Picts of Daxton's 5th Birthday and OWLZ game

Paris, ID camping Trip!

June... a camping, busy, birthday filled month

I know that I was being really good at the beginning of June with updating you, but I have failed.  I can't believe that June is over and done.  Thank goodness in some ways, and in other ways, I wish it could have lasted a little bit longer.  We were pretty busy with watching nieces and nephews, birthdays galore, our anniversary and top it off camping 2 weeks in a row.  BUT.... we had a blast as we were able to spend it as a family.

My sister-in-law had her baby at the end of May and to help out my mom and I watched her kids so that she could recover from her C-Section a little bit easier.  So my boys were excited to have their cousins over for a few days straight.  After that Corbin had his 3rd birthday!!!  I can't believe that Corbin is now 3 years old and acting so much older than his age.

After that we were able to go to Bryce Canyon with my mom and dad.  It was a GREAT trip!!! A very relaxing, do what you want kind of Trip!!  We played at the pool at my parent's hotel, went and saw all the sites up in Bryce Canyon, played back at our campsite and laughed.  What more could you ask for?!!?  Time spent with my family was very special to my this last month.  I got to do it a lot and enjoyed every minute of it.  Some may think that I would get tired of having my kids and my husband CONSTANTLY around me, but I beg to differ.  If anything else, it has brought us closer together and we have learned and taught each other many valuable lessons.

Playing in the tent.  It was really windy that first night.

First day at Rainbow point.

My boys!!                                                                                                Natural Bridge
 

        Cool stump we found and the boys thought it was fun!            Old Bryce Town---JAIL TIME!!!
 

  Cute pioneers, huh!!! hahaha                           Sitting around the fire!

     Papa and Hayden at Inspiration point!                                                           Roasting Marshmallows!

Those are just a smidge of the what I actually took!!  I didn't want to bore you with all my family photos so I just gave you a taste of it!!  Our next adventure was Father's day weekend!  Oh, did I mention Mat's birthday?  Well it was spent that first day in Bryce Canyon,  well the drive down to Bryce.  It was definitely a different birthday present for him.  When we got home it was Father's day weekend and we went up to his parent's home for a birthday celebration for his dad's birthday and all June birthdays.  It was nice to have ALL of Mat's family there, well, at least all his siblings were together.  Some of the nieces and nephews and son-in-laws were not there.  

 

 

 

After that fun filled weekend of family and friends! We headed off to Paris....... IDAHO!!!!  It wasn't as beautiful as Paris, France (from pictures I have seen), but definitely a little bit of heaven away from it all. We spent 3 days up there and out at Bear Lake, relaxing... who would complain about that... unless you were one of those that got really sunburned or eaten by the mosquitoes.  Other than that, I had a great time and the boys had fun playing with their Larsen cousins.  The Miller cousins don't like camping, but we still love them!!!

I was the designated photographer since everyone else either forgot their camera or their batteries for their camera had died.  So I had taken almost 400 photos in 3 days time.  While we were camping we ended up celebrating our 6th anniversary!  Mat's parent's felt bad that we were camping over the time of our anniversary, but I would rather be doing something like camping than possibly nothing at all since money is really tight.  So.... we spent it by going to the Lake and having dutch oven pizza for dinner with some yummy cobbler for dessert.  It was a really great day!!  My present for Mat was some quotes from songs that I thought described my love for him.  So I got this idea from a friend who did it for her husband on their anniversary, so thank you Tildie for the idea!!  What I did was take four songs that we both love and took exerts from them, pasted them onto some cute scrapbook paper, hole punched it and scattered them around in our luggage and places where he would be looking while we are camping, he still has yet to find 3 of them.  But I hope that he really likes it!!  

(There is a slideshow of pictures to show you coming soon!)

This last week of the 4th of July has still been crazy because it was Daxton's 5th birthday and it was his first birthday party.  It was a good birthday I think!! We kind of elongated the celebration for a few days I think because of it falling on the 4th of July weekend.  His birthday day was pretty laid back we just had homemade pizza, his favorite, for dinner, then I went to Eclipse with my Bunco girls!!!  (awesome movie) Then Thursday the first of July we had his birthday party!!!!  He had a slip and slide party and had a blast.  For Corbin's birthday we bought a new Buzzlightyear slip n' slide and they had a great time!!!  

After the party was over we headed up with our good friends Aaron and Chelsey to an OWLZ game for free!!!  It was great!  The kids had a good time and Corbin even got an official Pioneer League baseball from a staff member there.  He thought that was pretty cool!

My parents a couple of my siblings with their families headed to Idaho for my dad's side of the family, family reunion.  We were unable to go because of finances. (It would have been 4 weeks in a row of camping-- which is fine in my book, but the cost of gas would have killed us!)  So we spent the 4th at home with just our lil family!!!  We had a fun relay race in our backyard that Daxton beat us all at!  He's so fast!

Saturday we had a fairly relaxing day at home.  Got a few chores done around home and then we headed to what was a very empty Payson Park but great for us to have the boys just play without any worry.  We headed home after playing, napped and had a great dutch oven dinner with our friends, did fireworks and watched a movie on the garage.  Great day!!  Sunday was fairly relaxing as well.  We had my lil sis and her husband come over for dinner and then we headed to Memorial Park to listen to the band play and the Payson Chorale perform for the 4th of July!!!  Fun filled summer evening!  Great days to come in a few day with my family coming to Nephi Canyon to have a RICK LEE FAMILY REUNION!! 

Memorial Day weekend

So I feel pretty good that I'm staying on top of things,.... for now at least!  I am actually posting about Memorial day weekend the day after it all happened, which is pretty good for me especially lately!  Anywho, onto the weekend recap!  So Friday we didn't do very much, but on Saturday I was able to get a lot done on some yard work and getting things organized in the shed that is storing all of our stuff. I had to do most of it because Mat had hurt his back, well specifically he slipped a disc in his back.  So he has been in a lot of pain lately.  I moved most of the boxes and found a whole bunch of pictures that I need to scan and I can't wait to start some new books especially those from my younger years and some of my favorite and not so favorite memories and stories of my life.  We didn't do much after that.  My mom and my grandpa went down to Monroe, UT to put flowers on my grandma's grave along with other relatives that were in the same area. After my mom got back we had a BBQ with grilled shrimp and zucchini, onions and squash.  It was really yummy!  My sister and her family had come over and we were able to eat outside and have a great time.  We roasted marshmellows in our firepit and had a great time while my mom was telling of stories of my Grandpa Anderson and things that he remembered growing up as a kid.  It was awesome!  The only downer to the evening was that I found out that I'm allergic to shrimp.  My lip started to swell in one spot like a blister. My mom thought it was a coldsore, but I was thinking it was an allergic reaction.  So I took some benadryl and the swelling went away.  Thank goodness it wasn't a major reaction, but now I know that I can't have shrimp anymore. 
Sunday was a great day!  Church was awesome and after that we got salads ready and headed up the canyon to have a family BBQ up there!  I love BBQ's!!!  I love my family even more though.  I was able to meet my new neice, Sophia Rebecca Lee, my brother Ryan's newest addition.  After roasting hot dogs and eating our dinner, my sweet Grandpa Anderson read us a story about Christmas service for our FHE lesson.  I know it's not Christmas but the story touched my heart that even in the bleakest of circumstances we must serve others with all our heart and blessings will come in the end in many unexpected ways!  After our family get together we headed back to our house where some of our closest friends met us and we were able to go camping in our backyard for the first time of the season!!!!!  It was a great night!  We set up the projector and watched a couple of movies and we learned a new card game, Hand and Foot.  I've heard of it, but haven't played it until that night!  The kids fell asleep around 10- 10:30 pm and we didn't get to bed until around 2pm.  It was a pretty cool night, but at least the boys were warm.  For breakfast we made blueberry pancakes with bacon and it was wonderful!  We got a couple of pictures of the time when our friends, Chels and Aaron were here.  Thanks for coming down and can't wait to see how the summer pans out for us!
The next couple of weeks we are pretty free, but towards the end of the month we are going to be camping almost every weekend!!!  I'm excited to go camping, but I think I will be pretty tired over those 4 weeks straight! 
Hope you all had a Happy and SAFE Memorial Weekend remembering all those before us!

Daxton's a BIG BOY now!

Daxton just finished preschool on Wednesday and was so excited to now move on into elementary school.  With it being his last day they were letting any parent who would like to come and eat lunch with them and help out at the school.  So I went, had lunch with him and then they had a little program of some of the songs that they had learned that year.  It was a really cute program. If I can get the computer to work I will try and get a video or two of him dancing his way through songs.  He was very active during the program.  He would sing and dance at the same time.  I think he is going to be in show choirs later on in his schooling just like his daddy.  He was a lot of fun to watch, so hopefully, keep your fingers crossed, that I can put a video of him.  But I do have some pictures of him during his program and he is a hoot.  Now he is going to be going to the same elementary school that I went to, now that's weird!!!

Hogle Zoo.... the perfect day!

So May 15th we went to the zoo with our really good friends, Aaron and Chelsey and their family!!!! IT WAS A BLAST!!  The kids a great time together and love to play... which makes it all the better and a lot more fun!  We followed each other up to the zoo and had a great time!!  The photos that I took can pretty much tell the story for you and I won't bore you with all the details, but I will tell you of a funny experience I had a couple of times while we were there.  There were a lot of girls that were wearing a similar outfit that I was wearing.  I had a teal blue shirt on and brown shorts. One girl even had a similar hairstyle, but a little darker in color.  We were taking pictures of the kids on a statue of a rhino and the older kids were getting restless so I took them over to see the mandrills and Mat, Chelsey and Aaron look over to where I was and there were 2 other women there with similar outfits and Mat asked, "Which is my wife?"  Chelsey took a picture of that event, but I found it interesting that that was a popular outfit for the day.  Can I just ask you one other thing?  WHY DO GIRLS WEAR HIGH HEELED SANDALS TO THE ZOO?!?!?!?  It just hurts my feet just thinking about it!  Who are they trying to impress?  Countless times we saw women walking in high heeled sandals or shoes and it really baffled me! Wear something comfortable!  I said my peace enjoy the photos!