Crawdads!

A couple weekends ago, Lars took the boys out to Hyrum to fish for crawdads. They had a blast and came home with a big bucket full of them...

 Ashton invited his new friend Dylan that he met at vacation bible school.

I was proud of Lars for taking some good pictures since I stayed home...

Anyway of course the boys begged to be able to keep some of them, so Lars let Ashton keep some in water in his room that night.

Then the next day he went and bought them tanks and everything else they needed to really keep them as pets. I was NOT on board with this at first. In fact I had to walk out of the pet store, and just told him to do whatever he wanted. I really hate the idea of any kind of pet.

So he brought all the stuff home and got it all set up for them in their rooms that night. I still wasn't excited about their new additions.

That is until I saw their cute little excited faces. (the boys, not the crawdads).

 They named them, Ashton's...Spikey and Gunnar's...Pinchey (he only has one pincher) and they kept running in and out of their rooms to check on them and I was won over. I guess every kid wants to have a pet. Believe it or not, I had a DOG when I was little...not a family dog, it was actually mine. Panda was it's name. It didn't last long because my Mom feels the same way that I now do about dogs, but I did have one. Also a bunny named Bugsy that I had for quite awhile. Anyway as far as pets go, these 2 are pretty cool.

They are fun to watch...they stay up all night and play and apparently some have been known to be great escape artists! I hope these two aren't that talented. I prefer them to be in their tanks at all times.

Anyway kind of fun :)

Price again...

The weekend after the boys had spent their week in Price, we ended up driving back down for Lars' uncle Bob's funeral. Nana brother Bob passed away after a very short battle with cancer :(

We wanted to go down to support her and attend the funeral.

It was a nice service, but so sad to see all of his grandkids get up and talk about their Grandpa and all of their fun memories of him.

Ashton and Gunnar sat through it all really well, I was proud of them.

After the funeral there was a luncheon and I stopped the kids to take a few pictures afterwards...

 Goofballs!

 I am always so grateful that Ashton and Gunnar have these 2 cousins! Who knows, they might be the only ones they ever have.

They absolutely adore Hunter and have the best time with him every time they get together.

Then we snapped a few more pictures of the fam...

We ended up staying a couple nights, it was nice to be there.

Kind of a funny story...I think it was Saturday morning, I decided to go for a run like I have many times while we are there. But this time I ran a little further one way than I usually do, then when I decided to head back, I got all turned around and COMPLETELY lost! I kept running around thinking surely I would recognize something and be back on the right track to get back to their house, but no that did not happen. Eventually after it had been about an hour (knowing that Lars would be starting to worry) I stopped a lady who was on her way out to get into her car, and asked her if I could use her phone to call Lars. I told her I got lost while out on my run...I think she felt sorry for me and said of course I could use her phone. So by the time he answered he was already out driving around with his Dad looking for me...haha.

Anyway he found me and we all had a good laugh. That's one way to get myself to run further than usual! It ended up being a little over 5 miles. 

Our Donation...

Wow...I have a lot of catching up to do on my blog!

I wanted to start with this, because I realized I never did post how much money I was able to raise to donate to Food For the Poor to celebrate my birthday last month.

So here is the check I sent off...

I was so, so, so excited to be able to do this and so proud of all of my friends and family that helped me achieve this goal!
Best birthday ever :)
The thought that kept going through my head was "If we all do a little, we can do a lot."
Thanks so much if you helped me donate!

 

Bikes...

I have not owned a bike since I had my old purple 10 speed when I was in middle school I guess?

So I told Lars that that's what I wanted for my birthday this year. Anyway he obviously can't pick that out for me, and ended up getting me something else. But told me that I could take it back and get a bike or whatever I wanted.

Then when we went to Price last weekend, kind of last minute for his uncle's funeral, we ended up trying out his parents bikes that they never ride anymore and they told us we could just take them home with us to ride for now.

So we did and it's been kind of fun to have a bike again! I may end up getting a different one later, but in the meantime these work great and we are so grateful to them for sharing them with us.

Kelli was here staying with us for the weekend, so last night she watched the boys while we went out on a date. We went and got sushi (not the raw fish kind...gross!), then went to a couple stores. No good movies were playing and we couldn't decide what to do. So we decided to go wander around the fair, because I really wanted a funnel cake, but we couldn't even find a parking spot and the crowds just didn't sound very fun. So we ended up just going home and getting on our bikes and riding down to the shaved ice shack and getting a snow cone.

It was a fun night and we are always so glad to have Kelli watch the boys when she can :)



Vacation Bible School...

I can't believe we are almost halfway through August and Vacation Bible School already came and went last week!

It was a lot of fun like always...I love that this is something that the boys and I are able to be involved in every summer. And I love my job at it...taking pictures of course!

This year's theme was Kingdom Rock (Castles and knights etc...)

 ...and where God teaches us that through everything in our lives we need to "Stand Strong!"

Ashton was a little nervous and not wanting to go the first day, but after he was there for half an hour he was fine and had fun all week.

Gunnar wanted to wait with me every day until his best little girlfriend Amalia arrived and when she did, he did not leave her side all day.

They were SO cute together as always.

I love, love, love these pictures that I happened to capture of the two of them one day dancing to all of the fun songs...

Love these little cuties :)

Ashton even met a new friend too...

...and went and played at his house one day this week and now today after church Lars took him and Ashton and Gunnar to try to catch some crawdads out at Hyrum while I clean up our very messy house after not having a single day to be home to clean last week!

Anyway as usual one of my very favorite weeks of summer! I love our church family and every aspect of VBS. Can't wait till next year!

We made the paper...

Lars came in to the bedroom after reading the morning paper on Friday and said "Guess what was in the paper today?"

I immediately knew what it probably was and said "No way, you are kidding."

Sure enough I went out and read this...

And the mountain lion saga continues...I hope someone will be honest and come forward if they know something.



The Mountain Lion...

I have to post about this innocent turned crazy story to look back on some day. It starts back on that fun day Lars and I spent fishing on the Smith's Fork river up by Cokeville Wyoming.

 I don't think I mentioned it in my previous post about that day, but while we were up there fishing I saw this old shack a little ways off of the bank and thought it would be fun to go take some pictures by it. I love old stuff like that and we all know my love of taking pictures. So we took a break from fishing and walked up to check it out. We wandered around it and looked in the old windows and when I looked in one, I saw this!

So I called Lars over to show him and he was also impressed to see a dead mountain lion laying in there. I snapped a couple pictures, we talked about how it was cool to see something like that and how it was pretty rare. Then we took these pictures...

...then went back to fishing.

It was such a fun day!

So then when I got home, I posted a bunch of the fish pictures on facebook and a few days later remembered the mt. lion pictures and posted one with a picture of the old shack on facebook.

As soon as I posted it, people started to comment about how cool it was to see something like that and a couple asked where we were fishing that day. So I replied with where we were, not thinking anything of it.

Well when I showed Lars the post he said that I probably should take it off and that we also probably needed to report finding it to the fish and game department in Wyoming.

So I did, and he called it in.

Well a few days later, the ranger he talked to called him back saying that he'd gone up and found the shack, but then the first words out of his mouth after that were "I just have to ask you...how in the world did you know it was a mountain lion?" So Lars told him that he saw the face and the teeth and the legs etc...So the guy, obviously confused asked him a couple more times and then they went on to talk about it for at least another 20 minutes before Lars realized that maybe we'd seen 2 different things. So I was on the computer (at his parents house in Price) and had this picture pulled up on the computer...

 ...so he told the guy that I would email it to him. So I did. Well when he received it, I don't think he could believe it, because by the time he got up to the shack...(like I said within days of when we were there) low and behold...this is what he found...

Yep! Mountain lion was GONE!
No wonder he kept questioning how we knew it was a mountain lion!

Seemed pretty fishy to us that this mountain lion that had obviously been there for at least a few months or maybe much more was gone within a few days of me posting it on facebook!

So at that point, Lars ended up telling the guy that I'd posted about it on facebook and he pretty much said that they are starting an investigation and that I needed to put something else on there letting everyone know about this investigation and that if anyone has any information that they need to report to the Wyoming fish and game asap. Oh my goodness how one innocent thing leads to another. Never did I think twice about posting that picture...I just thought it was something cool to see and show. Who knew that someone would take it and that people sell the skulls and teeth etc...of these animals!

Ugghhh.

So I guess we'll see where this goes. At this point I really can't see anyone coming forward and saying they took it!