A coat of Wayne

At the beginning of the summer we set a reading goal.  How much, you ask?  Well I don't really know.  I filled out a paper with small boxes and said each box was 10 minutes.  So a page full of reading, I guess!  Anyway, they met their goal about 2 weeks ago.  The reward was to go up to the Discovery Gateway museum in Salt Lake City.  We finally had time to go up there on Monday!  We left after piano lessons.  The kids all had a great time playing and using their imaginations.  Unfortunately Thunder and Sunshine couldn't come because they were traveling to Idaho for the funeral of our friend's father.  On Tuesday Tornado had gymnastics and I had young womens that night.  We went to play frisbee golf.  Oh excuse me, "Disc Golf" is the proper term.  Apparently this is a large sport requiring official courses and weighted frisbees....er, discs.  We just had very cheap normal frisbees.  But it was still fun.

Wednesday was July 24, which is a holiday in Utah to commemorate the pioneers arriving.  We spent it with some good friends.  We started off the day by hiking to the Alpine Rock Slide again.  The water was just as cold, but it was overcast!  No sun to warm us up between slides!  I was chilled for most of the day, but everyone had a great time.  After a way-too-long wait to try Popeye's chicken, we headed home to get showered and changed.  Then we went to our friends the Butler's mom's house.  It is a really fun house with a zip line, sprinklers under the trampoline and cool decorations inside.  The kids played and the adults talked.  It was a great day.

On Thursday we met with the missionaries and a family in our neighborhood who are thinking about coming to church after being away for a while.  They are our neighbors and our kids play together.  On Friday Cloudburst had her last day of tennis and we all went and played tennis on the court next to her class.  She was not too happy about our plan to do this.  She insisted she would be very embarrassed if anyone knew the goofy kids playing next to her were her family.  When did she become a teenager??

Saturday began normally enough.  I went to an early morning temple session with the ladies from church.  On the way back I called Thunder to mention I was going to stop at Home Depot and get some paint to paint some baseboards (I have a meeting with a Deseret Book music guy at our house this week).  Well he called me back a few minutes later and said a friend of ours could help us install Wainscoting if I wanted.  So off we went!  The rest of the day until 8 pm was spent measuring, cutting, nailing, caulking and painting.  It took the 3 of us all day, but we finished off the piano room and the front hallway.  It looks amazing!  I am sore today... but it was totally worth it.