Hiking/Hanging out with Cousins
For starters, a hike up to Battle Creek Falls with cousins (Daniel’s side).
Cousins holding hands is one of my very favorite things in the world. Just look at that cuteness!
Cooling off:
Thinking about cooling off:
Running up this hill:
Daniel’s mom with a whole bunch of grandchildren:
Me with a whole bunch of kids:
Then later that night, hanging out with those same cousins at the fabulous Creekside Park near our house.
Almost as cute as cousins holding hands: Cousins Lying Down on Warm Cement
Forming a Band
This was the next thing checked off the sweet summer to-do list. I'll let Henry explain:
I’ve included the lyrics, in case you missed any of that.
Moral: Whatever stuff is like, you’ll still be okay
Moral: It’s always a good idea to look at things from a different angle
Moral: Lights are pretty much everywhere
Fourth of July Celebrations
There sure was a lot of Fourth of July celebrating going on in 2015.
Celebrations with my family (a day early, on July 3rd) included:
Swimming with cousins at Aunt Amy’s pool:
Cynthia in her “so unflattering it becomes extra cute” orange and yellow swimsuit:
Deep conversations:
Dinner up at South Fork (Provo Canyon):
Lizza and Cindy being good friends with my brother’s son, who looks pretty much exactly like my brother did at that age:
Cindy, my grandpa, and pink and whites. Lots of bonding going on here.
The kids with my grandparents on my mom’s side. They are wonderful people; I grew up visiting them every summer in Southern California. Now they live in Utah and I love that my kids get to know them.
Four Joannes: me, my grandma, my cousin, and a cousin’s daughter. I am happy to be named after such a special lady.
Fireworks (and other shenanigans) back at my parents’ house:
Sweet Rachel is so happy to be living in Utah close to family so she can steal everyone’s babies and mother them (since we ran out of babies for her to mother at home)
Then there were the Fourth of July celebrations with Daniel’s family, on the actual 4th of July.
You know you are at a party with Aunt Audra when there are cookies that look too fancy to eat. And when I look at these pictures I'm thinking that this is probably how Cindy should wear her hair for the rest of her life. I'm guessing I didn't do it, though - if cute hair needs to be done in our family usually Rachel is in charge:
4th of July relaxing:
And eating:
And slip ‘n sliding (nice pose, Lizza):
And more relaxing:
And fireworks at Grandma’s house:
And then more sparklers. 4th of July, consider yourself celebrated.
Family Reunions
We had 3 family reunions in July – one with my dad’s family, one with Daniel’s dad’s family, and one with my family.
The extended Johnson family reunion with my dad’s family was just a lot of local activities planned out over a couple of days. It was fun to see aunts and uncles and cousins I haven’t seen for awhile, but even more fun because lots of my siblings were in town because of our own family reunion we had planned the next week.
We hiked the Y:
And hung out at the Scera pool. I used to lifeguard and teach swim lessons at this pool when I was a teenager. It’s a lot different now.
This is my brother Victor playing the Risky Situation Game with Henry. Victor would come up with some sort of crazy scenario (it had to be “risky”, because that is Henry’s favorite kind of situation), and then Henry would have to come up with a plan to get safely out of it. Actual real example: “Pretend you were driving on top of a mountain and you wreck your car and it is hanging halfway off a cliff and then you look up and Loki (from the Avengers) is coming toward you. What would you do?” Totally normal game.
Cousins under a waterfall:
Cousins on towels:
Tristan and Cindy basking in the sun together:
Cindy doing a spectacular twirl jump:
Lizza and Rachel practicing synchronized front flips:
And me diving – that’s about all I am brave enough for. I could probably do twirly jumps with Cindy.
And then dinner and games at a fun park.
Henry met my aunt Carolyn. She had made homemade root beer for everyone at the park, and he thought that was about the coolest thing ever. He chatted with her about it forever to try to figure out exactly how she made it, and then he was so excited when she gave him the recipe – “Mom! Mom! Mom! Carolyn taught me how to make root beer and now I can make it for everyone at our reunion next week. We need to get root beer extract! And do you know what dry ice is?” The funny thing is that I remember Carolyn teaching me and my sisters all sorts of great things when we were little, and it made my heart happy to see Henry learning stuff from her, too.
Then there was just some fun hanging out with some of my family since they were in town.
Hot dogs and s’mores up AF canyon to celebrate one of the cousin’s birthday:
(by this point in the summer we could not go up the canyon without the boys trying to sneak some fly fishing in)
More hanging out at Aunt Amy’s pool:
And some hot yoga together (my sister’s twin girls, my mom, me, my oldest sister):
After the reunion with my dad’s family, Daniel’s dad’s family also had a reunion.
Cynthia meeting her great-aunt Cynthia – instant best friends:
Unlimited Italian ice. With ice cream in it. Happy, happy kids:
Some sort of water-balloon catching game:
Some sort of awkward skit/dance:
And the kids hanging out with their great-grandparents:
Fishing Trip at Strawberry Pinnacles
We took a little break in between reunions to take the whole family fly-fishing up on the Wild Strawberry River (a few hours from our house). Daniel, Tristan, Oliver, and I fished, and the younger four kids paired up with us and played around in the river. The family that fishes together stays together. Pretty sure that's what they say.
I brought along this little popup shade tent, just in case, and I was so glad I did. It came in useful for snack breaks and lunch breaks and taking breaks from the river and the sun and also for drying off wet clothes on top of it.
Bushwacking through the trees, trying to find the river. There were lots of adventures like this.
Cynthia loved collecting snake grass. She named this area Snake Grass Forest, and then referred to it all the time later in the summer (hey, Mom, remember that time in Snake Grass Forest?)
And we finished our day with a flat tire in the van. I guess I should say a flat tire ended our day – we had been planning on fishing until it was dark and then heading home, but luckily noticed the flat when we still had daylight left. It was a little bit stressful because we were out in the middle of nowhere with a lot of dirt road between us and main roads. The kids sat on the ice-chest and ate a snack while we worked on getting the spare tire on. Rachel is wearing slippers because I had told all the kids to bring an extra set of comfy clothes to sleep in on the long car-ride home – I knew they were going to be all gross and wet and cold from the river. I guess she wanted to be extra cozy. Anyway, the tire situation ended up okay. We drove home slowly on the wobbly tiny spare.
Then the next week we had the Johnson Family Reunion (my family) up at Bear Lake. That one’s probably going to need its own post. But here is a picture of all of us. And spoiler: Henry did make homemade root beer for this whole crew.
Miscellaneous
Here are some other miscellaneous things that happened during July.
Cindy and Henry playing their favorite “let’s cover the whole kitchen table with puzzles” game:
Scout camp for Oliver (also at Bear Lake):
Lots of fishing:
Drawing lessons (from Lizza):
Exercising. Back in spring of 2015 I decided I should try out running (I had never ever been a runner before). I started really slowly on the treadmill, and gradually worked up to running for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. Then once school got out I started running outside, and it was so much better! Alpine is such a pretty place to run. Anyway, Lizza loved to come along with me on her bike. She got to know my route pretty well, and she’d go tearing down the street ahead of me. If you have ever read the book called “A Girl Named Zippy” (one of my favorite books ever), then you will know what I mean when I say Lizza has always reminded me of Zippy. Especially when she’s racing down the street on her bike. Terrifying. But also fabulous.
Also in July, we decided to sell the lot that we had bought back in the spring. Or at least list it for sale and see what happened. We had no idea what we wanted to do, and kept going back and forth between building and buying. We hired some people to level out the land and also chop down a bunch of the dead trees.
These four spent a long and hot day stacking hundreds of logs from the chopped up trees (later we brought most of that wood to the house we ended up buying and using it for firewood)
Other miscellaneous July things -
Cindy dog-sitting Grandma Nini’s dog. This was her favorite thing that has ever happened to her in her whole life. We basically did not see Cindy the whole time Poochie was staying at our house because she was in the backyard with him. One morning I woke up early and noticed that Poochie was not outside in his cage, and our back gate was open. I was worried that he had run away until I discovered that Cynthia was not in her bed and she was missing also. I went out to the front yard to look for her, and way far down the street I could see a tiny person in a nightgown pushing a stroller. Sure enough, it was Cindy, with Poochie all buckled in. She had decided he might like an early morning walk. In a stroller.
Cindy finishing up reading lessons. Hallelujah. I used this same book to teach all 6 of my kids to read before kindergarten – it was a great book, but it was nice to know that I wasn’t going to be going through it again. Some things make me sad about Cindy getting older, and some things don’t.
More playing around at Creekside Park.
Rachel and Henry’s Birthday
Last July thing! Rachel and Henry’s special joint birthday – she turned 11 and he turned 7.
Opening presents:
A coupon for some new clothes for Rachel. Real live new clothes from a store and not from the hand-me-down box!
Then for a fun birthday activity we hiked the Y again, this time with my younger sister and her family who had not been in town when we did it the first time.
My kids:
My kids plus her kids:
The birthday kids. Her son was having a birthday soon, so we celebrated for all 3 of them with birthday cookies and candles up at the top.
Me and her. I really like my sisters.
My kids again, this time up on a rock. Probably being risky.
Later that day:
Stomp rocket and splash pad fun at the park:
And the birthday kids with their cakes of choice (some sort of key lime pie/cake for Henry, and a chocolate/coconut/tres leches for Rachel). These two are such great friends. They love sharing a birthday.
Here’s Rachel on her 4th birthday, just a few hours before Henry was born. Couldn’t have picked a better girl to give a baby to on her birthday.
And then all the other years:
The end.
