Roy Aquatic Center

For some reason, one of our traditional things to do when visiting Utah is to go to the Roy Aquatic Center. I think my kids love it so much becuase they don't have nearly as many rules as our Aquatic Center. For example, you can bring FOOD in, you don't have to be a certain HEIGHT to ride the waterslides, and they have two DIVING BOARDS! For my water-loving kids, it's just perfect. That was the older four kids jumping...now for Jordan's brave jump off the high dive. He said he wanted to try it and as he's climbing up the stairs, the lifeguard next to me is saying, "Can that kid swim?" to another lifeguard. I told them he was mine and that he could swim so off he went.

He walked pretty slowly up to the edge of the board, then off he went!

Right into a belly flop! Ouch! From the way he was crying when he got out of the water, I knew it had to have hurt.Brady is trying to console him a little here and tell him what a good job he did with a high five, but if you look at his face, he's not to happy about the jump. Here's the cute part of the story. We were telling him how you have to do a "pencil" dive off the high board so your body goes straight into the water (thus avoiding the belly flop). After about an hour or so he told me he wanted to try again. I asked him if he was sure and he said yes. I took him over to the diving board where he very hesitantly walked to the edge, then jumped in just perfectly. After he got out of the water and got lots of hugging and loving he said to me, "I just knew the Holy Ghost would help me do it right!" I thought that was too funny! Oh the things the Holy Ghost can do! :)

Random Fun

Here are some pictures...still from our trip to Utah, just of some random fun that we had.

Grandpa Nixon bought this huge watermelon and he and Tucker (oh yeah, and the rest of us too) enjoyed it immensely! Nothing like a good old watermelon.
We were able to see the Tuckers this summer. Here is our Tucker with Brother Tucker. Water fun at Kiddie Kollege.
We had a BBQ at Liseanne's one night and I couldn't believe how many little boys there were on the trampoline at one time! I think there were 10 or 11 boys and 3 little girls.
More BBQ fun!
Courtney playing the wii at Liseanne's.
Courtney, Madison and I think that's one of the twins feeding the horse behind Liseanne's house.

Grandpa Galen gave Tucker this awesome chess set which they got a lot of use out of in Utah and continue to use often here. They love chess...if only I knew how to play with them! I don't have the patience to learn.

Enjoying yummy shakes from Jakes Over the Top! My favorite flavor out of the 7 or so different flavors at the table was Jordan's chocolate peanut butter. Mmmmm!

Pine View Dam/Wakeboarding

The Saturday that EFY ended we met my family at Pine View Dam for a day of boating. My kids are always excited to try wakeboarding, waterskiing, water tubing, etc., but this time when we took the three boys plus my nephew Cole out on the boat, everyone said they didn't want to try it. We started with Tucker, being the oldest. He said, "No thanks!" Spencer said the same thing. Then we tried to get Cole to go, but he wouldn't do it either. So, we asked Jordan if he wanted to try wakeboarding. He said, "Okay, I'll try it." I was a little surprised and then I wasn't even sure if the boots on the board would fit him, but Uncle Jim said they would so we gave it a try.

Jordan is my water lover AND daredevil - a scary combination! He was amazing for his first time wakeboarding! He got up right away, but only to a squatting position. I don't know if he thought that was as good as it gets or he was just comfortable there, but he just stayed squatting the whole time. It was so funny to watch. Well, you can imagine after that that ALL the boys wanted to try - they weren't going to be outdone by the youngest. Yeah for Jordan for going first!

Jordan getting ready to wakeboard

And he's up! Well...almost up. This was his stance the whole time. Silly boy!
Here is Courtney on the tube with her cousins Keyera and Hillary.
And here is Meghann and Kaila. Here's Spencer's try at wakeboarding. I love the look on his face here. If you click on the picture you can see it bigger and maybe see how determined he looks! I paid for my two minutes of wakeboarding for at least two solid days afterwards! Ouch...I was so sore! It's not fun to use muscles once a year that have been asleep the rest of the year. Here are the three boys enjoying a little time on the tube. Thanks Jim and Michelle for a fun day on the boat!

EFY

Moving right along on our trip to Utah...Brady and I spent a week at the University of Utah directing a session of EFY. We love doing this - it was our second year and a little less stressful this year since we knew what to expect. The kids were just as great this year as they were last year (in fact, we had two girls that were in our session last year and were there again this year! Hope they weren't disappointed!).

This year was extra fun because my niece Lyndsey, her friend Jen, and also her cousin Ann Marie and cousin's friend were all in our session. It was nice to have a familiar face (and such a cute face too!) with us at the U. Our favorite night is Wednesday night - PIZZA NIGHT! I had to take a picture of this because this was JUST the Little Caesar's order - it didn't include the Papa John's or THE PIE order. Brady and I saved ourselves for The Pie - our favorite, it was also a stop for us on our honeymoon so it always brings back good memories! :)

We discovered that there were four counselors at EFY with us with NIXON watches, so of course, we had to band (no pun intended!) together and take a NIXON watch picture. So fun!While at the U, our awesome friends and former high school teachers, Lori and Belinda came up for a visit. It was so nice of them to make the effort to come visit us. We haven't seen them for a long time and it was good to catch up. Here we are visiting over yummy Cafe Rio! Lori taught both of us Humanities and was Brady's Student Government advisor, Belinda was my cheerleading coach and Brady was an aide for her in the library. They are great!

Reunion Wrap-Up/More Utah Trip

Okay, just ONE last photo from our reunion at Zion's National Park. Brady and the boys, my brother and his son, my dad and a few nephews all woke up early on the last day of the reunion and went for a 4-wheeler ride. My boys (all my kids actually) love riding on the 4-wheelers so this was a real treat for them...they didn't even care that they woke up at 6 AM to go!


A favorite pasttime in Utah is eating Pace bars. Those things are amazingly good and we crave them all year long until we can eat them again! I love the way Tucker's pace bar matches his eyes and shirt.
Utah wouldn't be the same without lots of family BBQs. We love getting together over a yummy dinner and visiting. Here we are with Brady's family one Sunday after church.

Courtney loved holding Grady. Isn't he cute?

You Guessed It...More Family Reunion Fun

Okay, this is the SECOND to last post about our reunion...then I'll get on to the rest of our trip to Utah! These shirts were awesome (great job Brady!) and when we got together for group pictures, we took about every combination of picture you could think of! I think Brady was about ready to string me up by the time I'd taken every picture I wanted. Actually, I didn't get every picture I wanted, he made me quit before that! So, here's just a sample.

Here's the WHOLE crowd - aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, out-laws, you name it.

This was the back of our t-shirts. It was made to look just like the license plate off my grandparent's car...they've had that license plate forever. It was fun to have it on our t-shirts as well! (If you can't get it...it means "for fun times")Here's my dad and his siblings with spouses showing off the backs of their shirts.

And here is me with my siblings - minus one sister (we missed you Shauna!) along with my parents.

Here is our family.

Our family with my grandma.

I put this picture in just to show that we took pictures until sundown! I would have kept going if the lighting had been better! Don't we look glowing in the sunset though? :) After pictures we headed out for some campfire and s'more making. Here's my sister Denise and Courtney roasting a marshmallow. Here is Jordan really enjoying his s'more. And here is the result of Jordan enjoying his s'more. His cheeks were SO sticky and he was making everyone laugh by smashing his hands to his cheeks and pulling on them like this.

Okay, now this was funny - not so much funny ha ha but funny amazing. It would have won the jackpot on America's Funniest Home Videos! My brother Mike threw a marshmallow at me from about 10-12 feet away and I caught it SQUARE IN MY MOUTH! It startled me to death that it actually went RIGHT in! Amazing! Now, that's talent, right?