Crossing off the Bucket List

With summer drawing to a close, we had just a few more things left to do to complete our bucket list. One of those things was to "dig a deep hole" -- one of the boys' contributions to our list of summer activities. They got the job done in a less ideal place than I had anticipated, but who I am to interfere with an afternoon of entertainment involving a whole lotta dirt and a snow shovel?

Eli crossed something off his lifelong bucket list and finally lost his first tooth!

We had to go up to our favorite summer evening hangout one last time before hitting the books.

We went up the mountain to have a campfire where Lincoln just wanted to spend some quality time with Carson and Carson just wanted Lincoln to get the heck away from him due to the fact that Lincoln kept intentionally blocking his view of the fire. So it is with brothers.

Our friends joined us to make the evening a full blown party.

I will never get over the similarities between us. We both lived in the same married ward in Cedar City but at slightly different times, Jeff and Burke are both accountants and were both completing their Master's degrees for a couple of months at the same time at SUU. All of our kids are born within 2-4 months of each other, Jeff and Burke currently have the same calling, and if that wasn't enough, Jeff (kind of coincidentally) just got a new job where Burke works! I feel like every time Teresa and I talk we discover some new, funny, unlikely thing we have in common. And as I told my sister shortly after I met Teresa, "You can't NOT be friends with someone you have so much in common with!" The one difference we have is she has the ability to produce the hair-bow-wearing type.

It was here we discovered Lincoln becomes noticeably possessed at the sight of marshmallows.

Jonah and Brightly are only 2 months apart. It was fun to be pregnant together and continues to be fun to have another set of kids so close.

You've known us long enough to know our favorite way to say goodbye to summer is to do one final summer shebang at Bear Lake with friends from our old ward.

With shakes as the cherry on top of a perfect day.

This makes 4 consecutive years we've gone up to Bear Lake in August so I'm calling this a firm tradition that's quickly become our most highly anticipated summer event. It was so much fun!

We were right in the perfect eclipse-viewing position mere days before the big show and yet I wasn't able to convince my family that totality was going to be cool enough to camp out for. We instead decided to hurry home in an effort to avoid the traffic and gasoline/power outages news reporters were dramatically predicting would most certainly occur. I have since heard everyone who experienced totality say it was even more awesome than what it was hyped up to be, which has left me forever ticked we skipped town and missed the midday darkness. We'll just hafta catch ya in SLC in 2045, totality. Until next time.