Park City!

 Every year since I was a teenager, my family has gone up to Park City for a week (give or take a few days) in the summer. As the family has expanded, the logistics have gotten more complicated in terms of where to put everyone, but we still manage to have a lot of fun. This year, all thirteen of my parents grandkids were present (and 3 of their 4 kids--my sister is off getting educated).

We went swimming every day, hiking one morning, and playing Olympics another. (I have some pictures but they're all on my new phone and I haven't yet figured out how to transfer all those pictures. I'll see if I can do that this week). My favorite part of the Olympics--besides cheating in the 3-legged race with Oliver (I just picked him up and ran), was watching Oliver try to crab walk. In the time it took the older kids to get around a cone and back, he made it maybe six inches.

We also went to the time-honored ice-cream spot (which has taken on the slightly annoying tradition of also being where the kids acquire yet another beanie boo . . .).

Mostly, we just enjoyed one another's company. (Though the walk my mom went on with me, Jared and Mitcee, where we were all playing Pokemon Go, might not have been so enjoyable for her!)

Thursday we headed back to Provo, where the kids spent a little more time with Jeni's kids while my parents took the two oldest grandkids to the temple for baptisms.

I spent the rest of the weekend at a Segullah writing retreat--which was lovely and rejuvenating. Though I did come back for a book signing at the Provo library Friday  night. Dan came up to join me and it was fun having an actual date night (and witnessing Pokemon mania first hand on the library lawn, which was covered with people. It was insane). Dan took the kids home Saturday while I finished out my retreat, and I came home Sunday morning just in time (well, five minutes late) for my ward council meeting. I then got to teach sharing time to an unusually squirrelly group of kids (they were missing half of their regular teachers), before a lovely dinner with Bubby and Poppy and a visit to the annual Platt family snow-cone extravaganza that they hold once each summer at the end of baseball tournament season (they run concessions during the season and they use up some of the extras here).

When the other kids were in bed, Andrew and I went for a walk around campus. (And yes, we played Pokemon Go. Andrew was super excited because he took down three different gyms. The fact that his usurpation lasted all of a minute in each case before getting taken down in turn did nothing to dim his joy.)