Uncle Jim and Aunt Shauna

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This Saturday we had the good fortune to be invited up to my Uncle Jim and Aunt Shauna's place. For those not close with the Bradley clan, Jim and Shauna live up in the mountains about a bazillion miles from civilization. This is a very good thing. They have all the great stuff up there that us city dwellers miss out on, horses, cows, swimming holes, rivers in their backyard, peace and quiet, and old fashioned good clean fun (which is a weird name for it, cause it usually involves getting dirty).

It's about an hour out of Salt Lake and we managed to make the drive with only one or two "Are we there yet?"s. Only got lost twice, once because the streets stopped having street signs, once because the houses stopped having numbers. It's rough finding something that's not on a neatly numbered grid, sometimes I forget how nice it is to live in a city that looks like my old geometry homework. We arrived to meet the two friendliest dogs on the planet, which didn't stop the kids from freaking out for a few minutes before getting brave enough to stand on the ground while the dogs were with sniffing distance. Jim and Shauna greeted us next, they didn't sniff and lick as much but they were at least as friendly as the pair of labs playing on their front porch.

I'd like to pretend I don't brag much, but if you're reading this you probably know better than that by now. This time I'm serious though, I have the best Aunts and Uncles on the planet. Jim and Shauna are a great example of why I can say that with such confidence. If you ever have the opportinity to meet them you should definitely take it, cause they're straight up great people.

The first activity up there was catching a horse, followed by grooming the horse, then riding the horse. All three little buddies were brave as could be and hopped right up on ol' Cactus's back for some trots around the arena. I even gave it a go. Cactus was a good sport and didn't kick any of us.

After the horseback riding, we were hot and dusty, so we changed into our swimwear and headed over to a real old-fashioned swimming hole. Well, mostly old-fashioned anyway. The folks around had dammed up a spot on the river big enough to be a pool and had it all set up with some stairs going down into the water, canoes, little inflatable rafts, deck chairs, and tables with big umbrellas in case you wanted to sit in the shade. The kids had a ball there, swimming, wading, boating, and sunning. James found his new favorite thing in the world, a green plastic canoe paddle. I haven't seen him that fascinated by anything in a long time. He didn't really want to do anything with it, he just loved carrying it around and stirring the water with it a little bit.

After the swimming hole we headed back to Jim and Shauna's house where they grilled us up an awesome dinner and the kids played until they were about half past exhausted. We had early church in the morning, so we headed out with some happy good-byes to the people and the dogs and made our way along the long gravel road back to the highway then back to the strange land of cell phones and asphalt we call home.

Thanks Jim and Shauna for a really truly great day.