Pioneer Day

Our Stake celebrated pioneer day Saturday, July 19th. The primary put on a parade and the kids were encouraged to dress authentic and decorate their bikes or wagons. Well, we don't have anything pioneerish (yes, its a word) so we went patriotic. Ethan had a lot of fun and threw out candy to the crowd. He was quite a hit!


They had a lot of games and booths including fishing, ax throwing, snow cones, popcorn and a lot more.
Above: Ethan caught the "big one" but threw it back.
I competed with one of my young women (Roni) in a game of stick pull. Okay.. yeah, she beat me... twice.
Joel and Ethan helped support our Ward in the tug-a-war. Yes, we lost that too, but in the picture you can see our ward consisted of a couple of men and a lot of young women. Well, the other ward had about 20 young men, and we held our own for quite a while. So... huh!

San Francisco... again..

We had so much fun in San Franciso on Joel's birthday, that we decided to take the kids back the next week. Oh, and Joel had a job interview with a dental supply company there too. I guess that had a little to do with it. He got the job, so I guess it was worth it. He is now the Northwest territory manager with Curasan. He will be in charge all of sales for Northern California, Oregon, Washington and some of Idaho. We'll ship him back east for training in a couple of weeks, then throw him to the wolves. He is very excited with the opportunity. Guess we'll have to put the family business on hold for a little while.

We ate dinner at the cutest place. It is called the Rainforest Cafe and the entire place feels like your deep in the jungle. They have a variety or tropical fish all throughout and life-like elephants, gorillas and other animals all around, that move and make sounds. The main floor is a gift shop and the next two floors are restaurant.

Independence Day

This year for the Forth of July, Travis, Summer and their boys came up and stayed a couple of nights with us. It is starting to become a little tradition of ours. In the morning we met Cory, Jessica and Brady at the Roseville parade. It was a lot cooler this year, than last, so we didn't mind sitting out in the sun.

Above: Ethan and Kabien watch the cars drive by.

Below: Summer, Melanie and Jessica take advantage of the lawn chairs.

That evening everyone met back at our place for Taco Salad and cookies... yum. Later we drove over to the Placer County fair grounds for the fireworks show. Below: all the boys were lying on the blanket watching, it was really cute. Megan spent the whole eveing lookin for more cookies. She is our little piglet!

Below: Megan and cousin Brady discuss the benefits of life without hair.

Ahhh... what a cute family!