Dancing

Bennett's new talent:

Happy Father’s Day!!

We had a great father’s day weekend. On Saturday, we ventured over to our pool for the first time this summer, and Bennett liked walking around in the little kiddie pool and pushing balls around. He fell down a few times, but was always willing to get back up and keep walking.

On Sunday, we enjoyed having Nate home for at least part of the morning (instead of his usual 7am meetings), then went up to his parents’ house for dinner. We had a delicious BBQ dinner. I was feeding Bennett his dinner and his cousin Abby was standing next to him and talking to him when all of a sudden he reached out his arms to give her a hug. It was really cute – he didn’t want to let go, and kept reaching out his arms later.

Nate and I were both blessed with wonderful fathers and grandfathers who have been great examples to us, and Bennett sure loves his dad! He is always excited to get to play with daddy. Happy Father’s Day!

Bennett discovered the slide in grandma & grandpa’s backyard, and loved it! He had been down the slide at the park, but this one was just the right size for him.

Backyard Campout

I should be cleaning out my fridge, but for some reason I feel very unmotivated today. Maybe it’s the headache. Or the heat (we’re trying to avoid the AC as long as possible. 94 degrees today may be the breaking point).

A couple weeks ago we had the third annual backyard campout with Nate’s family. The rain downpour and hurricane-like winds forced a slight change of plans (i.e. sleeping in the house instead of the backyard). Connor, Heidi, and Anna had planned several “Minute to Win It” games for us to play, which were very entertaining. The kids also did a “treasure hunt” for pennies and nickels buried in the sandbox. We ate lots of yummy food and had fun spending time together. A few pictures from the weekend:

When we first got there, all the grandkids were sooo excited that Bennett was there so he could put on his new outfit from Grandma and they could all be matching. 

one of the games the kids played was sorting M&M’s by their color into little cups. We also went fishing for pretzels using a licked gummy worm as bait.

 

Bennett and Mabel sneaking treats from the M&M and fishing games

 

“Junk in the Trunk” – shaking the ping pong balls out of the kleenex box. I love how they are in matching positions in the two pictures. Also: notice that I didn’t post a picture of myself. That was on purpose :)

Bennett has started loving baseball mitts lately – it’s on the wrong hand, but he has the right idea :) And the kids searching for treasure in the sandbox.

Chubby Cheeks and Curly Hair

Bennett’s cheeks are starting to look a little more like his mom’s (at least when I was little) – he’s getting a little chubby in the face. His hair has also been looking curly in the back, especially when he’s a little hot after waking up from a nap, or after his bath.

   

That last one is just because he’s cute – I love his little tongue sticking out (although he does need a Kleenex).

Last weekend when we were up at Nate’s parents’ house, we all went to the park so the kids (and adults) could ride their plasma cars down the hill. A thunderstorm came while we were there, but the rain only lasted a couple minutes and didn’t seem to even phase the kids. You can see them all going down the hill in the last picture. Nate and I each took Bennett for a ride – he seemed less nervous about it than I was :)

Congratulations Dave & Liz!!

As of Monday, my little brother Dave is engaged to Liz Newson. Congrats Dave and Liz!! We are so excited and happy for them, and look forward to having Liz in our family. They are getting married in August in the San Diego temple, so we’re excited to make a trip down there! You can see some pictures of the happy couple and read about their proposal story here.

Happy Anniversary – Day 2

On Sunday, we enjoyed sleeping in with no baby to wake us up, then went to church in Green River before heading down to Goblin Valley State Park. Nate had been there once in scouts, and we were both a little nervous that it wouldn’t be quite as cool being adults vs. 13-year-old boys, but we had a lot of fun. This is what it looks like:

We followed the ranger’s advice and went to “valley 2” instead of staying in “valley 1” where most of the people were (there are 3 valleys full of goblins). Most of the time, it was really quiet and we didn’t see other people for long periods. It was fun to walk around and explore without feeling like we had to follow a map or that there were certain things we had to see, but that we could just go wherever we wanted and create our own trail. We ended up making our way somewhat unintentionally to the top of a ridge that separated valley 1 & valley 2, and finding a path down the cliff back into valley 1 (it’s kind of hard to explain, but basically we went over the “mountain” instead of going back the way we came – around the “mountain”). It took a little strategy but it was a fun adventure.

Nate riding the turtle, and the shady spot we found to eat lunch in

Nate sticking his head in the picture…and me kissing the turtle

 

A lot of the time, we walked along the dry creekbed – unless it went places like this under some boulders. We still gave it a try and found we could fit into the crawl space underneath.

a very long jump we had to make across a deep vast canyon… I’m sure it was at least 10 feet wide or so ;) Nate insisted on getting a good shot of me jumping across, so I had to do it a few times. I’m posting these even though I look very awkward, especially in the last one.  

  

 

 

 

 

The fateful turning point – we had just decided we’d better start our return trip to the car when Nate saw this hill and wanted me to climb up it so he could take a picture. Once I got up there, I looked over to the other side and thought it looked like fun, so we went that way instead, thinking we would eventually have to go down and around the wall of rock – instead, we made our way up to the top of the ridge (we’re standing on the top in the picture above, right) where we could see over both valleys. It was amazing!

 

This is Nate on the creekbed we used as our path from the top of the ridge back to our car. In the picture on the right, the white-ish cliff at the very top is where we were coming down from.

We made our way home after Goblin Valley and decided to take a slightly longer route through Manti. Our drive along I-70 was amazing – lots of beautiful red rock and interesting landscapes. When we got off the freeway, we drove through a lot of small towns and beautiful green valleys. We stopped in Manti to see the temple grounds and take a couple pictures before finishing our drive. Nate’s parents were kind enough to keep Bennett for one more night so we didn’t have to drive even further to get him. On Monday, we got in a quick tennis match before heading up to get Bennett and enjoy a delicious BBQ with Nate’s family. We missed Bennett but he had fun with his grandparents and aunt Anna, and we enjoyed the freedom of just being by ourselves (like deciding at 10:30 at night to go out to get a milkshake!).  It was a great weekend!

Happy Anniversary!!

This:

was 3 years ago last  Monday!

We celebrated by leaving Bennett for the first time overnight and going to Moab for Memorial Day Weekend. It was a fabulous trip and we’re so grateful for Nate’s parents being willing to watch Bennett for us!

We drove down on Friday afternoon / evening, and stayed in Green River – about an hour from Moab. We spent Saturday exploring Arches National Park – we went on the “Devil’s Garden” hike – an almost 8-mile hike where we saw 7 different arches. Some pics from the hike:

 

wildflowers, and wildlife. We saw 23 lizards, 2 squirrels, 4 antelope, and many birds in our two-day trip. These cool orange flowers were along our hike and also as we were driving down – I loved seeing the bright spots of orange in the middle of the desert.

 

in front of Landscape arch, and looking through Partition arch out at the valley

Nate coming through the Partition Arch, and hiding in a cave he found.

The “Double O” Arch (not a great picture of it, but it is two arches on top of each other). The second picture is us inside the bottom arch…

…and here we are on top of the top arch! We climbed up to the very top – unfortunately, we didn’t think to leave our camera with someone down below so you can’t really see where we are, but it was pretty high up.

in the “Private Arch” (we got creative with the camera self-timer on the 2nd one – for this one the camera was on the ground)

in front of the “Tunnel Arch”

After finishing the Devil’s Garden hike, we stopped and ate our lunch, then drove back through the park (Devil’s Garden is at the very end) and stopped at various arches along the way:

Delicate Arch – unfortunately, we were too tired to do the 3-mile hike up to the actual arch, so we just went to the viewpoint, where the helpful person who took a picture for us decided it was more important to focus on the arch than on us :) (in his defense, it would have been hard to get both in focus).

I don’t remember if this first one has a name, but it looks like an elephant, so we thought it was pretty cool. Nate is standing in front of the “Double Arch” (not to be confused with the Double O arch we climbed to the top of earlier). This was one of our favorites because you could climb around inside it- it’s two arches that join at a point on the left.

Where the two arches in “Double Arch” join, and another attempt at a self-portrait.

After the final arch, we went down to Moab and had dinner on the patio of a restaurant along the main street, then walked around downtown. They had a little arts festival in the park that we walked through, then got ice cream before driving back to Green River for the night. And this post is really long so I think I’ll start a new one for day 2 of our trip :)