July 2010

Grandpa's Funeral

July started out rough, with my grandpa's funeral. Up to that point, it was the hardest day of my life. I want to do a completely separate post about my grandpa, so I will include pictures of his funeral with that post.

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M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

I took a trip to Mississippi with my mom and sister...just for fun! It is going to take me a long time to blog about this trip so I am going to do it in a separate post. Right now, I am just going to post a couple of things about Vance and the kids before I left, and while I was gone.

The night before I left, we had a movie night and treats as a family. The boys were sooooo excited to have that many treats all at once :)

While I was Gone...

Vance was WONDERFUL with the kids. He taught Mason how to ride his tricycle, and he took Isaac's binky away...for good! Every time I would call him, he was always super patient with them, and they were always doing something fun. On this particular day, they went to Murray Park.

This video is sooooo funny!!

The kids also spent a lot of time with my dad so Vance could work. THANK YOU so much to my dad for all his help! July was Vance's first month as an agent so it was crucial for him to work as much as possible.

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Another Campfire

Our search for good camping/campfire spots continued on through the summer. But this time, we found the best spot, and no one knows about it! It is so well hidden in the trees, but it's real close to the road. We made our own fire pit, and we had to make our own trail to the spot. It was so much fun that we wished we had brought our tent and had planned on staying the night.

Excuse the dirty face and crazy hair :)

Gathering wood for the fire

 Mason helping his dad start a fire

 Doesn't that look soooo good right now?

 Whenever Isaac is playing with his cars and trucks, he has to be laying down...even in the dirt!!

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24th of July

Going to the Bountiful Parade is a tradition our little family started last year. Each year, I set up chairs for the parade, and blankets for the fireworks. Last year I got lucky with a decent spot for the parade at the last second, but this year, I wanted to be in the shade, and some of my family was coming too. So I set out chairs the night before, but they had to be behind the sidewalk. Then at 7am you could go and move your chairs up to the gutter. When I put our chairs out the night before, there was a lady and her teenage daughter close by and they graciously volunteered to keep an eye on our stuff all night long for us, since they camp out there all night long, every year. So that was nice! I got up at 6am to go to our spot, and there were people everywhere ready to jump on any spot that was not taken right at 7. I even had a guy parked in his car right at the curb I was moving mine up to. Anyways, I moved mine up and he took the spot behind me. My mom and dad, and brother Matt came to the parade. Then my brother Mike and his family met us all at the fireworks. It was fun because my family has not done this together since we were all kids.

The Bountiful Parade

Only in Utah!  (Elders in the Parade)

Mason waiting for candy! The guy standing by him raced for the candy worse than the kids did, and he was always right there by Mason so Mase did not get much. It was so annoying.

OK, I know this is mean, but can you guess what Matt (my brother) is probably starring at?! If you need to, click on this picture to enlarge it and get a closer view.

Fireworks

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D-Junking

We started going over to my grandparents house to start d-junking everything to get their home ready to sell since my grandma was living in an assisted living, and my grandpa had already passed away. We started with their trailer. Vance and I came very close to taking this ol' thing off their hands, but it ended up to be more of a hassle than it was worth. We were really excited to fix it all up, paint the outside, and I was going to make curtains and couch covers for the inside, and decorate it soooo cute. But once we got it out and looked at the framing and all of the other details, we realized how much $ it would take to make it safe and even worth having. It was way too heavy for our barbie jeep to pull; plus we had no where to put it. But it sure would have been fun!

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Mase and Jake

One of Mason's best friends is our neighbor, Jacob. This summer they were playing together almost everyday.

Mase and Jake

They found and caught a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest.

The poor thing died an hour later.

I love those big blue eyes!

Their favorite activity was turning on the hose and making mud.

Does any one's girls do this, or is it really just a boy thing?

Doesn't that look fun!

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Overnight Camping

We enjoyed the spot we went to earlier in the month so much that we decided to go back and have our first real family camp out with just our little family. Yes, we have been camping several times since we had the kids, but it was always with other people. So we were excited to "rough it" with just us!

Setting up camp

Ready for s'mores all ready!

Long, but funny story! (We Shouldn't Be Alive...hehehe!)

 So after a night of singing by the campfire, eating s'mores and laughing and having fun, we put the kids to bed. Vance and I then went back out to the campfire and waited for it to burn the rest of the wood. While we were waiting, all of the sudden we hear tons of coyotes howling like crazy; and they were not very far away. It just so happens that a few days before this camp out, we watched "I Shouldn't Be Alive" and it was an episode about a guy that was on his ATV in the mountains. He ended up rolling the ATV and got his legs pinned under it and could not get out. When it got dark, a pack of coyotes came and surrounded him and taunted and teased him. This happened every night he was stuck there. He tried making noise, throwing rocks at them, etc... to scare them away. Anyways, so when we heard the coyotes howling, we both went completely silent and looked at each other with huge eyes. Without even talking to each other, we both started banging rocks together, logs, sticks and shouting out weird noises...just trying to keep them away! We were so dumb!! We have heard coyotes howl before, but we were always with a crowd of big boys (my big brothers, dad, etc...) so it was never scary, it was cool. Plus they were always pretty far away. Not that I didn't think Vance could protect me, but there just was not anything comforting about the situation. Plus our kids were asleep in a tent 10 feet from us. Anyways, after staying up for a while, freaking ourselves out, we hesitantly decided to go to bed. Well, literally 2 minutes after we laid down and got comfortable and were both starting to feel relaxed and safe, we hear this loud sound of air being blown out of a nose, followed by a couple loud footprints. FREAKY!!! AND, it was right by the kids. Like, a foot away from the tent. Vance quietly whispered to me that it was an elk. He seemed pretty confident in his idea, so we both took a deep breath of relief, and said how cool that was, and went to sleep!  The next morning we checked outside our tent, and there they were. Huge elk tracks about a foot away from our tent. So that part was pretty cool, but the coyotes...not so cool.

Here was our washing station. I was so excited to have one of these. I haven't had one while camping since girls camp so I came prepared! A water jug, soap in a nylon sock, and a towel. It worked like a charm!

When we woke up, we ate breakfast...

...packed up the tent...

...and drove around to enjoy the beautiful scenery! 

Vance, checking out the cliffs. This guy is ALWAYS thinking about rock climbing!

A few days after we got back, Mason started getting weird rashes randomly all over his body. This was the one month we did not have insurance, and we figured it was an allergic reaction so something, but we just were not sure what. We started closely observing them, and his actions and we noticed that they would appear where ever he scratched. And then about 10-15 minutes later, they would be gone. Completely gone. I tried scratching him, and nothing would happen. So we figured that he must have gotten something in his fingernails that was causing this reaction. So we scrubbed his nails, washed his hands constantly, and a few days later, it was gone.