Sullivans stayed at our house for the weekend leading up to the fourth of July. They brought Paige Doxey down from Boise so that she and Hallie could go to Brighton camp together for the week. It was a fun weekend. We did a date night up to see the Utah Symphony perform with a soloist (Lakisha?) for their annual Patriotic Pops at Deer Valley ampitheater. I just loved it again. Both last year and this year, we headed up hours early and stopped at Trader Joes/Whole Foods to get an awesome dinner and just hang out on chairs/blankets for an hour before it starts. Its so beautiful up there and once the sun is setting it gets a little chilly. And the music is just stirring. This year all Mariam and Joe, Jay and Kayla, Sullivans and Liz all went with us too. God Bless the USA and The Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America were just amazing especially this year. The soloist was a black woman that sang like Whitney Houston. She actually sang Whitney's version of "I will always Love you" and she just nailed it. I was so glad to be there. And glad to be around so many that love our country and care about making it better.
Fourth of July in the morning several of us went to help Gillespies load their moving truck, which was a great way to start the morning. After we headed home and loaded up kids to go to the Rec center to swim and eat lunch for a few hours. We all went over to Pratts at 4:30 for a BBQ and they had invited several families over there that they knew from CA. My favorite time of the day was going over to Murray park and playing volleyball and football etc etc for hours before watching their firework show. It was so much fun! Robbie and Blake and I didn't want to wait in traffic afterward and ended up walking a lot of the way home at like 11:30 together. The next morning I dropped off Paige and Hallie at the Brighton Stake center to head up to Brighton Camp for the week. I will have Hallie write about her experience. They both said it was SOOOOO much fun and one of Hallie's special moments of the week was at flag each morning after the group that was in charge of devotional was done, whatever time was left of the 30 minutes they would just quietly read their scriptures until breakfast time. Hallie said "I loved that time so much. I haven't ever studied like that before by myself. It was really cool." I just loved that! I am so grateful she had that particular experience of what that feels like to dig into the scriptures alone.
We did alot of cleaning and catch up after kids camp, people staying here and a holiday. On Thursday Jordans came down from Driggs and we met up at the rec center pool and had so much fun playing. Those 5 older boys did a million tricks off the platform (Sidenote: both at the Murray park in front of the whole family and again at the pool when Robbie was SITTING NEXT TO ME, two different girls came up to ask him for his number. Ballsy. ) Aubrie asked Evan out and Jack took Gia and they went on a double date that seemed pretty fun! Friday and Saturday all day were the extended Haynie reunion.
Glen and Connies family was in charge of it and they did a great job. Friday was a Rock Canyon park and lots of lawn games, crafts, cards and especially talking. WE all headed over to PG pool which was rented out for 2 hours for the whole family. It was so fun to have it to ourselves. I loved getting to talk more in depth with cousins. I left the reunion feeling so filled by everyones goodness, desire to do good things in their lives nad knowing we have this HUGE support system that is just generous. Saturday we met at a church in PG for testimony meeting and then over to a park next to the church for water games. Ryan and the kids most loved the whiffle ball game with kiddie pools for bases and slip in slides into each base. I never got to play but it looked so fun. Then 9 square, huge 200 foot water slide and lots of chatting again. It was the best. I love our Haynies!
That night I rushed all the older kids home (And Saunders two oldest) to run to a movie at 9:40 and after some (I hope) miscommunication and not dishonesty, the boys all ended up at a different movie theater with two extra friends and the rest at another movie theater. I was so mad and tired of bending over backward for kids and it not being enough that I cried most of the night. Jeff got mad and left to go drag our 3 boys out of the movie theater and have them miss the rest of the movie. They came home and we all talked it out in the living room for like an hour.
By then it was like 11:00 and we had quite the Sunday queued up so we stayed up preparing for that. Got up early the next morning (everyone was so exhausted) to finish getting ready.
Ryan, Robbie, Aubrie and Hallie and I all were speaking in sacrament meeting together and it was kind of last minute so it was a little stressful. Hallie was teaching the lesson for YW, RObbie was teaching the lesson for YM, Clara was giving a talk in Primary, I was doing a spotlight in RS and Aubrie was playing prelude. It was like a Jensen show and so stressful. But such a good growth opportunity too. It felt so good walking home from church :)
Behind the scenes stuff:
Aubrie has been working for Allen Family dental for about 2 months now and she doesn't loving being in doors all summer but I think she has liked it. She has found extra projects to do too on her own for them which is awesome. She broke up with Kaplan officially today and is glad she did but also feels sad for her and for him especially. She has been planning so many things with friends in any spare time she has. She leaves for girls camp in the morning. Last time going.
Robbie worked for Helaman last week and then left the next night with Milo and Elliot in their big decked out traveling van with their dirtbikes to go up to Idaho to work for a painter that paid them $25 an hour and they got a lot of hours in, slept in the van and cliff jumped and dirtbiked in their spare time. They went to Jordans last night to sleep, go to a rodeo and went to church and ate dinner with them today and are on their way home right now. It was scary to let him go and we for sure debated but I think it was a good decision. He gets his braces off tomorrow morning.
Hallie has been dog watching this week and just loved it. Of course. She bought a fish this week and named him Bluey. She plans daily how to get a dog. She is leaving in the morning for FSY with Zoe down at BYU and will be there till Saturday.
Blake had a friend over and right at the beginning they broke Luke's really expensive scooter so I told them they needed to make that right. The next day they did a lemonade stand over at Henry's house to earn some money and made $110 dollars (Ryans in the wrong industry) in like 2 hours of selling it. So we bought a another scooter on KSL. Those micro scooters are so expensive but they are just amazing scooters I cant buy a different one. Lucas lives on it. Friday night Henrys mom Holly asked if Blake could go camping with them so he ended up at Causey reservoir camping until Saturday night with a bunch of families and said it was the most fun! Lots of jumping off dock, floating, going out in their boat, etc. He came home exhausted and sunburned and so happy. And then had to mow at least one of his lawns before he went to bed. I was impressed he didn't complain about it.
Lucas is really getting swimming. He was doing well enough at the pool that we attempted the diving board and swimming to the side by himself and he did it. it was so awesome! I was so proud of him.
Clara has been just jumping around playing with Hallie, and Lucas and our neighbor Macey and spending a significant amount of time reading which is so fun!
