Summer Vacation 2009... Part 1: Rob and Lisa's

We just got back from a nice, long summer vacation that will literally take me days to update all of, so let's get started!

We were up in Utah. We first stayed with our really good friends the Goeller's--Rob and Lisa. Lisa is very much like my big sister and Rob is the closest thing to a dorky big brother I have. We had lots of fun staying them. The girls especially were in heaven. Rob and Lisa's 2 youngest are girls, 10 and 8. Alyssa, the older one just took care of KL the whole time. It was so nice. I was say it was bath time and go to get the kids in the tub, and the next thing I knew, she was bringing out KL already bathed. KL just loved all the attention, and it wasn't just from Alyssa either. All of their kids were so cute with her. Even their 16 year old son was found out pushing her on the swing once.

L had lots of fun playing with their youngest Carissa. She doesn't always have girls to play with when we are visiting, so she was so happy to have a friend.


Unfortnately, this was the vacation of being sick. Most of the first few days of our trip, KL and CK were found like this:
They both had strep throat, complete with accompanying stomach flu, which they ended up passing on to D, and L. B seemed to be doing good, but the night before we left, he started saying he didn't feel well. So far, I don't think he has strep, but we will have to wait and see. I thought I was going to escape it too, but when we woke up bright and early to come home yesterday, I could feel the starting of the flu as well... I'm just grateful that it isn't the stomach flu and that it at least waited until we were on our way home.

When I walked in our house, I went into my bathroom to set something down and found this:


It was our 13th anniversary yesterday. Dave had flown home 1/2 through our trip and then flew back up to help me drive home...which was a surprise! We were really missing him so were so excited when he just showed up at my brother-in-law's house. Anyway, before leaving, he got the bathtub all set up for me to come home and enjoy my favorite thing... a nice hot bubble bath while reading a good book (that is Pride and Prejudice sitting atop that nice new set of towels). I was so excited for my bath... unfortunately, once I finally got around to getting in the tub, I found out that our pilot light had gone out on our water heater so there was no hot water... oh well. Hopefully soon...

Stay tuned for lots more exciting pictures and stories of our trip... I know you can't wait!

Girl's Night!

My oldest sister is about to give birth to a girl!!! We are very excited. She has 4 boys and 1 little girl that she adopted from Russia. We never really thought that the day would come that she would have a baby girl. It has been a really rough pregnancy so I decided to force a small shower on her... only we didn't call it a shower because she was embarrassed about the idea of people feeling like they had to come and bring her a present. It was just a fun party to celebrate how fun it is to be a girl! Anyway, me and my sisters and my cousins just couldn't resist the opportunity to get together and play.

We tried to keep it pretty low key. It started out just as a family, but of course, more and more people started asking me if there was a shower for Jill, so anytime brought it up, I invited them over. It was a good crowd and lots of fun. I hope no one feels excluded if they didn't get a call. Jill didn't want anyone feeling obligated to come, but at the same time, didn't want anyone feeling excluded. Oh well!

Here are me, my mom, sisters, sister-in-laws and neices:

(we make up a pretty good size crowd on our own!)
After just about everyone left, we remembered that my sister in law Beth brought a game for us to play, so here we are playing it.
Jill with her daughter during our game, with her best friend from HS.

WICKED!!!

Last summer, my neighbor found that if she got a big enough group together, she could get advanced tickets at a group rate to go and see Wicked that is currently playing here. I was so excited because I have wanted to see it for a few years, but don't get that chance around here as much as I would like. When CK was a baby, we went to DC for Christmas and it was playing at the Kennedy Center. I was sorely tempted, but the only tickets I could find were $500 and I decided that was a little too much after the cost of flying the whole family out there. Anyway, after all our waiting, we finally got our chance to go last week. It was so AMAZING!! I highly recommend going if you ever get the chance. DAve liked it too. He said it was definitely the best of the ones I've dragged him too. Not that there have been many... Les Miserables when we were engaged (he flew down to surprise me and go with me, but he had been working double shifts at 2 jobs for the week leading up to it so he could get the time off so he was so tired that he fell asleep during it), Phantom of the Opera when we were in London (great music and effects... we had really good seats and were sitting just under where the chandelier goes up. It hovered just over our heads. But all that really can't make up for the less than amazing story... I still loved it though!).

Here we are waiting for the play to start.

After the show, Dave was pretty wiped out and ready to go home, but my amazing neighbor agreed to keep my camera and take pictures of the cast and get my program autographed. Yea!

Here are all the cast members with the daughters of my friends:

With Madame Morrible

With Nessarose

With Professor Dillamond

With Boc

With The Wizard

With Fiyero

And now the stars...
Galinda

and... Elphaba!!

Weekend with Mariana

Last weekend, my parents went out of town for a family reunion, but at the last minute, my little sister couldn't go, so we got to have her stay with us. It was fun for the girls and so nice for me because of how wonderfully helpful she is. KL especially loved having her around. A few times, I walked into the family room and found Mariana laying with her head next to KL's lap and KL playing with her hair. It was cute. She had a hard time the morning she woke up and found "Nana" gone. She kept walking around saying, "Er Nana go?" Anyway, one morning I found all the girls laying on the couch with her while she was trying to sleep, but the just wanted to be close to her!

The Meadow

While up at Girl's camp last month, I went on one of the hikes and we stopped in a meadow for lunch. The draw of "the meadow" was just to strong for me and my friend Michelle, so we had to recreate the scene. So for all you twilight fans out there... here you go!


I have to give all the photoshopping credit to Michelle. It is kind of hard to tell from this, but she did what she could to add the sparkling skin. Well done my friend! (by the way, Michelle is my friend who was willing to make go with me and make fools of ourselves at project book babe... clearly from this picture, neither one of us are afraid to make fools of ourselves. We really do make ourselves laugh!)

KL's 2 yr Old Pictures

Last week, I took KL to get her 2 year birthday pictures taken. Here are the proofs.






I also decided to do all the girls while we were at it. I had matching dresses for CK and L which coordinated with KL's dress. Unfortunately, we looked everywhere and couldn't find CK's. I was less than pleased because she wears it all the time and loves it, but naturally the one time I needed it, it was no where to be found. I mean no where! I checked my sister's house and my parents house thinking maybe she lost it in the dress up clothes, or when she had gone to go swimming, but nothing. I finally had to settle with using one of my shirts and pinning it to try and look like a dress that matched the other girls. Of course, I found her dress a few days later. It was behind the couch in my front room.

B's DC Trip

Back in April, B got to fly out to DC with my sister and brother-in-law who were going there on business. B was met at the airport by Grandpa Allan and to spend the weekend playing with Grandpa and seeing his other cousins and aunts and uncles out there. I had given him a small disposable camera for the trip so he could take pictures. The concept was some what lost on him. My father in law found the camera in the garbage when they went to leave. When he asked B about it, he said, "it's all done now." He didn't understand you have to take camera to get developed. Once he understood, he agreed to bring the camera home to me, but the he forgot it in the car. When I finally got it (I brought it home with us after Dave's court case), I went and had it developed but I was barely able to pick out Grandpa's elbows in one of the pictures. Needless to say, I didn't feel the need to post any of them. However, this last week, my father in law sent me the pictures he took and they were much more informative of the trip, so here they are.

Here he is at the DC temple.

At Aunt Stephanie's and Uncle Brian's house (not pictured) with Brennan (barely visible laying on the couch), Aunt Ali, Gable and Uncle Kalihi

B, Gable, Uncle Kalihi

At an air museum in Virgina.