Scout Camp and Water Fun!

The first week of August Zac got to spend a week with his scouts at Scout Camp. He was the Scout Master for our ward and absolutely loved working with the scouts. He should really be narrating this part, but I hope I chose some pictures that showed what he was up to up there. This is their camp. Zac said it was the rainiest it had been all summer so they got a little wet, but at least their tents didn't blow away like some of the other campers there.

*Zac did end up adding some comments to help clarify :)

3 of the United States Flags through history
Some pictures of the camp. Zac said that all the activities were done down in a valley and they camped up on a high hill, so needless to say, he got his exercise trudging up the hill several times a day.

The "fort"

His goofy boys. -- We had a clear night where we could see satellites. They started talking about aliens and that ended in them needing be protected from brain scans. (see the movie Signs and you'll understand)

Night time at camp --- I think they had fun

Zac competed in the Scout Master Run and did great! He said it was a lot of running to different stations where they would tie knots, shoot a bow,throw knives, then shoot a muzzle loader. Then they had to swim/wade threw mud a certain distance at the end. Yay Zac!

Last week we were lucky enough to have Daddy take off a day of work and come to the water park with us! Anne loved having her Daddy there and showed him all the cool stuff she likes to do. Here she is in the wave pool (the waves weren't turned on yet).

Her favorite thing to do at the pool is to throw around her squishy water ball. She's quite the little thrower these days and is even learning to catch!

It got a little cold later in the day so we put on her very cool wet suit from Aunt Jennifer. It helped keep our little skinny child warm :) We didn't get pictures of the other fun stuff Anne likes to do like playing on the floating alligator and snake, floating down the lazy river (which was freezing that day), and playing at the baby pool. Zac even took her down some water slides, but we found out she's not a huge fan of that. She kept yelling "Mom! Mom!" the whole time he said :) Ever since our trip to VA, she's turned back to a Mama's girl.

Yep, she has no bum. I can't keep any pants up on her, they just slide right down.

Anne has learned some new skills like climbing and has learned to climb up on our piano bench. She loves playing the piano.

I love that she actually looks at the music while she's playing and turns the pages :)

So every year it seems like we get at least one booming crop. I don't know what's in this soil, but it seems to make our plants explode. This was just a little tiny one shoot starter cherry tomato plant from Walmart when we bought it. It's even bigger now than when this picture shows. We have to constantly pick and eat the tomatoes or they go bad. I think that's why the Lord wants us to plant gardens 1) teaches us work 2) helps us be more self-reliant 3) saves us money 4) makes us eat healthier because home-grown produce always tastes better than store bought

Our other tomato plant. Not quite as impressive. We've never been able to grow big tomatoes, only cherry.

Anne is one of the only kids we know that likes fresh tomatoes. She calls them "balls" and could eat five of them at a time. Sadly, we think she might be allergic to them though cause she gets little red dots on her face and arms from the juice.

I gave Anne another hair cut, this time with some good advice from a girl at Church that cuts hair. I think it turned out a lot better this time. You probably can't tell a big difference from these pictures, but it looks a little more clean cut and even and her bangs are out of her eyes. I'm excited for her hair to be long and past this mullet-phase, though she still looks adorable :)

Snuggling with Daddy. By the way, her big-girl bed sleeping is going much better. She's not as scared anymore and is sleeping through the night again. :)

We took Anne to an Orem Owls baseball game the other night which was a lot of fun! Anne did great and kept pointing to the field and saying "ball!" She also loved the fireworks at the end, which was kind of a surprise.

The other day Zac called me from work and asked if I wanted to go boating in a few minutes, quite a surprise. One of his co-workers had commented that it would be a perfect day for boating and his boss told he and whoever wanted to go with to get out of the office and go! Zac has a very cool boss :) So we all went out on Utah lake (which is a whopping mile or so from our house) and went boating! The entire time we were out there I just kept thinking how awesome it is that we live in Utah. It is perfect for us. We have some many outdoor activities that we can do just minutes away from where we live and most of them are free!

Though this pictures doesn't quite show it Anne loved being on the water. She kept saying "wa-ter" and "fish-ies"and I think she tried to say boat. She was very relaxed and just sat on my lap and enjoyed the ride.

Zac tried wake boarding for the first time and of course, he did great! The other were very impressed and didn't believe it was his first time. That's my hubby :) I opted to stay on the boat this time, maybe next summer when I'm not so.....with child.

The three of us did hop in the lake for a couple minutes to cool off. We weren't sure how Anne would like swimming in a life jacket but she loved it! That girl is definitely a fish.

On the way back to shore Anne actually fell asleep.

Anne waving hi to the water.

Zac's first time up on a wake board.

The Thatcher family all in the lake.

Some of what we've been up to.

We've had a lot going on these past few weeks, so this isn't quite complete. But it'll give you a head start on what we've been up to. In the next post we'll show some pictures of Zac's scout camp and Ilene and Anne's trip to Virginia. But here's what we did before that.

Yep, we're teaching her young. Like mother like daughter. I remember being so excited to learn how to mow the lawn and be like my older brothers. By time the end of high school rolled around I was mowing three hilly lawns and I wished I hadn't been so eager, hehe. But Anne was very excited to be like Mom.
She is also being very girly these days. She likes to play with her dolls,

and wear necklaces,

and Gabbie's bracelets,

and wear cute dresses.

She also likes to imitate anything we are doing. So when I was crocheting she of course wanted to help. So I gave her some yard and a crochet hook.

Anne loves playing Rock Band with us. Her specialty is the drums.

And that girl loves her music.

Anne's new big girl bed. We decided once we found out we were having another girl, to get them bunk beds. We found a great deal on this one at Kmart so we decided to switch her bed now, before Rachel comes. It's a little tricky, getting her to sleep in her new bed, but not for the reasons we thought. We thought she would want to crawl out all the time or roll off accidently. She doesn't do either. She just wakes up a lot and freaks out. She wants to have us with her at all times while she is sleeping which is not how she usually is. Weird. But it'll get better. I hope before sister comes.

Our first zucchini from the garden. I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing before I cooked it, so this about half.

Anne being silly.

We went camping this last weekend which was a blast. We weren't too excited about it at first, but when we got there the nice people who owned the land let us sleep in their trailer on a bed and use the bathroom :) Mom was especially happy. I usually like roughing it, but my seven month tummy enjoyed the cushion. We went fishing, shooting, and got to know some wonderful people. It actually turned out to be a very relaxing and rewarding last campout of the summer.

Anne's first time on a boat.

She did great. She didn't try to run around at all, just kept pointing to the water and saying "waaater!" She also got a huge kick out of Dad catching a fish and watching it flop around.

These pictures are acually from a while back...oh well. This is July 24th, Pioneer Day here in Utah (when Utah was founded). We went to a little festival that was near our house. Anne loved the petting zoo. She has no shyness when it comes to animals.

And her favorite part of all, the horses. We didn't know how she was going to react to riding on one, but she absolutely loved it. She giggled and laughed the entire ride and kept saying "hose".

And was very sad when we had to get off the horsey.

Just cute.

Our ward campout was also a lot of fun. I'll post a video of the hula a friend and I did for the talent show on youtube later. Zac's chili won the "hottest" award at the chili cook-off. We didn't end up staying the night because my tummy wasn't feeling so good and Anne was still a little sick. But we still had a lot of fun. We love our ward :)

We busted out the pool one weekend. Though we did forget to fill it earlier in the day, so the water was freezing. The deepest any of us got in it was our knees.

Anne helping me make rice crispie treats.

When I put Anne down for a nap one day (after a weekend when she had spent a lot of time with Daddy) I heard this coming from her room:

I know this is not the happiest video, but we do think it's really cute that she says "ow" (which doesn't always mean ow, sometimes it means she's just not happy with something). And this shows her sensitive spirit, all this sadness because her beloved puppy fell on the floor, we think she thought it was hurt.