America's Birthday

Just like last year and the year before, we decided to celebrate the 4th of July up at Snowbird.  After spending the day riding the mountain coaster, alpine slide, and taking the tram to the top of Hidden Peak, we came home and had a great time across the street at the Domingo's house for a barbecue.  The whole group walked down to the end of the road when it was time for fireworks where we can see the entire valley.  We must have seen 12-15 firework shows going on at the same time.  It was awesome!

 Headed up the lift for the alpine slide.  Every year baby rides with Piper.

 My Josie bear and me on the lift.

 I'm a big fan fan of this dude.

We get a family picture at the top of Hidden Peak every year.  We were excited that Steve and Bubba were able to come up and ride the tram to the top with us after my dad got off work.

 Beautiful shot on a beautiful day.  We love Utah.

 Liza and Randy broke out the sparklers after dinner.

 Some of the kids getting ready for fireworks!

The girls were in bed LATE.  This is the first year they have actually stayed awake for the fireworks.  They were exhausted, but it was such a great day.

Easter 2014: The Golden Egg

I was in Boston this year for Easter, so we had "pretend Easter" on Saturday morning.  The girls woke up to their Easter baskets and then we joined the neighborhood for a fun easter egg hunt before heading out for a soccer game.

We were told that there were two "special" easter eggs - one was a silver egg for the bigger kids and the other one was a gold egg for the little kids.  They had separate areas for easter egg hunting.  The girls became pretty obsessed with finding that gold egg.  They hunted a little bit harder and a little bit longer and it paid off for Josie.  She found the gold egg which had a gold dollar coin inside.  Lucky girl!

I guess this is Josh's tough guy Easter Egg hunt pose?

On real Easter, when I was in Boston getting ready for the marathon, Nate, Emery, and my parents came over and the girls had another basket and some time to play with their cousin.

4th of July Weekend

Just like last year, we decided to head up to Snowbird again for the 4th of July.  It's hot in the valley, and lovely and cool in the mountains.  Plus, we love it there.  We decided to stay the night this year as well.  Grandpa and Nate were working, so Brynn, Emery and Bubba joined us for part of the day as well.  We started off with the pancake breakfast.  

 Then headed over and rode the tram up to the top of Hidden Peak to enjoy the beautiful views.

 The whole group together.

Can't wait to do some skiing here this winter.  Actually, I can wait.  I would gladly take many many more months of summer. :)

Then, we rode the alpine slide again.  Josie rode with daddy, Piper rode with Bubba, and I rode with Piper's babydoll while Brynn and Emery waited at the bottom.

During the afternoon, Brynnie and Bubba headed home, so we checked into our hotel and did some swimming at the hotel pool.  We had a great time cooling off, then had dinner at the Mexican restaurant.  The next day, we woke up, packed up and headed out only to find a note in the elevator that a rock slide overnight had closed the canyon.  We had some weird torrential downpours in the middle of the night and the canyon was blocked off for the better part of the day.

So...with everything closed (employees couldn't get up the canyon), we made our own fun doing stuff like this.  And chasing squirrels (which the girls call chick-munks) over and over.

Eventually we packed up the car and went for a little walk on a nature trail.  At around 3 pm, we heard the canyon was open, so we headed home.

 The next day, we met the Naisbitts up Bountiful Canyon to ride our side-by-side.

We rode to the top for some of these views.  It was actually freezing up there and we didn't have any warm clothes (yet still 95 in the valley).

All in all, a great weekend.  Happy birthday America.

Memorial Day Hike

After spending our morning getting our buns kicked with "Memorial Day Murph" Crossfit style, we took the girls on a little hike up Butterfield Canyon.  We've never really been to the Oquirrh Mountains, but they're our backyard now, so we went up to check it out.

The girls did great - until the end.  Josie said "I'm tired, and I'm hungry, I'm hot, and I'm cold, and I'm slippery."

Mother's Day 2013

We had a great Mother's Day this year.  The family came over to our new house (more on that later) for Sunday brunch.  No waiting in line anywhere, no stressing about reservations, etc.  It was great.  Then later in the evening, we went up to Syracuse to see my sweet grandma and wish her Happy Mother's Day as well.  The girls brought home some perfect Mother's Day artwork for me from preschool.  And even though they refused to smile for these pictures (especially Piper!), they loved having everyone over.

Santa Claus and the Marines

I am VERY behind on this blog and playing catch-up now.  I'm just now writing about some of the fun stuff we did at Christmas time.  A couple of weeks before Christmas, we went to the RS SLC Christmas party (Josh's work deal).  Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus showed up.  Not surprisingly, the girls were terrified even though they brought presents.  Santa Claus made me sit on his lap.  To be honest, he was a little creepy.  Maybe the girls were reluctant to sit on his lap for a reason. :)  

Gobble Gobble

This was our first Thanksgiving in Utah in a whole lotta years.  We came home one year when Josh was in flight school, but all other Turkey days were spent with family back east, or with friends.  I think Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday.  I love starting the day out with some Turkey Trotting and ending it with food and family.  That's a whole lot of good stuff.  There are no presents to buy, no decorations to put up, no craziness and running around with hair on fire.  Just some time in the kitchen.

As a vegetarian, one would think I hate turkey day, but I have no qualms about eating a plateful of potatoes, rolls, jello salad (yay, Utah!), and following that up with some punkin pie.

The Cottonwood Heights Turkey trot started less than a mile from our house.  It was a crazy hard course, but still fun with a huge crowd.  I loved participating each year in the turkey trot in New Bern, but I think this one will work out just fine for a new tradition.  Brooke Larsen also ran, so we got to visit with them after and the girls got to see Olivia.  

We had dinner up at my parents this year.  It was a small crowd, but yummy food and good company.

America's Birthday at Snowbird

We had a great time celebrating the 4th of July this year.  Last year, Josh was laid up in bed all day after surgery, the year before the girls were too little to do much of anything, and the year before that I was pregnant with scary complications.  So this year was fun!  We spent the morning with Brynn and Nate up at Snowbird enjoying their pancake breakfast, a ride up to Hidden Peak on the tram, some fun in the bounce house and a trip down the Alpine slide. 

These pics were taken at the top of Hidden Peak.  I worried the whole time that the girls were going to fall off.

 Enjoying the bounce house and the big slide.

 The Alpine slide was so much fun.  Both girls absolutely loved it.

We came home after lunch at Chipotle and spent the rest of the afternoon/evening hanging out at home and trying out some sparklers (which they thought were kind of scary). 

The girls recently learned about America's flag at school and they were so excited to see flags all over and talked a lot about "America's birthday".  I think they wondered where the birthday cake was though. 

Christmas wrap-up

Finally wrapping up on our trip to Utah.  We never did get any snow in Utah.  Here is what the mountains looked like. :(  So much for our white Christmas.  Oh well.

We also found an afternoon to head to the little aquarium in Draper.  It was fun.  The best part was the penguins.  Thanks for taking us Bubba and Grandpa.

 

Aunt Brynn came to visit one afternoon.  That's Josie and Brynn there with Moosie, my parents' vicious pit bull. :) 

And here are the girls showing off some new PJ's they got from Aunt Leslie and Uncle Jeff, and playing on their new table and chairs from Uncle Conor.  They got very spoiled for Christmas.

We ended the trip with a marathon day of travel, which included a 4.5 hour flight from SLC to DC, then a six hour drive home to New Bern.  The girls were troopers.  They did not sleep on the flight at all, but crashed once we got in the car.  We made it home just in time for one more three-day weekend to recover, do laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, pick up Blue boy, and try to finally kick the coughs we all came home with.