summer chaos

I can already tell that the summer will be over before I know what's happened.  The calendar is very full. 

I took my miamaids on a country roads bike ride.  It ended up being the perfect activity.  I love this calling more than I've loved any calling in years.  These girls are so funny, so good, and so loving. 

Alica has some very funny and very 'interesting' friends.  I told her that next school year, she needs to make a goal to have at least one friend that goes to church.  The thing is--she's a great influence on them and she always lets them know where she stands.  After they left one night, Mario said to me, "Do we need to be concerned about Alicia's friends?"  I told him that if he remembered, Audrey also had some colorful friends at that age and then it all worked itself out as she got older.  It's always entertaining to watch them interact.

I tried to get some new ward friends together to hike Crimson trail.  Only one took me up on it but we sure had a lot of fun with just the few of us.  The weather was perfect, the view was amazing and we had a bit of excitement to make it memorable.  We ran into a rattlesnake.  Eliza and Teesh were leading the pack and suddenly Eliza stopped abruptly and Teesh thought there was a bear.  (she gets that pounded in her head at Yellowstone).  They started slowly backing up without saying a word.  I was so glad that they were in the lead because I would not have been even close to calm.  The snake went into a bush but stayed right by the trail and wouldn't go away so we ended up having to climb up a really steep bank to get around it.  This was the best zoom pic that I could get.  I wasn't going to get anywhere close.  After that, we were all a little jumpy and everything that moved or made a sound seemed to be a rattlesnake.

Isaac and I have discovered the wonderful world of Geocaching.  It's super fun and right up Frosty's alley.  We haven't found anything amazing yet but it's all about the hunt.

The kittens are getting a lot cuter and we're enjoying putting them out on the grass.  Sunday we went out and spent a lot of time on the east side of our house with them and also with the kids making up a game that involved koosh balls.