Noah's new blog: August 2015

Visiting grandma Riggs (about 3 weeks before she passed away)

Noah started back to school on August 12th and we got to go to "meet the teacher" a few nights before that. He is very excited to have Mrs. Vietel this year, the teacher he was hoping he would get!

Poppy (and Uncle Dan) turned 60 on the 10th of August so we got together with our whole family and Dan's whole family to celebrate. We made it a "decades" party and it was mostly a combination of disco and hippie!

We also made sure to draw unibrows on some of the boys in honor of Sam & Dan!

The grandkids sang "I'm so glad when Grandpa comes home"

Almost everyone from both families! We were just missing Russ's girls, and of course Barton & Riggs too.

Noah started 5th grade and was so excited. He likes being in school more than being out of school.

Wyatt's mom went to the school on the first day and was able to get a few pictures with Noah and his friends, as well as one with their new teacher!

We weren't able to make it to Bahama Bucks on the last day of summer (like we traditionally do), so we made a trip there with Suzanne and Ellie after school on the first day.

We made a trip to St. George in mid-August to deliver Tayler's stuff for college. We stopped the first night in Flagstaff and found the creperie, the same place Russ and I went to when we were dating. I have dreamed about those crepes for 6 years and was so excited to have them again. I hate to say that they tasted better 6 years ago, but they still looked pretty so I took pictures! We also took a family selfie to document our stop at the creperie!

We weren't satisfied with just the crepes so we had another meal (Mexican) down the road in Flagstaff! haha! We had a good time walking around in nice weather and eating a few meals.

The drive to St. George was so pretty... this picture was taken out the window as we drove, but it's so pretty that it almost looks fake!

One of our first stops in St. George was SWIG! The drinks were delicious and the cookies were even better. We hiked "Dixie Rock" with our swig drinks in hand...

This is the view from Dixie Rock... the St. George temple is so pretty!

Next, we walked around the temple and read about it's history. So pretty!

Not pictured: later that night we stopped by swig for the second time that day and purchased drinks and cookies for our drive home the next day! Yum!!

Sunday, we drove home and passed through Zion National Park on the way. It was beautiful!

We drove through a mile-long tunnel that Abby didn't love.

We also got on a shuttle bus (Abby thought it was a "city school bus" and LOVED it)... and did a short hike to the "lower emerald pool". It was so hot outside and felt really nice to get sprinkled by some of the waterfalls when we made it to the destination!

(Notice the waterfall behind us!)

This tree was huge!

There's a fun fondue place in Gilbert called ELF (everybody loves fondue) and they put on a fun game during the month of August. They would park their truck somewhere, then post on instagram, a clue about where to find it. Every day I saw our neighbors winning the contest by taking a picture with the truck and posting their selfies. Surprisingly, one day I happened to be really close to where the clue pointed to, and already in my car... so I got there (to Costco) quickly and posted my selfie. We were the winners!