Bear Lake

July 22

Roy and Annette took some tim off work and for one of the days we decided to go on a day trip to Bear Lake.
It was cold but I just can't get enough of water for some reason. The best way to deal with cold water: run and dive in head first. Brrr..... So much fun!

Splashing around. We swam, ate some food and swam some more. It was a hot day and the cool water felt delicous. The water was super high this year and you could see the tops of trees pretty far out in the water.

Daddy & Mommy Poulsen even came in!

I'm on top of Kortney's shoulders. This did take a few tries especially to get a picture of it.

Kortney on my shoulders!

So apparently Bear lake is famous for its raspberry milkshakes so we got some!

Very delicious.

We also went and visited my Grant Aunt Renee on my Grandma Shurtliff's side of the family but I found out that she was also best friends with my Grandma Ririe. Small world eh? She had the coolest house ever! It was pretty much a museum. I can't remember when it was built but it is very old. She had an antique stove that she said still works, an antique fridge and pretty much antique everything. It was way cool and I wish I had taken some pictures of it. When I told Renee that I was Jean Ririe's grandaughter she was excited. She told me that she had something that my grandma made and started to walk towards this china cabinet. Right when she started walking over there I knew exaclty what it was. There was a bear sitting on the top of it with a cute dress and hat on. She pulled it down and handed it to me. I almost started crying holding the bear. For those of you who don't know my Grandma passed away in November three days after her 82 birthday. It was a beautiful bear and had Grandma Ririe written all over it. It was one of her musical box bears and played "As I Have Love You." It was touching to see that my Grandma's bears have made it all over the place and that she has touched so many lives.

On the drive home we drove through Logan and took a detour near the temple. It was very pretty but I noticed that it doesn't have an angel Moroni. My aunt said that it is one of the only temples without one and it makes me wonder why we have never added one.

Chelsea's Farewell

July 17

Chelsea entered the MTC on Wednesday, so the sunday before we went to her farewell talk and had a family get together afterwards. Chelsea will be spending the next 18 months preaching the gospel in the Des Moines, Iowa mission.

Chelsea's birthday is while she is in the MTC so we celebrated it early. We didn't have any candles so this is Chelsea holding a lighter as her candle.

Chelsea and her cake!

The food! It isn't a Shurtliff get together if there isn't food!

Andrew squeezing lemons for homemade ice cream!

Chelsea & I. She is going to be a great missionary but I sure am going to miss her!

Kortney, Chelsea & I

Homemade raspberry ice cream! So delicious!

I think Andrew likes it!

Camping with Spencer & Kimber

So I am a little behind on blogging so I deceded to include the dates of the next few posts so that you don't get confused and so that I don't either.

July 15-July 17

Spencer invited me to go camping with him and Kimber. Kimber has never been camping besides girls camp. Spencer felt that needed to be changed. It started out as kind of a stressful trip. We were going to go camping up Big Cottonwood canyon but when we got there the campsites were full! Ahh! To make a long story short we ended up going to Strawberry Reservoir which is on the other side of the mountains and quite a longer drive than we had planned but we found a spot.

The view from our campground.

We didn't arrive until around eight at night so we had to hurry and set everything up before it got dark. Quite exciting. Where we camped was mostly for trailers so there wasn't really any shade. It got very hot during the day.

Spencer setting up his new camp stove! We had hamburgers. Spencer tried to drain one of the pans of all the grease and ended up dumping one of the hamburgers into the fire. Luckily we had another one. :)

Our roaring fire! We roasted some very nice mallows. The BIG ones! :)

Chillin' in the tent.

My sunglasses broke a few weeks ago and so I'm currenlty without any. Spencer had a extra pair that he let me borrow. Good thing too because it was super bright during the day. Do you like our tent? It is bright orange and yellow!!

To stay cool we went down to the reservoir. The water looks super blue which it was but the water was also murky right near the shore so we didn't venture in. There was a very nice breeze coming off the water so we just sat and read and relaxed.

So pretty!

Rockin' Spencer's shades!

Our sweet tent! I don't know why but I really like this picture!

We really wanted to go on a hike. There were some trees up behind our campground so we decided to go explore. It ended up being a forest of birch trees. It was absolutley beautiful especially since we went in the evening when the sun was setting.

I love nature!

We randomly came across this and my first thought was "I bet there is a dead body in there!" I think I have been watching too much Bones! :)

Pretty clouds. It was so beautiful up on top of the little hill that we climbed. You could see out on the reservoir and it was gorgeous!

Hiking back down.

It was very fun camping trip. Thanks for inviting me Spencer!

Harry Potter: The End of an Era

As you all know the last Harry Potter movie came out on Friday. I went and saw it with Tyler, Kortney and Annette at 3:15 in the morning! It was so much fun. Overall I really liked the movie even though they did change a few things from the book which I wish they hadn't. It was fun seeing the movie on opening night will all the other hard core harry potter fans. It was fun to react along with the rest of the audience to the movie. Everyone laughed, cheered and even cried. During one part of the movie it was dead quite in the theater except for sniffing noises. You could seriously hear people crying. It was so touching. Everyone cheered at the part with Mrs. Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange! It was a very emotional movie.

The trio from the first movie that came out in 2001 and here we are ten years later for the last film. Look how small they are. I grew up reading and watching these books and I feel like they have grown up with me. Harry Potter will be something that I will always remember and always look back on when I think of those days. I can't believe that it is actually over. At least we can relive it by reading and watching the movies again and again. There were so many emotions that come with the ending of this fabulous story.

Ginny Weasly played by Bonnie Wright. She did a fantastic job. It was fun seeing her in the "19 years later portion of the film." When I read the books I always wanted Harry to end up with Hermione but after watching all the movies and see Ginny interact with Harry I guess you could say that I am now happy that he ended up with Ginny. They make a very cute couple.

Snape. What can I even say about him? He rocked! Alan Rickman was amazing! Everyone in the theater got a little emotional when they showed Snape's memories. It was very touching.

I really liked Neville in this movie and thought the actor that portrayed him did a good job. I love his funny lines and what he brought to the movie and his heroic speech at the end of the movie.

Farewell! Good luck with the rest of your lives Emma, Daniel and Rupert! Thanks for giving us all the gift of Harry Potter on the screen! You were amazing!

Camping with the Madsen's

The Madsen family invited Tyler, Kortney and I to go camping with them on Monday night and they were leaving the next morning. It was a last minute invite but we decided to go and ran home and got everything ready.

Our cute group.
We went to American Fork Canyon. What a beautiful area.
We hiked around the reservoir.

Rachel

Andrew

He is so photogenic. In my opinion at least. He is so adorable and has so many different facial expressions.

Kara all strapped into Sam's backpack carrier for her.

I think Andrew got a little tired. Ha ha

After the hike Josh decided to run and leap into the water. It was very cold!

Brrr....

Sam and Kara enjoying the sun.

Chelsea reading.

Kortney, Tyler & I

Andrew's shocked at how cold it is face.

He did shout a couple of times "It's freakin' cold." Quite funny coming out of his mouth. Ha ha.

Rachel sitting on a rock trying to get warm after she ran into the water.

The rest of the crew.

Tyler "tanning"

Of course I did get into the water a little bit. I just couldn't resist!

The Three Muskateers!

We also played lots of games while camping. Skip-b0, Ripple, Rage, Armpit, Spades to name just a few. It was a very fun time.

Kortney with her braided beard. Rachel thought this was hilarious and kept on making her do it.