July Fun

We had a great July!  We hiked with the Marshallese youth (and one of the boys slipped in the river and broke his arm!  He hiked the whole hike with it hurting and later that night his parents took him in, and sure enough, it was broken.  Poor kid!)

Pepper loves to sit outside in the sun!

Avery and Maren came back in town for a week!  Avery's friend, Aevrie, got married and she was a bridesmaid.  We went to the wedding and it was beautiful!

Awkward story:Avery went to give her ex-boyfriend a hug hello, and her earring caught on his shirt pocket and nearly de-lobed her ear!  Painful!  I guess that is a good way to break the ice...

Beautiful Sunset.

My family all came in town!  For the 4th of July we went to Plain City for their parade and park festivities with everyone.  We spent the afternoon at my parents house relaxing and playing cornhole, we went to Lynnette's house for dinner that night and then went back to Plain City for their fireworks show.  Roy banned fireworks, as did most of Utah because of the draught, but Plain City still allowed them and the show was pretty amazing!  We were right underneath the fireworks from the city and from individuals setting off their own.

The next day was Sunday.  We hosted a dinner at our house because our friends, Jacque and Tyler, were in town.  We invited my family because they all know and love them, too (and Monica and Jen were Jacque's roommates with me for one semester).  It was so fun and we love how our kids always pick right up like it hasn't been years since we've seen them!

We played a great game of Knock Out.

College besties.

We love the Thomas family!

An afternoon in the park, trying to cool down.  We had a heat wave!

Grant had a piano recital and our family came and supported and filled up the venue!

Dinner and games at Grandma and Grandpa's house with all the cousins.  Khalina and Edgar's family and Monica's family stayed with us.  Nicole's family stayed with my parents.  Chad's family got a hotel. 

On Wednesday, we all headed down to St. George for our Shurtz Reunion.  We stayed in three houses, all very close together, and made our meals together and did activities together.  It was great!  It was hot in St. George, but actually, all of Utah was just as hot!  Nicole and I were in charge of the meals for everyone.  We chose to highlight a country each day, where one of our ancestors had lived.  The first day was Denmark.  We made homemade rootbeer, because Grandma Losee used to make homemade rootbeer when I was a kid, and her grandma came to the United States from Denmark (maybe a stretch, but it was fun!).  We also had candy from Denmark that we all got to taste.

On Thursday we spent the morning floating down the Virgin River.  This was so much fun!!  It was the perfect spot (Sheep's Bridge was the name, for future posterity).  We floated, jumped off of rocks, skipped rocks and found frogs.  So great!  And we had no major sunburns afterward, so that felt like a pretty big win!

That afternoon, some of us went to the temple.  Beautiful!

Thursday was Ireland day.  We wore Irish hats and necklaces and ate Irish mints and learned about our awesome Irish ancestors.

On Friday we did family pictures at a park.

Our amazing friend, Jenn, picked up Rod and Sandy from the airport for us that day.  They had been on a trip and Sandy got very sick and they had to fly home early.  Since we were out of town, Jenn picked them up for us and sent us these fun pictures.  She's the best!

Friday afternoon we all spent at the pool together (others had gone swimming throughout our time there, but we all went together for this afternoon).  We had so much fun!  And this time, we did end up with some sunburns. :(

Friday's theme was England.  I found these fun England themed glasses, so we all wore them and traded them around and ate English cookies.

That evening we painted portraits of each other (Lynnette and Monica were in charge of activities and we had so much fun!).

Val and I painted each other.  Not bad...

Khalina is an artist, so everyone was a little jealous of Eliza's portrait.

Our family tree.  Pretty fun idea!

Then we played a candy bar game and did a family Kahoot.

The next morning, some of us went hiking at Red Cliffs.  We hiked Red Cliffs all the time growing up, so it was nostalgic for us to be there. 

When we got home from St. George, we were the same temperature as Arizona!  It got as high as 109 degrees!  Too hot!

The week after our reunion, our guests all went home, the girls went back to California, and Grant went straight up to Logan for FSY for a week.  We went from a busy, full house, to a very quiet house.  Grant had a great time, and we were glad.

Every night was date night while Grant was gone.

Our garden is growing!

Marshallese youth serving at the Food Bank.

More July sunsets.

I went hiking with some friends at the Albion Loop and Cecret Lake in Alta.  The wildflowers were beautiful!

They are basically the exact same size.

We went to the Days of '47 Float Preview with some family.  Our Stake had a float this year and it was fun to see how it turned out!

Our Stake float.

We went to the Ogden 24th of July parade and watched our niece, Abi, play her trombone.

That night we had a Marshallese Kemmem, a 1 year old birthday party.  They asked Dustin to say the prayer, and gave us beautiful matching outfits to wear.

Our friends, the Hertons.

They made me dance with them.

The next day was the Bountiful Handcart Days parade.  Grant marched in it with the Woods Cross HS float (he's a Student Body Officer this year).

Our Stake float made an appearance, too!

A fun P-Day, talking with my boys.

An amazing double rainbow.

Potato Pinewood Derby for the Marshallese youth.

Lana had artwork in an Art Show at Salt Lake County.

Our ward asked us if we could come help chaperone at an overnighter for our youth.  We could, but the silly thing was that Grant was in California for a week with the girls, doing a piano tuning internship with someone from Nicole and Matt's Stake.  So, we went without him and had a great time with our ward's youth!

Ryan turned 19 this month!  (This is an AI picture, but I stole it off of his Google Photos, haha).  He has been doing some fun things in Colombia this month!  His companion got out of the hospital and he got transferred to another area, with another companion, while his old comp recovered.  He is also hit his year mark this month!  Crazy!! Time is flying and I can't believe he only has a year left!  We love talking to him each week and seeing the growth that he is experiencing.  He works hard and has a desire to stay busy and find people to teach about Jesus.  He is enjoying his companions and mission president and the people that he meets.  He is learning a lot and his testimony is growing!  We love him and miss him!