This and That

There are a few things that didn't get mentioned in previous posts and pictures that I don't want to forget so here is a little of this and that.  I love this picture of all five boys together and at church.  Henry was forced to tuck in his shirt and wear a tie and I'm thankful for older brothers who have the energy to fight battles I no longer want to have.

Smashed in the Audi and driving somewhere with my "big" boys.  I love all those big smiles.  We really do love being all together.
 

Henry discovered a fro-yo place by the stake center and if you go on Friday nights you can fill your cup and add all the toppings you want for $7...a deal we take advantage of frequently.  

Another year of Young Men's Camp.  Randy and Landon were the leaders of Parker's group.  Randy takes a million pictures but I only have a few to share.  They always have a ton of fun and get little to no sleep.

These boys can do hard things on no sleep.  Also, the smoke was pretty bad this year.

I love where we live.  This is about 90 minutes from our house. 

And while everyone was at camp except for Henry, I made the best decision of this year by putting Henry (and Jack) in a weeklong football camp.  They loved it!  This will be a new tradition.  Next year I just need my sisters to fly up and hang out with me while everyone's gone.

I took Henry to the pump track with much resistance from him.  But he ended up loving it and got so much better at biking.  I'm too old for this stuff!

I took Henry and Jack to this place for Henry's birthday.  We got to go back another day for free so we went two weeks later for Jack's birthday.  

We didn't go to Pine Lake most of the summer and I was not okay with that.  So the last couple weeks of summer we went several times a week to make up for it.  I can load up all the paddle boards with the boys help in no time.

AI makes Parker look super jacked

The football star

Labor Day Adventure:  Biking across the 520 to eat lunch at Din Tai Fung with Parker and Henry.  Pretty sure this is the last time Henry gets to ride on the back of my eBike.  The lazy bum.

I had to take photos to make the older boys jealous and it worked.

We biked onto UDub campus.  It's so pretty!  And weird that Randy went to school there.  Since he spent all his time at the dental school and nowhere near the main part of campus, it doesn't really feel like we have a connection to it.

The two other guys we share the boat with are in charge of Henry's Valiant activities.  They took all the boys and girls out on the boat one night.  It was a lot of kids!  I offered to stay and help and was so thankful they said they had it under control. A few of the kids had never been on a boat before which seems so weird since we practically live on our boat.

Henry worked hard and after a lot of trial and error, made it to the top of the zip line at Big Rock Park.  I had fun watching :)

This picture has a good story to go with it.  Henry, Jack, and Eli were playing at the park while the moms were sitting at a table chatting away.  The boys ran off to play in the dry creek bed like they always do so an hour later when it was time to go, I knew exactly where to look for them.  Lauren and I called for them and got no response.  We couldn't hear them or anything.  We yelled some more and began searching a bit when suddenly all three boy come running to us from the playground area where we had just been.  They were relieved to see us because they had actually gotten really lost.  So lost that they prayed for help and keep wandering around.  They were yelling for us but were so far away we never heard them.  They prayed again and came across a house.  They knocked on the door and a nice elderly woman answered the door.  They asked how to get back to the park and the lady gave them a ride back.  They were so lost!  It was quite the story.  The boys were dirty and covered in scratches from black berry bushes.  They had been crying too.  I took this picture a few days later when we took a plate of cookies over to the woman with a card they had signed and thanked her for her kindness.  I was especially thankful she didn't call the police!  All three boys mentioned this experience when they spoke in the primary program a few weeks later.  Prayers are answered!

First Day of School

 

Landon is a Junior and is taking two classes through Bellevue Community College and a few more at Skyline.  He gets up on his own for early morning seminary every day (literally he never misses) and sometimes goes to class and sometimes comes home and sleeps.  He's counting down the days until lacrosse starts in the spring.

Parker is in 8th grade and cares about what he wears and how his hair looks.  He's officially taller than me now and we are all anxious to see if he will be the tallest Ball bro.  Parker is playing football for the first time this year and he loves it!  He's also really good!  He's a great receiver and catches some amazing passes and punt returns.  He's the secrete weapon.  When the team needs to score the play is always to throw it to Parker and he either scores or gets a ton of yardage.  We are all hoping he will play next year in high school.

Henry is in 3rd grade this year and has the nicest teacher.  Unfortunately his best friends have all moved away so he's quietly enjoying school without anyone to talk to all day.  He loves multiplication and reading but all he cares about and talks about is recess.  

Sea Fair 2026

Watching the Blue Angels on Lake Washington has always been a favorite of mine.  I remember the first time we saw the Blue Angels and I remember thinking how much I loved Washington summers.  This year we went on Friday, which is the unofficial show because they're practicing.  It's the same show they do the next day.  This was the first year in Sea Fair history that they had to cancel the air show because it was so windy.  We lucked out with perfect weather the day before.

We came prepared for the biggest water fight of our lives.  We went on our friends boat because our friends were on our boat and they had a bunch of little kids with them.  We chose the boat with our friends and the teens.  It was crowded and loud and I'm surprised we didn't sink the boat with how much water we took on during the water fights.  We played Pirates of the Caribbean music as we drove around attacking other boats with our water guns.  Sometimes we got surrounded and other times we surrounded other people.  Don't mess with the best!

Landon used a lacrosse stick to launch water balloons at other boats.  

Here's our group of several families and three boats eating dinner at Ivar's after the show.

Since we weren't in our boat I got some pictures of it from afar.  Our family HATES the blue sparkles but it looks fun on the water.  Unfortunately we put so many hours on the boat we probably won't be able to sell it so we will be stuck with Sparkles for years to come.

There were hundreds of boats out on the lake and when we saw people going off the slide of their double decker boat, we pulled right up to them and asked if we could try their slide.  They said yes and then stared in shock as everyone but me and Spencer (the boat driver) jumped out of the boat to take them up on their generous offer.  Then our friends on their boats pulled up too.  I worried the double-decker would tip over at some point. Next year we need to find out how to rent one of these for the air show.  It was so much fun!

Summer Boating

We spent an insane amount of time on the boat this summer.  Everyone improved their surf skills except for me of course.  I rarely surf thought so it is what it is.  Henry finally learned to surf, Parker can land a cool penguin/belly move, Landon can nail a 360, and Ethan flipped several 360's in a row on Randy's new board.  Marcus can surf off the back of the boat with out actually getting in the water which is a great skill on cold summer mornings.  Randy is the best boat driver on the lake and I have learned to drive the boat so that I'm not so terrible and no one dies.   

Parker

Ethan

Landon

Marcus and Parker

Henry finally surfed!  There was a lot of bribery and empty threats to make this happen but what really got him out on the water was when Jack volunteered to surf.  Henry refused to be outdone by his best friend.

My five guys eating Five Guys on the boat as we celebrated Landon and Parker's 17th and 14th birthdays.

This was our own little family reunion.  The college boys don't usually come home in the summer so getting us all together at the same time takes some serious planning and purchasing of flights.  Marcus finished out his internship/Europe travels so we flew Ethan home to enjoy family time before they went back to school.  Hard to believe they are in their junior years of college.  Wow!  All they wanted to do was hang out, eat (free) food, and surf.  Wishes granted!  Marcus brought us all Bernley soccer jerseys and I think this was his first night home because I made his favorite meal, spaghetti.  Blech.  Now back to the boating pictures...

Randy loves doing early morning boat sessions and sometimes it's really cold so he wears the bag that his surf board goes in to stay warm.

I have some pretty impressive tubing videos of people nearly dying on the tubes but this picture of Henry and Jack will have to do.  We had a couple bloody noses this year and one black eye and one bloody eye.  Not bad!  

In September, we got together with our friends from Okinawa who all live in WA now.  We had so much fun!  We hung out at our house for awhile and then took them to Lake Union for dinner.

It was such a beautiful night.  Sometimes Lake Union is pure magic.

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!