London

Ridiculously lucky me got a free 2-week Baltic Cruise above Britain's luxury liner the Queen Victoria. As Brandon says, everyone should have a sister that's a travel agent.  I didn't have much notice--I had a few days to decide, book a flight, pack, and get my kids all situated for school. It was almost enough to keep me home but my adventurous side prevailed. We saw the world, had a lot of fun, and definitely have no regrets.

We flew from LAX straight to London, watching movies all night. From there, in our sleep-deprived state we went straight to sightseeing.

 From the airport we rode the "tube" downtown and took a double-decker sight-seeing bus all over the city past buildings modern and sleek to old and ornate. It seemed the whole world was visiting London the same day!

 Tower of London was commemorating the anniversary of WWI with a bounty of poppies.

 Cruising the river Thames

 Traffic!

Traditional English fish and chips.
For running on no-sleep and only with limited time, I think we did pretty well at taking in all the key sights of London. Next time I would like to tour Buckingham Palace. We spent the night at a Holiday Inn, enjoyed a typical British breakfast of tiny things--pancakes, little honey pots, herbal tea with a little milk and sugar and we discovered a British breakfast favorite, Wheetabix.

Palisades

 We joined some neighbor friends for a day at the lake. It's the closest thing we have to a beach here in Utah.

Beautiful day!!

4-Wheelin'

With a few of our church friends we rode ATV's through town and up the mountain and deep into the woods to our Bishop's cabin where we cooked up a dutch oven dinner and then went wildlife sightseeing. It was the most Richfield thing we've ever done. 

 First part of our ride took us past this marker commemorating the Indian massacre of a settler family.

 We spotted many deer and large elk.

 Had a fun-filled night with our awesome Bishopric.

Amazing sunset over Cove Mountain

Skunk invasion

Kate was awakened at 2 am by a skunk clawing at her window. Eek. It looked so human, she was scared out of her wits. She slept in Brynn's room and informed us in the morning. "There's a skunk in my window well."  Bad news.

We thought animal control would come to our rescue but they just told us over the phone to put a long 2x4 down there--without scaring the skunk--and then hope that it would climb out.  That's what we did--very carefully. It worked! The next morning our skunk had returned to his flock.

County Fair

It was a busy week at our house in preparation for the county fair. The kids were slaving away with modeling clay, markers, paintbrushes, and poetry skills. 

 Kate's 1st place entry

 Adrie's pink sunset won 2nd place. She won first place for a story she entered.

This was Cannon's first year to be eligible to enter. He worked long and hard perfecting his lego sculpture which won a 2nd place ribbon. It was also my first year. I entered my 2013 12x12 digital scrapbook and won a first place ribbon. It was the only entry in it's category, lucky me.

 "If pigs could fly" by Brynn, 1st place. She entered the most times in our family with a bracelet, frame, ceramic toad, and a poem. All of them won first and the bracelet, second--a total of $20 in prize money.

The county fair. It's a family tradition!