11th Anniversary

Usually our anniversary is sandwiched in the middle of a summer vacation. However, this year surprisingly none of our trips were planned over the 26th of July. So, we decided that we'd better take advantage of it and plan something fun. I found an amazing deal on a cabin at the Alaskan Inn up Ogden Canyon. This is a picture of our cute little cabin (the Timberwolf)...
This was the view from behind our cabin...
My mom was so kind to watch the kids! It was so much fun to be alone after spending 24/7 with the kids this summer. Besides having fun at the cabin, we went out to Zupa's (yummy) , to the movie 17 Miracles (so good!), tile shopping for our bathroom, got our favorite Gelato, and did a session at the Draper Temple. We packed a lot into a short amount of time :) but loved every minute of it!

Double Digits!

Yup! I'm officially old. I have two children who are now in the double digits. 10 years old... that's getting up there. I don't even want to think about how close the teenage years are :) However, they are both super amazing kids who I love to pieces.

Tanner and Mickell's birthday was jam packed with fun. We had it planned out to the hour so that we could fit everything in. To start out with, they had breakfast in bed (well, Tanner's bed). We really do need to get another tray. However, it's more fun having someone to eat with, I guess.
After that, they were able to spend a few hours riding their new mountain bikes. We got them on Saturday, but they couldn't get on them until their actual birthday. I think it about killed them to have to look at them for two days!

Next on the list was swimming lessons. It was fun having Baylen there with us!

We spent the afternoon at Boondocks (we love the free ultimate birthday passes that they do). Tanner and Mickell were able to...

Ride the bumper boats
Do the fast track
Mini bowl
and mini golf
Between all the fun at Boondocks, we ran over to Golden Corral for dinner!

That night we went with the Whipple clan to a drive in movie. We saw Cars 2. It was super fun!


This was a monumental year for Tanner. He's now reached the age that I told him he could get a pocket knife. Grandpa made it a super special event by letting Tanner choose one of his knives. Tanner chose an awesome knife with a case that grandpa made out of leather.


Some things about Tanner at 10...
*He loves playing and watching sports. Basketball and Soccer are his favorites right now. He's a big Real Salt Lake and BYU fan.
*He loves hanging out with his friends. Tanner is a really good friend who is so easy going and gets along with everyone.
*He's really good at logical things.
*Tanner is one of the most sensitive people I've ever met (and I'm 100% serious when I say that.) He knows when someone is upset or having a bad day and does all that he can to make them feel better. He thanks me for EVERYTHING I do for him (sometimes five or six times) and is always coming up and giving me hugs. The other night he came up to me and said, "Thanks for family home evening mom. It was just as much fun, actually more fun than playing with my friends." Another night I could tell that he wasn't loving the dinner I made. I asked him about it and he said, "It's not my favorite." Then he proceeded to come over to my side of the table where he gave me a hug, and said, "I'm sorry that I don't really like the dinner you made tonight." In the midst of all the crazy girl moments that we have at our house, I'm so grateful for his calm, kind personality!

Some things about Mickell at 10...
*She has a natural talent for dance/tumbling. Several people have told us that she has an amazing sense of rhythm.
*She loves singing!!! Her favorite game right now is called Sing it. It's a playstation game where you have microphones and sing along with pop teen singers. Mickell has a really good voice, too! I hope she keeps at it. Singing is a talent that I've always wished I had.
*Mickell LOVES being with her friends. She has become a lot more of a social butterfly the past few months. When you see her with her friends, you wonder how anyone could call her shy!
*Mickell is soooo good to her little sisters. I am so grateful for what a good example and amazing sister that she is. Whether it is babysitting, playing with, or just hanging out with them, I love how she loves them. She is also super responsible when it comes to helping with them.

Granite Flats

We had so much fun camping with our neighbors last summer, that we decided to do it again this year! We ended up going to the same campground and the same campsites as last year.

We had a great time, despite the occasional rain storm. We are super lucky to have such fun neighbors that have kids the same ages as ours!

Here are a few pictures of the three days that we were there...

We played games
We did jump rope (Tanner and Mickell learned how to Double Dutch) and Chinese jump rope
We played kickball

Went fishing
Did crafts

and had fun just hanging out with our friends and family!

One night we drove up to Silver Lake to fish. We didn't get a lot of fishing in because there were so many kids, but we had fun and the view was breathtaking!


I do want to make myself a note for future camping trips... Always be prepared for a sick child. On the first night we woke up to Ashlyn saying, "I'm going to throw up." Baylen did the best he could to get the zipper open as fast as he could. She threw up once right outside the tent but the came back in and threw up again. I wasn't prepared with anything to clean it up. Luckily our camping box still had a pack of baby wipes from when Ashlyn was in diapers. I cleaned up the entire mess using little baby wipes. It was gross. Then, I was up the rest of the night worrying about bears coming because they smelled it inside of our tent. It was a LONG night. Ashlyn was totally fine in the morning. I think she just must have eaten too much junk the night before.

Happy Birthday America

We spent the Fourth of July down in South Jordan. It was a really fun day! Baylen was suppose to work but was put on call so he was able to party with us.

We had a great time at the West Jordan parade...
A karate guy came up to our little group and asked if anyone wanted to break a piece of wood. All of the kids got shy except for Ashlyn. She totally busted that piece of wood right in half. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.
I don't have a picture but Ashlyn loved the royalty floats. If the girls had a blue dress on, they were Cinderella. If they had a pink dress on, they were Sleeping Beauty. She had a princess for each girl she saw :)
I found a cool website that taught me how to do the girl's hair into a star. You can't get much more patriotic than that!

After the parade we did a little Fourth of July photo shoot...



Later that evening we had a BBQ. It was fun getting to know Seth a little better.
We rented Just Dance which provided hours of hilarious entertainment!
That night we got together with our neighbors in the cul de sac. We had an amazing firework show. It was just as good as going to Davis High.

My Birthday Sleepover

For my birthday present, I wanted to have a sleepover with grandma. I slept there for three nights. We had so much fun. We went to a movie theater, we ran through the sprinklers, and I went swimming in a baby pool. We made bracelets and puppets. We went on some walks to see the ducks. We fed them but they weren't that hungry. One night we got pizza.
Ashlyn

Sisters

The other day I was upstairs doing something in the loft (laundry, I'm sure) and I hear Ashlyn say, "We should cuddle by each other because we love each other so much." It was so cute that I had to go witness the moment myself. I'm glad that, for the most part, these two girlies get along so well! :)

It's that time of year again! Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!

Back in June we made our yearly "Whipple Family" trip up to the cabin. It was kind of crazy this time with everyone's schedules (Corey had to come late and Dave didn't get to come at all) but we did get to bring Kirsti along!
It definitely wasn't warm up there this time but man was it green. I don't think I've ever seen it so beautiful.

Baylen took 100's of landscape pictures. I almost need to do a separate post of just those. But, I did want to include this picture. One thing that I love about the cabin is that there is usually a misty kind of fog that covers the valley early in the mornings. I hadn't ever even thought to get a picture of it, but Baylen snapped one this time... (that's the cabin on the right of the picture).
The tire swing is ALWAYS a favorite...

We had lots of fun family bonding time!

A model that Tanner and Grandpa made...
On the dock pondering the deep meaning of life (or something like that!)...
The infamous "rock" picture...

On Sunday we were able to go down to my grandma's house. All of my dad's siblings decided to have a little reunion. It was great to see them all!
I have so many amazing memories at my grandparent's house. My grandma has the house up for sale now, so I wanted to snap a few pictures of the kids in the loft. Man, I love that loft!

No matter how many times we go to the cabin, there always seems to be something unique about each trip. This trip's "uniqueness" can be classified into frogs and chairs.

There were little tiny frogs everywhere. The kids LOVED them and would catch those poor little creatures by the bucket load. Then they would hold them and cuddle them until the poor frogs couldn't take it any longer.

Here Hailey and Ashlyn are with some frogs in their hands...
Here we are playing kickball out in the field. The field was crawling with little dime sized frogs. I don't even want to think about how many we stepped on during our game.
As for chairs...
One day Ashlyn and I were sitting at the table doing a puzzle. Somehow she slid between the backrest and the seat and got stuck. By stuck I mean that we could not get her out. No matter how hard we pulled, we was totally stuck. It probably didn't help that she panicked and wiggled herself in even farther. The whole time we were trying to pull her out, she was screaming bloody murder. Finally Baylen decided that she was not coming out and decided to unscrew the backrest.
Imagine with me... Ashlyn is screaming at the top of her lungs and all the sudden the screw is loosened. The screaming immediately stops and she calmly replies "Yes!" It was soooo funny and I'm super bummed that in the chaos of the moment I didn't think to flip the camera to record.

"Yes!"
Second chair story...
There aren't a lot of outside campfire chairs at the cabin. At the beginning of the trip, we noticed that one of the chairs was on the verge of death. The metal leg was almost totally bent in half. However, we needed the chair for people to sit in, so someone was always sitting in it. Each time someone sat down on it, we commented on how they were brave. They were totally risking their lives to sit in it. However, night after night it lasted just fine. Until the last night. Lucky Jared must have eaten a little too much dinner. At least he didn't fall forward into the fire!
We got this picture on the last day. Unfortunately the lighting was awful.
The bear picture and a cute extra...

Normally, my post would end right here. However, we had an eventful ride home. My grandma had been sick when we went to visit on Sunday and several of us ended up catching it. Unfortunately Ashlyn caught it on the way home. Throw up everywhere. Then, she had to go to the bathroom shortly after the throw up episode. We stopped at the strangest gas station I have ever been to. When we walked inside, there was incense burning and tumbleweed decorations everywhere. There was a sign on the bathroom door that said we couldn't go in unless we bought something. So, we bought a pack of gum so we could use the bathroom. On the bathroom door was a huge bolder hanging from a string. It would go up and down as you opened the door. The mirror over the sink was about the size of a dinner plate and was broken in half. But, the best part of all.... they had two of these crazy creatures grazing in a little pen right next to the front door.
I think they could film the next Napolean Dynamite from this gas station :)