Payne Family Fun: First half of August

We had a family hot dog roast up at Whiting Campground. Grandpa Fry had some volunteers come help with a skit. Fun times!

While we were there a horse and rider on the trail running behind the campsites stopped and asked if the kids wanted to have a ride on her horse. Of course the kids were crazy excited! It was a so kind of her! Grandpa Fry stopped by our house to get a picture with all of us before he headed back home. The kids were good for a few and then we had to do a silly one too. Isaac was rather confused by the whole process. Ken took this picture after loading the dishwasher one night. His caption, “Our family has a drinking problem.” Neil came with me hiking with the Activity Day girls. He was a great hiker, but we were significantly slower than the girls and the other leader. It was a pretty day though. And the girls trying to get up enough courage to reach out and touch a lizard we saw sunning its self was quite entertaining. Our garden gave us a plethera of peppers this year…..but the tomato plants were seriously slacking. Addie called and invited us to go feed the ducks with them. The kids had a fabulous time. When they got bored of feeding the ducks they turned their attention to the fish trying to get the fish to come close enough so they could touch them. I think someone touched one and it was slimy!

Jessie enjoying my camera….. I was looking at Instagram with Abbie one morning and this is the picture that Ken’s dad had posted for Throw Back Thursday…. Just then Mark walks in the room to see what we were looking at, having just gotten out of the shower. I just couldn’t resist taking his picture to add to Instagram too. I think Ken’s dad was about 8 in this picture and had just gotten a haircut and Mark is 12 (and really needs a haircut).

This bee stayed on Ken’s windshield the whole drive to work! We had the most amazing thunderstorm and we all wanted to enjoy it to the max, so we brought our lunch to the entry way and sat there for an hour watching the rain pour down. Neil was not as big of a fan of the thunder as the rest of us. And boy did we enjoy the couple of times it shook the house. We made some popcorn for a snack and the kernels all popped tiny so I searched online for some suggestions. One popular suggestion was to soak the popcorn before frying it. Just for the record that was an EPIC FAILURE! This is how the soaked kernels “popped”!

Rachel is the most popular aunt around here for a reason…..one day she showed up at my house after work with a couple of large boxes she had salvaged…..and then she turned the stairs into a giant slide. The kids were in heaven and boy did you slide…..fast……which is why we ended up with a huge pile of pillows at the bottom of the stairs to help pad your bum when you got there. Summer creation…

Isaac is just getting into making pretend food. So fun. Mark got some scout awards… These nasty huge grasshoppers were the bane of the flower garden this summer. They chewed the canna and sunflower leaves to bits. Making goop. One more thing checked off the bucket list.

We enjoyed FHE with a family in our ward and during treats the kids enjoyed the swing set and watching their dog do a few tricks. He really was trying to smile for Ken. We only had a few snails in the flowers this year. Yea us. But they were still a photo shoot subject for Jessie. And Neil’s favorite part was touching their eyes so they would pull the stalks down inside.

One more bucket list item was tye dying shirts. This years turned out pretty pathetic compared to the ones we did a couple of years ago. They were all bright and colorful until we pulled them out of the dryer and most of the colors had faded. Bummer. So my suggestion is to just stick with the kit that comes with primary colors if we do it again. This was a before the dryer picture. After they came out the blue was a mint green color!!

Our washing machine stared leaking water onto the floor. Luckily Ken knew exactly what the problem was (because we had already fixed it once). Isaac is trying to help him patch the rubber piece until the new part could be shipped to us. Unfortunately the patch didn’t hold. Quinn came over to play and Spencer had a great time pulling all the little boys around in the wagon.