For the Beauty of the Earth

Albion Basin in July is one of the most beautiful places on earth! The snow finally melts and there are wildflowers everywhere. I took the kids up for a picnic one afternoon and we had a great time catching dragonflies and chasing chipmonks. Unfortunately a developer wants to build out the whole area (devastating I know), but in the meantime it will be one of our families favorite picture taking, hiking and picnicing spots!

Chats with Clara

Mom: What do you want for breakfast Clara?
Clara: Sugar.
Mom: We don't eat sugar for breakfast, what else do you want?
Clara: Chocolate chips.
Mom: No, we can't have that for breakfast either. What else do you want?
Clara: Honey.

Obviously I'm asking the wrong questions! Instead of "what do you want for breakfast?" I need to ask "do you want eggs and toast or cereal for breakfast?"

SIX years old!

Chase turned six in July and wanted a LEGO themed birthday party. We had just the family this year (I'm trying the every-other-year friends party) which was so much easier and so much fun! Chase wanted me to make a LEGO cake - which he was delighted with (thankfully) and I was less than delighted with (I wanted to cry by the time we were done). At the party we played 'Guess how many LEGO's are in the jar' and 'hot and cold' with a hidden LEGO guy. We also had to create something with LEGO's and then guessed what each other had made. Good times. Thanks everyone for making Chase's birthday a success! And thanks to Chase for making me smile every day for the past six years.

For Grandma Jodee

I know I was supposed to post this months ago, but here it finally is!

San Francisco!

Somehow my pictures got out of order, so here I am playing catch up again. Here are some pix of our super fun trip with Dave and Jill, to San Francisco, for the fourth of July. Unfortunately in San Francisco, Independence Day is freezing cold and the cloud coverage makes it near impossible to see any fireworks so we had to go shopping instead... shoot. :) The trip in a nutshell: we rode across the Golden Gate Bridge on tandem bikes to Sausalito, ate, shopped, visited Alcatraz, the MOMA, saw Wicked (always a treat), ate and shopped some more, rode the trolleys and overall had a blast! I met Matthew from HGTV's 'The Stagers' which was cool too.

Happy Birthday Zack!

So my Baby brother is turning into an old man!

We had a little painting party at his new apartment in Provo, but took a break to celebrate his birthday too.

This is my second experience making a cake with fondant icing, and I'm learning more about it each time. This time I learned that it turns to super glue when wet, so don't assume you can put a little black 'soccer patch' on and move it into position. Oh no, once it's made contact it's not going anywhere.

His cute wife Kylee helped pretend to blow out candles... because I forgot to bring a lighter. And a knife to cut the cake (we used forks) and cups (we passed the pop around and took swigs from the bottle - we're all family right?). Happy Birthday Zack!

Fo Kimmy

Aunt Kimmy is always finding cute things for her neices and nephews. She got this red dress for Clara at least a year ago, but Clara's finally big enough to wear it. So Kim, here's a picture of how it looks on her... and thanks again!

Growing Up...

This summer Chase hit a big milestone: losing two teeth! He feels extremely proud and grown up. Now I have to confess that loose teeth and all the gore that goes with them makes me ill. I got weak when I saw Chase wiggling them and couldn't even look when it was tooth brush time! I was really hoping the dentist would yank them (we coincidentally had a check-up scheduled while they were loose) but no such luck. The first one fell out at a friends house and was knocked into the carpet where it was officially declared 'lost'. So we wrote a very nice note to the tooth fairy pleading our case. Luckily she was feeling generous because she left him a paper dollar and a silver dollar in his tooth pillow! The next tooth fell out at home the following day so the tooth fairy was on duty two nights in a row. Unfortunately she was all out of silver dollars so she had to go to Smiths Marketplace where each and every cashier searched their tills on Chase's behalf. No silver dollar turned up, but apparently there are gold dollars in circulation now and one was found in the very last till! FFHHEW! I have no idea why the tooth fairy set the precedence of a coin dollar but once she started it she had to continue it! And here's a picture of Chase's new 'big' teeth that are coming in.

Lagoon!