More Cousin Happiness

I'm sitting in a quiet house waiting for just one person to wake up so we can eat breakfast.  It was pretty crazy having so many kids in the house.  I've been reminded of my childhood, which was full of saving seats, accusing the person who took the last of the cereal of "taking all of it," caring about where I sat in the car.  I'd forgotten all about that stuff.  Mercifully.  Now I look forward to my visits with each of my siblings and every morning I check my email to see if I got a message from one of them.  One day when Allyn's kids get together just because they want to, they can reminisce about their visit to Aunt Nicole and Uncle Brian's house.

Wednesday morning we went to Aunt Makenzie's again for some homemade water park fun before it started raining, then we came inside for Kung Foo Panda.

Once again, Bridget stuck by my side with a pained expression.  I gave her some bubbles to work on while she suffered.

When it was snack time and everyone was chowing down, suddenly Noah started saying a prayer right in the middle of the blanket.  (I love that Adam just accepted it and bowed his head.)

On Thursday we'd planned to go to Timpanogos Caves for the hike of our lives and then a tour of the caves.  It was a rainy morning and some rocks had fallen on the trail to the caves.  We got there at 9:45 in the morning (cheers to us for getting out the door!) and discovered that the first tour we could take was at 1:20.  No can do.  The nice ranger lady told us that Cascade Springs was the hike for us if we didn't want to get muddy.  Sold!

The scenery was amazing - so many huge gray clouds and green everything.  I had Banks in the car as we drove to Cascade Springs.  We were driving through clouds (the clouds were low and we were high).  After driving through the first wispy cloud, Banks said reverently, "That was my first time!"  (Of course everyone drives through a cloud some time in their life, right?)

Let me tell you something about my girl, Bridget.  She LOVES anything to do with camping, and that includes hiking.  She had her day camp princess backpack on for the whole hike and it had two waters in it!  And seriously, this was her face the whole time:

This was also the first time I saw Adam posing for pictures and loving it.

These next two are my favorite.  The boys and Bridget looked so cute together, I couldn't stand it.

See, these guys are pals.  After all the wrestling and death threats, they totally love each other.

I'm already missing my sister.  She's just a pleasure to be around and I wish we lived closer to each other so that I could be more useful to her.  And so that she could teach me cool stuff.

Hopefully everyone forgets the part where Aunt Nicole led them up the wrong road out of the canyon and we were in Midway for a minute.  I totally know what I'm doing...