July

Porch Pictures band wagon to kick off July. Because everybody was staying home. It's so weird. 

   

   

Terrible news came on July 3rd that our family friend, Alex Ruegner, had died in a plane crash. He was with a friend and his Aunt and Uncle. It was instant but I'm sure those last few seconds were terrifying. Hopefully they felt some measure of peace before impact. He was friends with all of us. Alex always made you feel like a million bucks when he came around. He was always so nice to me, even when I was the annoying little sister. The funeral was outside and it was a beautiful day. Funerals always highlight the best of people and there were so many good, solid and genuine stories that bore testimony to the heartfelt life he lived. Watching brother Tyler read the Eulogy was heartbreaking. Big tough guy brought to tears at the loss of his best friend. Taken too soon. I'm sure you were needed on the other side. Alex, you'll be missed. 

  

Brother Tyler always does an epic fireworks show on the 4th of July and this year was no different with the exception that it was dedicated to Alex. A celebration of his life. Hopefully he got to see it. 

  

Our 4th of July High class we did a fundraiser for a participants family and little boy specifically. We had a great turnout and did some fun raffle prizes. It is always so much fun to get a huge group of people together to help someone else and do High Fitness together. Just look at that group. 

  

Brynlee has a pen pal! Her name is Emily Potter and she lives clear across the country! So cool. She was so excited to get her first letter and immediately hand wrote another letter and put it in the mailbox. I was thinking one day that it might be nice for her to be able to talk to someone else that is also an only child so since I'm in a group of Moms with only children on FB, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone was interested. Hopefully she makes a good friend via letters. 

Awwww..... Soapstone. Camping. Fishing. Fires. Hiking. Nature. Sheep lol!

We camped with the Thomas family and the Shawn Brown family. It was an interesting ride up there. Tyler had to stop on the steep dirt road and we started rolling backwards. Eek! I kind of freaked out a smidge. Once we got there we nestled Chip (our little trailer) and truck in between some trees and set up camp. Grandma and Grandpa came up but Grandpa was having a hard time breathing we were so high in elevation so they left in the middle of the night to go home. Their trailer jack broke too so that was an adventure to try and fix it. I don't actually think they ever got it fixed. Ty tried to use his truck jack and we realized the rod didn't fit on the jack (or something like that) which is not cool so when we got home we made sure to get one that fit. Our camp happened to be by a herd of sheep so we heard and saw them frequently and the sheep dog even came through and inspected our camp as well. He was a huge white dog and I know they can be really wild sometimes so it was a bit intense. We went to several lakes, one of which was Mirror Lake, which I had never been to. No fish at any of them but we still set up the poles. Upper Provo Falls is pretty neat. It was fun to walk around in the water and Brynlee took Shawn up on a dare to sit in the waterfall and he paid her $5 or something like that. That water was sincerely freezing and I am a wuss and the rocks hurt my feet but I did it anyway. 

 

 

 

  

   

  

Hiked in to a little lake where we met Steve (I think that's what we called him). He's a chipmunk we kept feeding almonds. He could fit so many in his mouth it was mesmerizing and he would scurry off and take them to his home and come back for more. Then we hiked even further in to another lake but got kind of lost before we found it. Once we found it, it was so beautiful and less crowded. It was off the beaten path a bit with wildflowers, tall grass and a cliff face right on the other side of the water. So peaceful. Back at camp we ate good, I read my books a lot, the girls did a show for us where Brynlee was the President and Aspen was the First Counselor. They tried to do a little dance to The Weeknd's Blinding Lights song but they were all pretty much too shy to do it. Camping always means we sit by the fire and hang out talking. We talked about how everyone at some point snuck out of their parents house and how Shawn was kind of a terror was he was in HS. We talked about how Grandma Brown yelled really loud at some people when we went to Yellowstone when Ty and I were first married. More stories like that.... We laughed and laughed. Brynlee took several turns on the 4-wheeler with Aunt Meagan as well. Super pretty up there and we had a good time hanging out with family. 

     

   

        

More Summer High including celebrating Annalissa's birthday party with an actual High class! 

 

Walker Edison Executive Retreat in Deer Valley. It was a one day thing this year so I didn't stay the night like last year. Nature is so pretty up there. This house was insanely beautiful as well. Behind me in that picture is an elevator. AN ELEVATOR! Can't say how happy I was to see some of the WE people though. I miss them so much. Covid has really put a damper on my corporate business. They don't have many employees working in the office so there's no work for me really. Man, it has really been a struggle for me but I know this won't be forever. Hopefully sooner than later we can get back to normal business. 

Some mornings Brynlee is just super bored and on one particular morning I snuck a picture of her just squatting at the back sliding glass door leaning up against it with her head. I feel ya kid, I feel ya. 

The Blue Balloon Toy Store. This was a stinking awesome little setup up she made. There was an overhead sound system for announcements (my speaker and microphone), a check out stand, shopping cart, everything was COVID sanitized and masks were required. All items had prices and she even had sales and discounts for being the first customer. Then she accused me of stealing and had to check my card again to make sure there weren't any fraudulent things happening. She spent a lot of time putting it all together and it is still like that downstairs. Not sure she is going to clean it up any time soon. 

  

Ty decided to start donating plasma. He said he felt a little weird afterward but he likes having the extra $ he can spend on whatever he wants. And let's not forget to mention that even though he is super self conscious about his beard and hair, I love the beard and how he does his hair. 

   

St. George round 2 this time with the Thomas crew. Aspen and Riley got to come with this time too and that was a nice surprise for Brynlee to have Aspen especially since they're at the age that they're too cool for the little kids sometimes. 

Maga and Papa Thomas rented a house for us and we all mostly had our own bedrooms which was really nice. The pool was basically in our back yard but we still had to walk all the way around to get to the entrance. It was nice to just throw all our stuff over the fence though and not have to carry it all the way there and back. The pool was awesome with a mini water park and a lazy river that we all spent a good amount of time in. The lazy river went under a bridge and Ty did a few pull ups on it. I tried but failed miserably. Pull ups aren't my jam. Everyone played tag in the lazy river and it was so fun. Sitting out soaking up the sun was seriously the absolute best. If Ty would let me I would stay in the sun all day everyday just reading books or sleeping. It's healing to my soul and makes me feel happy. I spent so much time reading my books too. I couldn't stop. I was getting to the end of the Throne of Glass series and it was so amazing! So intense that I just couldn't put it down. (When I eventually did finish it I was almost at a loss for what to do with my life. Like I had been living this alternate reality for weeks and it was suddenly over. It took all my will power to not pick up book 1 and start it all over again.) Dinner at the Pizza Factory where the menus were glued to the table (thanks Covid) and it was awkward to try and decide what you wanted. It was so hot there that my screen in my Mazda said it was too hot to function properly. There was a little sundeck up a spiral staircase on the outside of the house. Ty and I hung out up there a couple of times. It was gorgeous at night, especially because the sky was clear and you could see all the stars. Sigh... so nice to get away from COVID and the weird life of 2020. 

   

    

 

This quote from LOTR touched a part of my soul and almost made me crumble. And then the Seinfeld meme simultaneously hardened my resolve back up again. Laughter through tears... -Truvy. 

 

Ty went back to work in the office this month. That was a hard day for me. I truly enjoyed having all 3 of us home together during the day. We ate lunch and dinner together almost everyday and sometimes even breakfast. It's nice he didn't have a commute for so long and I should be grateful for that. It's weird to think he hasn't really been back to the office since the week after the earthquake in March. A lot of people are struggling with everyone being home but I really am sad it's starting to come to an end. Church is going to be starting back up every other week as well and I have genuinely loved doing home church on Sundays and doing the Sacrament together. It's a bit harder to fast on fast Sunday but I'll take the trade off. We've had amazing discussions with Brynlee about the gospel. I watched her learn how to say more sincere prayers and receive answers to those prayers while learning how to recognize that she is indeed receiving an answer to a prayer. It's led us to discuss more of our own family dynamic and household environment. These are probably discussions we wouldn't have realized we needed to have and thus would have never had them. 

Justin and Makinzie blessed Wyatt and that was intimate with just a few of us so that was neat. 

Brynlee had a preseason game with her new team. They have a lot of work to do and Brynlee needs to find where she fits on the team still too. It'll come. Excited to see how the season goes though.

I love Summer. Without question it is my favorite season of the year.