Summer Holiday part I

We did another Home swap this past summer. I love home swapping!!!! It opens up so many possibilities for us to travel and makes it much more comfortable.
This year we swapped with a family in Brooklyn and their sister's family in Seattle. We stayed in Brooklyn in a wonderful loft/flat of one sister's, and then her sister from Seattle stayed in our home.(A little different then your standard home swap but it worked for all of us so...) We also had one of our previous home swapping families return for a second stay here. We actually overlapped trips with this family, got to meet them in person this time and share a family dinner with them. I can't say enough positive things about the great people we meet.

So on to the trip. As many of you have heard already we lost/deleted the first 4 days of images of our trip in NYC, BUMMER! (If you know of anyone who is pro at retrieving data off a memory card that has been over written PLEASE let me know)
We did Top of the Rock, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, sampled as much NY pizza as possible, went to the Statue of Liberty and got to visit the crown which has been newly reopened to 30 luck people every hour, Elise Island, Wall St, Ground Zero including a train through the actually work site, Grand Central terminal, China town with Chinese dinner, Central Park with Chess games, Natural History Museum, MET, Time Square, Macy's, Several Churches/Cathedrals, Columbia University, The NY temple, NY philharmonic in the park one night. And a ton of other stuff.....

I'm going to start uploading photos in no particular order....enjoy!!!

Chess in Central Park

Grace with her Carousel pony in Central Park

The Temple

Saint Something ( I can't remember right now) anyway it is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the World

One of my favorite images at the MET

The street we lived on, notice impromptu thrift store.

The famous piano at FAO Swartz

Yes those are Lego's my dear Briant

First day of School

Some love these words and re joyous when they are uttered and others groan, moan and roll there eyes with dread.
Below you find one of each.


We have two distinct shifts this year, the early morning seminary group, notice it is dark when they leave and yes those are the cloths they picked out 3 days before in anticipation. I only hope that they spent just a tad more time with there t-shirt choice for school photos.
The first group who had actually planned there wardrobe countless times during the previous week.
I'm still trying to decided which one I prefer.

Light house walk with Armance & Girls

We hosted another exchange student this past summer for most of Aug. Her name is Armance, we fell in love with her, really enjoyed having her in our home and learned more about France.


At the beginning of Aug we had the opportunity to hike out to one of the local Lighthouses. It was a typical summer foggy day which made for wonderful hiking, it was weired though because the ocean was completely flat, it was almost eiry.


There was this giant swing in the trees over looking the coastline that all the girls had a great time playing in

Girl's camp

Audra's first year at girls camp was amazing! We had another great year! The big change this year was a real hike for these ladies and it was wonderful. 5 1/2 miles round trip with a beautiful waterfall and pool at the end. She was very excited to get to go since she wasn't queit of the correct age...but it was close enough. We had the biggest family showing with 4 cousins and 2 Aunties.

Cradboard Boat Race 2009

I think I started posting on this blog about a year ago and one of the first things was the Cardboard boast race....so a year has gone by and we had another one.
So fun!

Briant and Kade entered another great looking boat but unfortunately this years boat was not of a sound ocean going design and they ended up paddling from the keel side of there boat, making it out and around the buoy.



Wilson and Stephen built a giant paddle board and moved out quickly and beat the entire group into shore but the judge gave it to the 2nd place group on the beach saying that there boat was sea worthy for a second trip out around the buoy. Wilson and Stephen's vessel made a fine showing but was dragging the last quarter of the race with much extra water weight as the plastic was not quiet sealed. More duct tape next year.


All agreed they were first place....ahh....

Audra also participated this year helping her group build a fine vessel that made good showing.

neglectful, sorry

Well I'm way behind in posting here and I keep telling myself how much I need to catch up on but then I just feel buried so I'm just going to get started again and catch up if....
xoxoxox to you all

Saw Jay

A couple of weeks ago we went to LA to see some old friends, the Kozaks, it had been years since we had gotten together. Steve works for Jay and got us tickets to see one of the last shows, we got to meet Jay, have a photo op. Houston meet us too with the new surfboard. We had a great time!