Good King Wenceslas

I loved this sculpture at a mall near Wenceslas Square in Prague.  The Czech people believe that there will be an hour "when the Czech peoples will find themselves in mortal danger. But at that hour Good King Wenceslas will rise, awaken his sleeping warriors to save the motherland."  There is a legend that he has not shown up yet because he is trying to ride an upside down horse.

Prague was beautiful, but the people there seemed so down. When you ask how they are doing, they say 'bad'.  They don't talk about their accomplishments because they don't want other people to be jealous.  Until King Wenceslas shows up, they feel alone and disheartened.  It made me so grateful, especially having conference last weekend, for the power of prayer.  I know that I can turn to the Lord at any time, for any reason, and He is there for me.  I know that I don't have to wait for relief to come, or to wait for some event to happen that I have no control over.  I know that when I am discouraged, when I am stressed, when I am heartbroken, I am not alone.  It is such an incredible feeling to know this, and if you don't know it for yourself yet I hope you will give it an honest sincere try.

Professional Drivers on a Closed Course

Lagoon in June was last week, and for the first time in who knows how many years, the weather was amazing! We have many traditions that have been adapted over the years. We used to rearrange the letters on our shelter from "Parry Family Reunion" to "Pray Firmly" and things like that, but then Lagoon started printing shelter assignments on a sheet of paper, so that was out. One year we made a point to get kicked off as many rides as we could *without* being ejected from the park. This started a whole new game while at Lagoon-a-Beach. There is a water slide that you go on with tubes. You start at the top in a pool, slide down a little bit into another pool and so on for 5 or 6 pools. Well, they say you can only have up to 4 tubes linked together. For those that know my family- we have a lot more than 4 cousins, and we like to do things together. I think our record was something like 22 tubes, and we also happened to drag a lifeguard down- she had jumped on our arms trying to break the chain apart, because while it isn't safe for that many people to slide down together, doing a pile-driver on someone's elbow is perfectly acceptable. So, we have been kicked off that slide many times. The next tradition is going to raise some eyebrows, but it was one of our very favorites. Bumper cars. with about 25 cousins. . We picked a car from the line, made sure someone not related to us got that car, and hounded that poor person the entire time. I'm a little embarrassed (but really totally proud) of how many times we ended up making teenagers cry because they just couldn't figure out why it seemed every single person was out to get them.
We do have a new tradition that started a few years ago. Go Carts! They are so much faster than bumper cars, and you have to be a lot sneaker about hitting in to people. This year we had 14 of us and got the track all to ourselves.

Waiting in line- we got to cut in front of a group of six because the timing was right. Don't worry, we had let them cut first, so it was only fair.

 I just had to get Trav in his pretty pink car

Riiiiiight....

I took a picture every time I passed someone. Better luck next time Justin!

Our faithful fans

Chad and I tag-teamed it and spun someone out. It wasn't Jason though. Jason did not spin out, I can not stress that enough.

My mom's car got stuck for about half the race. It was awesome- they gave us a free race because of that, we got to cut to the front of the line and everything. Way to go mom!

Poor Matt was stuck on the overpass while my car was still cruising.

Jason had been trying to spin Trav out and I snuck in and stole the point. Here he is trying to take credit for the assist.

I don't remember why Sharon is trying to hit Travis, but it makes me laugh

She was telling Jason how he should do his hair

Jason's clothing company has extended to shoes now! His are the ones on the left.

I got 2 points for this one. sorry Matt!

Just for Betsey- the Terroride!

Paul and I heading in to the dark hallway. I don't think he was as scared as I was.

And I think these two must have taken a nap during the scary parts.

Colossus!!

This was on the first loop

I just love the lady's face behind us in this one.

Lagoon was totally awesome. I have been reminded over and over just how amazing my family members are, and I'm so glad I get to spend so much time with them this summer! Speaking of which- Jack's Pack plays tomorrow night! Come out and see why we're still undefeated!

A light at the end of the tunnel!

After way too many years and too many credits not transferring like they should, I found out I only have one semester until I get my associates! Actually, only 2 classes- a humanities class and upper division literature and I finally get a piece of paper to give me some assurance of credits actually counting for something. I'm not sure where I'll go after fall semester, I keep hearing horror stories about trying to get residency at ASU so I may end up moving to St. George if *someone* would just buy a house there that I could stay in! But I really want to play tennis again, so I may just drag out my stay there another semester so I can play again, but we'll see what happens. It's nice to have options!

 

Love this team!

Your face is full of hot air.

 

Chad and Elisa planned for us to go up in a hot air balloon ride! We headed to Utah on Friday to stay with them, and headed to Park City before 6am.

 

We got to watch everyone filling up the balloons

 Chad and I helped fill up our balloon. They set up a big fan and we just had to hold the end open. When they filled our balloon they noticed two large holes and decided we better not go up in the air until it could be fixed. Now, I know what you're thinking- "It's a good thing they noticed that on the ground instead of in the air!" But I'm pretty sure the balloon would have flown just fine. Regardless of my assurances that we would be ok, we decided to reschedule for another day. With heavy hearts we watched all the other balloons float away, and ended up seeing three of them land near Jason's office.

 The day was not lost, though. We signed up for The Dirty Dash 5k for that afternoon.

 Here's our group waiting for our 11:40 run time. We made sure to get plenty of before shots while we could still tell who everyone was.

 Believe it or not, I am actually a lot cleaner in this picture than I was halfway through the race. The only thing you could see on my was my teeth- even my eyelashes were so caked in mud you couldn't see past them to my eyes!

 

We had some guys throw mud at us thinking it would be a fun picture, but the timing wasn't right so we just look weird.

This wall was deceptively hard to get over. Not for anyone else, but I sure struggled with it. You couldn't get a foot hold cause it was too slippery and just kept breaking away.

 I was still smiling in this picture because I didn't know how cold the showers were going to be. Luckily you went numb after a few seconds and could get enough mud off to at least get home.

It was such a fun idea and we already started making costume ideas for next year- think tutus and shower caps. Anyone else that wants to be part of the Parry group just let us know!