JULY 2016

July has been a fun month for us!
We started out by attending Collin Taylor's baptism up in Riverton with all our local kids in attendance with us!  He is a really cute kid!!

On July 4, Breanna and Elliot joined us for an overnight so she could run the 5K the next morning with her old high school friend Katie.  They both did a great job and we had fun trying to drop her off and then find a place to go cheer her on and then fight traffic to get all around the parade route to go pick her up.  That part was not fun.  Susan was here with us for that too!

We hosted Jennifers annual birthday BBQ BASH on a lovely July 4 evening.

We were joined by LeAnns old teacher friend Wanda and her family.

Good times catching up with them!

And a peaceful place just to eat and eat and eat...

...and get a little wet!!

Jennifer with her patriotic dessert!  YUM, one of my favorites for sure!!

And a little help blowing out the candle!!

 When Susan got back in town, we had a hike... a really long hike for 2 little boys!  We hiked to Stewart Falls and it was beautiful!  Lucky for us it was the coolest day of the summer.  Its been high 80's to 100+ every since that day!


It was actually chilly down by the falls, but this did not stop the boys from wanting to get their feet wet!







This picture is to give you an idea of how large our branch at the MTC has been a couple times this summer when we have overlapping districts.  We had over 80 this day.  Normally we have around 45 in the summertime and down to maybe 12-16 in the winter at times.

We went on our morning walk at the Thanksgiving Point gardens one Saturday early and it was delightful...quiet and peaceful and we loved the umbrellas hanging in these trees.

One of my favorite summer meals is a yogurt parfait of sorts with homemade granola topping!  YUM!!

We met Braden's girlfriend Makenna this month and she is a cutie!!  We had a really fun Sunday playing together!

Family selfie.

Scott and I have had several missionary sealings this month.  This particular day was a DOUBLE HEADER up in Logan with 2 in a row!!

I told most of you that I had some skin biopsies from a few moles or rough patches but the one that surprised me was the mole by my eye that was a basal cell carcinoma...super common, but cancer nonetheless.  This meant that they had to go back and go deeper to get all the cancer cells.
This is what I looked like for a couple days before I could go to a smaller bandage.

I wore sunglasses a lot.

We had another Sunday dinner pizza bakeoff!!

And the highlight of the month was the birth of
Mackenzie Dawn Taylor born to Austin and Laura on July 20.

We are so excited to see her in person August 3-10!!

Precious Mackenzie!!

July 24 was our annual Temple2Temple run/walk.

This year I was ordered not to run by my skin doctor so I would not break little capillaries in my skin by my healing eye.

So, Braden rocked it in a fantastic personal best time...Jennifer rocked it in a great time that I would have struggled to keep up with  and Scott and I rocked it at walking super fast!!

We celebrated niece Lily's 4th birthday up in SLC this weekend and had a fun party with her!
She wanted donuts for her cake!

And someone was so happy to have presents to open!!

Another wedding reception up in Centerville this weekend...

...and a funny thing.  When I was announcing our new baby granddaughter at the MTC, our Sister Taylor in our branch says..."My name is Mackenzi too!"  So, we had to take a photo of another Mackenzi Taylor (Spelled one letter different)
She is the cute blond in the center.

JUNE 2016

 Im getting an early start on my June blog post since there has been so much going on with family this month.

I spent the first 16 days of June in New Jersey or in transit.
I got there just in time for Bennett's Preschool Graduation and he was SO EXCITED to get a medal!

Carter was really excited to show me that he can now ride his bike without training wheels now!  He is doing great, and Bennett is not far behind.  I am so glad they are in the helmet habit too!

Saturday mornings are spent at SOCCER GAMES!  The first Saturday I got to go watch both boys and it was a lot of fun.

Bennett scored his first and only goal of the season so that was extra exciting!  We got donuts to celebrate!

Carter also loved soccer and is a good little player!  It is not uncommon for him to score goals and have some nice kicks!

Amanda and Jimmy came for a couple days while I was there and we spent one of them at the beach and a couple lighthouses.


Jimmy wasted no time in burying both of the little boys.  They all love him!

Bennett was too little to go up in the SANDY HOOK LIGHTHOUSE, so Jenna stayed with him and Klay while I took Carter up.

This was the only working lighthouse I have been up inside so that was really cool!  The volunteer who did the tour was really interesting too.

We also enjoyed exploring the old arms battery nearby.  It had all sorts of interesting storage and doors that we could imagine missiles and such being there.

I brought a bunch of projects to do with the kids and one of our first was to paint new glow in the dark tee shirts.

Bennetts had dinosaurs all over it and Carter designed one with a Superman logo and sports balls.

Pretty cool!!

Another great bunch of projects were inspired by a book I bought called "DINOSAUR FUN" from Usborne/Scholastic.

It had the cutest dinosaur project ideas so we did a bunch of those over a week's time.

Here are some of the finished projects.

The next week I got to go to Carter's year-end program at kindergarten.

This is him with his teacher.  They did a very good job on their songs and slide show!

And here he is showing us an art project inspired by great artists!

Scott and Braden joined us on June 7 and we wasted no time in going to the beach!

It actually was not that warm while we were there, but nice enough to play in the sand and at water's edge!



Klay loves the sand and the water...he is a BEACH BABY!!

 Braden made a bunch of sand castles and had the boys destroy them!  It was pretty fun!

We chose the nicest day to go to SIX FLAGS amusement park.  Fun times all afternoon with the kids.

They are pretty fearless so it is a matter of height that keeps them from most rides that are more scary.  They do all sorts of roller coasters if they can!

And we went about 4 times with them on the big river tube ride that soaks you!!

The park is a Looney Tunes Warner Brothers theme park.

For SCOTT'S BIRTHDAY, we went back to the beach for more fun in the sand.

Not quite as windy today, and Grandpa was burying all sorts of boys today!!

Klay and Jenna exploring the water's edge.

Crazy faces...

...and some more crazy and happy faces.













More projects with Grandma like this bird bath that we made using sea stones to weigh the pan down.  Very cute, and we saw birds playing in it after it was out a day or two.









We took them a STOMP ROCKET set too, and they loved it so much!!

The last Saturday we were there was TROPHY DAY for the boys final day.

And our last Sunday there we went on a walk out at Monmouth Battleground in the evening when it cooled down a bit.

After we sent home Braden and Scott, we had a couple days to keep busy after school

One day we went to the CHILDREN'S MUSEUM in Cherry Hill.

We love this place and lucky for us, we get in free with our Thanksgiving Point pass...reciprocal arrangement.

The boys put themselves INSIDE A BIG BUBBLE with this station!

They got to make watercolor butterflies too!






GREAT VISIT IN NEW JERSEY!!  We love seeing this great family so much!!  Looking forward now to AUGUST and SEATTLE!!

The first Saturday we were home, we had one of our Mission Hikes.

We had never been to ANTELOPE ISLAND...so we went there!

Breanna and Elliot joined us along with a couple from our mission they are friends with, and about 8 other RM's.
It was a really fun group!

We really like the trekking poles that Bre and Elliot got us for our birthdays!







We did see some antelope, but definitely more BUFFALO!

Up by Dooley Knob, our destination!!

We enjoyed getting together up at Dad's house for a FATHER'S DAY celebration.

Nathan was checking out what it was like to look like a Father!  He will do nicely!

And as you know, Nathan loves to take photos so I let him take this one of the kids down below in the yard!

Braden and I enjoyed very much attending the new Provo City Center Temple.  We ended up helping seal families together along with our mission friend Dax Gerber and his girlfriend Kylie.

Scott had a lot of fun playing with our family photo from August...he finally added in the dinosaurs that I had designed this photo for.  It was supposed to look like we were terrified and running away from them.
Turned out great!

But even more terrifying was this one...seriously, what could be more scary than Barney, the purple giggling dinosaur!!  AND FRIENDS!  Yikes!!

The twins came over for a playdate this month and after a rousing time playing inside with trains, we headed out for the WATER TIME!

The slip and slide is always great fun!

Pretty cute little guy!!

Going through the pool noodle sprinkler in the front yard!!

And we ended the month helping our friends from AZ with a wedding reception in Mapleton.  I enlisted the help of Cody and Lizzie and a friend to come serve.  They were WONDERFUL!  Seriously ended up being an act of service as they spent an extra hour helping clean up as well!!  THANKS GUYS!