August adventures

(The flowers by our front porch are dinner plate dahlias that I grew again this year. White and yellow grow the biggest from year to year. I also planted orange, blue and red and they were just as beautiful, but not as big.)

August was full of relaxing adventures for our family. First, we went to the annual Parade of Homes- kind of a tradition since Dave and I got married. We visited about 15 different houses and saw many different decor ideas and interior designs that we liked.

Alex found his favorite room in one of the houses where he played soccer. We could barely get him out of there!

This house had a nice, landscaped backyard where Alex and I got to swing for a while.

This mansion was a multi-million $ house, which was nice but the interior layout was less than perfect. 

In the backyard of that mansion.

We finished our Parade of Homes outing by jumping on the trampoline until our feet almost fell off :)
The next weekend we went to the Pineview reservoir in the Ogden canyon- also our family's annual tradition. First, we all put on lots of sunscreen- a must in the sunny, high-altitude Utah mountains.

Babulya swam on the mattress peacefully...

...while we set up our "camp". We had a great location and were especially glad that Dave brought the canopy- our most important "do-not-forget" item on all of our outings this summer.

We played a little badminton (one of my most favorite games as a kid in Russia).

We swam.
And even played some volleyball in water. The water was warm and very clean.

It was a very nice and relaxing Saturday. As an annual tradition, right after the lake we went to the Brigham City farmer's market where we bought lots of different fruits, berries and veggies- these are the best you can find all around Utah!

The next weekend we spent 3 days/2 nights camping with our friends near Kamas, UT, at the camp site called Soapstone. I wouldn't say this was my favorite spot- I still love Moosehorn the best- but we had great company and had a lot of fun. I don't remember laughing this hard in a long time!

While there we went to the Lilly Lake to fish. Kids had a lot of fun fishing and so did the adults until we realized that we weren't catching anything :( Part of the group went back to the camp and took a nice, log nap (you can only guess that I was part of that group) and part stayed at the lake tempting their luck in fishing (they also didn't catch anything so our plans for fried fish were cancelled and replaced by other yummy food that evening).

Our camp had 5 tents set up in a half-circle pattern around the empty dirt-field where we all played a fun game of ring toss- for the Olympic record. I think that Jason ended up being the Olympic champion with Nico running not far behind with a silver medal.

Then we started the fire and the food preparation began.

Meanwhile, kids were enjoying their company running around and playing "monsters" with flashlights and both dogs. We had a little river right behind our tents.

Finally, food was on the fire and now it was just waiting time.

These are all the beautiful "girls" from our group. Me, Zara, Katya, and Carine.

This was a great camping trip with lots of delicious food, fishing (although unsuccessful), fun games while sitting around the fire, scary stories by the fire late into the night, and gazing into the starry sky- there were more stars than I have ever seen in my life in one place. I saw a few shooting stars and made my wish :)