We had a really fun fourth of July week. We were really lucky to have David and Mandy plus their two kids Kindin and Jack come up and visit us for a few days, then we all made a caravan and drove over to Idaho Falls to stay with Jeff's family for the week. His brother Chad, his wife Elisa and their and my niece Eden flew in from Switzerland the day that we all got there. We are really exited to have them back in the States now. They are going to be living in Salt Lake which is just a 4 1/2 hour drive so we will be able to see them much more now.

Sophia really really likes to play with her cousin Kindin. They are only about 3 months apart. Jane had a lot of fun following the two older girls around, but she also really like to play with her cousin Jack. Both of the girls really liked their cousin Eden. I thought that they were both really tender with her.

It was a full house at the Parry's, but I thought that we all fit nicely. Sophia slept in a room with us, which turned out to be really good. She's reached that age where if she wakes up we can basically threaten her with her life,( be quiet or die!), and she more of less gets the idea. Jane ended up sleeping in a corner of the basement, which actually wasn't a big deal. We brought a fan with us and turned it up nice and high so that it blocked most of the noise coming from upstairs.

We had family pictures taken while we were there. The first time with the Parry family since any of the kids have gotten married. We were told to wear kahki colered pants and either a white top or a black top. Having black hair, I automatically decided that I would wear white. The rest of my family doesn't have black hair, but they all have brown. If I wear black, sometimes in a photo it looks like I'm wearing a hoodie. So, kahki colored pants and a white top, sounds easy enough? Well, turns out, nobody in my little family has a pair of kahki colored pants or a white shirt. Ok, that's not exactly true, I have a pair of chinos that are kahki, but they are a size too small. (Sigh). But it was kind of fun to go out and buy some new stuff for us to wear. Usually I would hear, "get some kahki pants and a white shirt" and I wouldn't give it much thought, I would just go out and buy some kahki pants and a maybe the same white polo for our whole family. But this time I thought about it more and tried to get different things that would still work for what my mother-in-law wanted. I ended up really liking all of the stuff that I got for everyone.

The photo shoot was kind of exciting because halfway through, a huge storm started to brew. The clouds were really dark, then the wind started to howl and blow super hard. Then about 10 minutes after that it started to rain. Hopefully the pictures we were able to take were good enough to satisfy.

On the fourth, my mother-in-law watched all 5 grandkids, (two 3 year olds, one 18 month old, one 14 month old and one 9 month old) all by herself! (although Uncle Jason was downstairs asleep on the couch), while the rest of us went up and went river rafting with Steve and Sharon Parry. I was a little nervous and almost didn't go, but I'm glad that I did because it was really fun. I'm not much of a water person, whatever it's called to have a phobia of water, I'm sure I have that. Jordyn had a friend that came with us and he is the only one that ended up falling out, and he fell out twice. The river was really high this year, so it was moving really quickly, it took about half the time that it normally does to go the distance we went.

Idaho Falls has a pretty spectacular fireworks show that starts at 10:00pm. Usually my kids go to bed around 6:30pm, but we decided to try and take them this year. I had Sophia sleep from about 5pm to 8pm, and Jane just took he normal nap. I'm not sure if it helped or not, but at least Jeff and I got a little break that evening while Sophia slept. Sophia did NOT like the fireworks. She kept her ears plugged the entire half hour of the show. Grandpa took her for a little walk which seemed to relax her a bit, but even still, she kept saying that she wanted to go home. Jane like it though, she just sat on my lap and starred the entire time. On the way back to the car, Sophia had the sun shade on her side of the stroller pulled all the way down covering her completely because she wanted to block out all of the noise from locals setting off fireworks.