Utah Extravaganza 2011

We went to Utah to see two very special people graduate from BYU; my brother, the Young Brigham from Brigham Young and Kent’s sister, the cougar riding hooded Maria with her Master’s. Congrats!

Kent and I love, I mean love going back up to the Y to visit, to eat chocolate covered cinnamon bears from the bookstore, and remember good old times.  What a wonderful place!

After living in Arizona, Utah is seems so lush, green and cool. It was so beautiful.

We got to visit with a bunch of family and old room mates and friends and meet some of their spouses and kids! That was fun.

After the commencement ceremony we got together at a park with some of  the Slack family. Uncle Tim couldn’t couldn’t get enough of Elise and played with her the whole evening. We had yummy KFC and had fun chatting and playing.

We somehow got the four blue eyed cousins together to pose for a picture too.

The next day was graduation, and we were all over campus! We dressed the girls in Blue and White and tried to instill into their little hearts the desire to graduate from BYU one day.  I thing they thought that their Aunt Maria and Uncle Brigham were pretty awesome for graduating.

 

My whole entire family met up together in Provo, so that was really neat. We were all able to be together on Friday so we spent the afternoon together on campus and ate lunch together in the Wilkinson center.

There was in fact one more graduation that day that I did not mention, my sister in law, Jane Ann! She actually graduated BYU last year but being in New York at the time, she never got to walk or wear a cap and gown so she borrowed Brigham’s and we had a simple family impromptu two minute graduation ceremony for her. What a gal!

That evening we had a happening BBQ party at South Fork Park – my personal favorite park in all the world. It was so fun to visit a bunch of family, eat yummy burgers, and play bocce ball, and ultimate frisbee.

OK, I have to tell this story. So last year when we were up at the same park I took a cute picture of me kissing Anna’s cheek when she was a baby, and I wanted to get a similar one of me kissing Elise…but as you can see she did not try to look cute for the picture.

Kent also hiked Provo Peak with Brigham, we walked up to Bridal Veil Falls with the girls, Elizabeth and I attended a Zumba class with Shayla. Elizabeth made us green shakes for breakfast one morning, we ate 6 different type of pizza one night with Maria and Joel, we visited lots of old friends and roommates, we stopped in St. George on the way home and visited the Brigham Young winter home with my parents and attended the St. George Temple.

Side note: driving from AZ to UT is not fun with a baby and a toddler. But driving through the night is even a worse idea the driving through the day.

Ward Campout and the 24th

It is sooo nice to get out of the heat of the summer to the smell of pine! Ahhhh we love it, even though it rained on us, yet once again, actually even hailed. We borrowed a big old tent from some friends which was awesome. It fit the pack and play for Anna, an air mattress for us (Ok I had to convinced Kent that we were still rugged campers even if we slept on an air mattress), and Elise slept in her baby carrier, and the tent had a bunch of extra room too; I am sold on getting a big tent for camping.

Camping with a toddler is a different experience. At first I was using tons of wipes trying to keep her clean every time she touched the dirt and then I decided it was a loosing battle and I would just let her get dirty; we were camping right? I did cringe when she was pretending like she was drinking and poured a cup of dirt in her mouth. She was quite the ball full of dirt and mud by the time we left that we could hardly recognize her. We threw her strait into the bathtub when we got home and found our little girl again under all that dirt. But she did have so much fun running around with the kids and playing outside to her hearts content.

Anna's favorite book is called, We're going on a Bear Hunt, so while up at camp I took her on a bear hunt. We went through the deep dark forest, through the long wavy grass, over logs, and up the hills looking for a bear. Then, then we heard something, something that growled, we thought it was a bear and we ran all the way back to camp and bearly made it. Whoo! That was a close one.

Elise was the youngest camper; what a trooper! She loved being outside too! I was worried all night that she would get cold like I was, so I think I bundled her up too much, but she stayed warm and slept the whole night and I stayed cold and didn't sleep the whole night. Oh well. She was such a good camper girl.

Kent and the EQ made and awesome chocolate sauce for dessert that everyone poured over gram crackers, pretzals, bananas, and marshmallows. After all the kids were asleep, all the adults stayed around the camp fire telling fun stories. Some other BYU alumni and us were reminiscing about the crazy funness of BYU days.

That very night was our stake's 24th of July celebration of the Pioneers. We dressed Elise in Kent's old baby cowboy outfit (we had to put a bow in her hair to make sure people knew she was a girl), Kent wore his hat and boots, and Anna wore a poofy sleeved dress. Now, they had a pioneer dress contest and Anna actually won 2nd place and cracker jacks as a prize with that dress! The funny thing is that it is not really a pioneer dress. What a day!

Now 31!

I kind of like being 31 year old. I feel like I am truly a mature adult woman now. Ha! Anyway, I did have a lovely birthday. Elise’s present to me was rolling over from her tummy to her back, and Anna’s present was taking a long three hour nap in the afternoon, allowing me some free time (that is the best)!!! Kent and the girls surprised me when I got home with party hats and a cake and my dad babysat the two girls in the evening so that Kent and I could go see the last Harry Potter in 3D. Kent did not like how the ending of Harry Potter didn’t match the book completely, so after the movie we read the last several chapters of the last book so I could know how it really was. :) I got some fun things and really feel spoiled and loved.

Comparisons

Since nobody believes me still that my girls look completely different, I will show you the two girls with the same expressions so that you can see more clearly for yourself that there is nothing similar about them. Elise is in the first pic and Anna in  the second. There you have it.

Got a Smile

She finally started smiling. It is not very often that she will smile at us, but in the mornings when she wakes up she always has a smile. I got it on camera this time and I love it.