I'm a Day Girl

The last weekend in July I jetted away to the annual Day Girl Retreat.  My grandma, Vaudis Day Evans, is the daughter of Willard Day.  Willard was one of eight siblings raised in Draper, UT.  All of the girls that are descendants of those 8 Day children (7 boys and 1 girl) make up "The Day Girls".  When you graduate from high school you are officially in the group and this year there were over 70 of us - pretty cool!
It was fun to have a get-away with my Mom and sister and to be able visit with all those amazing ladies!

3 Generations of Day girls!

 Me, Connie and Aimee

The Willard Day group swept the raffle!  Caitlin won the coveted quilt and I won a cute apron. Yeah!

The Willard Day Family

(Thanks to Shawni for the pictures)

The Blues

Soccer has turned into a year round event at our house!
Ben's team played Spring Ball and then continued into tournaments for Summer/Fall ... and added in there he has been trying out/training with the high school team (he made the JV team, Hooray! - those games start this week).
So here are a few pictures of him in action at this weekend's tournament ...

The El Dorado Shootout

We spent the weekend watching all of his action packed games - cheering from the sidelines, eating shaved ice, and chatting with all our friends from the team.  GO BLUES!!

His team took 2nd place in their division.

Check, Check, Check ...

Look at all those check marks - we did better than I thought we would have on our Summer To-Do List ... especially since summer flew by this year!!
It reminds me of the 'Summer Fun' lists my roommates and I would make at BYU.  Good times!
Sam and Susie loved keeping track of all FuN THiNGS we did, so we will be doing it again next summer.

Our Empty Beanbag Chair

Ben was off to start his Freshman year of High School today.  It was noticeably quieter in the house and as I was cleaning and gathering laundry I kept passing our empty beanbag chair and empty TV screen.   That's how I know school has started.

Because no 1st day of school pictures are allowed - he is way too old for that! (I'll have to sneak one later).

kind of looks like he is going to soccer - but that is his look!, so different than Susie and all her outfit planning and accessories :)

House Guests

He were happy to have Jeff, Melissa, Jesse, Owen and Betsy come stay with us for a few days.  We all had so much fun hanging out, playing cards, listening to Jeff and Steve's geeky knowledge,  swimming in the pool and boating.

 Susie and Sweet Betsy

 Reigning kings of Geekery

 Ben showing the boys how it's done!

 Up!

 Up!

Up!

As always it makes us wish we lived a little closer to family.

Back to School

My baby girl headed off to middle school today - looking darling and feeling a bit nervous.  

Rewind

It is time for school to start and I need to catch up on all of our summer fun!  It seems like it flew by so fast this year!!

A big chunk of our time was spent visiting family and friends in Utah ... so I will start there.
Visiting with GG's is always one of our first stops - we love to see them and visit over lunch and a game of dominoes.

Since it was July there were plenty of FiReWoRKS!   We did 2 shows - One was so that pyro-boy could light off fireworks before EFY ...  and the other was up Morgan's 4th of July Celebration!

The little boys yelled "Bravo, Bravo!"

 Pyro-Boy! Loved his blow torch and the new aerial fireworks that Utah allowed this year :)

Morgan's Celebration featured Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson ... followed by fireworks.  The show was aMaZing and of course we are all BiG fans (Steven G. is their biggest fan so we were sad he wasn't there too).   Afterwards we met them and the kids got their hands signed and swore to never wash them off!!

My kids think it is so interesting that they put letters on the mountains - I grew up around it so it is not such a novelty!  M is for Morgan!!

Ben and 3 of his friends went to EFY and although he was tight lipped about the details of the week, saying his usual "Good", "Fine" etc. to all my questions - he did say that we would like to go back.   Here is the one picture he took of his group on their way to the dance
(love how Zach got him all decked out for the event - nice tie!)

After EFY Ben flew back home to attend High School Soccer Camp.

Susie and her cousins Marcee and Bethany attended a 4H cooking camp for a few days.  They made ice cream, butter, bread, bread sculptures, and learned cake decorating techniques.

While they did that I took the little boys to Morgan's bike ramp park.  Pure heaven for little Sambo our future BMX racer...

A One Handed Trick by J.J. 

 Best Buddies

Big Air by Sambo

Followed by lunch at Steph's with Tangee's for dessert (of course)! YuMMy!

Next on our list of fun was a trip to Provo to go to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point, do some school shopping and eat dinner at The Brick Oven!

 Paleontologist's in training

Loved spending the morning with our friends the Garcia's!

In between there was FRieNDS and FeaTHeRS!  Lots of talking and laughing (not a lot of picture taking), we miss the LaPray's!

Susie was able to sneak in a sleepover with MiLLie!

Finally, on one of our last days we took the kids LaGooN! Quintessential Utah, for sure!

{Whew!  A little exhausted just by the recap, and that was only 2 1/2 weeks of the summer :)}