July at Aspen Grove

Alright, I promised to catch up from back before the November blog post challenge, so here we go! After our family trip to Arizona, we headed up to Utah for a family reunion at Aspen Grove Family Camp just outside of Provo.  I always heard about driving up the canyon for years, and this time I finally got to experience it, and it was lovely. Well, it was raining, but I did get to see where Sundance is (ya know, Robert Redford and his film festival?), and Aspen Grove is just a little further up the mountain from it.  We checked in, and pretty quickly everyone started to show up and we all unloaded our cars within about a 20 minute window. 

This was our family style cabin that we stayed in- isn't the area just gorgeous? We were nestled in at the base of the mountains, with pine trees all over the place...and aspen trees...hence the name, right? Anyway, we had Todd's parents, 2 brothers and their families, 2 sisters and their families, our family, and Todd's aunt and uncle.  It was awesome!

The next day was Sunday, and since this was a BYU (aka Mormon) family camp, we had church services outside. OUTSIDE! Do you know how amazing it was to watch a butterfly float past me and have the sun shining bright as we were taking the sacrament and singing hymns? It was one of the most incredible sacrament meetings I've ever attended.  The big boys sat with the cousins, and the twins were running around with my older nieces (which, by the way, Mason and Parker picked out who was their "caretaker" and stuck to that cousin the entire week!)

That Sunday happened to be Chase's 8th Birthday. Before church, he opened up a set of scriptures that had his name engraved on them, and a case to hold them.  We had a party for him after church, and had cupcakes to celebrate.

We told the wonderful staff at Aspen Grove that he had a birthday, and they brought him up to the front of the cafeteria and sang "Happy Birthday" to him, and he got his own birthday cake from them! PS- the food there was AMAZING! And that cake was just as good as any one you would find at a nice bakery! We never went hungry there, let me tell you that!

Here's another one of me and my man! Todd totally impressed me while we were there.  He went there every year with his family as a kid, and I got a small glimpse of what Todd was like as a kid.  Plus, we had never been apart for more than a week in our entire marriage, so being away from each other for 2 weeks really made us appreciate being around each other again!

The best part of Aspen Grove is that the kids break off into age groups and are gone almost all day long doing crafts, hikes, and other fun things. 

Here is Gunnar enjoying a fun, albeit short trip up the climbing wall.  He made it half way up, then casually turned around and said, "OK, I'm done!" and was lowered down.

Here's Chase making his way up the wall with his group.  He almost made it to the top, but got scared and came down. 

 Here's Todd climbing up the ropes course.  The first part is a log with cutouts on either sides, and you have to work your way up it and jump over to this wall that had foot holds on it.

Once you reach the top of the foot hold wall, you move across wires that snake and wind around the course and put you back to the foot hold wall. And you repel down from there. 

I attempted to do this.  The cute young man who secured my harness became rather...uh...let's just say he had his hands on parts of me that only my husband is allowed to touch.  I kinda messed with him as he was tightening the straps across my chest; I looked at him and said, "Wow, you're not even going to buy me dinner first?" He turned the brightest shade of red, and I giggled, and Todd had a good laugh.  He was only 18 or 19, and still had braces on...how could I let that joke slip away?!  So I started up the log, however I got about 3 feet up, it started to sway in the wind, and I experienced fear like I've never known.  I demanded that I get down immediately.  My husband rocked this bad boy 3 times...I felt like such a loser!

Here is a great picture of Todd, his brothers, Dad, and brother-in-law after they all finished making wooden writing pens.  They used wood lathes and cut down blocks of wood and turned them into really lovely handmade pens.  This is another great feature of Aspen Grove- when your kids are in their groups having amazing adventures, you can do whatever you want! Our family spent a lot of time down in the craft hut painting pre-made items.  I painted a mini beehive and made a vase for my Mom.  If you don't really enjoy arts and crafts, no problem! You can play sports, hike, participate in different tournaments, visit the snack shack, or, if you're like me, you head back down the mountain to Provo to do a little shopping. 

And here is yet another example as to how awesome my husband is.  Todd, his sister and her husband and I decided we wanted to try archery.  They had a potato hanging from a wire string and if you hit the potato, you were known as a "Potato Slayer." So, what does Todd do? He hits the potato.  Yep, I married a winner!

Here's another cute picture that I liked.  It's Todd and his older brother with the twins, I just love the expressions on Mason and Parker's face!

Aspen Grove was almost a full week long and it was really wonderful.  We had a great time as a family, and it was really awesome to spend time with Todd's family.  I kept saying, "The next time we come back..." for several months after our trip, and we have tentatively set a date when the entire McKnight family will go back.  Not only was it a fun vacation, but the fact that it was a BYU run camp meant that there was a lot of different spiritual experiences to have as well.  I really loved it and hope our boys will have the same kind of wonderful experiences there that their Dad had at their age!

Tomorrow, I'm planning to write about our trip to Salt Lake City, Utah- tune in for more fun highlights from the end of our Summer vacation!