The warmer weather of summer time always brings about wild afternoons in the pool with cousins at grandma's house and boating with the Stuckis. Van has always been a water baby & he is turning into a water boy so these are the moments when he is the most happy!
One of Tyler's co-workers in Burley invited us over to see her farm before Ty's job was finished there. Van loved seeing all her animals and tractors. She let us pick our own eggs out of her hen-house to take home and we got to pet all their bunnies. It was really interesting to see a glimpse of a life-style so different from our own and very kind of them to let us explore their farm.
Van often wakes up in the mornings and brings me this picture of Jesus. He likes to ask questions about Him & sometimes he'll make up cute little stories from things he remembers in the Scriptures. His innocent love for our Savior is such a special thing to witness. I am one lucky mom!
My biggest achievement of the year was running a 5K Fun Run with my local Weight Watchers group. I am not runner, I don't like running & I have never had any desire to run anywhere, for anything... EVER! But since Tyler had just finished training & competing in a 50 mile trail run relay with a few friends from his program (more on that in a minute), I was feeling a little sedentary. I figured I would put Van in his trailer & walk the course. I ended up running the entire thing in 35 minutes, without having trained a single bit for it! I was blown away and Tyler was shocked. Neither of us could believe that I was capable of what I had just done & it made me realize that my body can do so much more than I give it credit for. Since that day I have told myself many times, "If I can run a 5K, untrained, then surely I can do this!" And I can!
Tyler's race: (I can't find the 1 or 2 pictures I managed to take of him at his starting line!)
As I said before, it was a 50 mile race in the hills/mountains here in Poky. These are trails that Tyler has grown up riding his mountain bike & dirt bikes on, not nice little paved jogging paths! The race started at 7 am and he had the second leg of the race, so he started at about 9-ish... I think. It was cold and rainy and the runners comming down from the 1st leg did not have good things to report about the conditions of the trail, visibility & other runners still behind them. By the time Tyler's partner came down things were getting worse, but the storm was supposed to clear off so he hit the trail running anyways. The weather quickly took an aweful turn and I started to worry as more runners came down the hill with hypothermia and extremely disoriented. Others were getting lost or injured & all I could do was sit in my freezing car praying that he would make it down. About 1/2 way through his run they canceled the race but he was too far to turn around, so he finished his entire 16 mile stretch and wouldn't you know it, he actually made an impressive time despite the weather and in his opinion, lack of training! I was so relieved and very proud of him!
And it's always so much fun to have his cousins, Avery(4) and Dawson(3) in town for some crazy play at Grandma Julie's house. This particular day, they were a rock band in the front yard and I'm quite sure you could hear the "music" from at least 5 miles away! 
We drove down to Utah for a family reunion... get this: it's the very first ever reunion that Tyler & I have been to since we've been married... in over 5 years! While we were there, we went on a very cool hike up a canyon (it would be cool if I could remember the name of it.) At the top was an amazing waterfall that you would never even know was there if you turned back at an earlier part of the trail; like the ugly desert-looking part for example. We kept picking the most gigantic dandilion flowers you've ever seen for Van to blow as we walked. When he got bored and my mom got sore, she took him back down the trail, but Ty kept the pack on and people kept making silly comments like "Hey, you're missing a baby!"
Van bagged all month long for me to get his inflatable pool out so he could play in it. He begged and begged until I ran out of excuses & patience, so we called up his girly-friend and had a pool party. It wasn't the warmest day of the summer, but the kids had fun until thier
