Summer, Summer, Summertime......

I'll admit to having a love/hate relationship with summer, I love to see it come and I hate to see it go. If I had one word to describe our summer this year it would be BUSY...what happened to the lazy days of laying under the shade trees in the Thanksgiving Point gardens while my kids played hide and seek? We didn't even make it to the gardens this year or half of the other things that were on our summertime list. I somehow even dodged Cowabunga Bay. Despite the things we didn't do there was a lot we did do. There were lots of events I didn't get pictures of but some I did. So here is the rundown.....

We kicked summer off with a fun trip to St. George with Shawn's sister Crystal and her husband John and daughter Lindsey. We had a great relaxing time. We were expecting really hot temperatures in June, but ended up with really mild weather including a couple of days that we needed jackets...strange.... Sunday of course was beautiful, and we spent the day showing John and Crystal some of the Church History sights.


The St. George Temple...



The Jacob Hamblin Home...
Zion's National Park... I was so bummed this day. I was so looking forward to a day of hiking in beautiful Zion's canyon. Instead I got a car ride through pouring rain. Lame.

We spent one afternoon at the fountains on Main Street, the kids had a blast..





For the Fourth of July Russ and Hollie hosted the family at their cabin in Fairview. This was really fun. Our kids had never slept in a tent before so we pitched one out back. This is the perfect way to camp. We had the cabin for the bathroom and the kitchen, but got to enjoy sleeping in the tent with the kids. Shawn loved it when I woke him up in the middle of the night and made him walk around the tent to hunt down the wild animal that was circling...(really just the wind blowing up against the tarp on the side of the tent) but I thought we were all goners...

We even spent a day fishing..our kids hadn't done that before either...we are lame outdoorsy parents.

Casey, Rachelle, and Kristen...

The Sorenson's.....
Manning the Poles....

Emma was the only Catmull to catch a fish...it scared her to death. Here she is in the background for her fish picture..that was as close as we could get her to come...

Even Kendyll got in on the action...

The next weekend we headed to Harris Pond for our Annual Nikken summer event. This is such a great time. The pond is in Burley. They have Canoes, rafts, kayaks, a waterslide, rope swings, and a zip line. The kids love this day and so do Shawn and I. It is so fun to sit around and chat with friends while the kids play in the pond.

The Kids's played king of the Hill on the dock, culminating in their throwing Brody into our canoe and dumping, Shawn and me, Britta, Kendyll and little Paris Craney into the pond. Their was a lot of screaming from the little girls, and then a lot of laughing...thank heavens for life jackets..






Summer wouldn't be summer without swimming lessons. Jackson and Emma did great this year. I forgot my camera for Britta and Kendyll's lessons. Britta did awesome and Kendyll, well made very little progress, oh well there is always next year.
Emma and Megan...


Draper Days is always a winner around the Catmull house. It has been a couple of years since we got to go to the parade so it was fun this year to be able to make it. The main attraction was the Junior Golf Academy. Jackson enjoyed being in the parade with them this year..unfortunately Shawn got pictures of the entire entourage, except for Jackson, so we'll just have to imagine him into this picture...

Britta and Whitney...

Emma and Kaela....

Kendyll....highly overdosed on sugar....

A fun hot morning....


And that is it...