Lil' Dean Fam

Nana and Grandpa came to visit for Maryland.  We had a great time together.  Stuart and his family are also in town for the summer between their China and Thailand posts.   My kids love hanging out with their cousins.  

 I love the Hot Air Balloon Festival that our city does each summer.  It happens to fall on the week of my birthday so I feel like that makes it extra special.  On Saturday morning the kids and I got up and went in search of hot air balloons.  We didn't have to go far to find some landing in the neighborhood just near our house.  It was a really cool experience for the kids to get to see them up close and personal!  I love that I get to see this again.

I really wanted to take the kids hiking before summer was over.  I heard that this hike up at Alta called Cecret Lake was a good beginner hike.  Being that we had kids ages 2-9 we needed an easy hike!  So off we set.  Jess and I drove the kids up to Alta and when we got there, the little ranger at the gate told us that there likely wasn't any parking since everyone had the same idea as we did!  So, we decided to park at the ski resort and do a different trail.   Just a little way up the trail we passed a family with kids much older than ours.  They told us that the girl at the gate was wrong and that the hike was much longer and more difficult than she had told them.  So, we decided to just go as far as we wanted and then turn around.   We found a nice little place to eat lunch and hiked up a little farther.   The whole hike was really gorgeous but the wild flowers were just amazing! ...

This Sunday our family spoke in Church.  We spoke in Sacrament meeting for our congregation here in Utah.  Usually children under the age of 12 aren't asked to speak in that setting.  However, our kids were super brave and didn't hesitate to say they'd speak!  The boys spoke about baptism and the holy ghost and Colin and I spoke about observing the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.  We've been away from this ward for 2 years while we were living in Asia so we also talked about our experiences in Singapore.  It was a great day for us.  Colin and I were overwhelmed with pride for our boys.  They're pretty darn amazing.   I had each of the boys write their own talks.  I obviously helped them a little bit.  I helped them find scriptures and guided them with the flow of their talks, but the majority was written by them.  And... here they are!   Hi, my name is Evan Miles Dean.  I am seven years old, I will turn ...

The boys had their first multi-team swim meet this weekend at West Jordan Pool.  It was so fun to see them participate in a swim meet!  I think they both really had a lot of fun too.  So we've decided that we are going to do the pre-competition team this summer and hopefully we can join the competition team in the fall.  Ryan is definitely ready for comp but Evan has some work to do still and I can't really be at two different pools at the same time for practices so this is what we're going with!   I was surprised by their competitive nature.  Ha ha ha!  I have no idea why I was surprised that they're competitive.  Have you met their parents??? Anyway, the boys have really only been swimming for a swim team for a couple of weeks.  Because of the whole moving back to the other side of the world situation, they weren't able to start at the "beginning" of the season.  There are some things they still need to learn and work on. ...

Boys are swimming a lot this summer.  Lessons, Swim Team, Water Park, oh my!  

Well, we are officially back in the USA.  For those who have asked and wondered, we are back in the same city that we were located in before our move to Singapore.  We're actually in the same house!  You see, we only purchased the home about 18 months before we started planning a move abroad.  Really, we had waited and waited and waited to BUY  a home thinking that maybe an opportunity to live abroad would come along.  We decided that after about 10 years of marriage and 8 years with Colin's employer, that the opportunity probably wasn't coming and we should just go ahead and settle in Utah.  So, we did.  We bought a home, and then less than 2 years later moved away.  SO... we weren't quite ready to get rid of the home, we both loved it so much.  And so we rented it out and that was an excellent decision because now we are back in our house and we love it just as much as we did before.   But, anyway... we ARE back!  It...