Ridiculously Good Looking

This man though.  Not only is he super good looking, he's an awesome dad.  Got that baby girl right to sleep in the middle of priesthood.

Fun at Home

These three love to play the piano.  Teagan is really excited to start piano lesson this fall.

Teagan loves to take baths in our jet tub on Sunday mornings.  On this particular day he got a little out of hand with the bubbles.  We couldn't even find him!

Eloise loves to hang around all the older girls in the neighborhood.  The Heath sisters asked if they could give her a makeover (they are 10 and 11).  Eloise was in absolute heaven.

Eloise loves to color and takes paper from the printer and a pen and colors for a long time.  She doesn't like to use crayons or markers though, just pens or pencils.  She is so sweet.

Teagan is growing up too fast.  He is growing right out of his church clothes already and is just too handsome for me.

Three Little Buddies

Seriously though, these kids are way too cute.  Boston drives the girls around in his awesome truck.  I feel like this is some foreshadowing into their future...

Great Grandma Durtschi

We had a glorious day up at Grandma Durtschi's house a few weeks ago.  Julie and I somehow managed to fit all our kids into her van, carseats included!  The kids loved it and had so much fun!

We had a great time visiting while the kids played in her magical yard.  I loved listening to her stories about raising all those kids.  She has such a fun personality, love her!

This is her pond, the big kids loved boating around.  Teagan has been asking to do this for a while now.

After all the reunions these two have become buddies.  Ellie and Ty love to run around together.

The rope climb is alway a big attraction at Grandma's house.  You can earn $5 if you make it to the top.  This time it was just Kate and Teagan that could make it, the younger ones have something to dream for now.  

Thank you Grandma Durtschi for hosting us and our families for the day!  It was wonderful!

Packer Reunion-Lava Hot Springs

We had the first annual Packer reunion over the 4th of July weekend and it was so much fun!  We all got together and rented a house that fit our family perfectly.  We split up the meals, planned some fun activities and the whole family had such a blast!

We spent the first day at Lava Hot Springs.  It was really fun.  Teagan and Addy especially loved playing in the water.  Eloise, as usual, got bored after a couple hours, but did love the tiny slide and went down over and over again.  

Teagan ran around with Ethan and Kai and the three of them went on every slide, diving board, and rock wall they could find.  They talked about going off the platforms a lot, but it only happened once. 

 When it was their turn, Teagan and Kai both started getting second thought about jumping at all.  Zac could see that it might not happen so he said, "Teagan, let's do this!" and got him to hurry and jump before he changed his mind.  It was awesome!

 Each evening we would eat our dinner quick and then go to the park down the road to play.  There was an amazing playground that the kids loved and a huge field where the adults played ultimate frisbee and soccer.  We played for hours each night, until it got dark.  This was a highlight for both Zac and I.  It was just so fun to play. On the 4th of July we played until they did fireworks and stayed at the park to watch them.  It was a perfect night.

Every night we stayed up way too late and played games after the kids were in bed.  Most everyone was playing Whitney and Joe's fancy games, but the three of us girls, me, Elise, and Julie, were in for just some mindless fun so we played skipbo.  It was so fun and there were a lot of laughs!

 One of the favorite activities was the Soda Springs 4th of July parade.  Each kid went home with bags of candy and it had a great small town feel.  Before the parade any kid could run the parade route and win a prize at the end.  Long legs Teagan was definitely closer to the front and was super fast, I don't think he stopped the whole time!

Eloise had Daddy to help her run and help carry her, and grandma Packer joined in to help her make it to the finish line.   Both kids got a ticket to Lava, sparklers, and candy!  Holy cow!

While we were busy watching the parade, this little miss found the candy stash and was devouring tootsie rolls, paper included, at an alarming rate.

After the parade we went and watched the Soda Springs Geyser.  It is apparently man made so the water was safe to play in.  On such a HOT day, we definitely enjoyed being able to cool off!

After the parade we headed back to Lava to float the river.  This is Teagan and cousin Grant in the tube.  Teagan went down about 6 or 7 times and loved it so much!

Zac and Eloise had a fun time going down as well.  I guess their tube tipped and when Zac popped out of the water and saw Eloise she was laughing still, luckily.  It was a little tricky finding them, eventually Zac just walked back to the house.  We all got separated, so it was a bit of a bummer.  Next time we will definitely make a plan beforehand so that we don't loose people!  Eloise went down twice but was done after that.  Me and Addy just watched and took pictures.

This was the first time that we'd had a reunion with my mom and sibling and it was so fun to have everyone there.  We definitely are ready to go again soon!

Rigby Lake

We had so much fun at Rigby Lake with some of our neighbors.  We went with the Newells and Heaths and we all had a blast.

Teagan also brought his friend Mason Murdoch so the boys had so much fun.  This was the only picture I got of Teagan, he was a blur most of the day so it was hard to get a good one.  He ran from the slide to the sand to the dock to the toys all day long.  It was heaven for him.

The young BFFs, Ellie and Jordan, played in the sand and loved being together all day, and Courtney photo bombed, I love that lady!

 The older BFFs also played in the water, but also enjoyed some lounging, laughing, and snacking in the sun.

Adeline loved the water so much!  She would crawl in and out of the water and sit and splash and throw sand.  She is a water baby for sure.  She also rode around on the inflatable toys a ton.  And then she took her puppy and bubba and snuggled in for a nap.

Eloise is not so much into the water and changed into clothes and hung out in the shade and sand.

The lake was such a fun activity for our family, we can't wait to go back again soon.

Jam!

Strawberries were on sale and we took advantage and made jam.  Everybody had a job and it went pretty quick.  Addy was in charge of being cute and happy, Eloise was in charge of stirring, Teagan chopped the strawberries and I washed, chopped, mixed, poured and delegated.  We had the music playing and I really enjoyed the time with the kiddos, even if they did abandon ship about ¼ of the way through.

A counter full of strawberry jam is so beautiful to me!  We have already been enjoying it!