Skinny Dipper

There's no Summer snack like cool carrots and vegetable dip.

But Sage wouldn't know.

That's cantaloupe.

"...like gentle rain through darkened skies."

We had a rare Summer rain Monday night.
Lucky for the kids, it started right at bedtime.
Of course, they got to stay up late and enjoy it.

It wasn't too late, after all.

It only lasted a few minutes. Sigh.

Long Live Pizza

We made pizza tonight.

Sage pressed hers out as if she were giving it CPR.

I pointed this out to Chad, and Sage immediately began blowing on her dough

as though giving it rescue breaths.

How does she know these things?

Bonding

If there is a God, which, of course, there is, and if we are His children, which, of course, we are, than our welfare and well-being are caught up in everything He has ever done. He does what He does because He loves us, right? So, why dinosaurs? We're working on the questions of When dinosaurs, and How dinosaurs, but I have often wondered, in the ultimate view of things, Why? It took an entire planet and millions of years. Why was it so important? Then one day I smiled at this thought:

One day in Heaven, when the earth was much newer, Heavenly Father said, "Sons, today we are going to have Celestial Scout Camp, (or Devine Father-'n'-Son's, something like that) and we're going to go down to that planet and make DINOSAURS." The sons faces lit up and they shouted, "YEAH!!! We have the greatest Dad EVER!!!" Which, of course, they did.

Camping Catch-up

We went camping the whole week leading up to the 4th of July. I've been slow to post because I've been busy doing all that post-camping laundry, and packing again to send my three oldest to Indiana for a visit with Grandpa and Grandma Coffman. Oh, and the fishing trip. Anyway, here, at this quiet moment at 12:07 am two Monday mornings later, are some highlights from our trip. Sage, licking the rain.
Sooty Samuel and Grubby Gabe, hiding from said rain.

Scavenger hunt!

Scavenger hunt prizes!

Eden and Torry crafting with "Glitter Lava."

View from our camp. Real cowboys on a real cattle drive. We were surrounded by cows the whole week. We would wake up and they would be licking the salt off of the kid's bicycle handles, or sniffing the trash. No bears. No racoons. Just cows.

On July 3rd, we took the ATVs up to a snow patch.

Snowball fight!

Lovely Lily just let loose at... someone.

Maybe it was Samuel?

Fish Stories

Friday, Chad and I went deep sea fishing with his company.
I caught a big fish.
(Actually that guy in the foreground hooked it and hollered at me,"Come take this!" So I threw the sardine I was clutching back into the live-well, ditched my pole, and grabbed his. Reeling it in took ALL I had. They kept telling me, "Keep the end of your pole UP!" I just wanted to say, "But I'm a GIRL! And that has got to be a walrus on the end of this line because it's not budging!" It finally budged all the way to the boat, they gaffed it and threw it on deck. I posed, with quivering arms, for a picture, and secretly hoped that would be the last fish I would catch that day. Surely they don't come any smaller than that, and I would have to wuss-out if it were any bigger.

This is the entire boat's take for the day. Mine is the smallest.

We saw schools and schools of dolphin.

And one seal, one flying fish, and two jelly fish.

Wanna hear a funny story?

Chad usually has such mastery of the English language,

That his flub-ups are memorable.

This fishing trip reminded me of a similar trip he took a few years ago.

On these trips, you either catch yellow fin tuna(like the one I caught),

blue fin tuna, or albacore(the BIG ones).

Chad had had more luck that year and had caught multiple albacore.

He was telling me about it as I was frying up some of his catch the next day. "Boy, it sure was fun realing in those albatross," he said.

I looked at him.

"Honey.

Tell me you know what an albatross is."

"Oh," he said, realizing he'd made a mistake, "it's a prison."