summer swimmin'

We did a lot of swimming this summer!  Ellie and I did two sessions of swimming lessons, and we went "swimming" in our baby pool in the backyard almost every day.

One night, for Family Home Evening, Tim even joined us!

The next three pictures are from Ellie's very first day of swimming lessons for the summer!

She was excited, but also a little unsure.  Which basically describes her entire swimming lessons experience.  Some days she was willing to try anything, and some days she tried absolutely nothing.  Some days she enjoyed it, and some days she spent the entire time telling me it was time to go home.  It was always a gamble.  (But she acted excited for it every single morning.)

Here we are on our last day of the first session:

And on the last day of our second session, Tim dropped by for his "lunch" so that he could watch her in the pool.  He took a lot of pictures that day!

I thought maybe Ellie would want to show off for Tim, but she was just as unpredictable that day as she was the rest.

Singing songs about the water made any activity a lot more enjoyable for her, though.  ("Motorboat, motorboat, go so slow...")

"Seriously, Mom, what is this?"

It makes me laugh that Ellie had like five different bathing suits and yet somehow only two made it into the pictures!  (Oh and a sidenote about that bandaid: she hit her head one day on our couch and got a pretty substantial bruise.  I put a bandaid on it to help it feel better.  Which she proceeded to wear for like the next two weeks.  She would have a panic attack any time we tried to take it off!  I was so relieved when it finally came off on its own.)

This is my cute friend, Brittney, and her kids!  (Dang you for moving to Idaho!)  My friend, Heather, and her kids were in swimming lessons with us, too, but her kids were sick for the last couple of days, so I didn't get any pictures!

We sure loved swimming this summer!  It was an amazing way to get outside every day and not get cooked by the heat.  (Which is a little funny coming from a former Arizonan.)  And believe it or not, Ellie handled swimming lessons a lot better than she did last year, so hopefully next year will be even better!

fourth of july

You'd never know it from looking at these pictures, but this was another really hard trip for Tim.  The Fourth of July itself was a fairly good day for him, and some of our hikes were okay.  But overall, it was just a tough trip.  Thank goodness for priesthood blessings, great family, and understanding bosses!

For the Fourth of July weekend, we went to my grandma's house in California.  As always :)  We love going there!  Our only regret was that we couldn't stay longer.

Ellie was not a fan of the sparklers or the fireworks.  In fact, my grandma's neighborhood basically sounds like a war zone starting at probably 5pm, and Ellie was not a happy camper.  She spent the entire evening inside with my mom and the dog.

I thought that maybe she'd get used to the sparklers and the fireworks after a while, but it seemed like she just kept getting more and more traumatized.  Needless to say, we spent a lot of time indoors, even the next day (since the celebrating just kept going).

This next picture is Ellie trying to be brave :)

And here is my brother, Jeff, and aunt, Ginny, showcasing the fireworks.

At the end of the night, Jeff, Tim, and I had way too much fun with the sparklers.  If you'd been there, you'd have thought we were all 10 years old by the way we were acting.

There was a lot of giggling.

Too bad Ellie doesn't get very much attention when we're around family... ;)

After California, we drove over to AZ and spent some time with my family.  We ended up going home a little early, and we were all sad about that.  It was hard to go from spending time with family to going home, especially that trip.  We are sure grateful for our amazing families!

camping summer 2015

At the end of June, we went camping.

We'd wanted to go camping anyway, but Tim's health situation made it feel even more important.  We just needed to get away for a couple of days.

Originally, we were planning to go at a campground that's like 10 minutes from our house, but by the time we got there, it was already full.  We decided Logan Canyon was probably our next best bet.  It was a good thing we got there as early as we did, because they were filling up fast, too!

For Tim's birthday, my aunt got him a tent.  Sort of.  She gave him money to get whatever he wanted, and that was what he wanted - a new tent, since our old one had been torn on one of our other, crazy-windy camping trips.  His new one is a pop-up tent, so it probably took us five minutes to set up.  Total.  It was pretty great.

We had hot dogs and canned chili for dinner.  Ellie didn't care at all about the chili, but the hot dogs were her personal heaven.

Ellie was scared of ALL THE BUGS.  Even the flies.  I wish I were kidding.  She would scream each and every time one landed on, or even near, her.  It was hilarious.

We almost walked into a rattlesnake in our campground, so as you can imagine, we were a little paranoid whilst hiking the next day.  We'd been forewarned by the one in our campground by its infamous rattle, but we didn't know if we'd get so lucky out hiking around.

After our hike, we went boating in a little reservoir.

Let me just say that our kayak is much easier to paddle than our inflatable raft. :)  But it was still so fun!  I think feeding the ducks was Ellie's favorite part of the entire trip!

It was a much-needed camping trip.  It was one of the only times Tim felt somewhat normal the entire summer, so I am sorry to say it was the only one we took!  It made me wish we could go every weekend.  (Or every day.)

We love camping!