The End is Near...

The air is changing, night is falling upon us sooner, and we've begun pulling out the school backpacks and making lists of school supplies that need to be purchased before school starts on Monday.

Aahhh!! Does the summer really have to come to an end? It has been a blissful summer and I've enjoyed having older kids as we enjoyed nice lazy summer mornings and then playing until we dropped late into the night.

We did enjoy August to it's fullest, with our usual Bear Lake fun with the Rimington Clan and then a family camping trip the weekend after, though that turned into an adventure. We had planned to meet up with friends in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho to go camping and tubing down the river, but it was supposed to rain all weekend, so while our friends braved the rain (well, in truth, they got rained out and came home early), we opted to camp up Ogden Canyon where it was sunny. We had a lovely time and enjoyed all things camping, including my famous Dutch oven chocolate cake and the small river by our campsite.

We still have some fun plans in the upcoming weekends - and we are determined to make it back up to Lava for a day of tubing. However, we will have to be a little more creative in our getaways as I have been asked to work in the newsroom on Saturday afternoons paginating some of the pages for the Sunday newspaper.

It isn't the most ideal of days to be working, but as things are kind of up in the air with a new editor who doesn't seem to be utilizing us correspondents like the past editors have done, I see it as an opportunity to fill in that gap of fewer stories and building up my work experience from a new angle.

Besides, I LOVE doing page layouts - it was one of my favorite classes in college and I've loved putting together newsletters and such, so this is really right up my alley.

I haven't taken a ton of pictures this month, but here are a few:

Natalie adores kitties - wherever we go. 

We went to the Davis County Fair where the younger girls of course enjoyed the princess show and pony rides. The older girls, not so much, but we did all enjoy the elephant show. It is really hard sometimes with a family of "olders" and "youngers" to try and find something for everybody to enjoy!

One of my dear friends from high school was in town for business and she and I got together for dinner. It was lovely catching up. 

Now I'm off to enjoy our last few days of summer....

Epic Road Trip

It was the Meldrum Family Reunion this July, again up in Lincoln City, Oregon, but it was the "off" year, meaning you don't have to go to great lengths to bring your entire family. As such, in years past, I have just flown up by myself, but this year I decided since my girls are all older, we could handle the long road trip on our own since John didn't have enough vacation days to spend away from work. Besides, the girls and I decided it was an excellent way to enjoy summer break, right? 

So we set out on our trek in July and covered 1,890 miles through four states (Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) over an 11-day period. It was truly an epic road trip. I didn't want to do the long drive (approximately 14 hours) by myself up to the Oregon Coast, so we cut it down by stopping at a few of my Meldrum cousins and siblings along the way. It was a riot and I can hardly wait to do it again. 

Here were some of the highlights: 

Kim got to relive her glory days riding a horse at my cousin Sam's house. All of the girls got to ride the horse, but only Kimberly got to go off and ride it on her own because of the two years of riding lessons she had under her belt. She was in heaven. 

We also got to feed her alpacas and in return, they gave my girls alpaca kisses. So cute. 

Then we visited another cousin who has a yard full of goats. The girls were again in farm heaven. 

We finally made our way over to the beach and made some new discoveries in the tide pools:

The weather was beautiful all four of the days we were at the rented beach house, which mind you is incredible for the area since many of our vacations up there have included sitting on the beach with our coats on and umbrellas overhead, determined to enjoy the beach during our stay. 

In the sun, we enjoyed bogey boarding: 

the beach: 

...especially beach campfires:

We loved piling in the car after spending time at the beach to head back to the house when we didn't want to walk up the gazillion stairs:

and hopping into the warm hot tub:

We missed John though, and wished he had been able to join us. 

We celebrated Alicia's 13th birthday while we were up there:

One of the memories I will treasure most from the trip was staying up late two of the nights playing our traditional Mormon Bridge game with my mom, brother and sisters. 

We laughed so hard I'm surprised I didn't pee my pants. The empty chair we left in honor of our dad, and it was fun as we laughed and joked about some of our fond memories with dad too. We felt like he was there with us. 

After the beach stay, we headed up to my brother's house in Washington where the girls had fun playing with the massive amount of frogs in their yard (they even spent time making froggie homes for them. so cute) 

We rented kayaks at a lake near their house:

We found a waterfall at the end of our journey and took time cliff jumping:

When we left his house, we took the scenic route past Mt. Rainier: 

It was such a fun, fun trip - truly epic.