The lake.....(not Bear Lake...obviously)

Well this weekend was a good weekend. Tom and I knew we had to do something to keep our minds off all the fun the Lillywhites, Smiths, and Goldthorpes, were having in "our" beautiful Bear Lake. Oh how we wish we could have been there. On Saturday morning Tom talked to one of the neighbors and found out there is a lake about 45 minutes from our house that has a beach and decent swimming. Tom and I being fly by the pants as we are decided to load the kiddies up and take off. We were there by 2:00pm and after a couple of detours and mini hikes we made it to the beach. It was...well not Bear Lake. That being said, there was sand and water and it was a lot of fun. The water was not the beautiful sapphire blue of Bear Lake, more of a dingy dish water brown but it did have one thing on Bear Lake. It was warm, like 84-88+ degrees warm. Yeah that was nice and the kids had a ball. We even attempted to make poop castles (gotta be a Lillywhite to get that one). After a couple of hours at the lake we packed up and headed home, we showered and then went over to the ward house to watch 7 brides for 7 brothers. Yeah, that's a whole lotta hot redheads. I'm still trying to convince Tom to grow his hair out like those boys. On Sunday it was nice to actually have a hubby sitting next to me, what a difference that makes. All in all it was a good weekend even without a raspberry shake. ;)

Momma snow day!

So we are having a blizzard here today and tomorrow...literally just watch the news. It is snowing so much that I was sent home from work today and told not to come in tomorrow! Yipee!!! I came home and took the kids with me to run the babysitter home, after we got back inside we were all soaking wet due to the snow and the fact that our apartments refuse to shovel the sidewalks....ever. So I made an executive decision to get back in my pj's to which all of the children followed suit. We have spent the hole day curled up on the couch in our pj's watching movie after movie and just enjoying being lazy. My kitchen is ferocious, but I really don't care. For breakfast we had homemade cinnamon rolls (it was also lunch for me) and I am making french dip sandwiches for dinner, followed with chocolate ice cream for dessert. All in all a nearly perfect day.

A 2 week blitz.... *warning extremely long post*

So I am going to attempt to go over the past two weeks in one post....yes this could be long. The week before the Lutz family came and visited us Tom left for Georgia on that Sunday. I had been feeling under the weather for nearly a week already but didn't think much of it. Tom was gone to Atlanta from Sunday morning till Wednesday night. He was out there for training and from what he has told me it sounds like he had a good time. All week that Tom was gone I was busy working on getting the house ready for our visitors. I felt progressively sicker but figured I would get over it before Thursday as I had already been sick for almost 2 weeks. Tom got home Wednesday and we almost went to the doctor that night but I thought....one more day. Well Thursday came and we were crazy busy getting ready for Candi and Kelly to come. I was so happy that morning as was the whole family. Tom told me to not clean and just sleep so I could get better. I tried to just rest but that turned out to be a bad idea. Tom was suppose to get home around 6:00pm but he stayed to help with a BBQ and he didn't get home until 8:15pm. The house was a mess, and so was I. Tom came home, sent me to a insta care type clinic and got to cleaning. I went to the doctors found out I had a lovely case of bronchitis and was sent home with some meds. I actually was so happy that I had something that I could actually take medicine for. I came home and Tom and I finished the rest of the house and waited patiently or rather impatiently for the Lutz family to arrive. We had put the kids to bed like normal but promised them we would wake them up when the cousins arrived. They got here a little after midnight and we were so happy. When I saw them it felt like home. I was so glad to have familiar faces in my house. I was so happy and so were the kids. We all stayed up, visited and, watched an awesome Hawaii video Kelly made for us. We didn't go to bed until after 2:00am but it was worth it. The next day was Friday and the boys went golfing. Tom was so happy to have his golfing buddy back. Then we went to Old Chicago Pizza (Yummy) to pay homage to the pic of Candi, and then went to a nature and science museum.

Its so funny how it just felt like normal with everyone again. It felt like no time had passed at all and like this is how it should always be. That night Nate watched the kids for us and Candi, Kelly, Tom and I went downtown to The Cheesecake Factory. Tom ordered some nasty pasta dish that tasted like vomit, and Kelly ordered to weird pasta dish without the pasta. My salad and Candi's sandwich were good though I don't think I would go back to eat. The cheesecake was the redeeming factor though next time we will go straight for dessert. On Saturday we woke up packed a picnic lunch and went to a neat park near downtown. It has a stream running through it so we let the kids wade through it and it also has a train and a petting zoo. The turkey was so funny, it would let the kids pet it and just kept puffing up it's chest. It made me wonder what they had done to it to make it so docile.

Elle loved the animals. The hubbys were party poopers and wouldn't come in the petting zoo with us, but they did ride on the train with us. I guess they were too tired after there awesome basketball game. Tom was so stinking sweaty after that, he was wearing a black polo shirt, not the best idea for a hot day. It was so fun to just let the kids play and visit. After we got home we all went swimming in the pool. We had some nice diving contests and even had some chicken fights.




We had BBQ that night with some corn Candi and Kelly had brought, it made us even more homesick. On Sunday we went to Estes Park, and took a little hike in the mountains. It was beautiful. Everyone kept think Jennie and Brooke were twins with there matching outfits.




Erik managed to drop his sunglasses in the toilet and Candi, yes our germaphobic Candi, fished them out washed them and gave them back. I was so surprised and still laugh about it. The best part is Erik lost his glasses and we still haven't found them yet but we are still looking.



On Monday we woke up and the guys went golfing again, Kelly may or may not have shattered a window on a house, and then we all went to a big mall by our house. We had lunch, Candi got chewed out by a security guard for not watching the kids close enough, and Tom found his dream cell phone (a watch). It all ended much to fast and we were so said to see them leave. It's like I told Tom the pain of being away from everyone had turned into a dull ache and then when they left it ripped it wide open again. Luckily we are going to see everyone for Josh's wedding and hopefully we will have some visitors in October (Eli and Asia? Jed and Suzanne?) This week has just be the usual so far, getting back into the swing of things. I promise to update more often now that we are all feeling better (knock on wood).

Our Summer Vacation...

Since we have moved we have decided to try and spend the weekends finding fun things to do around here. Since we aren't technically going on vacation we have decided that these little weekend trips will be our summer vacation. This last weekend we went to Rocky Mountain National Park, and stopped in Estes Park, on our way up. It was so much fun, and so beautiful. Being in the mountains helped with my homesickness a little bit, I guess all that fresh air... As we were driving we saw a HUGE ARK, on the side of the road so we had to stop. It was ESTES ARK. It is this huge ark that is chuck full of stuffed animals. The kids had so much fun looking around and we even let them each get a stuffed animal. Riley got a emerald tree boa, Brooke got a cat, and Elle got her new true love, Floppy Fred the Bear. He even has red hair like her other favorite Fred. We made out like bandits as it was under $24 for all of it. See why I like this place so much? We made our way up to the Entrance of Estes Park and the kids loved feeding the Squirrels, they were huge. They would eat straight out of your hands and we learned next time to bring peanuts. We had a picnic in Rocky Mountain National Park and the kids had fun flying their airplanes. In a little meadow we stopped at there was a stream that the kids played in. It was so interesting as the water looked like someone had dumped a huge container of gold glitter in it. It sparkled and anytime you kicked up the dirt it looked like a snow globe. Tom and I wonder if it really was gold, but with our luck someone probably did just dump glitter in it!!! It was neat non the less and someday we will figure out the mystery. We then drove on a narrow, curvy road for much longer than I would have liked (I get nervous about 200 ft drop offs) and at one point were 2 miles above sea level. It was a long day but we had so much fun. I am trying to learn to live in the moments and enjoy right now. Tom and I let the kids feed the squirrels for over an hour and that was probably the highlight of the day. Anyhow expect more pic's and more extremely long posts...Sorry!!!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Hello Summer...

So summer has officially arrived. Sorry I haven't posted Becky has came and visited with the boys for a few days and we have been having so much fun I haven't taken the time to post. Enjoy some pictures and an awesome video...

Fun with Cousins...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Sunday afternoon Tom, and I and Frank and Amy went on a walk with the kids to the park in Laketown. The kids had a ball playing with their cousins...