Mostly girls camp

    It's been an interesting week. We had a great crowd for ice cream. I spent the majority of the week at girl's camp and Greg and the kids managed to keep the house standing while I was gone. They may not have done much else, like laundry or basic chores, but they at least didn't have it a complete wreck when I got home. We also got our Armada back from the shop and although it cost a grand total of $6,000 we're happy to have a working vehicle back in the garage.

Another successful ice cream gathering.

What a pretty place to be with these beautiful girls.

Memories were made.

The spirit was strong.

The girls were a pleasure. (Mostly)

And there was definitely hard work involved.

    I had a great time at girl's camp mixed in with some major stress and anxiety. Above are just a few random photos that were shared with me. I literally only took the one photo of the girls by the lake and let everyone else be the photographers. We had several nice cameras available for the girls and leaders to use throughout the week and I'm sure I'll be getting a large file of photos shared with me in the near future from our hiking leader and resident photographer so I don't feel guilty at all for keeping my phone/camera in my pocket all week. 

    I love working with the young women and girls camp is always a favorite part of the summer. I'm glad I went even if it wasn't all fun and games, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. We have some special girls in our ward and I feel lucky to know them!

July 4th and more with the cousins

    We had such a fun week, with a fun 4th of July celebration to start it off. We were especially thrilled to have the cute Atkinson's here to help us celebrate living in American. We also enjoyed having them the remainder of the week, Charlie especially. No one loves her cousins more then Charlie!

July 4th breakfast of pancakes.

Device time

How cute are all these girls!?

Beau was a big fan of the chalk art activity.

These two grand girls are so fun.

We had a great group of friends & family join our celebration.

Pool time.

And it's not an official visit from the cousins unless there's a choreographed dance performed.

    And as I was searching for photos of Jackie's first car, (which I never found) I found this gem of a photo of Kayli with Jackie at almost the same age Charlie is now. There's no doubt now, they may look alike but Charlie is definitely taller!

Charlie and Kayli are literally only about 6 months apart in these photos with Jackie.

    Greg was in the mood for a trip up the canyon Wednesday and thankfully the girls were on the same page. It was a perfect day, lovely weather and not too crowded up the canyon.

We live in such a pretty place.

Charlie with four of her most favorite people.

    Greg and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary this week and we did a little more reminiscing. I'm still annoyed that I had my veil on wrong the day we were sealed but thankfully we went back and got professional photos. 

We were just kids!

And this lovely art work is courtesy of Jovi. She's got some skills!

    So after a fun week the Atkinson's had to head back to Idaho, much to the disappointment of Charlie. We also were sad to see them go and even more sad that their trip home was far from ideal or what we had planned but they're now back safe and sound in Idaho. We are currently waiting to hear back about our car and what might be wrong with it but thankfully we had great rescuers who saved the day and maybe our car breaking down, shortly after we got started on our trip, was a blessing in disguise. We may never know but we're just glad Ben could drop everything and make the long drive back to pick up his girls. We're also grateful to Kristin for saving us from a hot & long day in the park.

Fun!

    I don't know if anyone knows how obsessed I am with podcasts, maybe everyone knows, but I lucked out and actually got to meet two co-hosts from my most favorite podcast, "Nateland", Brian 'breakfast' Bates and Aaron Weber. They put on an amazing comedy show and graciously took a photo with me after the show. I just need to meet the other two hosts, Nate Bargatze and Dusty Slay and I'll be all set! What I really want is to have them show up for home made ice cream one Sunday night but I won't hold my breath. I will be going to more comedy shows at Wise Guys in the future though, it was such a great place and a fun night.

My guys!

    And now we have Jackie and her family here to join us in our July 4th celebrations, which should be a fun time!

Father's Day

    We had a great Father's Day and, altogether, a nice week. Nothing over the top but regular stuff. 

Carter sporting the bolo tie he won at his Priest camp.

Greg sporting his new apron courtesy of Kayli and the grandkids while churning ice cream in his new/fancy ice cream maker. Happy Father's Day to him!

A quick Harley ride after dinner.

And my favorite, spotting a hot air balloon while out walking, to welcome in the morning.

    So that's our fun for the week. On to another weekend & week of summer break.

Priest vacation and a bit more

    Judging from Greg's photos from his time with the priests in Wyoming I would have to say it's not in the camping category but more getaway/vacation category. To say he and Carter had a fun time is an understatement. Between the fly fishing, shooting and temple visit they had a trip of a life time. I won't go into all the details of their time with the priests but I'll let the photos tell their story. Lets just say the Kmetzsch boys, (Greg and Carter) dominated in all the activities/events.  

 

 Star Valley Lodge was legit.

 

 

This place looks so amazing and I'm told the photos don't do it justice.

 

If we hit the lottery maybe we can rent this place for the family some day.

 

    Sadly on the way home there was a bit of a mishap and the Built car and a dog collided and neither came out too well. The dog is in a 'better place' and the car is in the shop after air bags deployed. Thankfully no humans were hurt and it gave Greg an excuse to take a drive back to Wyoming to pick up the damaged car a few days later. P.S. Greg was not driving when the accident occurred.

 Who would have guessed hitting a dog would cause the airbags to deploy. Farm dogs next to a highway = possible accident.

    Charlie had a great time with her friends last weekend and they always send photos so she can remember the fun forever.

 

 

 

 

     And I captured this cute cuddle session just the other day. 

A rare moment of Harley sitting still and being chill.

    So there you have it! Fun times for all involved in these photos. And if you didn't know, our bishop has been stolen away to be the new stake president for our stake so our ward leadership is now headed for a drastic change. I usually don't mind change but this one stung! And we had one of our bigger ice cream gatherings Sunday and hopefully we'll continue to see the bishop/stake president occasionally at our ice cream gatherings.

This is just a fraction of all who came and of course we ran out of ice cream.

Separate fun

    We've had a great week but we've also been split, as a family, for a majority of the week. I've had the three youngest with me while Greg and Carter have been away at a Priest Quorum camp for half the week in Wyoming, and of course, Isaac is here but mostly gone working and spending time with his girlfriend. Here's just a glimpse at our fun here and away.

Dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, La Costa.

    

    And here's a couple photos from Greg and Carter's fun. Greg actually face timed us yesterday and they're staying in a pretty spectacular cabin and location. The scenery was amazing and the cabin was not really a cabin and calling it a camp out is kind of silly but I'm trying not to be too jealous about it. But catch me in July when I'm in a tent for girls camp 15 minutes from home and then I might have a different view point on the whole thing. 

Carter seriously living his best days!

Greg's a happy camper and we're happy he could actually go and get away for a few days.

    This cooler spring weather and late snow and rainfall definitely have been a blessing for Greg and all his job stresses, which made attending the priest 'camp-out' possible. He's having a blast!

Some random fun.

    We had a nice week. Kayli's officially 25, crazy! We had all 7 kids home for a minute on Sunday so I decided I should get a quick photo. Charlie was twinning with our neighbor so they had to take a photo. Brock and McClane had a cool young men's activity where they got to see some very old scriptures and even got to hold "Thor's" hammer. They were pretty excited. Charlie got to go to a couple of the cool museums at Thanksgiving point with her favorite Lopez boys and she also had a weeks worth of swim lessons with Morgan, Isaac's girlfriend, which she loved. And I reminisced a minute with photos of Kayli as a baby. Who knew what I was starting all those years ago?!

 

Charlie loves a good twinning moment.

A first edition bible, King James version and first edition Book of Mormon.

 

Charlie with her Lopez boys.

Swimming is her favorite.

Both of us were babies in this photo.

Kayli was a pretty adorable baby.

And, on a sad note, I ate my last small handful of my favorite jelly beans this week. Who knows when I'll ever get another chance to eat them but they were great while they lasted!

    Our first full week of summer break was great. Lets hope things continue to go smoothly.