Camping and Stalking Michael Ballam:)

all packed up, looking like the Beverly Hillbillies

Braxton, Hudson, and Allie Call

Sierra is not a big fan of these stinky bathrooms

playing games in the mosquito free tent

poor Olivia is allergic to mosquitos

At the beginning of this week, we went camping with the Call's to Sunrise Campground by Bear Lake. It was a beautiful campground filled with pine trees, aspens, wildflowers and about a billion mosquitos who were not deterred by the fact that we had insect repellent sprayed on thickly. Olivia and Maci were getting eaten alive and had a hard time sleeping that night. Olivia got some on her forehead that made her swell up and she looked like she had a third eye protruding from her forehead. I didn't have our magical black ointment with us to help the swelling go down, so she was quite itchy. We took our bikes and had fun riding them around the paved campground. We went on a little hike to see the lookout over Bear Lake and it was beautiful, the water is turquoise. We played games and made s'mores with the Call's. The kids played capture the flag, Olivia and Maci found the "golden bridge" with Allie, and the boys just hiked around the site. The boys started out sleeping in the one man tent but Hudson ended up going to the trailer with his parents sometime during the night. We slept in the amazing tent that I got last year for my birthday from my mom that sets up in 2 minutes. It is a joy to take camping because it is so easy. I listened to the girls scratching and moaning all night and decided that one night of camping was good for me. I'm such a light sleeper. Jace had a practice on Tuesday in the afternoon so we had to get home. LeAnn invited Sierra and Olivia to stay the night again and then I was going to bring Jace back after practice, but when I got home and read my emails, Jace had been invited to sing for the Zion's Bank regional area managers meeting and so he couldn't go back. He was very disappointed and cried about his bad luck. Thankfully, he was able to spend the night with Cameron Conrad to soften the blow of no camping with the Call's. Maci and I had a girls date since everyone was gone. I let her pick her favorite place for dinner so guess where we ate....McDonald's (they have a play place:) and then we went school clothes shopping for kindergarten. Maci picked out some pretty styling clothes and did a fashion show for each child when they got home from their various adventures. We went the next morning and got doughnuts for breakfast and even watched a redbox movie together called "Alpha and Omega" about some wolves that became friends.   

Amanda's 20th birthday

     Our visitors this week were Grandma Doris, Doug and Sherrie, plus Amanda and Dad. They came on Amanda's birthday which we celebrated the day after with a strawberry cake and 20 candles. She is headed back to  New York on Friday for her new nanny job and is so excited to see Wadi again. Visitors from our ward included Laura Deichman and Carylee Barnett (my visiting teachers), Mike and Cindy Turner (our home teacher), her mother and sister. I made a big lunch for everyone and Sierra and I made some cute treat bags to give everyone for intermission. We had exactly enough food, thanks to my brother's help in dishing things up:) It was good to see my family and spend some time with them. When we got to the matinee, Grandma told everyone she ran into or stood by that Jace was her grandson. I got a lot more comments with her there because people would ask me tons of questions after she would point out who Jace's parents were. It was fun and neat to see her so proud. The show was a sell out (the second one) and we had a hard time finding a seat. As it happened, Doug and Sherrie and my mom had two empty seats by them and we were able to be right next to them for the whole show. D.J. came at the last minute and LeAnn and Lyle let Maci came over to stay at their house while we all went to the play. She is having a harder time sitting through the plays as time goes on so I didn't mind giving her ticket to D.J. who sat by Amanda and Olivia up in the balcony. It makes me so happy to see the kids perform and I get great pleasure in seeing them get better with each performance. In between shows, Uncle Doug treated us to dinner at Sizzler. It was very yummy and the kids were in heaven getting to choose whatever they wanted off the salad bar. After dinner, we dropped off Jace and Sierra for South Pacific, came home for a short rest, and then went to see the 4th performance of South Pacific. It is a fun musical with cheerful music but too much swearing for Grandma Doris. Uncle Doug had a hard time following the French accent so they both preferred Oliver over South Pacific but enjoyed both of the children being in the shows. I think they just liked all the attention they were getting from everyone because once again, Grandma had to mention that she was related to the darling children in the play. Sherrie was very emotional and cried a lot during the play. I guess she was so proud of the kids that she just couldn't hold back the tears:)
     We've been driving around town looking at the different neighborhoods and houses. There are some really pretty places here and we love every inch of Logan. Someone told us that Michael Ballam's house is on the cliffside and that it is pink so we went searching last Sunday as we were driving around. Didn't find it but enjoyed looking at the "castle" houses (that's what the kids call them) in that section of town. The yards here are so beautiful with all of the different colors of flowers in bloom and it seems as if everyone has a vegetable garden producing food. There are a lot of old homes with such Victorian style that I love, a lot of stone, brick and fish scale siding. We attended "Musica Magnifica" on Saturday night and the kids told Michael Ballam that we had been searching for his house. Talk about embarrassing! He came over to me and gave me his address and told me to bring the kids by to play in the large sandbox he has in his backyard. I could have crawled under a rock! Why don't kids understand what's socially proper?:) Anyway, he was really nice about the whole creepy stalking thing. After the program we went with the Conrad's to Angie's and ordered two kitchen sinks full of ice cream. There is enough ice cream in the sinks for a huge crowd and we didn't even come close to finishing either one but they were sure good.

HUGE amounts of ice cream and toppings!

We love the Conrad family and all of the fun we get to 

have with them.