Summer in a serious nutshell

 Our summer was jam packed full of fun, as usual!  Never a dull moment around here!  Since I missed staying caught up on my blogging, here are a few of the highlights!

Morgan played a lot of softball this summer. She was on a team that played in two different leagues and traveled to tournaments on the weekends.  She played second base and short stop. 

 

Mataia trained hard all summer and competed in the Regional Junior Olympics in Bozeman, MT in the Heptathlon.  (A Heptathlon is 7 events: 100M hurdles, High Jump, Shot Put, Long Jump, Javelin, 200M run and 800M run.)  At Regionals she qualified for the National Junior Olympics which were held in Baltimore, MD.  The girls, Jeff and I and my Mom went to Baltimore to support her there.  She did great and ended up 10th overall.  She learned a lot and it was a great experience.  This is Mataia as we were checking out the facilities on the day before she started competing.  It was held at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

We caught a Baltimore Orioles game while we were there, too. That was a great time.

All the other kids were off at baseball, softball or volleyball on the weekend of the Hurdles for Hope race.  That didn't stop Jeff and Kace and I from running it along with my nephew Foster and our friend, Alli. It was full of obstacles, swimming through a river, a mud pit and even jumping over fire.  Crazy, but oh so fun!  Next year we are hoping to get the whole family in on the action!

Kace loved the race and he also loved having bragging rights over the other kids.  He never whined one bit!  What a kid!  

Yes, this mom can still slip and slide! 

The girls went to Girls Camp with our new ward.  They made many new great friends and had a good time strengthening their testimonies and testing their physical stamina as they climbed Table Rock.  Jeff went along as a priesthood leader.  I was jealous.  I love girls camp and I love hiking Table Rock!  And I love being with my family!

The Crapo family spent a weekend on Island Park Reservoir boating, eating and having fun!  Grandpa and Grandma rented a cabin and Brett and Mindy brought their boat.  We had a great time!  That was our one last hoorah before Braxton left.  Kace loves riding around in the boat and swimming in the lake.  He even like riding in the tube occasionally.

We said goodbye to my little brother, Braxton for two years as he left to serve a mission for our church.  We miss him like crazy, but are so proud of him and his example.  He is serving in the Nevada Las Vegas West mission.  He spent 2 1/2 weeks in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT and then he flew to Las Vegas two weeks ago.  We have received several letters and emails from him.  He is doing great.  You can follow him on this blog:  www.elderbraxtoncrapo.blogspot.com

The kids are enjoying our new neighborhood and yard.  This is Mataia (on the right) with some of our new neighbors enjoying a little silly fun on the trampoline during a rain storm.

My kids have the funnest grandma!  She took us all on a 12 mile bike ride to Driggs a couple weeks ago.  It was during the Olympics and as you know, everything in our house is a race, whether it is or not.  Well, when we all got the end, the boys informed me that Chad won the Gold and Kace won the Silver.  Too bad I didn't have a medal to give them.  I gave them a big juicy burger at O'Rourkes instead.

My parents take the kids on a Granddaughter and Grandson camp out each summer.  This has turned into an annual tradition that the kids look forward to all year.  This year the girls went first and then the boys went the second night.  They all camped at our ranch in the mountains.  We love going there.  We also make a trip to Warm River Springs where the water comes out of the mountain.  This is the boys on a rock just below where the water comes out. 

 On the second day, I made a trip to the ranch to do the kid swap.  I picked up the girls and dropped off the boys.  My sister-in-law, Shanda was here that week and she rode up with me.  We stopped at Mesa Falls on our way down.  That's always a favorite stop when we go to the ranch, too.  They are gorgeous!  If you don't know that they are there, you can drive right past them and miss out on one of the most gorgeous places around here!

Last weekend Jeff competed in the Olympic length of the Rush Triathlon.  He swam a mile in Rainbow Lake, got out and rode his bike for 24 miles and then ran a 10K.  He did great and the boys and I enjoyed following him around and cheering him on!  Maybe someday if I ever learn to swim well enough, I'll do it, too. 

This is Jeff just finishing the bike portion and getting ready to run his 10K. 

 

Now on to more adventures as we start a new school year!  

Change is Good!

 382 Eagle Court, Rexburg, ID 83440

Wow!  I'm bad at this blogging thing!  It's been way too long and we have had MANY changes in our life!  The biggest change is that we moved!  We finally got our house sold in the spring.  It was with many mixed emotions that we left our home in Parker.  We loved that place!  We put SOOO much work into making it what it was and we enjoyed it.  We loved our neighbors and our ward!  But over the last two years, it became apparent to us that we needed to be in Rexburg.  I think we looked at almost every home on the market in the Rexburg area and finally found the perfect one for our family!  Contrary to what I thought when we started house hunting - I love the location!  We are in town with neighbors all around, but we love it!  We are very central to all of the schools (including BYU-I.) We are just minutes from the grocery store, Wal-Mart and all the conveniences of town.   We went from taking care of almost 5 acres, to just a small yard.  No more need for the riding lawn mower! We love our new ward and our neighbors have been great.  The kids started school this week and they are all adjusting well.  After about one week of living here, it felt like home, as if we had been here forever!  Here are a few pix of our new place.  We've had a few visitors already and look forward to more!

 This is the view from the back yard.

 When we moved in, the first thing the neighbors asked was, where is your trampoline?  Most of our close neighbors do not have little kids, but they have grandchildren.   The old owners had a trampoline and shared it with the neighbors' grandchildren.  It didn't take long for our kids to miss their in-ground trampoline from the old house, so we got another one and had it buried, too.

 I was glad to still have a few places to enjoy some flowers!

 This part of the yard is sunken down with a rock wall surrounding it.  The previous owners planted some great annual flowers that make it pretty maintenance free.  I love that!  The kids call this the swimming pool.  Don't ask me why.  There's no water anywhere around.  Maybe in their imagination they wish it was a pool!

There is a door from the basement to the "swimming pool" part of the yard.