North Carolina

The best vacation of our summer was definitely Outer Banks. We spent nine glorious days in luxury and relaxation. My parents, Jeff, and Mark/Kimmie flew out from SLC to North Carolina. Alan and Lindsay already live in NC, and we drove down from CT. (Even the drive was great.) The entire family spent a fabulous week together!

Below are a few pics of some of the fun things we did while in the Outer Banks:

Four-wheeling on the beach was one of my favorite activities. Only 4x4 vehicles are allowed on certain beaches, and we could drive/bounce around for miles! The kids had a blast, I laughed for hours, and Jim loved driving thru the sand and surf!

I have to include a pic of "our" beautiful beach house. It was incredible! Whenever we weren't at the beach or out on some fun activity, we were relaxing at the house or swimming in the pool in the backyard. James keeps asking when we can go to "Grandpa's house with the pool". He doesn't realize that the house was a rental.....but we all wish it belonged to my Dad :)

Every day we went to the beach. The water was warm, the sand was soft, the waves were perfect, there were tons of shells to collect, and the beaches were very family friendly. Emi was in the surf continually, Clara collected hundreds of shells, and James loved running back and forth from the waves to the beach. The beach is awesome, the kids just entertain themselves for hours. My brother Alan brought lots of fun kites and also encouraged some serious sand castle building throughout the week!

We spent one afternoon visiting Kitty Hawk (the first flight, the Wright brothers etc.) Neat!

We visited one of the lighthouses on the Outer Banks. The kids all enjoyed climbing to the top...I on the other hand was a bit nervous. Heights aren't my favorite thing in the world. I was just worried that James was going slip through the railing or something! Paranoid I know :)

Other favorite things we did that aren't pictured (I need to get some more pics from Mark and Kimmie) - I loved going crab hunting on the beach at night. You go around 10 pm and there are hundreds of crabs roaming the beach. Kinda creepy, yes.....but very fun to scream and run around trying to catch them (the boys caught them.....the girls just screamed). I loved playing tennis, riding bikes, attempting to play beach volleyball (us Dibb's are not athletically gifted.....Jim was the only one of the bunch that could actually do some damage to the volleyball :). Oh, and enjoying lots and lots of homemade gourmet meals! Fabulous!

Aspen Grove

One of our vacations this summer was spent at Aspen Grove. Aspen Grove is a BYU run family camp located near Sundance ski resort at the base of Mount Timpanogus. It's a week of fun, adventure and excitement for the entire family. I grew up going to Aspen Grove each summer, so it was really neat to take my family! The kids had an incredible time....and so did the adults! Jim's parents and two of his siblings and their families also came up for a fun filled week.

"The adults"
Grandma and Grandpa Steele and the cousins.


Lots of face painting this week: Here is James as a pirate and Emi as a cat

Clara loved 'panning for gold' and James enjoyed 'horse back riding' - just a couple of the super fun activities at frontier night.

Emi fishing at the fish pond and Clara getting ready to climb the climbing wall:
Aspen Grove is located right at the base of Mount Timpanogus. (Jim and Brent were able to hike it.....and the rest of the fam took several shorter day hikes throughout the week). It's such a beautiful location, and just a great place to spend a week with family.

24th of July (a bit late)

I'm quite behind in my blogging, so I've decided to work backwards. I'll document some highlights of our summer vacations starting with the 24th of July in Salt Lake City. We got tickets to The Days of '47 Parade and we all had a fantastic time. The kids loved the horses, the marching bands, the beautiful floats and the "pretty princesses".

Emi, James and Clara sportin' their shades as they watch the parade from the bleachers.

Dad, Mom and James....We LOVE visiting Utah and watching the parade!

This was our favorite float! We were a little partial simply because my Dad was in charge of building this float (that's my Dad walking in front of the float). It was a giant ship, and everything covering this float was donated to the church humanitarian center. It's covered with colorful quilts that people in my parents' stake made, and the waves are made of socks...that were also donated. Even the wooden ship frame was donated to a local park. Pretty cool! My Dad put forth a TON of work organizing and building this float, and it looked great! The kids loved seeing grandpa walk in the parade!

After the parade, we walked around temple square and took some pics. It was a beautiful, HOT, dry day.............ahhhhh! Summer in Utah!

The evening of the 24th, we drove up to 'This is the Place' monument to show the kids where the pioneers first entered the Salt Lake City Valley. It was fun celebrating a "Utah holiday". It's still strange living in CT when the 24th of July rolls around each year. I still think "Gee, how come no one's celebrating?" :) We had a wonderful trip to Utah, and thoroughly enjoyed visiting family and friends!