WAY BEHIND

Did you ever notice that the farther behind you get, the harder it is to motivate yourself to start the catch up... so you just get farther behind.  Anyhow, it seems as though most all of my blogs lately have started with a disclaimer about how far behind I am!  We have been very busy lately, so here is a quick rundown of everything:

We have been working really hard on our house!  It looks GREAT!

We had our annual trip to Red River Gorge, this year we had two cabins and went with the Lesans, Cupps, Forbes, Guffeys, and Bluedorns.  It was so much fun and we did all of our favorite hikes, had lots of yummy food (including our traditional dutch oven dinner with fire cooked corn on the cob), canoed, played games (not forgetting the ipod game), relaxed, spent lots of time around the fire, tried to keep the children at least alive (they had a lot of fun together), and attended the teeny tiny branch nearby.  A successful trip!

We have had lots of visitors... my parents came to visit with my oldest niece for about 10 days... we made them all very busy days.  We spent a full day at Kings Island, we went to church and I performed with a small choral group.  We shopped and ran errand, we went to the new Wake Nation (a boatless wake-boarding park) in Fairfield for their grand opening and watched lots of world class wake-boarders and wake-skaters perform.  We went to the zoo, ate out and in (lots of good food) spent time swimming in Nana's pool, went to the movie "UP" (took Jacob and Claire to the theater for the first time... they did not even blink!), and did more errands and shopping.  We also took a weekend trip to Chicago where we spent an afternoon at Navy Pier taking a shoreline boat tour, eating yummy things, watching people, mini golfing (first time for Jacob and Claire... quite an experience... we didn't keep score), driving little toy boats, and riding a giant ferris wheel.  We stayed with my Aunt and Uncle and then took the train downtown on Saturday to go to the Aquarium for a large part of the day and then have many fun times with public transportation (first subway ride for many... complete with totally drunk bum who insisted on having a conversation for the entire ride) to get to Due's pizza, take a quick walk to ESPN zone or Michigan Ave while we wait for our pizza, enjoy the goodness that is Chicago pizza, and then take the long hike back to the train.  We got to see Pat, a friend of Jared's, in Chicago.  On Sunday our attempts to go to church were foiled by a dead car battery; my cousin came down for a big brunch and then we set out for home... on our way we stopped in Lafayette to visit an old BYU friend from Argentina who is doing his PHD at Purdue.  Martin is still very much the same.

The first weekend that my parents were in town Jared's cousin Devin and his wife Nicole came to visit, so we spent the day with them at Kings Island too!  It was a fun time.  

We also got to have a quick visit with Barry, Bridgette, and Ryan on the way home from Ryan's mission.  It was great to have a quick visit with them.

Other than all of those things we have just been working to keep the house clean and I have been spending some sunny days at the pool with Holly!  Summer is here!

Unfortunately when we were in Chicago our memory card in our camera decided to go totally blank and stop working, so I lost every single picture from Red River Gorge, Wake Nation, and Chicago.  The pictures I have to share are a few my mom took while she was here.

Our visit with Martin.
Navy Pier.
Grandpa and Jacob at the zoo.  There is something so satisfying about watching someone else wrestle to keep him under control.
Claire in anticipation of the ride on the zoo train.

Kylie, Mom, and I at the zoo.