~Changing our Blog~

So I've found that I had maxed out the number of pictures I could upload to my blog.  As I looked into it, they told me I could add more, but it would cost a monthly fee.  I didn't want to do that, so I had to open a new blog.  If you like to see how our little family is doing and what is new in our lives, please visit our new blog address: daveandnatalieropelato.blogspot.com

You may be thinking "That is the same address as before"  But there is a small change (dave instead of david).

~Cherry Hills Camp Out~

This year a few neighborhood families decided to get Cherry Hills Season passes.  It has been fun going weekly with the kids, the Copes, and the Mckays.  We thought it might be fun to try having a camp out one night and swim until the park closed, then swim right when it opened.  So we planned a camping trip.

I think my kids have been spoiled with our camper (especially the girls), because when I told them we were sleeping in a tent Mckell and Lexi both cried.  Literally cried, because they wanted the camper.  I thought it was funny because neither one of them had ever slept in a tent, so I couldn't understand why they were so upset about it.  We tried it, and they loved it.

Lexi and Melyn love playing in the lazy river.

 After the tent was set up, the girls thought it was great that we were having a camp out.  The dads came for dinner but it was just Mindy, Heidi, and I who ended up staying the night with the kids.  Dave even was nice and took Garrett home to sleep in his own bed.

The kids enjoying their breakfast. We had a lot of fun, and I was even able to go with the kids on all the water slides since I didn't have Garrett with me.  It was a fun camp out, something we will definitely have to do again.

~Happy 4th of July~

As always, we start our 4th off with the Cherry Days parade. Mckell was in the big parade this year, so Dave was trying to talk the kids out of being in the Kids Parade this year, but they weren't having it.  We got new bikes and helmets for the occasion, and even invited our friends, The Copes, to come to the parade with us.

 Love Hunter's new helmet!

Jasmin, Jocelyn, and Becky

Lexi and Melyn LOVED throwing candy out to the parade watchers.

 Lexi and Melyn are best buddies!  So cute together!

 Mckell's comp group, Dazzle Dance's float.

Zoee and Garrett watching the parade.

The parade is always so much fun!  After the parade, our little family went and saw Monsters University, then we headed up to Jerry and Darinda's for swimming, and we ended the day with fireworks at our house.  It was a great day!

~Happy 36th!~

Wow! Dave is getting old! LOL  We just celebrated his 36th birthday.  He got clothes, flip flops, and a Lapua gun.  Happy Birthday Dave!

~Basketball camp~

I love that we have a ton of boys in our neighborhood that get together and do things.  They have so much fun together!  This is the gang at Weber States Basketball camp.

~Summer Games~

Hunter's Basketball team went down to Cedar City to play in the summer games. Pretty much everyone stayed at Jerry and Darinda's house, which was a lot of fun.  Everyone had a ton of fun riding 4 wheelers, swimming, playing video games, and yes playing basketball.

Calvin, Hunter, Jace, Brex, and Rexton getting ready for a 4 wheeler ride.

Cooling off in the shade. We took 2 rides an evening ride and a morning ride.  The morning ride really started to get hot as the day went on.  Any shade we could find, we stopped to enjoy.

The boys spent quite some time "warming up" for the game.  They had a blast working out in Jerry and Darinda's workout room.

Go Redhawks!
After our first game, a dad from the other team invited us to go and see some jets that his company made.  It was like a little fieldtrip.  He explained about the jets, let the boys get in one of the jets, and showed us how and where they were made.  Very interesting.

After our tour of the jet place, we headed for a team party at the Washington City pool.  We were a little bummed because Jerry and Darinda's pool was supposed to be finished for this week, but didn't get done.  So we did the next best thing and found this fun pool.  It really was so fun.  It had waterslides, a lazy river, a lap pool, a toy water area to play in, which dumped a big bucket of water on you, and a kids play area.  The area was half inside/half outside.  It was a ton of fun.

I had to get a picture of Garrett with his vampire teeth.  Such a crazy smile, lol.  But I love it!

You would have thought the boys would have been exhausted with a day full of 4 wheeling, basketball, tours, and swimming, but No!  They stayed up playing games.  They had so much fun!

 Kaden and Kolton were our team captains.  They kept stats of each boy.  Recorded how many rebounds, points, steels, stuffs, fouls, etc that each boy had.

All the girls (and Creed) decided to take a break from basketball to go get some ice cream.

One night, they had a basketball skills competition, where people of all ages came to compete against each other in free throws, three pointers, and a hot shot competition.  They gave medals to the top three winners in each age category.  It was a lot of fun!

They had music playing for the warm up of the competition.  Lexi walked right out to the middle of the gym, amidst all the ball players and started dancing, lol.  It cracked us all up!  She was the pre-show entertainment.
As the night winded down, some of us moms thought it might be fun to compete, even though we aren't really that good.  We hadn't noticed anyone our ages competing, so we thought it can't hurt, right.  It was so much fun laughing at ourselves.

 Hunter took 1st place in his age group for free throws.  He made 13 of 15 free throw shots.  Way to go Hunter!

Mckell got 3 silver medals, even though she never officially made a basket, lol.  There was one other girl competing in her category, so Mckell was pretty much guaranteed to medal.  She was so proud of herself and kept rubbing it in Hunters face that she got more medals than he did, lol.

These boys played hard and had fun.  One game we played was very physical.  Cannon got punched in the eye and thrown, literally thrown to the ground, Jace got taken out at the feet, Davis got pushed over, etc.  It was all from one cocky, little player that knew if he did it when a ref wasn't looking they couldn't call it on him.  Jerry almost got thrown out of the game for yelling at the ref, and Dave got yelled at because Andrea went on the court and yelled at the other coach for letting his boys play so dirty.  It was quite an intense game.  At one point we were down by 22 points, but our boys kicked it into gear and ended up bringing the game back up.  We only ended up loosing by 5, we all thought we were going to take this game.  We were so proud of our boys!  They played so hard!

I actually didn't end up medaling, hahaha.  But Jaycee and Andrea did.  Way to go Girls!  Next year I'm bringing my A game :)

It was a fun week, a lot going on, but fun to visit with the moms, and watch the boys have fun playing together.  Hunter loved having all his buddies stay with him at the house.  It was like a big sleep over :) He can't wait until next year!