Some End of Summer Fun

While Alyssa and Danny were at Trek, the rest of us had some fun. One of the things we did was brave the crowds at Chik-fil-A on cow appreciation day. The line was long, but they moved us through fast. We took our food to a park instead of fighting for a table there.

We were going to do free slurpees on 7-11, too, but it didn't work in our schedule that day, so I bought them slurpees the next day, with out the long line.
Our Ward had to cancel their annual fathers/sons campout this summer because of a fire that was close to their campground. Instead, Danny brought home a big popcorn popper and snow cone machine from the Convention Center and they did an outdoor movie at the Stake Center. Danny had to spend most of the night making snow cones, but he set up a blanket for the boys and they had fun coming back to him for refills on their snow cones and popcorn.

We finally cashed in on our free escape room, because of the mix up on times with the business we had reserved our room with back in May.  We did a room called Leonardo's Loot. We were able to escape again, with only a couple of hints along the way.

Alyssa started school almost a week before Tyler and Ashley, so on her last day of summer, we took the kids to Cowabunga Bay. It was much overdue, since Ashley has been asking to go there since we moved here 7 years ago. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I snapped a couple as we were leaving for the day. They are super washed out from the sun, though.

 We invited some of Danny's employee's and their families over for an end of summer BBQ. We served hamburgers and hot dogs, but I bought way too much for the number of people that actually came. As a result, we were eating hamburgers, hot dogs, and their buns in every form I could come up with. One of the meals I did took me back to my mission days. It was the Brazilian Hot Dog. I remembered buying these in one of my areas from a member, who owned a hot dog cart. It had the normal bun and dog, but it also included many more toppings. The 3 toppings I remembered most were mashed potatoes, a meat mixture, kinda like chili, and these little hard French fries. Everyone ate it except Tyler and Camden. They said it was pretty good, too.

The end of summer is always a little hard for me. I love the heat, and playing in the water, no schedules, and having my kids around. Although, it is nice to have less fighting and no guilt about whether or not I got my kids to do enough educational activities and work for the day. School kind of takes care of that for me. Now, as the weather cools and the leaves are falling, we can look forward to the fun holidays we have coming up. I will try not to be too sad that snow and cold are just around the corner.

Anniversary Getaway

Danny and I celebrated 15 years of marriage in July. Danny had a lot of trips planned around that time, so I didn't think we would be able to do any kind of getaway for it. However, he decided to cancel one of his trips, which happened to be the one closest to our anniversary, so we planned a weekend getaway. He came up with about 6 different destinations, all located somewhere in Utah. I chose Zermatt Resort, in Midway. I had never been to Midway before and thought that Zermatt looked really nice. We left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa Wheeler on Thursday afternoon(the 26th and our anniversary) and stayed through Saturday around noon. We packed our weekend with a whole lot of fun and a little bit of relaxation. Thursday night, we had dinner at Tucanos before heading up into the mountains. We relaxed at the hotel that night, reading through memory books and scrapbooks about our sealing, reception, bridal showers, and first years together. It was fun to reminisce. Danny also surprised me with a ring, meant to compliment my wedding band and engagement ring.
On Friday, we were up early for a golf outing. I haven't golfed in so long, but I think I did pretty well considering how long it has been. I had heard that this course was one of the prettiest in Utah which is part of the reason I suggested it. I was a little disappointed to find out Danny had already golfed this course once before, but we still had fun.

After golf, we grabbed lunch at the restaurant at Zermatt, and then headed to our room to relax for a bit. That afternoon, around 4, we had a reservation for a razor rental. The razor outing was super fun. We got to drive up into the mountains, do some bumpy trails, hike a little, and just enjoy the outdoors.

We stopped at Cascade springs and walked around a bit there. We didn't want to do a full on hike, but got a little taste of the unique features there.

On the way back into town, we stopped at a pizza place and had dinner. One of the funniest parts of the weekend was my reaction to my dinner plate when they set it down. I had ordered a salad and personal pizza. I had expected the salad to come out first and then the pizza. However, they came out together with the salad in the middle of the plate and the pizza around the outside. At first glance, it looked to me like they thought I had ordered a salad pizza. The waitress set it down and I immediately said "Um...." I paused, not really sure how to put my thoughts into words. She then said "the salad is in the middle and the pizza is around it on the outside." Danny and I had a good laugh about it after she walked away.
After dinner, we returned the razor and then visited the hot tub and pool.
The next morning, we got up early again to play tennis. We finished the weekend off with a visit to the Homestead Crater. I'll let the pictures speak for this once in a lifetime experience.

The water was around 95 degrees and felt so nice. The worst part about the experience was the pool being full of scuba divers. It was fine when they were under the water, but then they would all surface, scaring us with all of the bubbles coming up around us, and make it very crowded on the surface. We enjoyed the soak, but probably wouldn't do it again for the price.
We had such a fun weekend and are so thankful to Mom and Dad for watching the kids for us. We've had a great 15 years together and we look forward to what the future hold for us and our family.

Zoob BuilderZ

The kids and I participated in the Library's summer reading program. Each of us had a bingo card with different summertime reading activities on it. For every bingo that you got, you got a scratch card. The scratch card would either be an instant winner for a small prize, or you got to enter it into a drawing for a large prize. Well, Ashley apparently inherited the luck of her daddy because her name was drawn for one of the prizes. The look on her face when they called to let her know was priceless. And she continued to smile for days afterwards about it.

The best part about Ashley winning this prize was that it entertained her and the boys for 3 days straight. They were so sad when I had to vacuum and told them it was time to pick up their creations. They made me take pictures and videos of all of them.

They called it an amusement park. there was even a rollercoaster track. I'm not sure where the picture of that one went. And they made animals to ride all of the rides. On top of the prizes, we all got to go to the end of summer pool party, too. That was the prize for getting blackout. Thanks, Lehi Library, for a fun summer program and for entertaining my kids for so many days.

Trek

Alyssa had the opportunity to participate in our Ward's Trek in July. Usually it is only for youth, ages 14-18. However, Danny was the one that booked the site a year and a half ago and in the process of booking it, he asked the missionaries there at the site what ages they recommended for trek. They said that it depended on the group and since our group would only be our ward, they said that it would be fine for 12 and 13 year old youth. The site they went to is located on the southwest side of Utah Lake and there are a bunch of missionary couple was serve there all summer long for all of the different trek groups. Something Alyssa did, that I did not do for my youth trek was fit all of her stuff into this bucket.

In the beginning stages of planning for trek, Danny was the young men's president. He knew pretty early on, that he would not be able to be there all 3 days(which is probably the reason we didn't end up as a Ma and Pa). However, by the time trek actually happened, he was serving in the bishopric. Either way, he had the opportunity to be there some of the time with Alyssa, which probably helped her, a lot.

She was also blessed with an amazing Ma and Pa and trek family. That made the experience so fun for her. Here she is with her family. Her Ma and Pa made each of the kids in the family a shirt that said "Doxey" on the back(which is their last name) and then each of the kids had a number 1-7 according to their age. Alyssa was the youngest in the family and number 7. She still wears her shirt all of the time.

I'm so glad that she got to participate. I still remember the 2 times I got to go on trek, once as a youth, and once as a 5 month pregnant equipment driver in Iowa. Both times were good experiences. I was a tiny bit jealous that I didn't get to go do it with them, but also glad that I didn't have to be out in the 100+ temps they experienced that week.

Lagoon

We did our annual trip to Lagoon in July this year. We spent 1 1/2 days there and had so much fun together.  This year was fun because there were a couple of rides that all of us could ride, so we probably went on those more than any of the others. One of those rides was this rapids ride. I think we rode it about 6 times in a row, because there was no line and because we could all ride.

 We could also all ride the Ferris Wheel. We didn't ride that one as much because it had a longer line.

The boys favorite ride was a smaller roller coaster that we could all ride. We probably went on that one 15 times over the 2 days that we were there.
We split up occasionally, too, for some of the bigger rides.

There was only one ride that Tyler could go on and Camden couldn't. So Camden got some one on one time when the others would ride that ride. This picture makes me laugh because Camden loves to copy our facial expressions, especially when the camera is in selfie mode.

We love how the trailer has made this yearly visit to Lagoon so much more enjoyable. We especially love how we can escape the middle of the day heat, eat a nice home-cooked meal, and get to our beds so quickly at the end of the long day.

Summer Kids Baking Camp

Alyssa talked me into doing a kids baking camp again this summer. I decided to do it once a week for 8 weeks instead of doing it 5 days in a row. I had a lot of repeat girls, but also a few new ones. It worked better this way. I was really bad about taking pictures while the girls were baking, but I did snap a couple of shots of their creations, plus a couple on the last day of class. We did the following categories for each of the 8 days: Donuts, Bars, Muffins, Cakes, Bread, Pies, Cookies, and Dessert Imposters. Here is a picture of our Imposters(Hamburger, meatloaf, French fries, mashed potatoes, breadsticks, chicken nuggets, and pizza-all made out of dessert items).

Here is Alyssa's cake that she made on cake day.

 I will miss the baking, but not the mess...

I had a lot of interest in the camp this year and ended up having to turn 5 girls away. As it was, the 13 girls I had was a little hard to handle. I felt like the 9 I had last summer was a good number. We'll see if I decide to do it again next year and what changes I make in order to make it more manageable.