Summer Fun

Other summer activities included...

A little hot hike to Battle Creek Falls. I love Lizzie's face in these pictures. It is bright red because she was so hot the whole time.

A camp out in the backyard that included a long story about a t-rex dragon, the hard ground (who knew grass was so hard and that I would want my sleeping pad so bad), a colder night than expected (again, who needs a sleeping bag. I'm in the backyard, my blanket will do, right?), and very little sleep ("Mom! Mom! The sun is up! The sun is up!"). The girls love the tent and wanted to sleep in it every night.

We also spent a great day swimming and playing up at Silver Lake. The kids didn't mind the cold water at all.

Lizzie spent a lot of the day floating away as happy as can be...

...then Katie would swim out and "save" her until she floated away again.

The Newport Beach Ride

The last thing to mention about our California trip in July, aside from the fun we had just hanging out with everybody, is that we took a ride with the girls. The plan was to have Lizzie and Rachel in the trailer and Addie on the Tag-A-Long. We had some issues with getting Addie to want to ride the Tag-a-Long which resulted in the following about halfway through the ride...

Notice that her little feet don't touch the pedals so she rested them on the down tube and balanced. Addie got into the trailer with Rachel. In her defense we were missing a part that made the Tag-A-Long more stable and kept it from rocking from side to side.



Addie finally found her bravery mostly due to "The Magic Flower of Courage." Yes, we did pick a flower for her and call it "The Magic Flower of Courage." Yes, it did work.

In the end we made it to the beach to meet everyone else and we all had a great time.

I'm a Horrible Person

I can't stop laughing every time I look at this picture.

I know the internet has a long memory so I would like to say sorry to Lizzie in advance. OK, now I am laughing again.

Disneyland

As part of our trip to CA we took our first venture into the Magic Kingdom with the kids. It went pretty well. Addie crashed with a fever in the middle of the day and took a nap in the stroller but as soon as she woke back up she was good to go.

Addie and the cousins looking forward to the day.



Lizzie was especially excited about... pretty much everything.



Believe it or not "It's a Small World" was a highlight. The girls lit up during this whole ride. Of all of the rides this was one of the best simply because of them.



Yup, Mickey Mouse pretzel. How do you pass that up?


The Teacup adventure went surprisingly well although shortly thereafter Addie started not feeling too well. Related??
I love this picture because it captures both girls together at the same time kind of looking at the camera. Not a common thing on the day.

I love the brooms in Fantasia. I always have. Kind of weird, I know.

The family with the big man. I'll be honest, I got kind of excited to see him when it was our turn.

One of the girls. I don't know if you can tell how excited they were. We waited in line and passed up playgrounds in Toon Town and other rides just to see Mickey. They thought it was a small price to pay.

Between getting the girls up there when no one else was around and getting them to look at the camera this was another major victory.

After this we went to see the fireworks. After every blast Lizzie would say "Here comes Tinkerbelle" When Dumbo came out on the zip line I thought she was going to hyperventilate with excitement.

After the fireworks we were walking out the gate and all of the sudden Minnie came running out of a gate right in front of us. The girls then promptly swarmed.

She stopped to talk to Lizzie for a second and gave her a long hug. That was kind of the perfect ending to the day.

California Here I Come (Back)

To start off July we headed back to California. This time with my family and we headed south to Newport Beach. My parents rented an awesome house that had eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a bunk room, and a pool. All of my sister's and their families came as well which made it the first time we were all together in three years. Of course, as a result, we had to do family pictures on the beach.


My cute niece holding Rachel.


Lizzie wouldn't cooperate and this is about as good as we could get. Her refusal to look at the camera was really shocking because Lizzie would never refuse to do something we asked her to do simply because we asked her to do it... ever.


See her eyes twinkle. Every once in a while I can catch it between the goofy faces and grimaces that are her usual trademarks.

All the grand kids.

The 4th of July was on a Sunday so after going to church and walking around the temple we decided to go see the boat parade. Instead of a boat parade though we saw a "people parade" and our kids were all educated in ways that we hadn't planned. After that enlightenment we headed back home and enjoyed the view from the house instead which, as you can see, wasn't altogether that bad.

The Rest of June

A quick catch up. June was cold and rainy and I really don't know what we did for most of it, but Nick did run his second marathon in the cold and rain.


Addie kind of learned to ride her bike without training wheels (She still needs a push to start and is kind of afraid, but hey, she can ride down the street without them which is improvement for our timid girl.)

Sam, Taryn, and the boys came into town and we hung out a lot (insert one of a hundred pictures here)

Sam got a mohawk which is much much better then the bleach and his Billy Idol look.


And everyone went on a really cool hike that I didn't make because of Rachel and kids and that sort of thing.

Moab (June) #2

Now here are some pictures of Addie and the rest of the crew.

It was a great trip. We were glad to be able to go out with Sam and Sara and have a good time, despite the temperature gauge that read 109 degrees. The other thing worth noting was that we rented a raft and went down the river. When I say "we" I mean Addie and the grown ups with Nat and I taking turns. Addie was a little nervous at first but as soon as we put a stick in the rope in the front of the raft that looked like bull horns and called the raft the "Blue Bull" she was good to go.






This is a crawdad we found in the river. Yes it is alive. There is a very funny story about this particular crawdad. If you want to make Addie happy ask her why her Aunt Sara was doing the boogie dance in the river shortly after her Uncle Sam threw that crawdad after her. $100 says Sam couldn't make that shot again.

Just the goofball Addie doing what she does best on hikes.