Dress-Up, Maddie-style

Dress-up days are here! Maddie stepped out of my closet looking like this the other day. She thought it was pretty funny that her heels made such a loud noise on the wood floors. I love the choice of necklace (courtesy of Allie) and the missing pants.

July 17-18: First Camping Trip

Our kids look really happy?!

Last weekend was our ward campout AND our first ever family camping trip. The kids went up with Grandma and Pop on Thursday morning. They were so excited to be in their trailer. And I felt a little weird not having those two around all day Thursday. It was way too quiet in the house. That's when I called Kevin and told him we need another baby to fill up the quiet. He wasn't too convinced. He missed the kids way too much on Thursday. We went to Arriba's for a dinner date that night.

We drove up to camp on Friday morning - Kevin happened to have a meeting in Payson so we stopped there for a good couple of hours. What did I do? I went to Walmart for 1.5 hours - Maddie and I tried out all the toys, looked at all the books, etc. Then for the last half hour I sat in the car sorting my mountain of coupons. I was glad that I had some dead time to sort those things. We got to our camp around 12:30 p.m. and set up the tent (Thanks Adam and Kristie!).

I helped with the ward program and visited with our good friends until dinner then it was time to go to bed. The program turned out great, and although we wanted to, we didn't have time to roast marshmallows together. Maddie wasn't tired eventhough it was almost midnight. Collin zonked out while watching Nacho Libre. I cleaned the kids off with baby wipes (they were SOOO dirty!) before they dozed off to bed. Maddie finally went to sleep after midnight.


It was a good night - although Kevin and I really didn't get any sleep. We were warm but the mattress! It was you know just an air mattress. So when we woke up I asked Kevin if he got some sleep (cause I didn't) and he said NOPE. That made two of us. The kids woke up in a deflated air mattress - time to throw that thing away! But at least they were still wrapped up in two big fluffly quilts. We enjoyed a great breakfast courtesy of our ward, and then Kevin and I packed up the tent and our belongings. We sat and talked with friends and family some more, ate some lunch, and headed back to town.

We had such a good time up there.

a BIG PLUS for me was that Kevin unloaded everything from our car to our laundry room, washed and scrubbed all our dirty shoes, and loaded the washer with our camp laundry all before I even could think of any of that stuff. He had everything cleaned up before 8 pm, even took the car to the car wash for me.

What a great husband!!!

I know.

Unbelievable.

Allie will have to look VERY hard for someone to match up to this in the future.

Not sure how I got lucky.

Now for some picture overload:

Maddie found this already-eaten silly candy pacifier (the candy part is gone, she's just sucking on whatever the candy was stuck to)

Having fun in the hammock with Travin and Jace

Maddie spent a lot of time wandering around the camp and sitting in the dirtiest chair of the three kid kind we brought with us.

She loved the licorice!

The kids played Old Maid

Allie spent LOTS of time running around with her girlfriends Olivia and Vienna (seen here), also Isabelle, Bailey and Morgan among others. She came home to eat and sleep.

Collin played with Kyle. Here they are pretending to ride a quad. Collin loved riding the rhino with the Merrills.

Here is Maddie throwing a fit. She woke up so early on Saturday (6 a.m.) after not going to bed until after midnight, that by 8 a.m. she was so tired she threw this fit.

Not even an hour into our drive home, all the kids zonked out!

The whole family of campers: Merrills, Drysuit, The Other Harris, G and P Harris and us

Collin loves this quad. Hint, dad.

Collin and Jace were out before the movie was even over.

We (me, Danette, Kevin & Mark) couldn't have been more color-coordinated.
Excuse the non-makeup.

Allie enjoying the warm fire

Until next year!

July 6th - Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open house, Reunion

On Monday July 6th, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house in South Jordan. We went with our dear friends the Harrisons. It is such a pretty temple! The kids were reverent, except for Maddie who wanted to walk around by herself without her shoes on. If we didn't let her go she screamed bloody murder (in the temple!). Luckily the people there were nice and thought she was so cute walking around like that. It was such a neat experience for the older ones to see the temple inside for the first time in their life. Allie thought the baptismal font was awesome!

Scott, Preston and Jennifer Harrison - we can spend all day talking

After the open house, we all enjoyed cookies in a reception tent decorated really fancy (a la razmataz if you ask me) and then went to lunch at Bajio's with the Harrisons. It was great to see and visit with our old friends and get to go to a new temple open house.

Kevin, Bishop Bliss, and Zach

Later that day, we met up with Bishop and Sister Bliss, Zach (soon-to-be famous author) and Sharlee Largey for an old bishopric reunion at Brick Oven. The highlights of our time in law/MBA school were the years Kevin served with Bishop Bliss and Zach. It was so nice to reminisce about old times in the BYU 109th ward with them.

july 8th - veteran's memorial pool

Maddie fell asleep after playing in the pool - Andrea wrapped her up in a towel and it wasn't long before she zonked out and didn't wake up until we were ready to leave.

Wednesday July 8th - after a day and a half of yard work at our old house, we took the kids to the veteran's memorial pool. Andrea came with us so it was a lot of fun. Kevin and Allie set "record" (their own) for going down the big water slides five or six times in a row. Collin slid down the small water slide about 10 times, and Maddie went down 3 times. After the pool, we went back to our hotel and enjoyed some PF Chang's.

Before and After of the hedge out front. It took 3 hours to hedge trim this thing.

July 4th - Grand Parade

Some of the fun floats and things at the parade

Slowly (but surely) I am getting through all the few hundred photos on my flashcard, I am not halfway thru! I know I need to get them out and blogged before school starts or I will not get to do it at all.

We drove to UT on July 3rd, made it up there in 10 1/2 hours. Our first stop was Brick Oven! I was so hungry for good ol' Brick Oven. The Brown Cow Freeze was oh so good! and Kevin of course got sausage pizza. Allie begged for cream of broccoli soup. The next morning, we headed to the parade with Grandma and Pop and our good friends the Pettit's (who was also in town) to watch the parade on University Ave.

Watching the parade

Pop and Grandma L and our family after the parade

From top: Collin trying to carry an unwilling Maddie to the right path - Maddie wanted to keep going the wrong way; Allie; Allie and Maddie; Collin and Nate, Carter? and Katie inspecting a broken bird egg; Maddie walking up the ramp.

We got there pretty early, and found a little clearing really close to the spot we had last year. Only this time there was a lady who was pretty possessive about the spots she saved for her family. She wasn't very nice, and stared at me (with a frown) from head to toe until I made eye contact with her, and pointedly told me there were people coming, to which I responded "I know." (irritated at this point, so I couldn't come up with something better to say). So the parade starts and she still has 5 big blankets sprawled out with NO people! They ended up moving 3 of them out of the way. After that more people came and we just all squished in to accommodate the latecomers. Next year, we will have to come out the night before and set out our big chairs or pay the $7 to sit on the packed bleachers (just kidding, but it sounds like a great idea!)

We got a little rain during the parade, which was exciting, and it cooled off the rest of the parade. Collin was upset half the time because he didn't get any candy, and was too hesitant to fight the kid crowd for candy on the street. We saw some great floats this year, and some awesome military vehicles and even a silver and copper car. The MTC had a big float for the first time, last year the missionaries just marched. Of course we also cheered for our alma mater BYU! and the kids loved Cosmo.

Allie with her buys at Nordstrom - we heard rumors the Jonas Bros shopped there earlier that day

After the parade, we bid the Pettits goodbye and ate lunch at The BYU Creamery! After that, Allie and I went for a quick shopping trip at the University Mall (she had some birthday money that was burning a hole in her pocket), then we went back to our hotel to chill before the Stadium of Fire.

July 4th - Stadium of Fire

The infamous flag-burning

The Jonas Brothers!

SHeDAISY

Every year we look forward to the BIG jet flyover right at the start of the program. It is loud and the pilots talks to us LIVE right before they flyover the stadium.

A couple of the synchronized performances and fireworks right in the stadium, set to some great patriotic music. Bottom left: performed to "I'm Alive" by Celine Dion.

The Coxes had us over for a bbq right before the Stadium of Fire. Brother Cox dropped us off as close as he could get to the Stadium so we wouldn't have to walk.

It's become tradition for us to attend the Stadium of Fire (we've gone since 2003 and felt we missed a huge part of the July 4th festivities when we didn't go!). This year the featured group was the Jonas Brothers! Those kids didn't disappoint. They were great entertainers! I dare say there were 50,000 of the 65,000 audience screaming at one time. So much fun! A local group, SheDaisy came and performed too, and they were great. Glenn Beck was awesome, and the BIG synchronized group performances were so colorful. We enjoyed great fireworks (we thought last year's was better) and then walked home to our old house to pick up our cars, before heading back to our hotel at midnight. The traffic was crazy! We took for granted all those years we would walk back to our house and then spend the last hours of the night talking and setting off fireworks in our backyard. We are already looking forward to next year's Stadium of Fire. July 4th in Provo is the only way to go!

july 7th - family photos

I love this one!

My friend Jen took some photos of us while we were in Utah last week. The kids did great except for Maddie who didn't want to sit still for the camera, not even for one minute. So that made it hard for my friend to take photos. The two photos above are favorites from the sneak peek Jen sent me. Thanks Jen, I owe you a photo shoot!

and the awards go to...

At FHE on Monday night, Kevin and I gave out our first family awards. We made up new awards since no one qualified for the "Neat As a Pin" award - their rooms looked like something blew up in it most of last week; they both also said no one was a self-starter since they both had to be told what to do; and no one claimed the Leader for the Right award.

Kevin gave the "good swimmer" award to Collin for getting over his fear of swimming/water at swimming class. Allie got the "helping hand" award for pitching in when needed and for being good at washing the dishes. They were so excited to tape the awards on their bedroom door.

This morning, I noticed that Allie had added another sign to her door. She promptly announced that she was NOT doing any damage to the door because the wikkistix pull right off (she's gotten herself in trouble for using HEAVY DUTY GLUE on the walls and doors before). Pretty soon Collin came up and noticed that the door said "no collin". He got mad and started pulling the wikkistix* off the door. Allie luckily didn't mind "because she misspelled "allowed". So she fixed that back up and helped Collin come up with his very own sign that said "secret club". I couldn't resist taking a photo.

*These guys got the wikkistix from the local library (summer reading program) yesterday. Who knew a small pack of 24 wikki-stix's could be so much fun? I think I would like some for my preschool - this and this are my favorites!

ring around the rosie

Maddie's favorite thing to do is play ring-around-the-rosie with Allie. She loves to do it over and over!