Utah Trip Part 2

Nothing says Utah like Sunday dinner with all the cousins, aunts, and uncles.  I loved seeing everyone hang out, completely relaxed, making jokes, teasing each other, inhaling food, and just soaking in all that togetherness.  Kids were playing outside and in the basement and some of the girl cousins had set up a manicure station and were doing nails, hoping the rowdy boys wouldn't interrupt.  After all the eating we played a few games like Chameleon, and had even more fun being together.  I'm sure my mom was there because she wouldn't have missed it.

Greg knows how to use his smoker and brought over this yummy smoked cream cheese dip and his homemade pepper jelly.  It disappeared within minutes.

The portable nail salon...these girls take nails to a new level!

The next day was BYU lax drop-offs while Randy and Henry went fishing in Oakley.  Henry was so excited to catch his first fish.  He caught a bunch and woke up at 5:30 to do it.  He slept the entire drive back to Farmington.

The most serious fisherman on the reservoir 

Meanwhile, I drove to Provo to drop off the lax players and then headed to Midway to have lunch and do some shopping with Laura.  Ballerina Farms is so overrated.  But Midway is most definitely worth all the instagram fame it is getting.

Thanks for lunch, Laura!  It was so good!

Randy flew back to WA so it was just me and Henry waiting for the lax boys to finish camp.  We played with all the cousins and discovered some incredible playgrounds.  We went in the evening and it was still 90 degrees so I let Henry do most of the climbing after going down a couple slides with him.

I can't imagine a park in WA with slides like this.  People would go nuts over it!  The slides were HUGE!

Henry going up with the Ball cousins for some indoor fun while I chatted it up with Aunt Heidi.

Don't let his face fool you.  Henry still talks about this burger get to eat while he tagged along at dinner with April and me.

Greg's girls love their chickens!  And Henry got brave and picked one up so the girls wouldn't think he was a coward.

The only picture I have of Ethan and Henry at Lagoon together.  Lagoon costs almost as much as Disneyland and it was so hot I was more than happy to sit this one out and let the brothers have fun together.  They went on Cannibal, the biggest rollercoaster, at least five times.  Henry is fearless!

I took Henry and Owen to Cherry Hill and had to go down some of the slides with Henry before he was comfortable with me leaving him.  I had a great nap back at our spot under a tree while the boys ran from slides to pools, over and over again.

BYU lax camp was a success!  Landon played well and made a bunch of friends, including some of Marcus's teammates.

Parker represented the Ball family name by getting MVP

Grandma Kathy was so thoughtful and helped us celebrate Henry's birthday early so everyone could participate.  Henry loved blowing out his candles.  Sometimes I forget how young he is and that birthdays are a BIG deal still.

He was gifted the baseball he'd been asking for.  Henry is really good at basketball.

We made the long drive home in 11 hours and only stopped for a little bit of traffic due to a truck explosion.  We went right past the burning truck as a helicopter flew overhead trying to douse the flames that had spread across the dry mountain.  It was pretty cool!  We got home to beautiful WA where the temperature was a cool 75 degrees and we actually felt cold after living in a furnace for a week.  It was so much fun seeing all our family.  I wish my boys wanted to go visit more.  Oh well.  One week a year is good enough because I have Marco Polo and chat with my sisters almost every day.  Our kids don't realize it, but we know everything that's going on with all of them from their dating lives to the potty training mishaps.  It's a good life!

Utah Trip this Summer (I forgot to hit publish)

Farmington for the win!  We drove down to UT so Landon and Parker could go to BYU lax camp.  I timed it so we could be there for the Farmington Festival Days parade and fireworks.  I love small town parades!  Too bad it was almost a hundred degrees.  Thankfully we were in shade so I tried to not move so the sweat was minimal.

Henry's first parade that he can remember.  He quickly learned that holding up the bucket meant lots of people throwing candy at him, trying to make a shot.

I love all these cute girl cousins.  Henry was waiting for Owen to get back from scout camp so he could have a buddy. 

Some of our group

After the parade we went to Alicia's house for a BBQ and pool party.  They have a pool and their HOA has a big pool and it was a hundred degrees so it wasn't long before 

I wish I had a picture of April and I floating and cooling off.  UT is hotter than Hades.  It's actually terrible.

The Ninja Slushy machine saved the day.  So good!  So refreshing!  We have one too but my boys mostly make milkshakes with it.

Meanwhile Marcus was in Switzerland making friends with a cow wearing bells.  Switzerland was his favorite place. No surprise there.

Waiting for fireworks to start.  I think it was still 90 degrees.

Henry asks and his request is granted.  Pretty cool light saber for watching fireworks though.

We were driving to SLC the next day and it was so hot the car just couldn't cool us off.  It was 109 degrees!  It was the highest temperature ever recorded in Salt Lake, and we were there for it.  How embarrassing that my boys took off their shirts on the drive.  

As usual, we are not very reverent but at least we have fun!

It was so cool touring the new visitors center.  Getting to tour the inside of a temple that will never be dedicated meant we could all be in the celestial room together, in our casual clothes even, and take pictures.  I loved it!

Checking out the baptism font that will never be used for a baptism.

Randy's parents joined us for the end of the tour, and yes, I forgot to change my shoes before jumping in the car.  It's been happening a lot lately :)
 

4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  In typical PNW fashion, the weather was cool, mid sixties, until the sun finally came out.  It was great!  Randy was in charge of the annual church breakfast which meant there was a ton of food and a ton of leftovers.  The decorations were on point so everyone knew as soon as they pulled up to the park that Randy Ball was in charge.  Randy had a "founding father" recite the pledge of allegiance and then one of our talented teens sang the National Anthem.  Good times were had and Parker was awesome for inviting a bunch of his friends.  They all had a great time.

I sliced two crates, not boxes, crates of strawberries.  

Kristina, our office manager, bought decorations for the kids to decorate their bikes with for the bike parade.  The prizes were bags full of swag.  Kristina knows not to do anything halfway for Dr Ball.

Notice all the bunting by Randy.  He says we can use it for our house (insert eye roll and laughing emoji here).

After the breakfast we braved the boat launch and it turned out no one was out on the lake.

The best kind of boating is when I can read a book

Marcus spent the 4th of July in Paris with our good friends, the Walker's.  

We literally had hundreds of sparklers because Randy bought a ton and so did one of the other dads.  We finally stopped helping the kids light them and just walked away.  They figured it out themselves and no one got hurt, although a few small fires were stomped out of the lawn.

Our backyard is seriously magical with the lights and the kids playing and the s'mores being roasted.  

We had a little pre-firework show in the front yard that was actually crazy.  I ever knew fireworks could be so big, loud, and smokey.

Our trees are starting to get too big for perfect viewing but it still beats fighting the crowds and parking to watch the show from anywhere else.  There were so many kids/adults/teens on the roof this year that they didn't fit.

The state of my laundry room is how I gauge the chaos level of my life.  This was an all-time high level.