Day 12 - My Brother the Chef

We got up and cleaned up the cabin a little. We clean up ourselves a little too so we were ready for church.

Anna must have been exhausted from all the cabin fun because after a little fit she slept through the rest of sacrament meeting.

We stopped at Grandma M’s house quickly, but couldn’t escape without eating something. We enjoyed rootbeer float popsicles (Justin, you’ll have to try some). They were yummy!





When we got back to Grandma Jones’ house I laid on the couch and fell asleep. The kids played and Dave unloaded the car.

Next thing I knew it was time to go to Jedd’s (my brother) house for dinner. True to form, he tried out some great new recipes.

He was a cute, but punkish kid growing up…so its funny (in an ironic sort of way) to watch him fuss over a certain dish or a new recipe.



But he is becoming quite the gourmet chef.



We had grilled chicken (two flavors), honey brie bread, grilled yellow squash, yummy fruit, fried plantain bananas. And he even let us have a taste of his homemade chocolate ice cream. (Chrystal, we are going to have to try his recipe, if he will share.) Yum!

The girl’s had great fun playing with “little” Allie.

Day 11 - Another Birthday

Today is the 4th of July, our county’s birthday. The day started out early (as most holidays and the cabin do). With Grandpa Mahoney waking everyone up for a flag ceremony. He thought it was great when Allie found a horn in a drawer. They were glad to go around to honk it at everyone who was still sleeping. Amazingly enough, everyone got up and dressed….not that they had much choice.



I love that Grandpa M gets us up for flag ceremonies. Throughout my life he has taught all of us to love our country and the flag. I am grateful that my little family gets to experience that with him too.



Incredibly, we had a huge yummy breakfast and were ready to go to the parade by 9:00am. (The incredibly was for the fact that we were ready to go to the parade by 9, not that we had a huge yummy breakfast...those are cabin tradition.)

The kids wrote their names on sacks that Grandma had for the candy they would gather and we played games while waiting for the parade to start.







Ryan and Jen and their kids (my brother’s family) met us there.



It was a great parade!



We saw lots of horses,



a pink car,



a huge flag,



lots of “princesses” (city royalty)



and other fun floats.









The girls have laughed a lot about the kids who rode in a bight yellow convertible eclipse that stopped every so often so they could hop out and clean up the horse droppings. “Poopper scooper! Ha! Ha! Ha! What a funny name. Pooper scooper!”

After the parade we went back to the cabin for a great feast



and some birthday cake for Ryan whose birthday is tomorrow.



After lots of rides in the swing we went for a walk to the river again. On the way Sarah (my cousin) found a snake. The girls were facinated to see it.





But this time we were a little more prepared (and perhaps a little more brave)…. We took our swimsuits and some inner tubes.



We actually played more in the cold water and even floated under the bridge on the tubes. Brrrrr!

Day 10 - Relaxing

We spent a relaxing day at the cabin. We played games and went on walks. Grandpa and I walked with Allie, Jennie and Anna all the way up the big sledding hill and back down a “secret” trail. The girls kept asking Grandpa if it really was a trail.



After lunch we walked down to throw rocks in the river.





Grandpa kept finding huge rocks to throw in so they would splash Grandma.



Even though the water was really cold we still waded a little bit.





As we walked back to the cabin we picked some wildflowers. They were everywhere. It was really pretty.







That afternoon Grandma and Grandpa Mahoney (my grandparents) came up. Grandma M joined in the traditional games of Rook and Grandpa M even put down his comic book to read the girls some stories.



After the kids went to sleep my uncle Bruce and his kids came up too. And we played games late into the night, including a hilarious game of Apples to Apples.