Crazy 4th of July!

On a total whim I somehow convinced Ryan that we should go to Utah for the 4th of July. It was going to be a ridiculously short trip but since we hadn't been for a year and a half I felt like we should really go since Ryan wouldn't commit to any future date.


(Everyone looks happy and healthy right (except for Easton's cheeks needing some hydrocortisone?)

We made the trip there in 13 1/2 hours. During our lunch at Cafe Rio with the Pressley family Easton started puking. Not exactly my idea of a great way to spend a short time with friends you haven't seen in forever! The plan to see Jaime Snow's cute little family after lunch quickly changed to hopefully Sunday. About 5 hours after Easton got sick he was feeling completely recovered! Yay! Sunday morning we were supposed to meet my parents, who I'd talked into coming up from AZ, and my two grandma's at Temple Square but.... Caiden, Ryan and I were now sick. So stinking crappy!! We figured out that the stomach bug that made Camden sick the Sunday before had a really long life hanging out till I thought we could celebrate the 4th in Utah. Ryan and I spent the entire day in bed sleeping while Uncle Bryce and Aunt Steph took care of our family. Talk about crappy for them. They offered to put us up and we bring our germs in! Since Ryan had to be on a flight Tuesday morning from Seattle we decided to leave Sunday night so we could stop and sleep whenever we needed. As it turned out it was good we left Sunday night because in addition to stop and sleep we also stopped to empty Londyn's barf bucket more times than I could count. Right before we left Bryce and Steph's she got sick. So from here on out I will live with Ryan's complaints of what a crazy idea it was to make the trip.


The not so fun drive home.

I have informed him I will never again attempt that trip over a weekend again. Saturday morning we did go to Provo to see the hot air balloons take off. I attempted to use what I learned in my photography class taking some fun pictures. Mostly I've decided that taking pictures in manual mode is going to take A LOT of practice. (Ryan gets the credit for the pictures of Necia, Shelby and Easton.)





Ryan's cute sister Necia


Our cute niece Shelby


East the Beast

How does your garden grow?

When we moved here to Washington one of Ryan's biggest desires was to do our first ever garden. We figured this might just be our best chance yet with all the rain we get here. One big help along the way was that there was a garden club in our ward. In compliance with what seems to be the in-thing we did a square foot garden using Mel's mix (1/3 of each: compost, vermiculite, and peat moss). Since our yard isn't huge by any means we did our garden alongside our fence.

This has been a family project through and through, building the boxes, mixing the soil, planting, 10:30 pm slug hunts ending in slug death, watering, picking and eating.

So far we've harvested lettuce, broccoli, peas, carrots, cilantro, and strawberries. It's amazing how rewarding it is to do a garden. It really is true that produce really does taste better homegrown. The garden club wanted to do a garden tour of many different gardens so they came to ours. Apparently by the comments I got our garden was doing extremely well. They were asking, "What did you do?" and "How is everything growing so well?" I then told them that I believe the truth of it to be that ever since we began our garden Ryan has prayed over it and encouraged us to join in as well. I then heard, "Well, can you pray over mine too!"













We are still waiting on onions, corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, watermelon, and pumpkin. Hopefully we'll get to see all of them grow. I think I'm most excited about the tomatoes! Is there anything better than a delicious tomato? They are so hard to come by.

Bowling History for Ryan

We got to spend a day with Ryan's cousin Carrie and her family. We went to the famous Maltby Cafe for some brunch and then we went bowling.


Steve, Stefani, Alyssa, and Carrie - such a fun family!!!

It's been a long time since we'd been bowling but we all had a good time.






Ryan bowled the best game of his life! It really was a great game for him. There was only one time up that he didn't knock down everything (missed 2 pins!!)! I got a couple of strikes and a spare myself but that wasn't impressive at all compared with Ryan.

Ryan had a birthday!

(Whoopsey! I just realized I never posted anything for Ryan's birthday.)

Ryan was gone this year (again) on his birthday, so we celebrated when he got home. We took him to THE ROCK pizza. This place has become one of our favorites for a few reasons. One being that the food is DElish!!!! So yummy!!! Next is that they really cater to the kids, even though the atmosphere could seem a little more grown up and rough. They bring out pizza dough for the kids to play with at the table. This entertains the kids for a really long time which for us is great. (Usually when we decide to take the whole family out to eat Ryan and I always end up so frustrated with the kids even before we have our food.)


Cam's wearing his dough creation on his head.





When we got home we let Ryan open some presents. He got a couple of fresh new t-shirts,


a new electric razor (because he left his bathroom bag in a hotel room and it was never turned in)


and..... oh it looks like he knows what it is....


a new ipod touch! He'd only been drooling over it for several months so I surprised him with it.

I'm pretty sure that bumped me up a few notches on the good wife scale.


We sure do love our Daddy! Happy Birthday Babe!!

Caiden's last day of 3rd grade

I went into Caiden's classroom on the last day of school to see Mrs. Miles be given a gift basket from all of the kids. I had all the kids with me and planned to stay just for that but Mrs. Miles asked if I could stay and help with their brunch. Londyn, Easton and Camden practiced being a photographer with my camera phone.


Caiden signing classmates papers for their scrapbooks.


Making weird faces with cute girls in his class. One mom from church informed me that her daughter says there are quite a number of girls that have a crush on Caiden.


Caiden being recognized for the things he was part of during the year: cross country, science club, and track and field.


It's hard to believe Caiden's finished with 3rd grade! We really feel liked we lucked out with Caiden getting such a great teacher! Mrs. Miles has such a great positive outlook for the kids. She would always tell them, "Today is a new day!" I really loved the simplicity of this because I think being a kid is hard. It was nice for the kids to hear that no matter what happened yesterday they have the chance to do more with today. Sometimes it was even something I needed to hear from her. Caiden did great and had lots of fun in her class!

Now we have a 4th grader!!

Cam's Last Day of Kindergarten

Camden had a great first year of school with Mr. Rettig as his Kindergarten teacher! Mr. Rettig did a fantastic job helping Camden adjust to what is expected of him as a student. It took Camden a while to understand that his teacher wasn't going to call on him every time, even though his hand was raised and he knew the answer. By the end of the school year Mr. Rettig was very pleased with Camden's achievements, both behaviorially and academically. On Camden's report card there is a section where Mr. Rettig wrote that he recommended that over the summer Camden practice writing paragraphs, though this generally is not a skill learned yet, he is ready. Way to go Camden!!


The "give a nice smile" picture.


With some school friends.


The "gOoFy" picture!



Does he look like he's ready for FIRST grade?

DATE NIGHT!!

Since I couldn't get Ryan to stop drooling over the adult track while we were at the boys' birthday party we decided to plan a big group date there. I was able to reserve a time on a Friday night which was great because it would have been quite a wait if we'd just showed up. A bunch of couples weren't able to make it but we still had such a fun time getting to know some people better in the ward.

The Traxx employees took our group down to the track where there was a room full of racing suits and helmets. Since none of us had ever been to this place before we all put on the suits and helmets and were then informed after we started taking pictures that we didn't have to wear the suits. Oh well! It was fun for the first race.

I didn't expect to be nervous before we got to ride but I was. Turns out that after just a couple laps I was really into it and was trying my best to pass people up, which is not as easy as I thought.




Do you see me trying to be so fast?



The Carroll's didn't make it until after the first race so a bunch of us raced again with them. It really was so much fun racing go karts! If both of us racing twice hadn't already cost us $60 I would have wanted to do it again. After we raced we went to Red Robin for some dinner. Too bad there isn't a way to get a table at a restaurant where everyone can hear everyone else. The Bissenden's met up with us at Red Robin so we had 14 people. This was such a fun night and we can't wait to do it again!


After this I've decided a movie every now and again for a date is okay but having really active fun is a blast!!! Thanks to Ryan and all of our fun friends for a great night!