Park City LAX Tourney

The girls got to enjoy some donuts, time with friends, and a few lacrosse games over the weekend.  

They were lucky enough to get placed in the highest/toughest bracket, so a few of those games were kinda rough.  This was also the first time we got to see them play without last years Seniors, so a little sneak peak into next years season.  Kayla still held her own on the draws.  Go #21

 

One more side note about this tourney....we had 0/zero nada  subs, so these 12 girls played every second of every game all weekend. These girls ROCK!!

Kayla's Summer Project

On top of the school summer projects that the older girls have, we gave them the option to have a home summer project that they would be compensated for completing before school starts again.  Kayla chose to stain the Swing Set,  I'm pretty sure she did the whole project in the blazing hot sun in her swimsuit, and loved it.  That girls was made for the Outdoors.  

5th Grade Program

Today was the annual 5th grade program - celebrating and sharing curriculum they have learned this year.

This is one of my favorite songs.  Click on the arrow and then the box in the lower right hand corner

They performed several songs on their recorders

Cute Brenna wearing her bandana

Her 5th grade class

with Mikayla

A few more friends

Summer Stationary & Chalk Art

The girls found a cool way to make their own stationary, so they have been hard at work making cards and paper to write notes on.

 They also been working on Chalk Art on the driveway.  I loved the Dumbo Lindz was created - freehand with cheap chalk and it looks amazing.  With no rain in the forecast, I think we'll get to enjoy Dumbo in the driveway for quite awhile.

Baby Robins

Another nest in our back yard trees

This time it was 4 blue robins eggs.  The nest was hard to check on as you needed a stool to reach it, and the Mom and Dad birds were constantly there and would fly right by your head when you got near the nest.  There was lots of screaming and running away coming from that part of the yard.

The blue eggs did hatch, and out came some ugly, slimy, baby bird type things.  The stayed in the nest probably a week or two and we could see the Mom taking worms into feed them.  But they were not cute, and no one got attached to them.  Eventually they took flight and off they went.  We're already looking forward to see what types of nests we'll find next year in our yard.

Provo River Rafting

The Provo River is one of the beauties and blessings we get to enjoy living here. 

 In the past, we have tubed the river in individual tubes and this time we decided to get an 8 person raft.  As with most things, there are pro's and con's to both, but today we had fun being all together.

It's about a 90 minute ride down the river, and about 3/4 through we saw this off to side of the water.....

At first we couldn't tell what it was.  We usually see muskrats and beavers, but this was definitely neither of those.  It was definitely a bear - but maybe a dead bear, or sleeping bear????

Ah no, it was alive and moving, though only slowly moving. 

With 7 Miller's all together in one raft, we couldn't help but stop and check it out.  As I look back on the pics now, I wonder of that was a good idea, but at that point, we couldn't imagine just passing it by.   

Here's the girls 'bear pause' photo

From there on, it was pretty mellow

We took a few breaks to jump in the freezing cold water

and finished up just past the Anderson's 'River House' at Vivian Park

We love where we live and love the opportunities we have to explore and enjoy the beautiful world around us.

Duck Adventures

Meet Stella the Duck.  She and her partner arrived in our yard in the early spring.   

And a few weeks later, we found these - 8 little duck eggs.  The girls were beyond excited.  We did some researched and patiently, and sometimes not soo patiently waited the 35 days for these eggs to hatch.  

Stella kept us entertained during that wait time by periodically swimming into the pool when it was open and wandering around the yard when she took short breaks from sitting on her eggs.

After returning from our Mt. Olympus hike, we checked on her to find a partially hatched batch of baby ducks.  

Look at those cute little beaks,

Oh man, they were soo soo cute and fluffy.

Sunday morning, the baby ducks followed Stella over to the pool and fell/jumped in.  Lucky for us, we had all morning to watch them.  

Swimming came completely natural to them.  They just floated and followed their Mom all around the pool. They got into the water easily, but could not get out.   Stella would get out and wait for them, but they could not get up and over the edge of the pool like she could.  

Just before we left for church, Robert angled a skim board from the edge of the pool to the top step.  

 When we arrived home 3 hours later, the make shift ramp was in full use.  The ducks stayed right close to  their Mom.  They would follow her in the pool and follow her up the ramp.  If one didn't make it up the ramp and out of the pool,  which happened periodically, Stella would jump back in and they rest would jump right back in after her, and try the whole process again until all 8 baby ducks made it to land.  Once on land, they would follow their Mom in line, and when she stopped,  they would scurry under her wings, similar to how they were under her in the nest.   It was completely fascinating and entertaining.

After watching them so several hours, Kayla REALLY wanted to hold one.  Can you see Stella's reaction to that idea???? She almost bit Kayla's finger.   

Shortly after that, the miracle happened.  Stella flew away for a few minutes.  She had done this before when she was sitting on the eggs, but this was first time we had seen her go since they had hatched.   The baby ducks huddled together in a little pile and those girls that had been waiting and hoping to one day hold baby ducks....saw their chance.