More pictures from trip to Idaho in July

I didn't post enough pictures of the trip that Benjamin and I took to Idaho, so here are a few more.

Danae, dad, and I went to the Rexburg Temple. Absolutely gorgeous.


We went to the American Girl movie with Cali, Paige, Kit and Nikki.


Benjamin's just wondering when somebody will open his sucker!


Benjamin and Kade love their blankets from Grandma Sanders!


Cousin ("Auntie") Danae helped Benjamin explore trees at the family reunion.


Cute picture of Benjamin playing in Laura's yard.


We had a great time visiting Katie, Tanner, and Alana in Provo. It was the first time that we got to meet Alana, and Katie hadn't seen Benjamin since he was two weeks old!

Brian and Debbie and girls came to visit!

Brian and Debbie have had a great adventure in New Jersey this summer. Brian had an internship at Johnson & Johnson and had a great experience. They saw so many sights back east and are even pros at navigating around New York City now.

The best part of the internship, though, was that they stopped at our house on the way to New Jersey, and then this past weekend they stayed with us on their way back home to Utah. It is SOOO much fun to see family here and we are so grateful they stopped by. Benjamin and Hailey had such a fun time playing together. Nicole was so cute and changed so much since we saw them at the beginning of the summer! After church on Sunday Benjamin gave Nicole a big love and just stayed there for a long time. It may look like he tackled her, but he was being gentle and she really didn't seem to mind at all. It was very cute. SOOO, good luck on the final year of your program Brian and Corwin!!! Good luck to Stephen and Lynette, too. It's very fun to have so many siblings at BYU. And good luck to Hailey, who starts kindergarten on Monday with Mrs. Lemmon. : )

Family Trip to Lake Michigan

We wanted to get one good family vacation/camping trip in before David started classes again, so we headed to Lake Michigan on August 13-15. We stayed at Warren Dunes State Park and had such a great time. It was beautiful and the weather was great, too. We hit the road late Wednesday afternoon and basically just had time to set up camp that night. We put Benjamin down in the tent and he eventually fell asleep, but he woke up when we went
to bed. It was a long night for all of us! Thursday morning we just headed out to explore and went on a great hike. We tackled a huge, vertical dune and had a great view of forest on one side and lake on the other. We hiked on to the lake and had fun skipping rocks and walking along the beach.

That afternoon we went on a nice drive to see St. Joseph, a neat city on the lake, and went swimming in the lake. Benjamin had a fun time playing with the sand and David had a great time swimming out in the waves. We made a nice dutch oven dinner (chicken cordon bleu and pineapple upside down cake) and all slept much better on Thursday night. Friday morning we went on pretty much the same hike again and ended up, true to Blunck style, carrying out a beautiful piece of driftwood for our landscape. We had to laugh at ourselves. We had such a wonderful time, and it was nice to get home on Friday!

Pretty Butterfly

We have some out of control flowers in our yard, including some pretty zinnia. The butterflies love it! Benjamin loves to run past these flowers and see the butterflies move around. We also have a toad living in our barberry bushes in front of our house.

Combustion conference or bust!

Benjamin and I finally returned to David after being in Idaho/Utah for a few weeks and just turned around this morning to take David to the airport. He is now in Montreal, Canada, until Friday at a Combustion conference at McGill University. We hope that he has the most wonderful time and wish him the best of luck at his presentation on Wednesday. Things have been a little stressful for him this week as he was working through some rough spots with the research. He felt very blessed throughout the process and especially last week when he really needed extra inspiration. I'm sure he will have a wonderful time at this conference and accomplish some great networking. (David is all about networking.) : ) He took the camera, so we'll get some pictures on here at some point. I spoke to him tonight and he said it is very beautiful.