Blessings come big and small!

So I feel like I need to let you know how much we were blessed in July!  We were able to be with our family a lot the last few months and we are so grateful that we are close enough to do that.  But this is not entirely about family. Mat and I were able to go to the Manti temple with our ward for ward temple day.  Since Provo was closed at the time the next available temple was Manti!!!  Which was awesome for us since we were married there 6 years ago.  Anyway, we were getting really excited and hoping the boys wouldn't get sick or have any injuries preventing us from going to the temple.  All was well and Mat and I took the boys over to my sisters to spend the night since we needed to leave by 7 am the next day.  So off we were to spend some time with ourselves.  YEAH!!!!  The next morning we got up bright and early and met the ward at the church and followed down.  We had a really good turn out about 20 people came!!  AWESOME!  We didn't carpool with anyone else because we wanted to go and walk around Snow College's campus and visit Mat's grandma in Fountain Green.  So we took a nice quiet drive down to Manti, got to the temple and hour before the next session started, which gave us ample time to think and ponder.  While we were pondering we noticed a girl that was receiving her own endowment and realized that we knew her.  It was our good friend's little sister and she was with her parents and grandpa along with her fiancé and his parents.  It was really cool. We were hoping that we would see our friends, but they weren't there, although our session was really full and it was amazing.  We were able to talk with the parents afterwards and it was just good to see them.  After that I was in the dressing room waiting to get into my locker and another lady saw me, recognized me and it was my little sister's friends from growing up.  She had just gotten married in the temple a month ago and was at her brother-in-law and sister-in-law's sealing.  It was soo cool!!!!  So we talked for a little bit and it was just awesome.  We then waited outside for all our ward members and followed each other over to a near by park to have lunch.  After lunch, and while our ward members were leaving I found some really good friends of ours from Logan which we hadn't seen for 5 years!!!!  We talked for awhile and found out they were living in Orangeville and some of Mat's family is from there and were actually there in Manti at the park.  So Mat ran over and talked with his Uncle Gordon and Aunt Carol. What a GREAT REUNION!!!  It truly felt like heaven that day where we were able to meet and be with old friends and family again!  I was on cloud 9 the whole day!  Mat and I were suppose to be there that day to see so many old friends that some have been over 5 years since we have seen them.

We then walked around Snow College's campus and it was great!  They have a new library there that looks like the Noyes Building!  BEAUTIFUL!!!!  Good memories were shared there at that dear college!

          I loved my roomies!!!  They were the best both years!  I was hoping to find some other pictures and I need to fix some around and get them a little bit better, but here are some of the memories of room 218!  Let the good times roll!

July a month of celebration!

Here are our Fourth of July weekend Celebrations!   We had our really good friends, Aaron and Chelsey come down and have some good ol' dutch oven dinner and dessert with us.  It was so so nice! It's always nice to be in the presence of people that love and respect you.  It's such a wonderful feeling.  Thanks Aaron and Chels for the great time and all the great times we get together.  On Sunday the 4th we had dinner with my little sister Chelsea and her husband Casey and had a great time with them.  After that we went to the Payson Memorial Park and saw the summer annual band concert.  It was great.  The boys had a good time, I think.  Maybe not listening to the music, but definitely wrestling each other on the blanket.  Silly boys!!  I guess that's what I get with having 3 crazy, lil boys!

These are photos of my family that has grown to 33 people!!!  We have a growing family and it was a great time!!  We went camping for our first annual Rick Lee Family Reunion up Bear Canyon, up Nephi Canyon.  ALL OF US WERE THERE!!!  How great is that.  We had a great time with playing horseshoes that Casey and Chelsea brought up and games at night when the kids went to bed and doing lots of crafts thanks to my mom (aka Mama)  she knows exactly what to bring to keep the kids out of trouble most of the time.  Except for when Corbin fell in the river following the big kids and got his shoes soaked....  good times.... :O)  We had no quarrels or fights.... except the lil bickering between kids that happens no matter what... we had a BLAST!!!!  What more could you ask for a big family?!?  I can't wait for next year!  We are going to Paris Springs Campground in Idaho so it will be closer for my brother and his family to come.  And we get to spend it at the beach!  YEAH!!!  The camping trip had it's ups and downs for our lil tent though.  Our zipper finally gave out the second day into that trip and thank goodness it was the last camping trip planned.  We ended up putting a tarp over the front door to keep us warm and hopefully keep the critters out.  I have pictures in the slideshow.  It was an interesting experience and hopefully we can get our tent fixed or get a new one entirely.  We'll see!  Well, enough of the boring talk.  Our summer has been an adventure and a great one to with our families on both sides.  My kids can't say they had a boring summer!  We have had ample enough family time and things to do and the Lord has truly blessed us so that we have been able to make our relationships stronger with our family.  We thank him everyday for it!!!!!

Summer time fun!!!

Here are pictures of our camping trip we took with Mat's family in June!!  It was over our anniversary so we celebrated our 6th anniversary on the beach at Bear Lake.  What a wonderful day!!  It was a great vacation and we had a BLAST!  The kids were great and had a great time with family that they don't see that often.  Well, I don't think this is all my photos, but most of them.  I was designated the family photographer because everyone left their cameras at home or batteries were dead.  I didn't mind though.  Our meals were great and we did miss Kyle, my sister-in-laws hubby.  He was in Germany for work.  She did get to talk to him while we were camping though,  only while we were on the beach though.  We did try and had some success getting cellphone service at our campsite.  Which was an awesome campsite in Paris Springs, ID only 10 minutes from Bear Lake.  Great spot and where my family will be having their camping trip next year!!!!  AWESOME!!!  On to the next set of photos for you!

Picts of Daxton's 5th Birthday and OWLZ game

Paris, ID camping Trip!

June... a camping, busy, birthday filled month

I know that I was being really good at the beginning of June with updating you, but I have failed.  I can't believe that June is over and done.  Thank goodness in some ways, and in other ways, I wish it could have lasted a little bit longer.  We were pretty busy with watching nieces and nephews, birthdays galore, our anniversary and top it off camping 2 weeks in a row.  BUT.... we had a blast as we were able to spend it as a family.

My sister-in-law had her baby at the end of May and to help out my mom and I watched her kids so that she could recover from her C-Section a little bit easier.  So my boys were excited to have their cousins over for a few days straight.  After that Corbin had his 3rd birthday!!!  I can't believe that Corbin is now 3 years old and acting so much older than his age.

After that we were able to go to Bryce Canyon with my mom and dad.  It was a GREAT trip!!! A very relaxing, do what you want kind of Trip!!  We played at the pool at my parent's hotel, went and saw all the sites up in Bryce Canyon, played back at our campsite and laughed.  What more could you ask for?!!?  Time spent with my family was very special to my this last month.  I got to do it a lot and enjoyed every minute of it.  Some may think that I would get tired of having my kids and my husband CONSTANTLY around me, but I beg to differ.  If anything else, it has brought us closer together and we have learned and taught each other many valuable lessons.

Playing in the tent.  It was really windy that first night.

First day at Rainbow point.

My boys!!                                                                                                Natural Bridge
 

        Cool stump we found and the boys thought it was fun!            Old Bryce Town---JAIL TIME!!!
 

  Cute pioneers, huh!!! hahaha                           Sitting around the fire!

     Papa and Hayden at Inspiration point!                                                           Roasting Marshmallows!

Those are just a smidge of the what I actually took!!  I didn't want to bore you with all my family photos so I just gave you a taste of it!!  Our next adventure was Father's day weekend!  Oh, did I mention Mat's birthday?  Well it was spent that first day in Bryce Canyon,  well the drive down to Bryce.  It was definitely a different birthday present for him.  When we got home it was Father's day weekend and we went up to his parent's home for a birthday celebration for his dad's birthday and all June birthdays.  It was nice to have ALL of Mat's family there, well, at least all his siblings were together.  Some of the nieces and nephews and son-in-laws were not there.  

 

 

 

After that fun filled weekend of family and friends! We headed off to Paris....... IDAHO!!!!  It wasn't as beautiful as Paris, France (from pictures I have seen), but definitely a little bit of heaven away from it all. We spent 3 days up there and out at Bear Lake, relaxing... who would complain about that... unless you were one of those that got really sunburned or eaten by the mosquitoes.  Other than that, I had a great time and the boys had fun playing with their Larsen cousins.  The Miller cousins don't like camping, but we still love them!!!

I was the designated photographer since everyone else either forgot their camera or their batteries for their camera had died.  So I had taken almost 400 photos in 3 days time.  While we were camping we ended up celebrating our 6th anniversary!  Mat's parent's felt bad that we were camping over the time of our anniversary, but I would rather be doing something like camping than possibly nothing at all since money is really tight.  So.... we spent it by going to the Lake and having dutch oven pizza for dinner with some yummy cobbler for dessert.  It was a really great day!!  My present for Mat was some quotes from songs that I thought described my love for him.  So I got this idea from a friend who did it for her husband on their anniversary, so thank you Tildie for the idea!!  What I did was take four songs that we both love and took exerts from them, pasted them onto some cute scrapbook paper, hole punched it and scattered them around in our luggage and places where he would be looking while we are camping, he still has yet to find 3 of them.  But I hope that he really likes it!!  

(There is a slideshow of pictures to show you coming soon!)

This last week of the 4th of July has still been crazy because it was Daxton's 5th birthday and it was his first birthday party.  It was a good birthday I think!! We kind of elongated the celebration for a few days I think because of it falling on the 4th of July weekend.  His birthday day was pretty laid back we just had homemade pizza, his favorite, for dinner, then I went to Eclipse with my Bunco girls!!!  (awesome movie) Then Thursday the first of July we had his birthday party!!!!  He had a slip and slide party and had a blast.  For Corbin's birthday we bought a new Buzzlightyear slip n' slide and they had a great time!!!  

After the party was over we headed up with our good friends Aaron and Chelsey to an OWLZ game for free!!!  It was great!  The kids had a good time and Corbin even got an official Pioneer League baseball from a staff member there.  He thought that was pretty cool!

My parents a couple of my siblings with their families headed to Idaho for my dad's side of the family, family reunion.  We were unable to go because of finances. (It would have been 4 weeks in a row of camping-- which is fine in my book, but the cost of gas would have killed us!)  So we spent the 4th at home with just our lil family!!!  We had a fun relay race in our backyard that Daxton beat us all at!  He's so fast!

Saturday we had a fairly relaxing day at home.  Got a few chores done around home and then we headed to what was a very empty Payson Park but great for us to have the boys just play without any worry.  We headed home after playing, napped and had a great dutch oven dinner with our friends, did fireworks and watched a movie on the garage.  Great day!!  Sunday was fairly relaxing as well.  We had my lil sis and her husband come over for dinner and then we headed to Memorial Park to listen to the band play and the Payson Chorale perform for the 4th of July!!!  Fun filled summer evening!  Great days to come in a few day with my family coming to Nephi Canyon to have a RICK LEE FAMILY REUNION!!