The Riverton Rodeo 2022

The Riverton Rodeo has quickly become one of our family's favorite annual activities.  Greta is on the far right.

The whole gang (except for Bethany).  But she's in Texas so we hope she gets some sort of rodeo/cowboy experience at some point during her time there.  The rodeo is just a heck of a lot of fun-- the whole atmosphere, the smells, the sounds, the crowd.  It's definitely not our everyday kind of outing, but we will for sure be back next year.

The skydivers landing right in the middle of the arena is always awe-inspiring.  How gorgeous is that scene?  I love where we live.

There were three skydivers, with the last one trailing the American Flag.  It really gets the patriotic blood pumping.  

We loved cheering on Lily as the new Miss Riverton and had fun remembering how exciting it was to cheer for Bethany and Elinor.

Feeling pretty blessed to have just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.  

The costumed cow was terribly disappointing to Greta who still qualified for the Itty Bitty "Coupon" Cow. Coupons for ice cream are okay, but she wanted cold hard cash on an actual calf. 

Next year, Greta, next year.

She did pretty well-- Greta will be treating us all to ice cream cones in the near future!

Not surprisingly, George snagged a couple of bucks from the cash cow in his age group.

Now there is a story to tell about our wonderful little Peter.  He was in the 6-8-year-old age group.  He was unsuccessful in grabbing any cash off the cow.  Sadness.  But wait, he wasn't giving up yet.  All the cash had been grabbed but he was still chasing and checking for any unnoticed cash in a pocket of the cow's "coat" that the money was taped to.  He didn't find any on one side, when suddenly, he flung his long, skinny body over the cow, presumably to check for cash on the other side.  But then the cow started running and Peter hung on!  Then the cow bucked him off and stepped on his calf.  

Thanks to Brandon's video, you can watch Peter risk life and limb for a dollar.  

Click here to see the most glorious moment of Peter's life.  You know we cheered like CRAZY for him-- partly because we feared he might be really sad he didn't get any money-- and partly because it was so gutsy and unexpected and we were all pretty dang proud of him.

He was pretty proud of his battle wound as well.

Now we just call him "The Bull Rider".

The rodeo is a late night and our little cowgirl was all tuckered out.

Celebrating 25 Years

Abe and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this weekend.  25 YEARS!  We came across this thought about marriage and all I can say is AMEN! 

 "Any couple who has a healthy marriage and has lasted 20, 30, or even 50 years did NOT stay happily married based off of luck.  They sacrificed, they forgave, they rebuilt trust when it was broken, they kept dating each other, they listened, they apologized, they got help when they were stuck, they made time for each other, they learned to communicate, they cared more about their marriage than their pride."  

We celebrated with a hike up around Red Butte Gardens.  It was beautiful. 

We ate dinner at a Greek/American restaurant in Salt Lake called The Other Place.  We quite liked it.

We stayed the night at The Grand America hotel downtown.  Oooh, so fancy!  But actually, it was so lovely and relaxing and we enjoyed every moment together.  

Abe is so good to me and I love him.  In marriage (and life), it's NOT about getting everything exactly "right", but it IS about continuing to turn towards each other and try again.  And Abe is really, really good at that.

Camping, Hiking, Dancing, Visiting, and Jumping

Last Friday evening Elinor and Brandon took the boys camping.  It was very good of them and the boys had a great time, even if the fishing wasn't so good.  

With the boys off camping and Faith off with friends, it was just Abe and me and Greta hanging out.  So we pretended Greta was an only child and we took her to get some dinner and to the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point to play.

Saturday morning we took her on a hike over in Corner Canyon.  It's nice that now they have some trails designated for hikers only.

She is such a joy to us.

She loved the tiny little flowers.

Sunday was Father's Day and we celebrated Abe and the awesome father that he is.  

We missed Bethany and enjoyed getting to talk to her on Father's Day.  It was all-around a lovely day with our favorite people.

Monday morning I drove Faith and a van full of other kids from our ward down to BYU for FSY (For Strength of Youth) for a week-long camp.  Faith (and I think they all) had a great time and made new friends and hopefully learned some good stuff.

Brother Brad Wilcox from the General Young Men's Presidency was there greeting the youth so we got a picture with him.  He was so kind.

Faith loved being roommates with Tristin.

Summer Intensive continues for the boys (and Ivory-- our carpool friend).  They have two more weeks of  8-2:30 Monday through Friday.  It's demanding, but good.  Peter only has one more week and he has been surprised at how much he's enjoyed it.  

Just this past Saturday Greta had a little two-hour dance camp.

This made my heart so happy this week-- Dave Young was on a business trip to Dallas/Fort Worth area last week and he paid Bethany an unexpected visit.  I'm excited to talk to Bethany tomorrow and hear all about it.  Dave is very much like a father or uncle to Bethany and I'm sure it did her heart good as well.

He was so thoughtful to bring her a ukelele.  A gift from one talented musician to another.  

Wednesday night we had such a lovely time with my dear cousins and their spouses, Ben and Cali and Brandon and Rachelle.  Both Abe and I enjoy their company so much.  Brandon and Rachelle live in Virginia so we don't get to see them often enough.  We ate at a very tasty Thai restaurant in Lehi.  Great conversation and lots of laughter.

Our new trampoline arrived this week and Abe and mostly George put it together.  We are all grateful to have it, and our kiddos are trying to love it.  It's just that it was well known that we had the best, bounciest trampoline in the neighborhood and we'd had it for a very long time-- longer than any of the children now living in our house.  Perhaps we didn't have a long enough grieving period before moving on to a new one.  For whatever it's worth, I think this one is pretty good too.

Summer in Full Swing

 

I said it before, and I'll say it again.  Getting the pool in the backyard was the best thing that ever happened to summer at our house.  

Last Saturday afternoon was Swim With Dad Day:)

Okay, now, I am warning you right now that if you don't do snakes-- and I realize most people don't want to have anything to do with snakes--- you might want to scroll quickly.

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Proof that Fox boys have been catching bull (gopher) snakes for a long time.  There's Abe, Clark, and George.  Snakes or no snakes, they are all so cute!

Okay, I'm sorry I disturbed some of you.  All done with snakes for now.

Saturday night was WAAAAAY fun.  The four of us-- Abe, Cannon, Clark, and I went to the AJR concert at the Usana amphitheater.  This is Cannon's favorite band and for his birthday he wanted to go to the concert on June 11th.  So Abe bought two tickets for them to go.  Clark had already bought two tickets and I bought one of his tickets off him, so the four of us were off to the concert.  AJR is a really great band-- fun, positive, energetic, and quite a bit hipper than I'll ever be.  

We had two tickets in chairs and two on the lawn.  Abe and Clark switched around a bit, and Cannon stayed in the chair and I stayed on the lawn (by my own choice).

It was a perfect summer evening in so many ways.

With my love.

Another one:)

Bethany's good friend (from Utah State, even though he, too, is from Riverton), Noah, found us in the outrageously long lines to get in.  Of course we took a picture to send to Bethany on her mission.  So fun to see him!

Also, it was kind of crazy that of the 19,000 people at the concert, the car the parked right behind us in the masses of parking, was Bridger's family-- from our neighborhood.  Neither of us knew the others would be there.  

But seriously, it was such an enjoyable night.

Not the clearest picture, but no matter.  Last Sunday, our friends, the Portlocks, who happen to be family history specialists in our ward-- came over to give Abe, Faith, Cannon, and me a crash course in how to do family history and find names to take to the temple.  It's something I've wanted to learn more about for a long time and they were so gracious to come over the very day I asked.  It was so interesting and I learned some things and now am anxious to learn more!

Cannon and George began their ballet summer intensive on Monday and will go Monday- Friday 8:00 am to 2:30 pm for four weeks.  As you can imagine, they are sleeping very well at night.

Peter is goes from 3:00-5:30 for three weeks.  

With the boys gone so much and Faith often gone to swim or work or hanging out with friends, I'm spending a lot of time with Greta.  She has discovered yoga for kids on Youtube.

In exciting news for Greta, she has been working on getting her backhandspring.  And while it's still tough for her and she is working on consistency, SHE GOT IT!!! She's done about 25 of them so far, so I think it's going to stick.

Here is the link to see it the night she got it.

Her reward for working so hard and finally getting it was this amazing sparkling cat purse.  If you know Greta, you know this was totally her jam.  

In very sad news, our loyal trampoline of 18 years died this week.  Abe was dragging/moving it so we could mow the lawn, and the rusted frame broke.  And you know that very night we started researching replacing it, because I don't want to parent without a trampoline.  When kids get rowdy, I just say, "Take it to the trampoline!"  Yesterday I said that to the boys and George said, "We don't have one!"

Blast!  Hopefully our new one will arrive this week.