Nature's Cool, Man

 

While we were in Idaho visiting relatives, Jeremy spotted a lone cloud standing (floating?) out in front of the gray clouds in the background. I got a quick picture with my phone then started singing, "I'm Just a Little Black Raincloud," from Winnie-the-Pooh. It wasn't a little black rain cloud, but it seemed to fit because it was all alone, hovering under the other clouds. 

I Like Living in Utah

So much to catch up on again. You know what that means.

Time for a picture of the sky.

This one has a lovely mountain in the picture as well. And some clouds. And a tree.

Oh it's beautiful. It's a beautiful place to live.

Too Tired to Finish

I started a blog post but got tired and couldn't finish it. So here is a nice picture of one of our evening skies.

There. Blogged.

Action Packed 4th of July Weekend

Joshua had Friday and Monday off of UVU Prep for the 4th of July weekend. That meant four days for Jr. to fit in as much family fun as possible. Jeremy had to work all weekend so it was mostly the kids and me but he was around on Sunday.

Friday, July 2. Balloon Fest was happening throughout the weekend. That's where a bunch of hot air balloons are together and they do different activities. It is part of the Freedom Festival in Provo. I got up early to sit outside to see if I could see the balloons from home. I couldn't see anything. I found out later the balloons didn't lift off the ground that day because of the weather. I did get a little wet while I was waiting. Oh, well.

Later that day, I took the kids for a picnic and Provo Story Trail at Rock Canyon Park. After the story, we continued walking around the park and Jr. asked to use the camera. He climbed a hill and brought this picture back to me.

"Crop Circles! Today is World UFO Day." 

"It kind of looks like a face which also goes along with the UFO thing."

We also looked at "mashed potato clouds" while we were there.

That night we drove by Balloon Glow as part of Balloon Fest. They had several hot air balloons on the ground and shined lights on them to go along with music. The kids and I decided that we'd get up and drive by the next morning to see the hot air balloons in the daylight.

 

Saturday, July 3. Surprise. Surprise. When we got out that morning, we could see hot air balloons from home. They were able to lift off! 

We drove anyway and were able to see them much closer. As we got closer to where they were launched, they were all over the place, some even over the road where we were driving. 

We drove to Carterville Park and everyone was able to get out and get a good view. We were even able to see some where they landed in nearby parking lots. That was a fun morning. I love hot air balloons.

 

 

Before we left, we found a little friend who decided to crawl to a place where it would get squished if we closed the door. I tell you, snails are faster than you think. Jr. nicely moved it so it would be okay. Good kid.

That evening to celebrate Eat Beans Day and Chocolate Wafer Day, we had burritos and chocolate wafer cookies.

Definitely click on this picture to see Jet and Lucky's faces.

Sunday, July 4. It was National Caesar Salad Day so we had chicken Caesar salad wraps with 4th of July type food- potato chips, potato salad.

Monday, July 5. The kids and I went to see the giant flag hanging over Grove Creek Canyon. We hadn't gone to see it since we lived in Pleasant Grove. I blogged about it in July of 2017. It's definitely become a bigger thing- not the flag itself, but the event with it flying. There were flags lining the trail up to a spot to get good pictures. There was lots of informational stuff in the parking lot. Yeah, it's become a bigger deal just in the last few years.

That evening, the kids and I went to pick up Jeremy from work and we had Family Home Evening lesson and treat in the van. Then we did our activity at home. As it was National Graham Cracker Day, our treat was graham crackers with frosting in the middle. Homemade frosting. I got the recipe from The Food Nanny. It is frosting they use on brownies but I think it works great on cake (or on graham crackers).

We were also able to see the giant flag from the freeway. Yeah. It's huge.

So that was Jr.'s action packed 4th of July weekend before he went back to UVU Prep to finish out the last couple weeks. I hope he enjoyed it.

Even though Tuesday, July 6, wasn't part of our weekend, it was International Kissing Day. I got lots of kisses from and gave lots of kisses to my baby and I mentioned later to Jeremy how he and I didn't kiss at all that day. Huh.

Catch of the Day

Magnificent

Earlier this week I was up early with some stresses.  Luckily it was a warm morning.  I went to take some garbage out and later to recycle some paper at the elementary school's recycle bins.  I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and sandals.  There was a light breeze but I wasn't even shivering.  Lovely.  As I was dealing with my stresses, God gave me a gift.  This:

It was so nice to take pictures of the beautiful sky.  I also took some videos of the clouds moving.  It looked like the whole sky was just crawling along.  Magnificent.
Even though I had stress, my husband mentioned that this was a reminder that God is always there.  I appreciate it.
Later, I saw on Facebook that several other people had taken pictures of the stunning sunrise.  So great.

What We Did at the Top of the World

When we left Yellowstone National Park to head to Jeremy's second fair, we decided to travel out the Northeast entrance of the park since we were headed to the Eastern part of Montana.  We were very happy with our choice.
We drove the Beartooth Highway.  We went up and up and up, then we went down and down and down.  It was so gorgeous up there.  Alpine meadows and snow and lakes.  Think Heidi meets The Sound of Music.

In fact at one point we even had mountain goats cross the road in front of us.  It was like The Three Billy Goats Gruff, though one was a billy goat, one was a nanny, and one was a kid.

Oh, it was beautiful.  We drove up into the clouds.

As we drove down the other side, the scenery was much different.

You could see where glaciers had carved away the valley.  So many switchbacks to get up and down.
Oh, it was so wonderful.  It was like being at the top of the world.  There was even an area on the way up the mountain that had the name of Top of the World.
Even though it took longer to drive along that highway instead of the freeway to the north, it was so worth it with what we got to experience.
It was a great drive.