July 2016 - family reunion, Rosie turns 2, and water falls

Quinton, on our neighbor's empty lot, waiting for 4th of July fireworks.

Summer sunset

The birthday girl with her cake. She likes cake.

We attempted to utilize the chickens to kill the grass around our cherry trees. Unfortunately, the just stood by the fence wondering why they had been exiled. Too much work getting them out there every day, and little in the way of results. 

We had three bushes I was ready to remove, but it turns out they were filburt bushes! We got about a half pint, unshelled, but that's a start. We have two filburt trees in the back yard that are several years from producing, but this will do for now.

Zachary finishing the horsemanship merit badge. 

Quinton went camping with troop 376. He didn't stay clean. Not even close. One of the other leaders has a boy Quinton's age, so they both come with their dads when possible.

After the aforementioned campout, Quinton went home with his friend while Stephen and Eric Yoast took boys on a ten mile hike. Zachary was not impressed with our pace. 

The deer trail we were following disappeared, so we got to practice traversing steep shale slopes for over a mile until we hooked back into a known trail. It was difficult for the boys, but they made it.

These guys were quite proud of themselves once we made it back to the trail and started down. This is about 3000 feet above our neighborhood.

Zachary and Stephen at the point just before starting our descent.

The Tueller Family Reunion was at our home in Providence. In the morning, we climbed about 700 feet to get a view of the sunrise and Providence Canyon. This short hike was much more pleasant for Zachary than the one described above.

We borrowed a bubble machine from our neighbors, and went through a couple dozen bottles of shampoo, letting the kids slip and  slide in the afternoons. Stephen went with Steven (McRae) and Steven (Knight) and biked down Providence Canyon a couple of times. We went to the Browning gun museum and children's place museum in Ogden. 

For having lived in Providence for six years, we were sure missing out on the waterfalls in Providence Canyon. We made it almost all the way to the falls in our 2 wheel drive mini van. We told the kids not to drink it, and found out later (during another scout hike) that cows used the falls for drinking several hundred feet above this point. And you know cows, they leave other thinks around wherever they go.

Another view of the falls. This didn't make the cut for the Christmas card. 

Here we are shelling peas we let dry for a fall seed crop (which, unfortunately didn't do well).