Author: Emily

Toph Taught a great lesson about a body, and members of a family, how we are ALL important! 🙂

Hiking this spot began many years ago, when Rhonda was a little girl. It’s always fun to hike to the top, and drink fresh from the spring. 🙂

And of course, all the kiddos love to climb!

As you can see, after the Hike, we went down to the river to fish and eat dinner. A few of the kiddos even jumped (or fell) in the river. 🙂

>Over 10 days we had many memorable experiences! Unfortunately our camera broke, so most of these pictures are either my poor quality phone ones, or ones generously shared by the rest of the Phillips Clan.

So thanks to everyone else, we can share these memories!

A few shots from the BIG family reunion.

So, we had a few days between vacation, full of back to school prep, laundry, dishes, unpacking, and repacking. I didn’t have much food, and knew we were leaving town again soon, so figure it would be an ideal time to cash in Library Class Vouchers at a local restaurant for free food!

Don’t let the pictures fool you. It wasn’t a picture perfect event.

Even a few months later, I can still remember the details. That’s how crazy it was!

There was dumped food, there was a child taking off her diaper as she ran thru the crowd, there was spilling on people who were eating next to us, there was shoes thrown, and that’s when we left. I hate to think what could have happened if we had stayed!
😉

There is always things to catch up on!

We had lots of dishes:

Thankfully, the kiddos were excited to see their toys! And built a village of trains and tracks again!

And it was nice, because we washed Laundry, then repacked it back into suitcases, to prepare for Family Reunion in just 2 days!

Our last full day of family vacation!

The big boys started off the morning with a canoe/fishing trip for a few hours:

Afterwords, we turned in the workbooks, and trash for JUNIOR RANGER BADGES!
Truman finished it off that morning:

Everyone, including Lorelei, worked hard to earn them over the week:

The boys loved ‘building’ and creating a castle for princess Lorelei and Queen Mommy. And us girls appreciated being doted on. 🙂
The front gate:

Walkway:

Out to our very own island!

We spent time on the beach, splashing and swimming, and couldn’t help crop this pic:

Isn’t she a hoot? I love this pic. Silly Girl.

Playing on the Beach:

The littles were tired, so the Bigs and Toph went for a hike around the pond.

Ha, Ha, Truman is always good for a funny pose!

It sure it beautiful here!

The next morning we said Goodbye to Pinon Pine! Until next Year!

Grateful for time to be together as a family, away from the pulls of the world! Love the opportunity to be together.

This was one of my favorite days on the pond-a day with a paddle boat and a canoe! We had a jolly good time! And note to self, Next year, rent the paddle boat for the day. You’ve said this the past two years, and keep forgetting. Maybe putting it in writing will help you remember this! 🙂

Here we go paddling along-figuring out how to paddle and steer again!

Stopping by the dock:

And I’m loving this video of my family jumping in! Love them!

Off and exploring:

In the middle of the pond, we anchored, and jumped in!
Here is mr. Elliot jumping in!

We spent the afternoon relaxing, reading books, and enjoying some minions from Despicable Me:

Then Hot Dogs and Woof-em’s for Dinner

Then the bigs and dad went down to the pond for a late night swim, and splash out to the dock, while the littles and I went for a scenic drive to help them to go to sleep! 🙂

We spent quite a bit of time driving around Manti, Ephraim and another small town trying to find a Laundromat this morning. We were out of clean clothes, and the Laundromat that we knew about, didn’t exists anymore!

After we found it, we celebrated with some doughnuts and ice-cream! Any occasion is a good occasion for sweets while you’re on vacation, right?

Then we headed to the historic pioneer house, this year the boys were fascinated with the stories of the rattle snakes coming in on the pioneers, when spring came. They were in their ceilings, coming down on them. yuck.

Then back to Ephraim we went (with a full car of clean laundry from the Laundromat)

Where we went to the Ephraim bowling alley-what a time we had!

I wish the below picture was higher quality. Something bout my kids lined up in bowling shoes, with their funny faces just makes me want to put it on a Christmas Card.

Then we went to dinner, PIZZA, yum delicious, and such a fun ambiance!

We made a trip to Walmart, for a few things we forgot, and a new toy for each kid, then back to our cabin. I love these pictures of the boys hauling laundry back inside:

Where we played with toys, ate treats,

then watched a movie on toph’s computer.

Beautiful evening!

Breakfast in bed in the cabins:

Driving Remote Control Cars and Scooter Ride to the Playground, where we played, and played and played!

We headed home for lunch, then hike around for geo-caches

Back to the lake, Jumping off the close Dock:

Found a tadpole:

Playing in the sand:

Toph and Tuck swam out to the dock, and were so proud of themselves! 🙂

The boys found a stick bug, and had oodles of fun! 🙂

We spent lots of time working on their ranger books, Elliot and Lorelei especially loved them this day:

Truman liked playing a game he made up by himself called cup-ball.

Dinner BBQ Chicken and S’mores:

And the rain came again, and started during dinner! Here is Elliot is and Toph on ‘trash duty’ 🙂

Fun, fun day!