Oops! Sorry, Dad!

So, the other day we were all kind of sitting around in the front room watching tv and the kids were playing around, running in and out of the room. I heard a loud crash and when I looked up, this is what I saw. Gene, who had been sitting in the rocking chair, relaxing and enjoying a cold drink of water, found himself with his feet up in the air and his head on the ground! I guess Lani had run past him and decided to hang on the back of the chair to say hello to him from behind. She was just as startled as he was when he came crashing to the floor! It was really funny! I hurried too snap this photo.

Pioneer Day Fun

We had a lot of fun this pioneer day. Our Grandma came up and spent two nights and three days with us! We sure had a lot of fun together. We started out the day putting on our Pioneer day outfits so that we could surprise Grandma with them. My girls have always wanted a pioneer outfit of their own because each Pioneer Day I come out in my trek outfit to surprise them. They always stare at me with really puzzled look on their faces. So this year, I decided to make them their own outfits. They were so excited to show Grandma! We hope that someday we can take our kids up to Martin's Cove to pull Handcarts with our girls.

What a special time the 24th is to me. It has been exactly 5 years since Gene and I were able to take our Snow Canyon 3rd ward youth to Wyoming to pull handcarts and to camp. We walked 26.5 miles and had such a wonderful and spiritual time! It was one of the most monumental times of my life! I could actually feel those people and their testimonies so strong! It really is amazing how you can feel so much when there is nothing there really. The spirit there is unreal and I would reccomend this trip to anyone! What a wonderful experience!

Well, after breakfast, we headed downtown to the Pioneer Day Parade. It is always so much fun! I didn't get to see too much, though because Kiara wasn't a big fan of all the noise that the fire trucks make. Lani and Gene were able to sit on the curb and enjoy it. Kiara and I sat in the car with Grandma in the Lin's parking lot and Kiara watched her Barney video while we waited. We still had a great day together.

Kiara had finished eating lunch one day and gone off to bed for her nap. I cleaned up in the kitchen and about 5 minutes had gone by. I decided to find out what kind of mischief she had gotten into. When I walked into her bedroom, this is what I saw. I figured that she was just pretending to sleep and would be opening her eyes at any moment. However, she was out! I just had to grab the camera and snap these cute pictures!

Kiara is 2 now and she just amazes us everyday-she has a huge vocabulary and sings to us at the top of her lungs. She actually is a pretty good singer. She knows her alphabet and can even tell you what the letters are just to look at them. We are working on the sounds now, which she also knows most of. We have a blast with this sweet little girl every day and we just wouldn't know what to do without her!

We Love Our Grandma and Grandpa!

We have had so much fun spending time with our Grandma and Grandpa this summer! With the higher price of gas, we haven't been able to go down to St.George as often. We are thankful that Grandma and Grandpa have been able to make a couple of trips up here to visit us. Lani and Kiara get so excited to spend time with their Grandparents! They get spoiled with being taken out to eat wherever they want, eat lots of candy and to be able to stay up later than usual, you know, just the usual visiting Grandparent perks! We are so happy that we get that special time with them and that they take time to do that with us. We love you Grandma and Papa!

Making memories

We went on another awesome camping trip this weekend-this time with our great friends Katie, Todd, Zach and Lucy. Gene was going to run in the Bryce Canyon 5k race and our friend Katie was signed up for the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon. Gene didn't think he would even do well since he hasn't been running lately. We knew that Katie would do well-she runs all the time and coaches a high-school cross country team. She was just hoping to better her time from the last. She wound up coming in 2nd over all the women and winning some money! We are so proud of her, yet not surprised at all! Gene was my biggest surprise, however, he took 1st place in his class which was quite a few people!

We had a great time at our camp and also at Bryce Canyon-it was Katie's first time to see that. Our kids had fun getting filthy dirty-which kind of drove me crazy-I'm not sure why I don't get over that, I really should expect that when we camp, right?

Our tent is still up there and based on all the rain we've been having here in Cedar City, I sure hope it is still standing when we go back up!

Our first Great-Grandbaby is almost here!

Our oldest grandchild, Brittney and her husband Grant our expecting our very first Great-Grandbaby and we are so excited! It seems like it was just yesterday that Brittney was just a little baby herself and now here she is about to be a new mom. We are so proud of her and Grant-they are going to be such great parents! It has been fun to see Brittney's tummy grow bigger, and bigger. I don't know how she feels about having a big tummy, but I know that she has been waiting for this for a long, long time. We know that they are having a little girl-they have painted her room pink and everything. I'm sure that baby will be slightly spoiled, especially having Becky for a Grandma!

"A Camping We Will Go..."

So, we have officially kicked off our summer camping season and are so excited about it! For those of you who don't know this, we have been going to a particular spot up near beautiful Bryce Canyon for about 15 years now. We love this spot because it so secluded and private. We have a whole valley to ourselves and yet are just a few miles from Tropic Reservoir, Pine Lake, Bryce Canyon, the Boulder Mountains, Otter Creek and much, much more. So, it really is a central location to all the places we love to fish and spend time during the long hot summer months. We take our tent, etc and just set it up and leave it up there for the entire summer. I love this because it eliminates all the packing and hauling-well just work! We love it!

We have some great new friends-the Harmans-who seem more like family to us, that live down in Tropic, Utah. Tropic is not very far from our campsite and so the Harmans came up to have dinner with us on the 3rd of July. We had a great time, cooking tinfoil dinners, s'mores and samoan koko while listening to samoan music and visiting. We are so happy that we met them and are having such wonderful times with them-we just love'em!

Lani and Kiara loved our most recent camping trip. They got to go fishing, hiking and looking for deer and elk, but I think one of the main highlights for them was catching their very first ever horny toad which they named "Lizzie". Lizzie was just a baby horny toad and so, so cute! Lani carried that thing all around camp-Kiara was a little more timid about touching it-but they just loved that little creature! I finally talked them into letting it go back to it's mommy so that it wouldn't be sad and they agreed.