What We've Been Up to this Summer

 Aside from the larger trips to Bear Lake and the cabin, we've found plenty of ways to fill in the summer. Settle in for the photo dump!

Travis and Ginger had her birthday activity. She wanted to go camping and chose to wait till the summer to camp instead of a winter campout.

Jaxon had a stake HHJJ campout for a week.

Here is a typical made up backyard game I'll call "Hide from the sprinkler"?

There's always a trip to the Bean Museum, or BYU Dinosaur Museum.

Ginger and Ivy powered through their summer workbooks in a month. Ivy has since wanted more, and more workbooks. She just finished her fourth and now wants "a break". Can't blame her!

We had our annual summer Ward BBQ with some fun games. We love our ward so much.
 

We go to the BYU Bookstore and just mess around. Here the kids are using a stage to dance to the "audience".

We had swim lessons, of course, and just normal pool days.

Ivy is my little nutritionist. She seems to be very aware of her body's needs. She's the kid who takes a couple of bites of a dessert and says, "Mmm..I think that's enough sugar for my body. I think I want a banana now." You go girl. She had been wanting to make these fruit skewers for a while and now that it's summer- perfect time.

She's also very innovative. I'll be honest, I forgot what she said this was.

We celebrated the 4th at Mamie and Papa's with food, fireworks, and cousins. 

Britian (spelling is correct) is always like this on the 4th. Very typical.

That evening we had our youth fundraising activity- cleaning the BYU stadium after Stadium of Fire! We had a great turnout and most didn't have to stay too late! Only about 1:30am or so. Poor Travis and a few other fathers handled the hoses till 3:30am. We spent a long day at the pool to let him recover.

Jaxon and Violet took a bowling camp at BYU. Have I mentioned I just love living so close to campus?

Typical Thursday at Mamie's house with cousins. Here Ginger and Beckham are up to some magic tricks.

Violet finally let me take her to get her hair trimmed. She still thought it was too short.

Sleepovers with cousins at Mamie's house...

The annual backyard summer recital...

A fun Saturday evening at the splash pad.

Talbot Family Reunion 2025

We had another wonderful Talbot family reunion at Bear Lake!

Travis had to work the first day, which was probably for the best because we found a little friend the first day at the beach...

Bridger and Mattie were in charge this year and they did a terrific job planning everything. Bridger was always taking kids out on his paddle board.

Ivy and Killarney were just two peas in a pod the whole trip. 

Day two at the beach...Travis sat far from the water just in case our friend made a reappearance.

So it was up to me to help with sand castles.

It was such a fun weekend, and it was so nice to relax, eat some great food, listen to oldies, and catch up with everyone.

 

Talmage Turns 4!

 Our little "Tal Tal" turned 4! We started off the day with some red balloons. If you want to keep my kids entertained for hours, get a few helium balloons...

He is very much into dinosaurs, right now... It's so interesting to compare him to Jaxon when he was this age. Jaxon was just into fans, switches, the A/C unit outside, turning the pedal on his tricycle and watching the wheel go round and round...

Talmage is very much loved by all, and he knows it. I guess that's part of the fun of being the youngest.

A few weeks later, Travis took him for his birthday activity to Pizza Pie Cafe and the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point.

He also wanted to go to an Hombres Jovenes activity. He's always seeing Travis and Jaxon go to Hombres Jovenes and he just wants to join in the fun! So Travis took him that morning to help clean the church, as it was the HHJJ's Saturday to clean. He enjoyed a chocolate doughnut afterwards.

Violet Turns 11!

Violet had another birthday! Can't believe this is her last year in primary and elementary school!

She wanted cinnamon rolls for dessert. Don't worry, we'll still have the occasional kid pick the traditional cake and ice cream.

The week before her birthday she went to Camp Big Springs though PSD. She was going to be gone the whole week! We missed her very much.

She was a little worried she wouldn't make any friends since we signed her up for a different week than what her school was scheduled for, but when we picked her up we saw she had nothing to worry about. 

She also had so much fun on her birthday activity with dad camping.

Violet is a very clever, creative, and tenacious girl. We are so blessed to have her in our family!

Summer's Here!

After school ended, we headed up to the cabin for the week! We tried a new hike.

And were greatly rewarded.

Sometimes we like to stop by the Fairview park and library. We doubled their story time attendance one day we were there.

 

End of School Year

The kids finished their end of school year projects...I especially loved the part where Ginger wrote "Harriet Tubman's interests were sugar and freedom." Ha, ha...don't know where she got the sugar from  but I love it.
 

Ivy had the best kindergarten teacher anyone could ask for.

The kids had their school dance festival. I love this tradition.

They brought home a yearbook and it made Travis nostalgic for his old yearbooks. He showed me this picture of himself in a junior high yearbook and I thought it was just so adorable.

 

Battle of the Books District Champion!!

This was Violet's third time competing in Battle of the Books. Each year she's won her class, grade, and school competitions. Each year she's also gone to the district competition to compete against all the other elementary schools in Provo. In 3rd grade her team got 3rd place, in 4th grade her team got 2nd place, and this year...

To say she's worked hard for this is definitely an understatement.

It definetey got close towards the end- they were tied with another team, and after an extra round between the two teams, it was still a tie. So they started calling one member up from each team to answer the question without the help from the rest of their team. Boy, if that doesn't put pressure on the kids...

We were so excited when her team won!

Way to go, Violet!