Labor Day Weekend

So to celebrate the end of a really good, fun Summer we wanted to have one more bang.  So we had another weekend with daily events.  We did not go camping this year but instead had a camp out on Friday night in Josh and Stacy's backyard.  I forgot my camera so Stacy should be blogging about the convenient campout.  It was really fun although a little chillier than I expected.   Sunday we celebrated Whitney's birthday a few days early. 

Whitney requested Strawberry Cake.  I used the recipe that Shelley blogged on Valentines Day.  My frosting ended up a little chunkier with the strawberry bits.  It was very moist and tasty

We had a nice Sunday Dinner after we all got home from our various church meetings.   Whitney even got her very own treasure hunt at her 26th birthday party courtesy of Maren.  I bet she did not plan on that happening.   

Kelsie came home for the weekend and brought her new pet.  I am not sure what she was thinking but she and her roommate bought a little bunny.  Stacy is worried that she will soon be owning said bunny.  His name is Shenanigans.  I think Kelsie has started her first 2 weeks with a big college shenanigan. 

Sunday evening we did a bit of Dance 2 Wii game or whatever it is called.  What an enjoyable workout.  It makes me kind of want to get a Wii so I could buy it. 

Then on Monday Stacy decided we should picnic at Silver Lake.  It is located at Brighton.  So we drove up the canyon with about half of Salt Lake Valley to spend a few hours in the mountains.  We took homemade fried chicken and potato salad and other picnic fixings.  It reminded me of the days of our Huntington Canyon picnics where Mom would fry up chicken for us.  It was fun to do.  I have not done fried chicken for years.  Jonas said he loved it. 

Essie found her a bag of chips and got comfy. 

We had to wait for a picnic table to open up because it was so crowded.  This was the wavy table next to our normal table. 

Whitney brought along a friend named Helaman.  I am not sure what he thought of our picnic but he seemed to enjoy himself. 

Jonas and Gabe take their posing very seriously as you can tell.

There is a boardwalk around Silver Lake that goes all around the lake.  It is about a mile walk.   A few of the family members decided it would be nice to run a race around the lake.  This was the starting line.  I believe Noah won the race. 

The rest of us decided to take a leisure walk around the lake so we could take nice pretty pictures of the scenery.  Or that was my excuse for not running.  That and I was lame for the weekend due to a foot wart removal incident gone bad.  At least it was a better excuse than Josh's shower slipping, knee twisting incident that left him also lame and unable to attend the picnic.  He missed out.  Here is the marshy area of the lake.

It does look like a silver lake does it not?

We stopped on the trail for a few photo ops.   When the racers took off, Jonas, Gabe and Maren took off after them.   We did not see them again for sometime.  We were a little concerned but just kept on walking since the trail is in a circle we thought if there was an issue we would run into them. 

Because it has been such a wet year it is still amazingly green.  This does not look like Utah does it.  Well it is.

Then we saw a small moose.  I had to have Les take this picture because she is taller than me and really zoom in.  It was after we saw the moose that I heard a little high pitched voice and knew that we had finally run into Maren.  Apparently Jonas had asked Arden to take Maren off of his hands so he could run fast with Gabe.  Good thing Jonas didn't just leave her behind and good thing Arden was around to help out.

I guess Maren also takes her posing seriously.  She wanted to get a picture on this big rock because she had seen other children doing it. 

So serious.

Not so serious.

Esme was so dirty that she had dirt streaks from her tear tracks down her face.  Not sure what she was so upset about.

But she was not sad for long. 

After the walk around the lake we were rewarded with Rebecca's yummy chocolate zuchinni cake and mini candy bars.  We had to eat them out of the back of the van because our picnic table was being used by someone else at that time. 

I think everyone enjoyed the day.  It was a very fun Labor Day weekend and was so nice to have an extra day off of work.  I only work 2 days this week because I am heading TO  IDAHO TO SEE AN AMAZING MISSIONARY THAT I HAVE NOT SEEN FOR 2 YEARS!!!  Hope to see many of you there.  It is going to be great!