Lake Fun and Little Jamaica

Soooooo a year ago my Uncle E went out on his mission to serve in Chile. He even went directly to the Chilean CCM (MTC). And it was hard. Very hard. And very scary. And Uncle E came home after about a month. Everyone was happy to see him again, but it was still strange because he had committed to serve for two years and everyone really wanted that for him. Well he spent this last year going to college and working and then SUDDENLY he told everyone that he was going to be going out on his mission again. Like in four weeks. This time to California. We were all very excited for him, but that meant that we were going to be separated again for two years. Mom and her siblings all tried to coordinate schedules (which was ALMOST impossible) and do a canyon and found it just wasn't going to happen because Mom still breastfeeds Sam and we couldn't do it on a Saturday. Then in a golden opportunity, they were all able to get out on the boat with no extras. No spouses. No children. Just them and their parents. It was for about an hour and a half and people had to go their separate ways, but it was awesome. They were silly and Mom's face hurt from laughing.

They tried to double wake surf! It only worked in a few combos and Mom was never one of those but Grandma and Uncle E and Grandma and Grandpa worked! When Mom and Aunt Becca tried it, they just ended up swallowing a lot of water and laughing.

Uncle E borrowed Aunt Becca's glasses...he looked good.

Mom even wake surfed. She has only done that one other time so she was proud of herself.

It looked like Mom had a lot of fun.

Now, just after this magical Wednesday, Aunt Becca asked Mom and us girls to head to a place called Little Jamaica with her. Little Jamaica is a natural spring that flows down the side of a cliff into the Virgin River, but what's CRAZY is that it is directly underneath a freeway overpass. The overpass is massive, but you can still hear the freeway. It's so weird and we weren't sure EXACTLY where we were going and it was a little dicey because we brought Iva and just flip flops, but we found it and got down and it was AWESOME.

We even tried floating in the river, but it wasn't very deep. What was weird was that the spring was cool almost cold and that made the river feel really warm!

This was basically a giant "cold" tub. Like a hot tub, but cold so it felt amazing in the 100 degree heat.

Aunt Becca and I probably shouldn't have jumped. It was only about three feet deep and we both kind of hurt ourselves, but it was fun anyway!

We found a better place to hike out which made it less scary to go up!

Thanks, Aunt Becca, for taking us on a journey. And thanks, Daddy, for watching Sam while we did it.

SEVEN

Cara hit the big SEVEN. 

Mom let her have a swim party at city pool with some of her friends a few days before her birthday. The weather was perfect and I think all her friends really enjoyed the water!

Sam loved her wrapping leftovers!

She made out with quite the loot!

One small sad note to her birthday was that it was going to be one of the last times that she would hang out with one of her best friends, Kailey because Kailey moved to Enterprise.

But we should talk a little bit about WHAT Cara is like at seven.

-She's gotten a little bit louder...but that's comparative so she's really still quiet.
-She reads so well that first grade is going to be a breeze.
-She is normally the first one awake in the girls' room which means she is normally also the first asleep.
-She loves it when Sam will play with her, less so when it is Iva, but overall she is a great big sister.
-This girl is all about carbs....unless it's BACON or even pepperoni. It's a challenge to get her to eat chicken nuggets. She would prefer noodles with butter and parmesan cheese. She does NOT like macaroni with orange cheese. Mom thinks it is a texture thing. Melty cheese is not her thing. She takes it off of pizza. If she makes a pizza by herself, it's crust, red sauce and pepperoni! She also does not like peanut butter. Nutella, yes please. Peanut butter, gag.
-She is just barely starting to wear size 6 clothes and her foot size is somewhere between 10-11.
-She had a meltdown the other night about being short. (Like sobbing because I was making it worse by trying to point out how short she was...Mom wasn't happy!) In her words, "I don't even look like a first grader!" Grandma was able to fix it by pointing out that Grandma was short and LOVED it.
-She has quite the sense of humor and seems to understand sarcasm.
-She still sucks her thumb when mom isn't looking or rather when she thinks Mom isn't looking!
-She does her chores like a champ and is almost done with her first book in piano!

She's pretty easy going. She still bursts into tears if she even THINKS Mom is mad or she's in trouble, but other than that she is pretty mellow.

On her actual birthday, we had cupcakes and Mom made her take pictures!

Mom just told her there were probably lizards in there!

LOVE YOU, CARA!!!

Larsen Family Reunion

After the zoo, Mom and Dad and the two littles joined us up in Midway for Grandpa's family reunion. We basically spent a lot of time playing on trampolines and with chickens and lots of cousins and eating way too much sugar. Iva just kept saying "Watch me. I can jump so high!"

Fireworks on the forehead two minutes after arriving!

Dinner Time!

Aunt Emily had planned yummy meals and fun activities.

Double Grandpa fixed up a new pony swing!

We had a balloon spraying race that was really hard! But the piñata was awesome.

Grandma and Grandpa brought up spike ball to teach everyone!

We rented this awesome house with all of my mom's siblings and her parents. We were all only there together for one night because Mom and Dad came up late and other people had to leave early, but that one night was awesome. I hear that mom and dad were up at TWO in the morning laughing and talking. Sam, however, decided to make Mommy pay by being up bright and early at seven! She took him on a walk to keep him quiet.

After going to church with Double Grandma and Grandpa, we played on the homestead again. Ponies and chickens and wild rabbits. It's heaven.

Aunt Emily had more activities for us. We made candy tractors!

More Spike Ball before people had to start leaving.

The house we rented had a jacuzzi so of course we swam. Sam did not like the jets! He cheered up when we turned them off.

This was our attempt at taking a large family photo. Ironically the one Mom saved to her phone is the one that GRANDPA isn't even in! But it's a great photo of the rest of us!

Monday morning we snuck over for a few more treats (COTTON CANDY AND SNO CONES!) before heading home to St. George.

We love our visits to Midway!

Girls Week Part Two

Aunt Rachel took us back up to SLC on Thursday and we were so excited!!! Until it actually came time to pull away and then I was actually teary eyed until about Toquerville. I was excited just sad at not being with my parents.

Ice cream sundae bar? Yes please!

We had lots of fun up north too! We finally got to go to the big Living Planet Aquarium. We haven't been there since they were in an old grocery store...it was probably four or five years ago!

Do you like my glasses? They used to be sunglasses, but they broke and I'm using them now!

You'd think that after that much cousin time, we would be tapped out, but nope. We were kind of sad to leave on Saturday morning. Aunt Rachel took us up to the zoo and dropped us at the curb. JUST KIDDING. She dropped us with Aunt Angie and Aunt Becca and Aunt Hailey and almost everybody! We got to show our other cousins how awesome the zoo is and the new baby lions!