July’s adventures brought us to Utah for our annual Fourth of July time with our Utah family, a trip up to Utah State for Sophie to check out the campus and the ROTC Air Force detachment, Utah Valley University for Simon to check out the campus and just all around fun with our family. Sophie participated in the Northern California Air Force training and program for high schoolers interested in joining the Air Force at Travis Air Base, I started 75 Hard, Simon went through the temple for the first time in advance of his mission and more. Here is our recap of August 2021!

LOTS of fun with friends and family in Utah. We packed in as much family time as possible and it was great.

Simon is planning to go to Utah Valley University as soon as he is done with his mission; we stopped by the campus so that he could get a feel for everything. The verdict is in: he loved it! this will be a great fit for him once he is back from his mission to Kenya!

We took Simon to do some shopping for his mission. He isn’t much of a shopper in general and this was a little bit overwhelming with the sheer amount of clothing and stuff we needed to purchase but he got through it. Luckily Sophie was there to help him!

We spent the day up in Logan with Sophie to check out Utah State and LOVED it. We did a full campus tour and then spent an hour with Sophie meeting the ROTC Air Force detachment there on campus. This is our first experience with the military; Sophie is really forging this path for herself and for our family! We felt great about the ROTC program at USU and just as great about everything we saw at the school in general. This is definitely the place for Sophie; she is so excited to apply and become an Aggie! Sam and I both went to BYU and never made it up to Logan or onto the USU campus; we LOVED Logan! Looking forward to adding this as a place to our family favorites.

Sophie and I traveled back to Fairfield to Travis Air Base for her to participate in the Nor Cal Air Force day for high schoolers planning to enroll at the Academy or in ROTC to become an officer after college. It was a day long even that brought in kids from the central valley all the way up to the top of Northern California; it was a big turnout. To start the day, the parents had a long briefing while the kids all did something called a CFA or Candidate Fitness Assessment for the Air Force. It is NO JOKE. It is flat out hard. You can read about it right here. Sophie did great and figured out what she needed to work on for her ROTC scholarship application, plus had multiple briefings, a mock interview to learn what to expect in her actual interview and then the highlight was all of us going out to the flight line to tour the biggest planes I have ever seen or been on. It was amazing. So So SO amazing.

I started 75 Hard without really thinking it through, just jumped in. It was hard and totally worth it…but those early days were a struggle bus in every way.

We went to the temple with Simon. Great experience for him and for me and Sam.

Went on some canal walks with these two…

My incredibly talented niece water colored these three paintings for me as a commission. I was telling her that I had been looking for Day of the Dead art and she whipped these out so quickly! She is amazing.

That is a wrap for August 2021!