Look Who's 4!

Happy Birthday to Hailey and Mckenzie!  I can't believe they are already 4 years old. :)  The girls had an awesome birthday and we celebrated the whole weekend!

 

Hailey is all of a sudden obsessed with Elsa, so of course we made an Elsa cake for her.  Mckenzie is still totally in love with Mickey Mouse and horses, but since we made a Mickey cake last year we went with a horse cake this year.  

 

Here's Hailey helping me frost and decorate her cake and luckily Grandma came and helped Mckenzie make her cake.  I think they turned out pretty cute and the girls loved them, so that is all that matters! 

 

Here are the girls in their Birthday outfits showing they are 4 now!

 

And the party.... Here we are blowing out candles!  We bought an extra cake to serve in case ours ended up not being edible! :)

 

 

The highlight of the party were the pinatas!  Apparently Hailey needs some work on her softball swing...

Mckenzie, on the other hand, is a natural... we might have to sign them up tor T-ball this year!

We decided to make a weekend out of their birthdays... so we took the girls to Idaho for a fun camping trip.  First we went and visited my Aunt Linda in Lava Hot Springs.  There we got to ride horses, hold kittens, feed baby chicks, and pet turkeys at her farm.  We also were brave and took the girls tubing down the river.  They didn't love it the first time, but it was much better the 2nd time down.  :)  Then we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and camped out.  The next day we went and visited Grandpa Greg on his farm near Pocatello.   We got to feed his horses, ride the 4-Wheelers and we ended our trip by visiting Danny's mom's grave.  It was a crazy-busy weekend, but we had a great time!

 

 



Fourth of July Fun!

We started the day off right by going to the Murray City Parade with my family.  My dad works at Terry's R.V., so we always sit in front of his work with all of his co-workers and they make a yummy pancake breakfast for everyone!  After the parade, we decided to get out of the heat and go see the new Disney movie "Inside Out".  It was a really cute movie. 

 

After the movie, we went to Danny's dad's house for a swim party, BBQ, and fireworks!  The girls had a great time hanging out with all of their cousins and they loved the fireworks!

Pioneer Children Sang as they Walked and Walked and Walked....

Danny and I got to be a Ma and Pa for our Stake Pioneer Trek.  It was an awesome experience.  Danny and I both feel truly blessed to be able to have gone and had this experience and we were both a little sad to be back home.  It took us a couple days to get back into the normal life routine.  We could not have had a better family.  Our children worked hard, played hard, and had great attitudes!  I am that crazy mom who has still never left my girls for more than one night, so I was a little nervous to be gone for 4 days, but once we were on the Trek, we were so busy and we had a "new family" to worry about I was actually fine to be away from my girls.  Plus, they were in good hands.  They were totally spoiled by their grandparents and were probably not missing us at all! 

 

Anyways, back to the Trek.  It was a great boost for our marriage.  It was fun to spend time alone-ish with Danny and to work hard for a good cause.  It was also wonderful to leave our phones and other worldly cares behind for a few days.  We had a great time just talking and playing silly games and really getting to know our new "family".  One of the things that our Stake wanted the kids to learn was that they can do hard things.  I really liked this and have started to use it with my own girls.  Now when they complain about making their bed or cleaning their toys, I remind them that they are awesome and they can do hard things!  They still complain, of course, but I hope the message sinks in one day!  Here's some more pictures from Trek...

 

Let Summer Begin... (The Zoo, the Fair, and a Dance Recital)

We had a pretty awesome weekend.  Oh how we love the summer! Thursday night was family night at the South Jordan Fair, so we had to go.  The girls had a blast riding on all of the rides!  Their favorite ride was the Ferris Wheel. 
  

 

 

 

 On Friday, we went to the zoo with Grandma for "Fun Friday".  They have a pretty cool dinosaur display going on right now which the girls really enjoy.  Mckenzie has become so curious about everything.  She wants me to read every sign about every animal and comes up with some pretty tough questions. 

 

 

 

Hailey loved this baby dinosaur and thought it was so cool how it's eyes moved.  She could have sat and watched it all day! 

 

 

Then on Saturday, we had our final Dance Recital for the year.  The girls did great.  They are definitely performers!  They love to get all dressed up, dance on the big stage, and of course, they were super-excited about the flowers and trophies they got when it was all over!  We had a great first year of dance! 

 

 

 

 

 



Family Vacation!

 

We go to St. George every year with my family for a vacation.  We usually spend most of our time boating at Sand Hollow, but this year was a bit colder than usual.  Of course, we still went boating.  Yes, the temperature was only in the high 70's, and yes, the water was really cold, but there were hardly any other boats around and the water was glass!  We all took our turns wakeboarding and skiing and then the girls got their turn on the tube!

 

 

 

 

 

It was the perfect weather for hiking and we did a lot of it!  Here we are hiking at Red Cliffs.  There was a lot of water in the pools this year, so it was a lot of fun.  Hailey had to be in front the whole hike, of course!

 

 

 

Playing around with slow motion...

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we went to "Crack Mountain" (as Kenzie calls it).  I don't really know what it is called, but the girls love hiking through the crack.  While we were here it started to pour.  I have never been there in the rain and it was definitely an experience.  At first, we just camped out under a little arch, and then a little bigger cave.  Then we just braved the rain and made it back to our car.  It was crazy to see all the rain coming off the red rocks... it was like a flash flood, waterfalls everywhere... and yes, we were all soaked!

 

 

We ended up coming back another day and finished what we started...

 

 

 

 

We also explored Snow Canyon.  We did the Three Ponds trail, which was a little long for the girls and had a lot of sand.  But, we made it and the girls had fun walking barefoot and jumping off any rocks we could find.   We also saw blooming cacti which was pretty cool!

  After our long hike, we took the girls to the Sand Dunes and just let them play. 

Last, but not least, my dad and Danny went and did a little exploring in the underground caves.  I even convinced Mckenzie to come down and explore a bit!  (Pretty brave!)

 



 And of course, we did a lot of swimming at the condo!  We had a great trip!  It is always fun to get away from normal life and spend some fun time with one another.  It is also always hard to come back to reality!