The rest of the Summer

And the rest of the summer...

We had Emma a little longer and loved having her down with us.  We played games

 Who's the Dalmuti now?

 Celebrated Sam's birthday

 And made some fun Independence day cookies before she had to leave again. 

We got toilet papered

 And Max went to scout camp

 Joe became legal!

 Don't worry-he didn't just get Hostess cupcakes for his birthday.  I also made him this cool death by chocolate cake which was super yummy!

 And we celebrated Angus's birthday!

 And that's all folks!  

Now it's time to get back to school!

Max 7th, Joe 10th

 Sam 13th- College- for this one!  In the summer they made all the freshman come down and do an overnighter.  They showed them around campus and had talks and presentations.  They set them up with a councilor that talked to them about what they wanted to major in and then set them up with the classes and the schedules they would need to keep for the years ahead to get that degree.  They also had Sam do some testing and got him enrolled with the honors college.  He skipped ahead in math and went to the honors Chemistry.  

Emma was finishing up her 16th year- 13 hours away, so no picture of her!

They are all getting so big!!

The End of Summer

Summer had to come to an end sometime.  We had one last hurrah at a ward youth party in the corn maze

and then it was off to school for these three.

Somewhere in all that summer time, Joseph went to Scout camp and Sam went to Football camp.  Sam won another award this year.  He won the "Ironman" award.  There was one for the upper classmen and one for the lower classmen.  It involved push up, sit ups, pulls ups and a mile run.  It was an optional thing and very few people did it solely because of the mile run part.  Sam had one competitor in his group that sized everyone up and was very confident he could win.  Problem was, he didn't know how stubborn Sam is.  Sam beat him in pull ups and sit ups and the guy beat him in push ups.  Then they ran.  Sam was behind "almost an entire lap."  (which I highly doubt, but maybe 250 or 300 meters).  Sam calculated in his head that the only way to beat the kid was to beat him in race, so he took off.  He caught the kid and they raced like crazy to the finish.  He said he could hear his whole team cheering for him and getting all riled up.  Finally they crossed the finish line together.  Sam was sure he had lost, but had calculated wrong and actually beat the kid by one point.  The team went crazy, because it was the first time ever that our school had won this particular award!  He has been contemplating donating it to the school to put in their trophy case, but I say no way- that is purely his award!

Rounding out July

I thought I would do a quick round-up of July, until I found out everything we did.  We are animals!

 We went strawberry picking

 And swimming

 We enjoyed the 4th of July celebration at Patch that Emma can't remember about 6 months later.  

 I did so bad on these segways when I tried to turn.  I actually ended up in the grass tripping over myself.

 We tried to keep cool any way we could.  It was an especially hot year and when you live on the 4th floor of an apartment building with no AC it gets hot!

 I finished up my year of German class with the immigrants.  I ended up doing one more semester before I quit all together.

 More swimming

 A trip down to Europa park

 A little fun at the park

 More swimming- this one had a rapids slide that would never in a million years be allowed in the US.  It sucked you under the water right here and then farther down again.  The last one took all the strength I had to get out of!  I learned to avoid that spot.  We played great games on this slide.  It had two pools at different turns and we would try to dive into one of them.  You had to push off at just the right time to make it into the calm pools.  Once we learned how to do it, we started playing a game where half of us were in the pool and half on the slides and we tried to see who would win by getting all of the group in one area.  The Pool people had to drag the Slide people into the pool and the Slide people had to drag the Pool people onto the slide.  Lots of bruises and scrapes from that game, but it was super fun!

 And some raspberry picking!

But that's not all!  No not by a long shot!

Emma and I went to Girls camp as leaders.  This is the flag I made for our cabin.

Our hike. I convinced newbie Eden to take the longer hike.  We ended up doing 6 miles or so.

 And where would you end up on your hike in Germany other than a castle ruins??

 It was wicked hot, so some water games were definitely in the mix.  I made sponge balls and we threw them at each other.

 Then we played relay games with the squirt bottles- I didn't have the best squirt bottles and no Target to run to in order to get new ones- boo!

 What a crew!

And finally we ran over to see Prague.

Beautiful Prague

Haha- I thought that was pretty funny- Czechpoint!  Emma got a sweatshirt when she came with the Model United Nations that said, "Czech me out!"

 The Fred and Ginger Dancing house

 Taking the steps up to the castle.  They made us stay half way up while they filmed part of a movie- it took a really long time and people just stopped listening to them and went anyway, so they had to take a break.  If I ever see a movie with a bunch of kids playing soccer around steps that has an indian looking market on them, I'll know I was there!

 We walked from our hotel everywhere- mostly along the river.  It was about 2-3 miles to the Charles bridge.

 On the Charles Bridge

 Not sure why this man was hanging out

 On the bridge watching the paddle boats.  They had lots that looked like swans!

 On our last day there we head to one of the most fun parts of the trip- to the indoor water park.  It was huge with 3 different rooms and a lazy river through it all. They had the pirate ship, regular swimming and hot tubbing, a wave pool and 

 A whole room of slides. 

This one had you going super fast when you came out of the lightless tube and then spun you in a circle and spit you out the bottom!  It was crazy!

 Traditional Czech pastry

 Of course we had to stop and eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.  It's our little bit of Americana wherever we go!