Chalk It Up To Summer!

Summer has begun! So far, this summer has been FULL of events, visitors, visiting, and friends. It has been wonderful!

The past 9 weekends for us have been planned and full. Although it has been a blast, the rest days in between are welcome also. The balance is nice.

We have had the Thanksgiving Point 1/2 marathon and my moms Birthday, three gymnastics meets, the State gymnstaics meet, a 5 day visit to Pocatello, three dinners with Ben's relatives, a family reunion, mine and Williams Birthday, the Utah Valley Marathon, a visit from Ben's brother Wes and his family, a visit from Ben's dad, ward dinner group, t-ball games, a gymnastics recital, last day of school stuff, preschool graduation, trips to the splash park with friends, lots of trips to the park directly behind our house, and lots of sprinklers, and so on.

The next few weeks will be great as well. The 4th of July weekend in Pocatello (lots of waterskiing and fireworks), a visit from Ben's brother Dan, and his family, a weekend get-away with Ben to Lagoon (one of my Birthday presents), and a week long vacation with my whole family at a cabin on Payette Lake. There is also the Moonlight Half Marathon with about 5 other friends, Mary starts 1st Grade somewhere in there, and Mary and Sam have swimming lessons somewhere in July as well.

I don't mind busy, when it is fun busy. I wouldn't have our summer any other way.
Aside from the big events, there have been a lot of fun little events here in our neighborhood as well. Our ward family is wonderful, and we have made some great friends. It feels good to love and be loved. We are surrounded by some really neat people. Very genuine and down to earth.

This morning a bunch of us from the neighborhood got together for our very own chalk festival! Thank you Sheri! It was such a fun summer idea.
We have a really nice path that runs along our neighborhood,

(our house is the one on the far left..with the garage door open)

so we decided that each family could have 6 feet of the path to make their chalk drawings. There were about 15 families.



There was an awards ceremony and popsicles at the end.
The kids had a great time! William crawled all over everything, and ended up covered with chalk from head to toe. He did his fair share of walking as well. He is about 50/50 right now with walking and crawling.



Mary decided to do a beach theme, so we all went along with it.

Sam added a spider, a second sun, and a jellyfish.

The kids won the "fun in the sun" award.


All in all, it was a great summer morning activity, and a really fun way to be with all of our friends and have a good time.
We sure love summer and this neighborhood of ours!

p.s. Speaking of "summer," I thought it would be interesting to add that Ben is STILL snow skiing! One of the resorts is open until the 4th of July! This weekend he will snow ski on Friday and waterski on Saturday. Crazy huh! He is in snow skiing paradise, to say the least. ;)

oh, and one more thing..I am getting my foot looked at by a physical therapist in our ward. I am headed there in about 30 minutes. She is guessing it is a stress fracture, but she is going to check out the tendons as well. Depeding on what she thinks, I will probably go to an orthopedic surgeon soon. I am trying not to dwell on it, because it can get me really upset, and I am staying positive that it is a tendon and that I can heal it up in time for the next few races. Until then, I might just get really into swimming and biking!