Better Late Than Never

Hey Everyone,
It is hard to believe that the summer is almost over. We have had a great summer so far and luckily we have been able to spend a fairly good part of it together as a family. We started the summer off by making the children miss all the shenanigans that occur on the last day of school and had everybody on an airplane to visit Virginia. The stated purpose of the visit was to have a family vacation and enjoy the historical sites of Virginia. The secondary purpose was to ascertain how well the family would handle relocation away from mountains, high altitude and in particular Grandma and Grandpa. The flight proceeded without any major embarrassments. Noah did not smell any disturbing odors that he felt obliged to questions and for the most part everybody slept for most of the flight. We had a great visit to Virginia except that the weather did not want to cooperate. It was rainy and cloudy except when we were in DC and then it was so hot and humid everybody wilted and a five dollar bottle of water at the Lincoln Memorial sounded like a great idea. While we were in DC we decided that it would be fun to see “A Night at the Museum – The Smithsonian” at the Smithsonian. Unfortunately, 10,000 of our closest friends decided that this sounded like memorable experience at well. The staff (used to handling a few dinosaur loving prepubescents and their sightseeing families were all of a sudden drafted into shuttling 3,000 people into a sold out theater. Needless to say anarchy was the rule of the day. I was able to use Isabelle to get me in a side door. As I was trying to get Kira’s and Aaron’s attention to let them know I had some good seats in my sights, I watched some very ignorant (Utah definition) people push Aaron down and steal the seats he was trying to save. We finally succeeded in scoring enough seats with only one that had a seat pan less than horizontal when in use. The movie was very enjoyable and definitely beat the heat. The majority of the vacation was spent at the Water Park and Busch Gardens. We did drive by a couple of historic monuments and wondered if they were related to the civil our revolutionary war (Pauline was able to set us straight and gain some brownie points for knowing stuff that Dad didn’t - not really all that uncommon; however, I have the kids buffaloed). The vision that the kids would come back with a greater knowledge/appreciation of our Nation’s history was replaced with a knowledge of physics and what pulling 3 g’s will do to the human body (in Kira’s case it turns her a interesting shade of green).
We also spent some time at Virginia Beach. It was raining most of the time; however , we were able to still have a lot of fun. The girls weren’t all that keen about playing in the water. Isabelle preferred to build a sand castle while Kira was all about looking pretty for the boys. Elijah and Aaron had Dad nervous about how far out into the water they were willing to venture. The most surprising of all was Noah. He absolutely loved the ocean. He loved playing in the waves and did not care when he would get knocked down. I could not believe how big of fish he was and how much he loved the ocean. I kept expecting him to grow some fins and gills and swim off. The rest of the month was very uneventful – the family returned to Utah and started to get moving on their action packed summer. Kira and Elijah went on Trek for Youth conference while Aaron stayed home to keep Pauline company. I will get Kira or Elijah to write about Trek since no one has been very verbose in discussing their experiences with their dear old dad. That is the update for June. I will post July when I get it done. Pauline is responsible for August.