Fair Days Parade

I swear every Fair Days we go grocery shopping right before the parade, so we get caught in detoured Main Street traffic trying to get home. This year I made sure we went grocery shopping earlier in the day, and, being free in the late afternoon, we decided to bike over to Heber for the parade. The kids had a blast.  Zeke is always in the Swiss Days parade rather than watching it, so it was a fun new thing for him to sit on the curb and see all of the entries and catch candy (and fliers, popsicles, water bottles...).

We saw horses; lots and lots of horses. Zeke started counting and got up into the twenties before he saw something else fun to look at.

We saw tractors (isn't this purple tractor awesome?).

There were even a few floats, which I love.

And several fire trucks. (Zeke took this picture while I was keeping Nora out of the path of the parade vehicles.)

And Zeke is awesome because he really got out there and collected candy for himself and Nora. He is by nature rather hesitant, and we all know that he who hesitates doesn't get any prizes out of a pinata, or a parade, or anything else where there are lots of grabby little hands. But on this night he did a great job of both being assertive and sharing with the rest of us. 

Up on Top of Memorial Hill

We took a weeknight outing to the Memorial Hill a couple of weeks ago. Zeke wanted to bike up the hill but I wasn't quite ready to commit to that, so we drove. But it was a cool place to be on a hot summer evening. 

We enjoyed great views, even through all the smoke. 

Zeke climbed all around the big rocks.

I couldn't get Nora away from the little rocks to look at the view. 

We also looked at the plaques and traced the letters and numbers at the base of the flags. 

Then I gathered everyone together for a picture (Aaron was at a meeting).

We sure love it here! 

Photos by Zeke

Zeke has lately taken up photography. Some of his pictures leave a lot to be desired, but some of them are really good! 

  

And, when I'm using the real camera, he's practicing with the toy one :)

Loertscher Reunion

We had so much fun at the extended-family Loertscher reunion at the end of July. On the first day, I went through a pile of old extra family reunion shirts someone had brought and found one child-size shirt so now Nora has one too!

We played games, visited with cousins, and I worked on my quilt a while when it was too hot in the afternoon to move much. The kids had a great time playing outside.

Splashing in the puddles during a summer rainstorm,

Swinging on the big swing (Zeke spent most of his time here),

Playing in the water,

And of course, riding the train.