We had a big event heralding in June (Dave’s Ironman), and another big one to top it off (the BBS conference), but there were sure a lot of “little things” sandwiched in between.
So let’s cover those suckers, but not without a little snippet of the Ironman:

The month started out pretty heavenly for me…

…a little more painfully for Dave:
Ha!  But he did it so beautifully and I’m so dang proud of that guy.  I was in awe of all those athletes and gained an even more heavy appreciation for what the human body can do.  More about that back HERE.
Loved visiting with Dave’s parents when we returned…and of course, our traditional Rummikub 🙂

These were Dave’s souvenirs:

Lucky, right?

He lost five toenails in all. 

Now that’s some serious dedication!

We got in one more Activity Days with our girls before summer took us in every different direction.

Loved sitting on the side of that pool hearing all those cute girls spill our various things and talking with my teaching partner Shelly.  She’s the best.

Claire did a volleyball summer league:

 …which only lasted just a little while because of her surgery, but we took what we could get!

Lucy got a couple of her braces brackets taken off and re-situated to further fix those teeth of hers. 

This picture does not tell the story quite accurately (most of the time she was in quite a foul mood)…

…but I was trying to cheer her up by showing her how she looked with one bracket on and one off…which thankfully she found quite amusing.
I don’t have many pictures to show our “summer goals” this summer, I guess I was just into those summer goals myself, but I did love that for the majority of June we got so much done.  Reading and practicing and extra jobs around the house as well as my big girls putting in some outside work to earn some extra money for school clothes that are coming up shortly.
Grace folded 1,478 t-shirts at Old Navy (who knows if that’s really an exaggeration or not…she sure folded a bunch) and also worked the dressing room and sometimes the cash register, and Claire put the word out to get extra babysitting jobs which she did.  
I soaked in those days at home more than ever.  I knew we’d be gone for a good portion of July, but also, I just know from experience that those days with my girls all around are fleeting so quickly.  Grace is starting her senior year.  I’m happy for her but sad for me for that little fact.  Boy I will miss her so much.  
But let’s not get all sad about that now, let’s talk about how all these girls helped make meals from start to finish this summer. 

Loved it so much.

We had an FHE gathering shortly after the Ironman with our friends we went with.  My friend put together a slide show of all our pictures for our kids so they could be in that experience with us somewhat. 

Loved sitting snuggled up in that room with those good people we love, reminiscing about that pretty fabulous event.
Amidst the summer jobs and goals, the girls lucked out to get to go to the lake a few times.

(those cute cousins happened to match one time)…

And Max, up in Utah, figured out how to get to a lake as well with some friends (Bear Lake).

This is a picture of Lucy’s hair:

Duh, right?  But it was one of the few times in June that an actual hair-do happened.

So it got documented 🙂

I listened to the majority of this book:

It’s a good one.

And Lu and I finished the last of our Narnia books.

Which I wrote about back HERE…and which still makes me sad wanting to cling onto not only those books but that time of life snuggled up reading together.  We’ve had the best discussions reading that series.  Maybe we need to start over.  THANK YOU for all the suggestions (back in the comments of that post) with suggestions of new reading material to start from there…I’ve been waiting for her to finish some dolphin series before we dive into some of those suggestions.

Loved this note Lu wrote to my Activity Days teaching partner for her birthday:

Like Max and Elle when they are in town, Dave and I recruited Grace to go to some of our workouts with us:

Man, why do I love that so much?

We did plenty of our own family workouts at home too…complete with Bo Jangles some of the time.

I got to meet up with my mother-in-law and sis-in-laws (as well as my niece and her sweet-as-pie baby Graham) to celebrate some birthdays.

How I love those wonderful women!  
A summer volleyball game warm-up: 

Still weird to me that our whole at-home family can all sit in the front seat of the suburban:

 My niece got her mission call:

We are so, so happy for her, and for the people she will find to teach and learn from in Florida. 

More cooking:

A couple friends and I decided to take a road trip to a further-away temple as a little “field trip” one day:

Love all these awesome kids:

 …and their good moms too.

For almost three of the weeks in June, Claire did early morning (5:30am) volleyball training at the school.
She basked in the glory of that.  I love that she loves volleyball so much.

She took advantage of being able to do that before she had to take a break for her little umbilical surgery.  I found this in her room…not sure why…maybe for volleyball?  Maybe for surgery?  Maybe to have the ability to stick with all her summer goals??  Ha!

We had good times in various hospital rooms to take care of that girl in June (back HERE).

Dave had a bunch of his China team in town for a little some meetings for a few days.

Love that Kevin and all the good people he works with.

I like when these things come up on my phone:

My sis-in-law passed through BYU on her summer road trip with her boys and look which college student they just happened to randomly run into at the library:

Lucky 😉

We went to California:

 Went to another wedding:

(more about that back HERE)

My sister Saydi started a family “challenge” anyone could join before the reunion.  Everyone pitched in $5 and the winner after 21 days (the theory of 21 days to create new habits), was the winner:

(That last part was a typo…it was really only 2 free points, and we tweaked it a little in our family to only have one treat a week, but you get the idea.)  I love things like that to keep us motivated on what’s most important in a world of so many “swayers”)
Dave and I snuck out on a date one random night to try out a new ice cream place (luckily before that challenge happened).  And I took this picture because we have a little joke about how I claim to not really like ice cream that much but have no problems putting something like that down.

Ha!  But in all actuality, I just sure like baked goods better…namely chocolate chip cookies.

Meanwhile, Elle is having the experience of a lifetime over in Jerusalem.  It is so fun to FaceTime now and again and get random pictures like this showing up in our shared family photos on our phones:

Speaking of college kids, we got Max home just for one quick weekend between spring and summer semesters up in Utah. 

We snuck in to visit Grace at work one night and tried to take some incognito pictures:

 

 Card games still live strong at our house:

We celebrated Grace’s birthday a day early with the family since we knew she’d be gone with friends most of the next night, and because Max was home.

(that extra girl in these pictures is a cute friend of Max’s)

We stole away to the lake for a second:

 (We lucked out with that dog I tell you!)

 

I love this man:

…and that we got to celebrate TWENTY-THREE years of being at each other’s side:

And sometimes at each other’s throats too.  Ha! 

 I’m the luckiest (wrote about that back HERE).

 Grace’s birthday:

More about that back HERE and HERE, but I left out this picture of her birthday injury stubbing her toe on her bed:

 OUCH!

This is one night when we were trying to hang with our girl Lucy for a little date to watch A Dog’s Purpose and our television wouldn’t work so we were trying to pull it up on a computer.  I don’t know why I have it except to remember that it was a sweet night.

Then we were off on our road trip to head to the BBS conference.  Loved that Max and his city were near the end of the trip…and that he made his little sister smile bigger than ever when we met up for lunch.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the end of June was filled with trying to cram the science of BBS into my brain.

I wrote all about my thoughts on those technical slides and those amazing researchers, as well as so many awesome families back HERE.

There we go. 

And now we’re almost to the end of JULY.  Nutty. 

Happy Tuesday!

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3 Comments

  1. So much fun!! I love these posts the most!!
    I saw Max’s instagram post today.. I Think they are more than friends now haha!!
    It must be crazy but cool to see them return home and move forward with their grown up lives, but in my mind he should be still 15 lol

    Reply

  3. So we knew the Martin family when we both lived in Las Vegas and now to see your connection is fun. I don’t know you but feel like I do since I’ve followed your blog for so long!

    Reply

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