Pool Party!

So my friends are awesome and have decided that we don't hang out enough. What do you do about that? Plan to get together more. We are going oldest to youngest and are trying to get together about every other Friday. One Friday will be gals/kids day and the other will be for everyone. Angela had the gals over for a water party our first time. Katy and I didnt make it because we were getting over a cold and didn't want the kidos to get sick. So you can imagine that I was happy when we could make it to Michelle's night together at the Schmidts for a pool party/BBQ. Let me tell you, we had a BLAST! Ha I think it was throwing Katy off when Dr. Schmidt came out to say hi! Thanks for the good times we really did have a BLAST!

The boys....whoo whoo!

We had Grayden that night. Wendy and her family went to see Harry Potter and decided it would be too scary for him. I think he was happy to find out we were going swimming. He kept saying that he was going to bring his mom and dad back to come swimming!

Michelle and Abbey. She was quite the diving board jumper for sure!

Bryson and Kyson making the shot!

Ha, Anna was such a CHEESE! I was lovin' taking pictures of her. Hey Anna, let's hang out and take more pictures. She could probably do that all day!

Katy liked the hot tub best. She especially loved to put bubbles on Steve's head!

Jon was pretty good with Abbey when she was so small. Now the torch has been passed to Anna. Katy attempted but I think Anna takes the cake on this one! Good try Katy! On a complete side note...Steve won the farmers tan contest! Ok we really didn't have an actual contest but I made him the winner!

Ang and Kyson. Love that it's just his head floating there in the bubbles!

Tommy was stinkin cute too! He thought it was cool to see himself in the lens!

Talia was having a pretty good time as well in the hot tub!

Katy was pretending to be Marley. She makes me laugh that she always wants to pretend to be a dog! Hey I guess that is what happens when you are a dog family!

And I of course couldn't resist taking some shots of baby Siena. The many faces of Siena! She is a cuttie too. I guess our friends all just make really cute babies! We missed Andrew and Rachel and Luke and Marin...oh and also the Cannons! Until next Friday!

Let Freedom Ring

The 4th of July weekend was such a BLAST! I think (aside from Christmas....who could compare) the 4th is my favorite holiday. I just love the atmosphere the fireworks and time with family. Love, love, love! Oh and I love all the carnivals and "town days" that every town here in Utah has. We were seriously going non stop all weekend.

After we got back from Britney's Steve picked us up at my moms and we headed to the Riverton days celebration. Katy really wanted to go on the merry-go-round. She always calls it the carousel. She loved it and it only cost 4 dollars! Sheeze! Ha. Luckily I didn't have to buy a ticket to stand next to her. It was making me laugh my head off when the pink horse we were riding on was super rickety going up and down. I'm surprised it didn't just break off the track. I guess that is what you get with carnival rides that get taken down and put up who knows how many times!

I love the picture above because sometimes Steve is just as bad as Katy when it comes to taking pictures. See funny face and not paying attention to me face above! My family...gotta love it!

Katy and I tried to get a picture taken but the ride behind us what too loud she kept saying. I guess she was a bit distracted! Ha :) After we got back from the fair we slept in the tent (see June post) in the backyard. It was so much fun. Much better than our sand dunes experience!

On Saturday we drove up to American Fork Canyon. This canyon is BEAUTIFUL for sure. We may be kind of nerdy but we got a season pass so we can go up there all the time! Like I said it's beautiful....and I forgot my camera!

Saturday night we went to see Cars 2 at the drive in with Wendy and Chris in Steve's new truck. Yes we have another new car. I think I'm resined to the fact that Steve wont keep a car for longer than 3 years...even if it is your dream car Jeep Wrangler! Ha, hopefully this truck will be his new dream car for another 3 years!

Jordyn, Katy, Grayden and Carter at the movies. I had a good time at the movies with you guys. You are welcome to come any time. Ha, Steve gets us in for free because he's a cop. You can imagine we spend a lot of time there...which makes us kind of white trash but I'm embracing it!

Monday we had a blast. Most notably we headed over to Roger and Joannes. Holladay has a pretty great fireworks show across from where they live. For the festivities Steve made his famous home made root beer. He always makes it for Halloween but we decided that the 4th was another day we need to make a tradition. I opted to make homemade ice cream. MY FAVORITE! Actually the funny thing is I made it earlier that day and put it in the freezer. By the time we got there I pretty much didn't need the ice cream maker....so you don't necessarily need to have an ice cream maker to enjoy homemade ice-cream! You should give it a try it's my Grandpa Ferguson's recipe.

Dad's Lemon Ice Cream

2 quarts milk (that's 8 cups)

1 1/2 C heavy cream

1 1/2 C lemon juice (I use limes)

5 C sugar (to taste, I use a little less)

2 1/4 t. lemon extract (this one I usually use the lemon, but lime extract is good too!)

It's seriously my most favorite summer treat. It's not quite ice cream, or sherbet. Kind of like a combo perhaps! Give it a try, seriously you will LOVE it!

I found some morning glory sparklers in the dollar bin at Target. We had a good time lighting them off. Katy watched on Steve's lap. She was not too impressed. She did watch the fireworks with her special headphones aka Steve's gun earmuffs! All in all it was an excellent weekend for celebrating! We are blessed to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Paisley Poppy!

Britney and I have grandiose plans for taking pictures all the time. But for whatever reason A LOT of them never work out because we are both just running around non stop. Also the fact that we don't live all to close to each other doesn't really help. For instance, we wanted to do bunny pictures for Easter up in the cherry orchards. Didn't happen! That is just one example.

Last year we talked about taking pictures in the poppies. She has a field of them up by her house. We weren't really sure when they were going to make an appearance because we weren't even sure if winter was going to end or if we'd ever see spring or summer for that matter.

Britney texted me a picture of the field a few months ago that was totally green and had a frowny face on it. I assumed that they had all bloomed and we had missed all of them. Ha, that's the pessimist in me...remember the last photo ideas we had that never came to pass? Well it turns out that they hadn't even boomed yet.

I'm glad we made it up to them this year. I think we'll time the light better next time...but man o man we had a great time!

Katy kept trying to pick all of them!

Katy's new favorite thing is the underbite smile. Now something to know about the underbite face....this is straight from Steve. When he is deep in thought he pulls out the underbite. Why? Not really sure but I also know it's not all Steve because this is also straight from Grandpa Roger. Yup, when we were in the same ward and he was in the bishopric he did that same exact face when he was thinking up on the stand. Ha. I always thought it was cute....but really this brings it to new levels!

Grandma Kerry joined us. It was so nice to have her along for the ride. It's really not a bad drive but it seems so much faster when you have someone to chit-chat with!

We were trying to do peek-a-boo. Even though Katy has done this a million times...I think Brynn takes the cake on this one!

And this one is for record purposes...Katy being SCARED of EVERYTHING!!! Since she wasn't smiling Britney pulled out the clown nose. And, as expected, she wasn't a real big fan. So funny!

All in all a successful run of things!

Thanks for the great time Brit and Brynn!

summer treats

Chuck sure loves summer treats....

Glad we decided to eat them outside!

the BIRD is the word

Snowbird. What can I say about this place? I love it, it's a tradition, it's a blast! My grandparents bought a unit up here day one, which means my family and I have been going to Snowbird since before I was born. After my grandpa passed away and because our family is getting SO big we all take turns sleeping at snowbird. So every 4th year my mom and sisters and I can go and spend the week up there. When it's not your week you are welcome to come up all day every day....there just isn't room for you to sleep over. So seeing that it was not our year we went up for a few days of swimming. Mind you this was in JUNE, and I cannot believe how much snow was still up there. There was a big pile of snow right behind the lounge chairs, which made me laugh.

Tuesday Britney came up. Mom and Grandma Ida came up with us and we spent the afternoon at the pool. Katy and Brynn were making me laugh for sure!

Brynn was so nice to share her blow up tube with Katy, because she loved it!

Brynn seemed to have a pretty good time pushing Katy around on that thing!

Ha, not the most flattering light, but a fun picture non the less!

Mom and Grandma had fun watching us play in the pool.

TJ and Gage were quite the dare devils in that pool doing all sorts of jumps, flips and throwing each other off the edge. TJ was growing his hair out so he could to the Justin Beiber hair do. Katie cut it a few weeks ago and it looks really good!

After we went swimming we went up to the Plaza and got some ice cream, yum!

My cousin Tyler was up from Seattle with his super cute family, we had a fun time playing with all of them. His daughter asked Grandma Ida if I was a teenager, oh yeah! I still got it!

Mom and I went back up on Friday and that's when Katy got stung by a bee. I had just gotten in the water, Katy hopped out and wanted to go and jump in. She was deciding where to jump at when I saw a bee flying around her head. I didn't want to scare her but wanted her to move. I asked her to come to me and that's when she spotted it. She was scared and went to cover her eyes and that's when she trapped in in between her face and hands. Luckily it only got her hand and not her face, but she did get it twice. Poor thing. The rest of the day she didn't want to go outside because the bees were going to get her. She didn't mention it for a few days but did start having an aversion to "guys" a few days later.....so that is what we are dealing with now a days....GUYS!

A day in the life.....

Just catching up on some way old iPhone pics....

1. Making a fort with dad....the chairs on the ottoman is not a good idea!

2. Checking out the rabbits at the IFA store for Easter.

3. Colt laying on Katy in the car. Not sure if she's happy about that or not!

4. This girl can work an iPod like no ones business!

5. Colt sneaking on my bed to take a nap. Oh man! The Hair!!!!

6. Falling asleep in the massage chair at Brookstone, we may have to invest in this one!

7. Checking out the U of U bookstore while we visited Grandma Joanne.

8. She always has to try on hats when we are shopping!

1. Trying on the rabbit helmet at Target. We ended up getting one at the safety fair this year.

2. Checking into our hotel in California.

3. Sleeping under the desk in Vegas on the way down.

4. Poor Colt! Katy thinks he's a horse!

5. Trying on those hats again!

6. Falling asleep at dinner in California. No massage chair required!

7. Whiskey Pete's on the way back from California....bathroom break!

8. Playing with her Tangled app, we love pascal!

Fun as usual!

Big Daddy

Any man can be a Father but it takes someone special to be a dad.....

It's really hard to put into words how lucky Katy is to have a dad like Steve. Really, I don't know too many dads that get to have the same type of relationship that Steve and Katy have. His work schedule allows him to be with her most of her waking hours. She always gets up in the morning naming all the things she is going to do with dad for that day.

He is the kind of dad that will ALWAYS get the race car shopping cart (I hate those things they are a beast to maneuver through the store), that washes his car several times a week...with Katy's help (her favorite), will take her to Walmart just to go to the toys section for her to look around, he never makes her brush her teeth unless she wants to!!!, and will even let you eat chips for lunch! What's not to love.....he'll also love you unconditionally, tell your mom about 50 time a day how cute you are, and give you more kisses that you want.

Thank you for being the best kid of dad a kid could ever hope for Steve. We love you more than you know and hope you had an EXCELLENT day!

3 x 12//June 2011

Holy Tolito....June is history. Even though I am not totally caught up with June postings yet, let's go ahead and get it out there before it's gone because I don't want to forget all the fun we had this month.

We hung out with Brynne for her birthday, hung out with friends, had swimming parties, hung out with cousins, took lots of tubbies (summer brings out the grodie feet!), went hiking, hung out with our friends, did crafts, ran a race, read lots of books, went to Snowbird, got stung by a bee, ate some popsicles, celebrated fathers day, realized I need a remote for my camera (see above self time sequence!!! Colt's not even in the last one, he was sick of taking pictures by that point!), date night/temple night with Steve's family, 2 police shootings in WVC, watched Steveo help with a K-9 demonstration, slept in our tent, watched fireworks and pretty much just had the BEST June ever!

We actually got around to our spring cleaning too folks! I told my mom that and she laughed out loud and reminded me that it was, in fact, summer! Yeah, yeah. But I guess it's better late than never, right?

Katy is SO hilarious right now. She is officially, if she wasn't already, a big kid and a "real person" as I like to call her (not sure what that made her before). I know I am always writing about potty training but more updates on that....she totally has the peeing down but has yet to poop or go in a public restroom. I think she'd be happy to go in a diaper until she is 8 if she didn't have to go into the public restroom! You'd think maybe she got Steve's germafobia about public restrooms but I think she's just scared of the LOUD flushing. *Oh a side note, one time we "camped" in a KOA type campground when we went to Moab. Steve wore his flip flops into the bathroom to take a shower. Little did he know that the stalls were super small. I guess he was bending over to grab the soap and his butt touched the shower wall. He practically came out SCREAMING saying that his butt has touched the wall and that he probably had an STD for all he knew!!! Hence the germafobia*

Since being stung by a bee up at the pool at Snowbird, Katy is really worried about all the "guys" she sees! Steve picked us up from my mom's house after work when we went to visit Britney. On our way home she was totally tired and practically asleep (maybe that made it worse) and all of a sudden started SCREAMING that the "guy was going to get her!" What? We thought she saw a totally creepy dude on the side of the road until, who knows how, Steve spotted a misquote in the back seat flying around. So all the bugs are called "guys" and they are all "going to get her". I was thinking that we were doing good about the bee sting, because she didn't mention it for a few days after it happened, but I guess it heightened her fear of other "guys"....kind of like how I did not care for spiders but had horrible experiences in Hawaii with HUGE cockroaches that I am now more "fearful" and "messed up" from spiders.....make sense? I guess it does in my head! Oh and I just have to write about how Steve has taken the liberty of teaching Katy that we don't ever say no to mom or dad, just strangers and weirdos!!!! So I had to laugh to myself when I thought she saw a weirdo or stranger on the road that scared her!

This month she has pulled out the phrases like "what's the point, mom?", "what you talkin about?", and "Katy's in the HOUSE, ooo ooo" She is seriously like a sponge. We went to cousin Blake's game and she was pretty much repeating everything the guy in front of us was saying...."come on guys, let's get em'", "go Brighton"....she was making everyone laugh. I have also noticed that she has a tendency to get a bit bossy and likes to tell people what to do. Like when I tell her she can't do something, that she doesn't agree with, she'll run over and get right in my face and say "no mom, you can't do that!" I guess that is her inner diva coming out!

If this even makes you laugh or not....who knows but Steve got a Truck this month. He is the funniest guy I know. Forever he was OBSESSED with Jeeps and said that they were his dream car and he had to have one, so we made it happen. I was convinced that our car buying days were behind us (we've seriously had like 20 cars between the two of us!), because he had his "dream car". Well I guess his dreams have changed and he got a HUGE F150. He is convinced that I will now drive the Jeep and we'll get rid of my jalopy. Whatever, I totally am in love with the Jeep and am kind of shocked that he wanted a truck and will miss the Jeep, but someone has to be practical here. Besides I really do love my car. It's dependable and it get's me to where I need to go....and it does it at 35 miles to the gallon! Thank you very much! He acts as though I am making him sell the Jeep! I think that is somewhere we have agreed to disagree because Steve has a hard time believing that a really don't care about what I drive, and he always feels bad he get's the "nice" cars. Hey if it makes you happy do it, but I really don't care whatsoever so let's capitalize on that and go from there...because just as I don't get the car thing Steve doesn't really see the appeal of having someone totally RAD take our family pictures (although he loves them). So there you have it.

Here's to a great JULY!

Dude, where's my van?

Ha, every year I do this...I ask myself the same question. Why? Then I run this crazy race and I realize that even though I am totally crazy I have a total blast....although I was asking myself "why" more than once this particular year! Let me explain....

For whatever reason I always get stuck with wonderful start time or 5:00AM IN LOGAN! Ask yourself, do you want to wake up any earlier than you need to? Me neither....so I enlisted the help of my sister Britney.

Let's back up a step here. Suzie is awesome and has worked with my mom, for like ever (yes I just said like, because that's how long it's been!) so she is pretty much just like a sister of mine. I jumped on her team last year and had a blast. Nicole and I got to know some pretty great people. We obviously had a good time so we decided to do it again minus the 6 crazies we had last year. That meant we had to find more people. In the end, because of injuries and whatnot, we had to switch it all up and we got two guys we knew nothing about except that they were friends of her friends. Sounds safe enough right? Steve was not extremely excited about the fact that I would be hanging out with 2 single 30 something guys (he was thinking I was going to get kidnapped or hurt or who know's what....I guess that's the cop coming out), but like I said I was pretty much stuck with them so we tried to make the most of it!

We had a meeting the week before to decide all the details. My van decided to bring our food. I emailed the two guys to see if they wanted to pitch in (no worries if not, of course) and they were down so we gave them the simple assignment of ice and rolls. To start it all out they didn't bring anything. So once we picked everyone up we made them stop and get a dollar bag of ice and a dollar bag of rolls....thanks for pitching in! Ha.

We finally got to Britney's house. They let us sleep in the basement...where they had a king size bed and TJ's and Gages beds. Need help with your math? That equals 4 places to sleep. Got it? Well they had us upstairs for waffles (so sweet). One guy went down, the other one followed him about 5 minutes later and we followed about 10 minutes after that. So there were 4 girls and 2 boys and guess where all the girls slept? ON THE FLOOR!!!! Yes that is right, at my sisters house 4 girls had to sleep on the floor because one took the king bed and one took TJ's and Gage's room!!!!! SERIOUSLY? Yes, this is actually what happened. I figured since I had to deal with these people for the next 2 days pretty much that we'd make the most of it, not a big deal. I think in the morning I made a passive aggressive comment about how that was "really considerate" of them to leave us a nice comfy place to sleep!

So off we went. When we were running I felt that we had a pretty good groove. It was "nice" trying to get to know one another. Really though.....it was smooth sailing. Great time. I got to snap this pic of everyone at our first big exchange. Here's the gang, minus me and Cameron (who was running). This leg was awesome because runner 6 got to wear a sombrero the last half mile in exchange for a free meal from cafe rio. You looked good Nicole! Actually I do believe Cafe Rio had a van that said funny things on it like "extra meat"!

Another reason I was having a good time was the fact that we got to run through some of the most beautiful scenery!

Pretty much what you are pushing for it this beaut.....the one mile to go sign! Once you see this bad boy you are home free! It's a good thing!

One of our "favorites" in motion. I am grateful that he ran the same leg I had to run last year....which sucked! And I'm even more glad that the other one had to run #3 spot, which is where I was supposed to be until we made the switch and I opted for an easier leg. If nothing else that is what I am grateful for them for!

Good old Nicole. This gal is my running buddy extraordinaire! We always have such a blast. This was her second leg, which was NOT FUN for sure...she is a champ because this leg sucked!

Too bad Nicole couldn't enjoy the beautiful view because she was probably cursing this leg! I'm not even going to tell you about our second exchange down time....but let's just say they ate all our food and left us steaming mad when they left us hight and dry in the parking lot! Let's just say these guys were painting a pretty BIG picture of why they were still single!

After Nicole's leg it was about 9:30...plenty of time to get to Oakley and eat dinner AND get a decent amount of sleep, we thought! Pretty much all the gals wanted to just go ahead and sleep at the exchange site so we would already be there and not have to worry about getting up early to drive to the exchange. We slept at Morgan High School last year and were late to our exchange, not to mention we had to get up way early....AND you actually had to pay to sleep there this year. Sleeping in a room with 500 people snoring in sync on wrestling mats was not appealing to me! One of the guys had no problem whatever we decided but the other was being such a BUTT! He kept saying that he really wanted to sleep in the high school because it was about "quality of sleep and not quantity". Are you kidding me....there is NO quality of sleep whether you are on the grass or a sweaty mat! I'm pretty sure there is no "quality" sleep in this race in general! We finally got him to go to Oakley but he got lost on the way and we finally got there at 11:30! Let me remind you that we had not eaten yet and were starving and tired! Well the Polar King was open and they wanted to go grab something to eat. They promptly went in, ordered, and sat down to EAT for 45 MINUTES! I was livid, but really what was the point. Among Melynda telling me under her breath that she felt likes she was talking to her 4 year old, we were just holding on to the fact that we would only have to be with them a few more hours!

By my last leg I was totally dragging because we pretty much didn't eat dinner when we got there we were so hammered and felt like sleep (what little we got) was more important! The dragging in motion!

I was happy when my leg was over though! At least my ladies were awesome!!!!!

Lacey totally kicked butt, along with everyone else that ran!

Poor Melynda.....this picture doesn't even do her poor blisters justice because they were NASTY and they looked like they hurt so bad! She rocked it too. Her leg's sucked too!

Just in case you cant read this dude's shirt it says "running sucks".....by this point, I couldn't agree more!

Here's our team....minus Cameron again because he was running! You know the dude in the back is totally trying to get in our pic! Love it! Even though we had to run with two butts I had a great time, and have had a blast laughing about our experiences! Thanks ladies I really did have a blast! Thanks for listening to my rants and raves! Good bye Wasatch Back...until next time!