misc. photos

Laci took this one of me pulling weeds.
Laci loves close ups.

Brigham and Laci with the Guevarra kids at their house. I babysat them this summer. We loved them.

Anybody want an apricot?

I took the kids to the elementary playground this evening. They were basically begging. So anyhow, we were there and we saw a tree that had signs on it. It was in a neigboring yard with tons of huge branches hanging over the fence (someone really needs to prune that tree). We decided we needed to find out what the signs said. Brigham thought right away that they would say "something bad". So we got to the signs and they were basically encouraging people to pick the fruit. They clearly had WAY more than they could handle. We were so excited and ran across the school yard to scrounge bags out of the car. The limbs hung so low that Brigham and Laci could easily reached and as you can see we got quite a few and there were still a TON left on the tree! Once we dumped out our bags at home I realized that I didn't know what to do with them all. So I called grandma and she told me how to make apricot jam and we talked about fruit leather. I have so many memories of grandma and her jam so it was fun to call and get her advice. Man, I love grandma. So I think on Monday I'll work on that. I just don't know what containers I'll put it in....

Our annual (well at least 2 years running) Lagoon weekend

It was so fun to host a bbq in my back yard. It's not very often I have so much family visiting!

Going for a walk. On our walk it started downpouring (we WERE NOT very close to home) and we had to run all the way home. Everyone including the kids were laughing so hard and running that we all agreed it was the funnest "walk" ever. Even the littlest baby Brooke was really wet! She was too surprised by the commotion to even cry!

What a cutie!

Getting ready for pictures.

Laci loves taking pictures now. I'm holding Brianna. My brothers daughter.

Grandma with ALL of the grandkids!

Lagoon

No way. Out of our whole trip to Lagoon these are the only photos I took????

Snowbird

We all went to Snowbird last weekend. Nephi ran the Speed goat 50k. I was going to go with him and leave the kids with Nephi's parents but when we thought about it, it just made more sense to take them with us. Geez, they love hotels. They'd move into one if they could, why not take them. I've never seen a hotel like the ones at Snowbird. It's like they've built them to survive an avalanche. Concrete everywhere. But actually really beautiful. Everything is on a grand scale. The kids loved the pools and here we are exploring in the morning while Nephi's out running. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of Nephi's race. It was a long hot day and I had my camera in the car by the time he finished. There wasn't much to see at the finish. But Nephi did great. I was really proud of him.

I was determined that we were going to ride the tram with kids panicking or no kids panciking. We went while Nephi ran. The kids really did fine and it was an amazing view at the top. Quite a long way up the mountain.

The view of the hotel upon reapproach. How magnificent! Right?

What a view. This is at the top. Poor Laci couldn't find her sunglasses. (They were in the car) Nephi's race actually came through this spot. You can see why it's considered possibly the hardest 50k in the world. They started and ended back at the bottom folks. shudder...

Oh yeah, let the good times roll!

Hanging out with grandpa in the backyard.

Happy Birthday Kids!

The kids really wanted to go to Chucky Cheese for their birthday. Laci turned 5 and Brigham turned 7. Once again he couldn't handle the idea of Laci having a birthday before him so they celebrated on the same day, which was Laci's actual birthday.And boy did they have a good time. Brigham brought Hayden Johnson and Laci brought Gracie Hassell. Yes, they rhyme. People even coincidentally asked if they were twins. I couldn't get pictures of the boys there because I had to spend every minute with the girls or they'd get nervous. But they all had a FUN time. The kids thought the pizza was the best they'd ever had (It was actually worse than frozen pizza) and remember it with nothing but the fondest feelings.

Opening presents at home. Thank you everyone who gave them presents! Boy did they have a good birthday! Can you see Laci's excitement as she opens her unicorn?! She even picked it out the week before and yet her joy was still full. Brigham is opening up a wolverine. Of course he loved it. Actually, he picked it the week before also...

I thought that I would surprise them this year with some decorated cakes but they insisted on decorating them themselves. Hey, why not. So here they are with their respective cakes. Laci has a princess cake with crown candles and tons of sprinkles and Brigham has a whole fleet of pirates including boat, treasure chest, and swords! They had so much fun. Maybe this will be our tradition for awhile.

Midnight project

I've got my bowl of chips and salsa out still. You can't work at midnight without snacks.

This is the "before". I uploaded them out of order.

I literally did this project at midnight. I got home from work and some b-day shopping for the kids at 10:15pm and I needed my "down" time. So after browsing the internet for awhile I remembered I had these wall decals that I ordered a couple of years ago and still hadn't used. I looked through the blik website to brush up on the installation skills and got right to work! I think I really like it. Man, I get more done at midnight sometimes than the rest of the day!

Visiting the trains

The Olympics car

Climbing trains

An old caboose


Fountain in front of the Union Station

This is actually why we went to the Union Station yesterday. This new movie coming out in November is doing a cross country train tour. They had an entire train that you could walk through and see how they made the movie, costumes, special effects. Just a big promotional gig. It looked like it would be fun. I hadn't seen a lot of advertisement so I thought the crowds would be fine. NOT SO. The line to get in was 3 HOURS LONG! Sorry, not interested. So we settled for a picture in front of the train. (The kids couldn't care less if we went on the tour.) Instead we visited all the trains they have parked on the side of the station. This was a big hit. It was Laci's second time. Gina, when you bring the kids up. I want to take your kids here. They'd love it and it's just downtown Ogden.

Raining like crazy

According to the weather report it has rained 9 out of the last 11 days. What is this, Portland? It's getting REALLY old. There's been so much water in such a short time that in some places it has become a problem. My yard is full of mushrooms. We have to keep checking on the drainage from the gutters. So far seems to be alright. Tomorrow night Nephi's parents are staying with our kids and Nephi and I are staying at the Marriot downtown. Just for fun. The arts festival is on Saturday and I'd imagined what a fun time it would be strolling the festival (minus the kids) on a sunny day. Don't think that's going to happen now since it's supposed to pour on Saturday. Oh well. Regardless of the weather it will still be a fun mini get away. The kids are so excited for grandma and grandpa to come. By the way, I forgot to mention that they're celebrating their upcoming birthdays with them while we're gone. Brigham practically cried himself to sleep because he's so excited and was just so frustrated he couldn't instantly fall asleep. He wants morning to come NOW!

Awesome air show

When we moved to S. Ogden I knew one of the perks would be living close to the air base. I've always been a HUGE fan of air force aircraft and love air shows. When we lived in North Dakota we even left church early with friends to drive an hour to the show at the base there. So to live one freeway exit away from one is very cool for me. We went to the show on Saturday afternoon and managed to get up close on the bleachers. It was AWESOME! All kinds of stunt planes, jet fly-by's, and demonstrations. One of the the most amazing things believe it or not was watching a huge C-17 land right in front of us. It's enormous and yet uses very LITTLE space on the runway. It just comes right to a stop like it's no big deal. And then it just backs up and heads off. Unbelievable. I really wanted to stay for the Thunderbirds but of course before they could fly the kids were crying and starving (we will be better prepared next time) so we had to leave. I was disappointed. BUT, today was day 2 of the airshow and I knew the Thunderbirds would be flying at around 4pm-ish. All during church I could hear jets flying overhead and it was making me crazy but I kept telling myself I was where I'm supposed to be and I just let it go. But when I got home, I was on the lookout. And what do you know.... The Thunderbirds IN FORMATION came over the hill, very low, and flew right over me!!! They were so close I could easily see the birds painted on the bottoms. When they reached my house they all turned to the left and flew off that way. I was ecstatic!!! Then a few minutes later I could hear the roaring and I ran back outside and they came from behind my house and headed off. This was as good as being at the airshow. A show with no traffic to deal with! I saw the Thunderbirds in North Dakota so I was alright with not seeing the actual show . This was good enough. For the next hour they flew back and forth and all around. But never as close as the first two times. It was fun. I took a little video on one of their pass overs. They are quite high on that pass but I didn't have my camera when they flew low.

Ahhhhh......I love Ogden.

my house in early summer

I post these mainly for my mom who hasn't been able to make it up since I moved in last fall. I've been hard at work on the landscape. Cleaning it up, manicuring, planting, etc. It is a far cry from when we first moved in. It was very unruly back then which didn't seem appropriate for the style of the home.

Brigham's Opera

Waiting for the show to begin.

These pictures don't show it, but Brigham really got into the production. He was acting right along with the best of them!

Having fun before the show.

getting his "stage makeup" on. Brigham surprisingly didn't mind this at all.

The Utah opera company sponsors the 1st grade opera every year. The kids write it themselves and the company sets it to an orignal score. At first Brigham was nervous about the whole production but eventually it became a big deal to him. I bought a dvd of the program that somebody put together.

Looking to the future.....

Laci heading off to her last day of preschool.