We had a fabulous 4th of July week!! Christina's parents and sister Ginger drove down from Oregon for a surprise visit. We had a great time swimming, eating good food, and setting off fireworks.




Of course all the girls loved to play with Mike. He's the coolest!

The kids also had fun playing chicken. Though they worked hard to beat one another, Mike and Jana got the grunt end of beating. :-)

What cute parents we have!

We definitely needed that swim because in the morning we went with Mike's parents to Thanksgiving Point's magnificent gardens.

Cheri was smart and she rented a Segway to make the long walk easier on her, and as you can see Teri and Mike loved it too! Christina didn't enjoy the whole moving and balancing thing.

The gardens truly were beautiful. Here are a few of our favorite shots. To look at all the pictures click on the web album link on the right and look in the July 07 album.

We also were able to have a lot of Christina's family come up to the cabin. We had a fabulous dinner of chicken kabobs, fruit salad, and corn on the cob. It was really fun to show off the cabin and have a party up there. We all had a blast!!!

Andy finished his Eagle Scout!!! And just in the nick of time too since TODAY is his 18th birthday! :-) For his final project Andy cleaned the trail in the gully in Sandy. He had a lot of friends turn up to help out and we collected quite a few bags of trash.

The boys also had fun showing off their gymnastic abilities.

But nobody could beat Tyler Kingston's flip!

They even found a Smith's shopping cart on their way out. It's just awesome that Andy finished his Eagle! He did a great job and we're so proud of him!

The cabin has been so good for learning how to do different projects. This last weekend we learned how to tile a counter top! It was so much fun once we got the system down.



Tiling the counter tops has been a big project. We started out having to strengthen and secure the cabinets, then we put plywood and fiber rock on top of the cabinets. Then we use this amazing stuff called Thinset. It makes a mess but it definitely is strong.


Mike had to buy a special wet-saw to cut the tiles. It worked okay, but it was definitely wet! Mike was soaked by the first cut. The blade was also not long enough to cut the edge pieces, so we couldn't finish completely.


Even though the tile saw wasn't the best it did do a good job in cutting tile for this corner piece and around the sink.


Cheri & Teri also did an awesome job helping with the tile and the baseboards. Teri put a trim around the door that gave it just the right finishing touch.

Originally we thought that we would just a full time for the back splash, but we had just enough tiles to do the counter tops, and since we bought the valley out of these tiles we've got to find something else. But we're excited for how good the tiles look! Counter space is something the old cabin never had, and it's going to be so great to have a nice clean counter top to use!