The Difference Between Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts...

10. Girls Scouts shower, not well, but at least an attempt.
9. Neither boys or girls brush their teeth when their mom isn't there to tell them too.
8. Girls Scouts learn cute silly songs, Boy Scouts learn gross songs.
7. Girl Scouts have girl drama! Boy Scouts apparently just "diss" each other.
6. Boy Scouts exclaim "flushing toilets" and proceed to leave the door wide open while they use it!
5. Girls Scouts make pottery and little glass art, Boy Scouts carve wood and burn leather.
4. Girls Scouts stay up till 3am, Boy Scout don't keep track of time and have no idea what time they went to sleep.
3. Girl Scouts come home with no money and some really dumb stuff, Boy Scouts come home with money and some cool stuff.
2. Boy Scout camp has good food or maybe just hungry boys. Girls Scout camp... not so much!
1. Girl Scouts want to tell you every detail of every minute. Boy Scouts come home with stories they CANNOT repeat to their mother.

Bonus: Girls Scouts come home with cute pictures of new friends and pretty mountain scenes. Boy Scouts take very random and worthless pictures, many of stop motion LEGO scenes, and very few with actual people in them!

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Bad Mom?

We have sent both our kids off to camp for the week? Does it make us bad parents that the silence is blissful? Does it make me stupid that I have spent 2 full days of that silence trying to get our computers all set up right??? But I am a good mom, because I am starting to miss the little boogers! I hope they are having fun, and I hope they are to wet from the rain we keep having at night!

Pioneer Day...

"Mom I think this is a family tradition" said Elisabeth as we walked to our traditional spot on the parade route at 7am. Grandma, Grandpa, E and I spread out our blanket and chairs, and prepared to wait. Sam and Jeremiah came shortly after, Sam had to put out flags for Scouts. And our best treat, Jessica and Adrian came around 8:30 to watch the parade with us. The baby was shocked by the noisy police motorcycles, but he mostly checked out everything and was so good. Elisabeth loved entertaining him! Good times!





Another family tradition is having Joe and Randi over for the 4th or 24th for dinner and FIREWORKS! Jereld came along this year too, and the kids were extatic when they saw all teh fireworks they bought. We had a YUMMY dinner with pulled pork and salads and then spent hours out side. Randi, Joe and Elisabeth decorated our whole driveway with sidewalk chaulk art. The 4 Johnson boys are terrible when it come to fire and came up with all sorts of ways to modify the fireworks. We missed RJ, our last pyro, so we took a picture to send to him. All in all it was good times for all!

Youth Speaker...

Congrats Sam! You did such a great job as youth speaker today. Can you believe all the compliments you got? You didn't sound nervous at all. Getting to speak with your Grandpa about our Pioneer heritage was a real treat!

Day at the Lake...

Our good friend Tom and Courtney Monsen invited us boating this weekend. We had such a great day up at Echo, the weather looked iffy but it cleared out and was wonderful. The kids loved riding the tube and Sam even tried wake boarding. We all adore their little kids, and Elisabeth and Berklee love to see each other. We went home very tired and very happy.

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Primary Bike Parade...

The annual bike parade was once again a hit, biggest success? SNOWCONES! Somewhere in the last year we have turned into a Primary of little kids, so the pace was a lot slower this year which was great. Everyone always has such a nice visit afterwords and then its easy clean up and done by 11am.

Thanks to our friends the Barrett's we had tickets to the Tabernacle Choir's Pioneer Day Concert. They celebrated the choir being pioneers in recording history for 100 years. It was the best musical performance I have ever been too. My favorite numbers were "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Seventy Six Trombones (The Music Man), and "Come, Come Ye Saints." They also sang "Amazing Grace" accompanied by bag pipes. The kids enjoyed the Nigerian carol "Betelehemu," with its African drums, hand clapping and over all rowdiness. It was kinds weird to clap for the choir since we have only seen them at Conference.

Keri had gotten the tickets from her grandma, and they were President Eyring's seats! We sat behind President Uchtdorf 's brother and nieces and nephews. And we were about 30 feet from President Monson! It is amazing to be that close to a prophet of the Lord. He gave the final remarks, and well, is just amazing.
After it was over, the first 5 or 6 rows (we were on row 3) go out the way the Church leaders do. you go under where the stage is and you are in a tunnel system. The Church security pick you up in golf carts and take you to your cars. They drove so fast! Zipping along passing each other, he said they had to go quick because they have a lot of people to move. My kids giggled the whole way. We started at the Conference Center, went under the TEMPLE, the church office buildings and ended up, some how, behind the Lion House. So fun! We then walked around Temple Square for a minute, and took pictures with the flowers. The flowers didn't show up much in the dark, put I love the picture that a stranger offered to take where they take wedding pictures. We all look so nice, and happy, and matching.

Sam has been asked to be youth speaker Sunday, he is speaking with Grandpa about pioneers, so we have been reading pioneer stories from our family. It was a good way to prepare for his talk and set a good tone for the weekend.
What a great night! Thanks again Collin and Keri!

Summertime...

We've been busy this summer, traveling, having friends over and spending lots of time as a family. I also, somewhat unfortunately, have not had much of a break from PTA. We had my friends from high school over, the Hiatt's last week for a bbq and homemade root beer. We spent a day swimming at Jana and Chad's, the kids LOVE being with their cousins. We still are trying to fit in a sleepover, now that baseball is over, before the boys go back to school in 2 weeks. We've been working on gathering stuff for Girl Scout camp, Scout camp and, eeeekkkk, seventh grade registration.

Tonight we had a special treat, we had some of my oldest friends over for a get together. Annie and Amber grew up on my street, we spent hours together as kids and I hadn't seen them forever. Thank goodness for facebook! Merritt was one of our good friend too and she and her little family came to. It was so good to catch up and visit.

Have I mentioned lately how CUTE my great nephew is?

Ahhh!!! Look at the new Ticker!

MY NEPHEW JORDAN COMES HOME IN A SHORT 5 MONTHS and 2 WEEKS! Where has the time gone! He will be home with us for Christmas! I miss that kid, but I am proud of what a good missionary he has been!

Our Little Ballerina...

Here are Elisabeth's recital pictures, finally, they performed the Wizard of Oz. She was fire for ballet and a villager in the Land of Oz for character. She is loving summer dance, especially jazz. She is also taking a pre-pointe class in order to be ready for "beginning pointe shoes" in the fall. WOW! How did she get so old, she is so little it is hard to imagine her being on pointe. She is in a group of girls who are really working hard and advancing quickly, not to mention they all get along so well. Before I know it I will be driving to Holladay 3 days a week... so my question is when does she get a driver's licence?

Oh My Family Makes Me Laugh! or Island Park 2010

And laugh we did! We had a great time at the "Rigby Reunion" in Island Park this weekend! My aunts had invited us all up at Christmas and we decided on the 4th of July. Boy were there a lot of us, just from my dad's family we had 17. And then my cousins and all there darling little kids. Our big kids had a great time playing with the the babies, riding four wheelers and running a muck together. We spent Friday visiting, we talked about how great it is to be able to keep up with each other on blogs and Facebook, it makes conversation so easy. Saturday, the 17 of us went to visit Quake Lake. It was so interesting, in 1959 there was a 7.0 earthquake just outside of Yellowstone Park, that is the same magnitude as the Haiti earthquake. It was also crazy to think that my aunts, uncle and grandparents had been staying in West Yellowstone when it happened. That night we gathered behind our hotel for treats, the boat regatta (CoeLen and Bill got 3rd place!) and fireworks. The fireworks were set off on right there and were right above us! Elisabeth went out on the boat to watch them from the water. There was one scary moment when one firework tipped over and lit sideways sending fireworks everywhere, but everybody was okay! Sunday, we went into the park and visited Old Faithful, then the three cars went separate ways to get back. Our car, Miah, grandma, grandpa, Elisabeth, Jana, Stetson, Sam and I took the loop back out to West Yellowstone. The ride was pretty long, but we saw buffalo and elk. Elisabeth had told us shortly after getting in the car that she needed to go the bathroom, she was a trooper and just a few miles from Madison, where we planned to stop, the traffic came to a stand still! For almost 2 hours! We were entertained by Stetson! Jana and I laughed so hard! And he really can get my kids going! Well pretty soon everybody needed to use the facilities, and laughing that hard wasn't helping! Finally people walked to the front of the line and when they came back they reported that there was an accident at the bridge, but at that point it was 10-20 minutes from being cleared. Finally things started moving, when we hit that camp ground in Madison, Elisabeth darted for the bathroom, nobody could have got in her way. Jana said she felt 11 months pregnant getting out of the car and had to walk. It made for a good memory. Jeremiah was a saint through all the silliness and waiting, but he did have to have some alone time after that! That night we had a campfire and talked about Grandma and Grandpa Rigby, I LOVE campfire talks like that, I love to hear every one's memories and always wish we had recorded them. Monday morning we had breakfast (yummy waffles) with the clan and hit the road. My kids had such a great time, they were exhausted every night. They loved learning to ride four wheelers, they are after all adrenaline junkies. I enjoyed seeing my family and it was so great to actually have Jeremiah there for a family outing, even though he is big tease and trouble maker. So hey you guys, who may be the only ones who read my blog, lets do it again next year!

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Ladies Trip to Spokane...

A twelve hour car ride, 3 hens, 4 umm... ladies, 3 preteen girls and 5 little kids later we arrived in Spokane last week to visit my cousin Emily and her family (add 2 more adults, and two more darling little boys.) We met my cousin Joe there too (add 2 more adults and one VERY preteen boy.) We had a great visit and Spokane is beautiful. We went from one side of the valley with farms and a strawberry festival to the other side with its forest and Liberty Lake, to downtown where they were setting up for the world's biggest 3 0n 3 basketball tournament, and just east to Couer d'Alene where they getting ready for an IronMan. Wow, we saw a lot in just a few days! There were a lot of laughs, and giggling and watching a bunch of cute little kids run a muck. And my Elisabeth fell completely in love with Emily's boys, she is still missing them. Laura was my official photographer and made a darling video, it's on her blog, The Reina's in the side bar.