Roaring Springs

The weekend all of us West kids where in town we had a boating plan but when it fell through we decided on roaring springs instead. 

It was very fun and i think it was cool for the kids, it was their first water park experience (except Eli when he was like 4 months old).

Joseph and i rode a ride together like 10 min from closing (no line then), I told him it was our last hooray before he left.

A day for family

Our weekends have become so important.
Mitchell is SOOOO busy. I am not trying to brag or exaggerate. He works from 7 to 6:15-6:30 each day, because he teaches extra classes during his prep (so he gave up his prep basically) and because of his responsibilities as Attendance dean, he has long days with no break, poor guy.  He then has 2 hours min, each night he is required to do for his online professorship job through BYUI. On Thursdays he has Night class for his masters and get home at 9:30 or so, depending, some Saturdays all day for his masters. On Wednesday night he has meetings for church calling. Some Tuesdays he has things in the evenings and starting today he will have BBall on thursday nights after his class (when he can get there in time). And he always has papers and homework to do for school.
I am SO grateful but it is hard! I am not feeling very good so it makes for long days. We have meal times together everynight from 6:30 to 7:30, then it time for the boys to get ready for bed, Mitch usually gets homework of online job stuff started while the boys have a bath adn then will log off at bedtime so the family can have prayer and scripture study together. Then i go to bed (i really dont feel good) and he works another few hours coming to bed around 11, he usually wakes me up to pray together.
whew.
So the weekends when he doesn't have class and we don't have a billion things going on we really like to spend our time together . This last weekend we did a picnic and then played at the park and Big Als, that night it was homemade pizza and brownies with a movie!
It was so nice.

What i have been thinking about a lot is, first, this is all good. My aunt when she heard Mitchell was in a masters program she said "it will be a long couple years of you not seeing much of him, but, it will be for the betterment of your family." -She is a favorite aunt of mine and for some reason when she said that is seemed really profound and i repeat it to myself sometimes as kind of a mantra.
I have also been thinking about how, this is not something to whine about. The Lord has sent us an outpouring of blessings and it requires much of our time and energy but, really that is a blessing too. We now are more selective with what we fill our family time with. We are reaching our goals!

Riding along

We took our longest bike ride yet the other day. About a mile, all the way to the park and back! What a hard worker this boy is! He always reminds me that " mom I am a big boy and can do hard things!" I am so glad he knows!
Love you boys!

This little guy is not so little anymore he does not need my help much at the park he has got these toys figured out!

Water

I've been taking my kids to new parks as much as i can this summer, anyplace with a water park is on my list because it is HOT!
This is bad but yes I saw my kids drinking from this and yes it took a picture. Bad I know. They spit it out because it tasted like chlorine, and then I got to do the " see, mommy told you it was yucky" thing.

We went to the Park

*There are a lot of extra pictures in this post,it so that my friend can download any that she likes.

This morning as I was getting everybody ready for the day my friend called and asked if we wanted to join her for a walk in the park. Umm, yes. I don't mind if I do.

After dropping Eli off at preschool (late *sigh*) K and I drove to the park to meet our friends. Unfortunately it was windy so our walk was shorted then we would have liked but the kids had a blast playing!

Pictures: 

The pictures really tell a story.