Utah Trip 2013

It was wonderful being able to spend some time with family in Utah.  We especially love seeing our kids interact with their cousins.  We wish we lived closer so they could have that experience.  We'll take what we can get though.  We started our trip staying over at the Andal's in Vegas.  Emma just LOVES Annadele, so any excuse to get together is great.  We were lucky enough to have Aunt Melodee staying with us for a week and then she drove with us back to Utah.  She unfortunately, for us, will not be living with us after all, but we are excited for the opportunities that will come to her in Utah.  We made a quick stop to say hello to Grandma at her work which was fun.  We headed up to Northern Utah to spend a couple days with my parents.  We were able to see most of our family.  My poor mom was so stressed out with trying to get everything ready for us that we just ended up staying at the hanger.  It all worked out.  We were able to help Daniel out by watching his kids, and got some yummy Pizza Plus Pizza.  The next day Grandpa Larry took us all for an airplane ride and then watched the kids while Mike and I went and did sealings at the Brigham City Temple.  It was beautiful and I felt such a strong love and appreciation for my ancestors who settled around the area and through whom I have the gospel in my life.  Wonderful day.  So we had some craziness with my moms car keys, I misplaced them and so we finally just picked her up and brought her down with us and met up with Jackie.  We got to spend some time with Uncle Matt (Sharp) that night and the next day we spent with the Denos's in South Jordan and then Mommy was able to meet up with most of her sisters and Mom for dinner.  Unfortunately Grandma Marla didn't enjoy her dinner, but it was nice just being together.  Saturday was Tysons baptism and it was so nice being able to spend time with family.  It was a really nice day.  We were so proud of Tyson!  That night Mike's family had gotten together to play games while the Andals were in town and we got back in time to say hi and bye.  Sunday we spent with Mike's mom and sisters family.  It was a nice, relaxing day and the kids had a lot of fun playing together.  For Labor Day we got together with the Sharp family and went to the Provo Rec Center.  I wish I had some pictures from that day because it was a lot of fun.  We swam in their awesome swim area and then after lunch I took the girls to Manda's for a nap while Mike stayed and played with the boys.  It was perfect for both of us and Emma even fell asleep with me.  Score!  Everyone met up afterwards and we had dinner and then a family meeting to plan out future family reunions.  I was sad to have to leave the next day.  We were going to go to Thanksgiving point on our way out, but decided the cost wasn't worth the time we could spend there.  Someday we'll get the girls to the Dinosaur Museum.  On our way home we decided to go up Cedar City Canyon to see Cedar Breaks.  Mike had never been and I remember it being really beautiful from my highschool days.  We took some time out of traveling for a hike and it was nice to be in such a beautiful place.  Mike was in heaven.  We then made our way to the Andals, stopped in St. George for dinner and had the best waiter that we've had in a long time.  Anyway that was a very detailed travel log, but the point was, we had a great time and loved being with family.  Let's do it again sooner than later.:)

 

Summer Fun

This summer we decided to get Emma involved in Gymnastics.  We are no longer participating, but had been taking Emma to Physical and Occupational therapy.  She really came a long way with her physical therapy.  She is much better at balancing, etc. now.  She still has a hard time with coordination (She falls a lot), but we are hoping that gymnastics will help her as well.  As far as her occupational therapy goes, they were just going to be working with her holding a pencil and her grip which she is honestly on age level for and so we just decided we could work with her on those things at home.  Anyway, that is a long detailed story for another time, I just realized I had never written about it on the blog. 

So onto gymnastics.  I was almost in tears the first day because I could see how good it was going to be for her and I was just kicking myself that I hadn't gotten her into it sooner.  She has really come a long way.  I'm sure she will never be an Olympic gymnast, but it a great opportunity for her to have fun, strengthen her muscles, learn to follow directions and persevere.  She gets very proud of herself when she is able to accomplish something that at first was very difficult.  She has come a long way and I am proud of her.  Hopefully we'll be able to get Vivian involved sooner than later as well.

 

The girls are also involved in swim lessons.  We were able to take advantage of the amazing $5 sessions again this year, and although I had to wait in line, with the kids, for 4 hours to get them, it has been worth it.  Emma is becoming a pretty good swimmer.  She can keep herself a float and is really working on using her arms and legs in a more appropriate manner.  She is the queen of back floating and her teacher recommended with put her in a more advanced class.  I'm so proud of all the hard work Emma is putting in to learning how to swim.  Yay Emma!

No Vivian on the other hand is such a funny kid.  She used to love the water, but our first couple of classes she just could not wait to get out and kept telling me she wanted her towel and wanted to go home.  :)  She has since warmed up to the idea and is doing really well at blowing bubbles and kicking her legs and using her arms in the pool.  2 more weeks and we'll all be pro's.

Murray Family Farms 2013

It is one of our favorite Bakersfield traditions to go to Murray Family Farms and get their AMAZING fresh blueberry pancakes.  They have these awesome all you can eat blueberry pancakes with your choice of fresh strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry syrup and fresh cream on top.  Oh boy, Mike thinks it's worth the admission just to go for the pancakes, but we also get to play with all of their kids themed activities, go on a wagon ride, petting zoo and we also get to pick our own fresh fruit.  We decided to get some blueberries and blackberries this year.  We had a great time and came away with some yummy fruit. 

Vivian's Birthday

Happy 2nd Birthday to Vivian.  Luckily Vivian had a much nicer birthday this year than last.  Last year we were in Utah and she had just gotten out of the hospital from dehydration.  Poor thing.  Vivian loves Dora the Explorer and BACKPACK!  She also loves Elmo.  I decided to make her a backpack cake and have a Dora themed party.  I accidentally signed up to feed the Elders that day and so it worked out because we had someone to share our cake with us.  Viv got her very own "backpack", some Elmo books, coloring books, movie, etc.  She was so excited to see all of the Dora decorations and her cake.  It was a hit.  Viv is by far our pickiest eater, but for some reason she LOVES take out Chinese food.  We got her some Chinese and she just gobbled it up.  The rest of us had pizza.  :)  Viv is such a fun kid.  I can't believe that she is 2 years old already.  It has gone by far too quickly.  Everyday she will do something new and I am amazed that she is no longer a baby.  She is talking so much more and imitating EVERYTHING her big sister does.  She loves Emma!  Viv can also tell us all her letters.  It is crazy!!  I swear Emma couldn't do that at this age.  She is becoming miss independent and is full swing into the terrible two's.   She really has a fit if she is not able to do what she wants, which most of the time is play games on Mommy's phone.  She loves to sing Twinkle twinkle little star and "Elmo's World".  We sure love our Vivian and wish she would take a little bit more time to "grow up".:)  So blessed to have our beautiful children. 

 Check out those gams:)

4th of July in Vegas

We usually spend New Years with the Andals in Vegas, and we have spent a couple 4th of July's with them as well.  It has become a fun tradition and we love spending time with them and their girls.  We weren't sure if we were going to be able to go because the day before we were to leave our roof started leaking and we had flooding from our condensation pan for our airconditioner.  We are still in the process of getting all of it fixed, but luckily we were able to dry it out enough to leave for the weekend.  We had such a nice time.  It is wonderful now that Vivian is old enough to interact and play with the other kids.  It was the perfect amount of time to where the kids didn't start to get on each others nerves.:)  We were able to go to the temple thanks to Merilee and Mark watching our kids and we had a lot of fun swimming in their in-laws pool.  The girls could not get enough of the water and Emma really made strides in being able to keep herself a float.  Vivian on the other hand wanted nothing to do with our helping her, but wanted to run off to the deep end and jump in by herself.  She was scaring us to death silly girl.  We really had to keep an eye on her.  We had a great time with great food as always.  We were even able to go to Zupas since they have one in Vegas now.  I LOVE that place.  Can't wait to see the rest of our family at the end of August.

O.K. so I really wanted to try this cake.  It looked nice, but it was way too SWEET!!!  We were all pretty sick of it after about a bite.  Needless to say most of it went in the trash.  It was a fun effort on my part though.:)

   AT Zupas!

 Cousin Sarah was nice enough to do face painting for all the girls, myself included.  Too bad I didn't get a shot of my butterfly.