When we got back from vacation, I started babysitting Isaiah and Emma full time.  

Other than that, the rest of our summer was spent at the pool. 

Summer vacation continues...we can't got all the way out to Utah and not see the Soderquist family. Heading up north, we got to play in a little snow on the way.   We went to Grandpa and Grandma's pool, to the copper mine with Mom, and to Sugarhouse park with Dad and Linda.  We also got to meet with our friends at a splash park in Odgen, and see the Airspace museum.  We celebrated Mom's, Mike's and Rachy's birthdays, too!

Lake Afton

One last big outing for this summer vacation. We went with a few friends in the ward to Lake Afton and had a picnic and played in the water. It was a beautiful day. The kids wasted no time, as soon as we got there they jumped right in. Michael brought his "raingutter regatta" boat that Mike had made for him and the wind carried it out past the buoys where it sank :( He played the rest of the time in a dirty little pool of water off the beach looking for tadpoles and frogs. Rachel stayed out of the water for the first hour and then got brave and started venturing farther and farther into the water, only falling down one or two...dozen times. Sarah wore her rain boots for some reason and they became holding tanks for the tadpoles and frog - plus the sole inserts were a fun little raft to play with. (Multi-functional boots). Hannah and Bekah played "dolphins" out in the deeper water with their friends.

Swim buddies

 
Shortly after Bekah learned how to swim, Sarah thought she would like to try as well. We took off her floaties and she learned to swim that day. She was apprehensive at first and we would keep one finger under her tummy as she swam, but pretty soon she saw that we would let go for a few seconds and she could still keep herself up. So that gave her the confidence she needed and she started doing it on her own. She would even jump off the side and swim over to us without help. We just couldn't believe it, but we have been so happy with both of them. We've had to be careful and acknowledge all the kids' progress because it's been kindof like when Rachel was learning how to walk and we got so excited for her that the older kids would want to show us that they could walk to us too.

Bekah learns to swim

We have been fortunate this summer to have a lot of swimming opportunities. We've been to the Cessna Employee's Club swimming pool and the Anderson's have invited us to swim with them many times as well. Swimming with the Anderson's allows the kids to have more one on one attention and Bekah has used it well. She can now swim without floaties in the DEEP END! She actually swam for the first time while Mike was in Oregon, so we got this video to show him.