Friends, Fun, Phelps!

I am officially addicted to the Olympics! Who can pull themselves away from watching history in the making? What an incredible ride it has been and it is not even over! We have had a great time explaining to Dallin how hard these athletes work. He loves Michael Phelps and always asks when he is on. Today he told me that when he is in the Olympics, it will be in gymnastics!
I can't believe we are down to the last 2 weeks of summer. It has flown by! I am really happy with what we have been doing and I think the kids have made some great memories. We have not done any camps or huge outings, but have kept busy.
Here are some of our most recent events that I have been too preoccupied to blog about!

Daddy/Daughter Campout- Emily asked about this every morning for the week before. She had a great time with Jeff. They camped in a tent and there was a pool there.

Cowleys visit- Angi and I became very good friends the summer after my freshman year. She married Jared a year after I married Jeff and we spent a lot of time together playing Settlers, (which they were lucky enough to witness our first fight over!) , going to BYU football and basketball games and just hanging out. Over the years we have lived in different states but have always managed to visit each other. Our 3 kids are within a few months of each other and always enjoy hanging out. They came to stay with us for a couple of days and we had a lot of fun showing them our favorite places and going out on the boat. Thanks Cowley family!! We love you guys and we had an awesome time!
Nate had a reason to be nervous on the tube- He and Dallin ended up in the water. It was a little scary for them, but they learned that life jackets really do work! And we learned not to buy tubes from Craig's List! Giant, safe, Costco tube- here we come!

Little Mermaid play- We were able to get tickets to a children's play of Little Mermaid thanks to the efforts of a good friend. You can imagine my little Emily was in heaven! My neighbor was kind enough to watch Bryce and I took Emily and Dallin. The play was very cute and after the actresses and actors signed autographs! This is definitely something we will do again next year!

Girls' Nights Out- Jeff has been very sweet and supportive of some needed time to myself. I went out for some great dinner and a movie with some of my closest friends. Then this weekend, I was able to get out again to go to the coast for the weekend. I love Ranell's condo and the girls who came. It was incredibly relaxing and enjoyable. We did a little bit of retail therapy, but mostly we just enjoyed have time to chat uninterrupted! It is nice being with other women and remembering that we are all just doing our best. These are smart, fun women who I learned a lot from. And, we watched a little Phelps!

We were too busy relaxing to take any pictures, except I took this one at the outlets where I randomly ran into my Cowley friends again later on in theirvacation! Too funny!

Everyday adventures- Going to the library, the park, hanging out with friends, playing in a pool without water- those are some of the other things that we have been doing. It has been very low key overall. I am excited for school to start, but it will be strange having Dallin gone all day. I hope we have been taking advantage of the summer enough. I feel like we have!
Still running and enjoying training with Jeff. We have paid a babysitter to do a few runs together. He is doing so great and may actually be liking to run. We have not always been able to meet up with our group to run, but when we do, it is always interesting. Ask Sarah about the cat story...

That's it for now. When I get a chance I am going to blog about some of the things I have learned. Until then...