Our Wiley Ways: Summer 2011 - is it really almost over?!

[Insert lame excuses about not blogging forever being so far behind and how time flies and we're so busy blah blah blah]

Here are a few fun highlights from our summer so far (and by "highlight" I mostly just mean "something we have a picture of")

June

When we got back from our big East Coast trip, we got the kids signed up for swimming lessons at the country club - I was excited about this since this is where I'd like them to eventually do swim team, so it was a step in getting them acquainted and familiar there. After lessons they got to spend some time going off the diving boards, which was a highlight. All the kids have made great progress, and really it's just a matter of practicing the strokes more at this point. June needs to be willing to practice with no goggles in order to progress to the next level - her goggles have become a real security blanket for her so I'm not sure if/when/how that will happen.

On June 20 we sent Brenden off to Camp Big Springs - week-long sleep-away camp for all 5th graders in Provo. We missed him a lot and his absence left Oliver more freed up to pick on June, but are glad he had a good time. He came back very dirty but excited to have made some new friends and had some fun experiences.

Looking back at the calendar reminds me that Oliver had a day of cub scout day camp in June, we celebrated Father's day for both Scott and Grandpa Z and Grandpa Z's birthday, Brenden & Oliver both had some dental work done, and we listened to the Beatles Abbey Road album a lot.

July

by Justin Hackworth

July started off with a bang when on July 1st we had our next Rooftop Concert which featured The Abbey Road Show - a group of local allstar musicians who got together to play the Abbey Road album from start to finish. Scott played guitar with a group of about 15 other musicians and singers and the whole thing was truly magical. The music was great, the camaraderie visible on stage was fun to watch, and the fireworks during the encore were epic. The crowd was amazed and the whole evening went over very well. So fun.

by Justin Hackworth

We hired a security crew this time so I got to wear this nifty walkie-talkie headset which felt pretty silly but very official.

by Justin Hackworth

It's kind of crazy to see how big this whole concert series has become. But Provo is a gentle place so the crowds have been manageable and so far it's still been really fun to work on.

After the show on Friday, we spent the rest of the weekend celebrating the 4th of July. We watched the Stadium of Fire fireworks on Saturday night, did our own fireworks with friends on Monday night, watched the hot air balloons (not) launch on Monday (it was too windy but that was kind of dramatic too), and watched the parade. It was fun to have Brett in town for the festivities.

The boys have spent a lot of time this summer riding their bikes and looking for good spots to jump and do tricks. We discovered a bike park in Eagle Mountain, have gone to several different skate parks, and the boys go out "street riding" sometimes (i.e. riding around town looking for different curbs and cracks in the sidewalk to launch jumps over).

In fact, we took advantage of the fact that Brett was in town and put him to work operating heavy machinery.

We rented a mini-excavator and built a little bike jump park up in the vacant land above our house. The boys worked on that in the dead heat of summer every day coming back dirty and hot and sweaty, but the outcome has been great.

We've ended up with a ton of these types of movies from Brenden's Go Pro camera - this is him riding the jumps we built by our house. I think he was out there by himself this day.

IDAHO

On July 7 we packed up and headed to Lake Pond Oreille in Sandpoint, Idaho with the Wileys. We stayed at this amazing house right on the lake with it's own doc and rolling hills and glass doors and windows from floor to ceiling. It was breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful.

We watched bald eagles swoop for fish and played checkers and ping pong and went boating one day. We ate good food and everyone made a little progress in their respective books/work/knitting projects.

The kids spent PLENTY of time in the jacuzzi, and we took advantage of the grassy hill and built a super slip-n-slide.

We went exploring a few times into the cute town of Sandpoint wherein we discovered this beautiful bank of old postal boxes that I just couldn't live without.

Most importantly the kids got along well together and made memories together and we enjoyed each others company. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa Wiley for making it all possible!

What else?

We've been to Seven Peaks a few times - a couple times with Scott

and once even with June's best friends who used to live next door (Raeanna is 2 years older than June - they get along very well in spite of their huge height difference).

The boys went to rock climbing camp again this year for a week. Their leader took me aside afterward to tell me he thinks they're great climbers and suggested they join their competition team. I'm of course proud of them and happy for them to find a physical activity they enjoy and are good at, but the idea of them getting really good at rock climbing frankly scares me a little too much. That might sound funny since I don't really ever worry about them bike riding or motorcycle riding or jumping off the high dive, but somehow rock climbing seems different. Maybe I've just seen too many movies. In any case I'm sure we'll continue with it a bit and see where it goes.

The Lower Lights had a show up in Logan - beautiful area, great show, funny crowd.

Huck had his 2-year well baby checkup and passed with flying colors (65% weight, 98% height, 94% head). His speech has really exploded the past couple of weeks which has been fun to watch. I think he is further along at this age than my others were, which makes me hopeful maybe he'll pass through the "terrible twos" a bit faster too. He still has a ton of energy and screams more than I'd like and can be rather intense, but he is very funny and cute. He has started to express interest in potty training, and even been successful a couple of times, so maybe I'll take a stab at it early with him.

In a desperate attempt to facilitate some at-home outdoor entertainment, I bought this "super fun" backyard slide/pool. It took a long time and a lot of pumping to get it all setup and the whole time I was sure the fun it would enable would last all of 5 minutes. But to my surprise it lasted for a couple hours that day and a couple hours the next. For the next 3 days it sat out there unused and killed the grass underneath it, and now it's all deflated and crumpled on the side of the house pretty much forgotten. So that's about $10/hour for fun, which I guess is about the same as any other activity we could have thought of, so I shouldn't feel bad about that.