Catch up time! (once again!)

If only I would just stay on top of this blog, I wouldn't have to keep titling my new posts "catch up time" or "what we've been up to"!!!! Nonetheless, I've decided it was time to finally catch up on blogging again and hopefully just keep up with it this time.

 

 

I guess I will just pick up from where I left off. Unfortunately that was way back to the 4th of July. So here goes....

 

The week of July 10th (I think) is when I left my family for girls camp. I had been stressing about girls camp all summer and was very nervous about it. To my relief everything went so smoothly. We had plenty of time at camp to get everything done that was required of us, and had lots of time to just sit back and relax. Fortunately my friend Amber had a family cabin that they offered for us to stay in, so it was hard to call it camping, but thats the way I like to do it. The bishop teasingly called it "Princess Camp". It was fun, but man was I glad to have it over with. I'm not sure if my family can take another summer of "Stressed out Mom", if I still have this calling for the next girls camp. We will see.
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Next on the list

Terry turns 36!!!!!!!!!! I know that I took pictures of Terry's birthday, but I have searched and cannot find any. For his birthday we went out with a bunch of friends to Olive Garden and then went bowling afterwards. We also had a little party with Terry's parents. Nothing too exciting, but we had fun.

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We have promised our kids to do a family vacation every summer. We switch off every summer with one summer being a big vaction and then the next summer taking a smaller vacation. Last year we went to California, so this year was our small vacation. So we packed the kids up and drove them down to Utah. We dropped Damon off at my parents house (sshhh! Don't tell him. He is just too young to enjoy the things we had planned for this year.) We stayed at a hotel and just did some fun stuff locally. The first thing we did was go to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Pointe in Lehi.

Here the kids and I are posing for a picture in front of some dinosaur bones.

 

Here the kids are building a dam out of sand.

(The kids were kind of bored with the rest of the museum. This is where we spent the majority of our time.)

Not really sure what Blake is excited about!

Terry had just as much fun as the kids!

 

The next day we took the kids to Seven Peaks water park down in Provo...

The kids enjoying the wave pool.

Blake is such a poser.

Miss Ashlyn

Me and Terry

 

We really enjoyed our time at Seven Peaks. The last time we were there Ashlyn was too scared to go on any of the slides, but this time she had tons of fun on them.

 

That night Terry and I were super stoked to go eat at Joe's Crabshack! It was DELISH!!! We both just got a big bowl of crawfish ettoufee. (our favorite) It did not disappoint!

While we were there they pumped up the music and grabbed all the kids in the restaraunt to join a "conga line". Ashlyn was too shy to join it but Blake jumped right in with them.

Here's a picture we snapped of him in the line with our waitress behind him.

 

We did other fun stuff while in Utah, but spent alot of time in the hotel swimming pool. The kids had lots of fun, and we plan to bring Damon along for now on!
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Everyone summer we always try to get in a few games with the local semi pro baseball team, the Chukars. This year we made it to a game with our friends the Highs. First we took our familes to dinner at Applebees for kids night where kids meals are 99 cents and they do free face painting. Then we headed to the game.

Here is Blake with his best bud Dallin, and Ashlyn with friend Cade.

Here is Damon with his best bud Carter.

 

Blake was brave enough to go ask one of the bat boys for a ball before the game ended.

The kids got to run the bases when the game was over. Here's a shot I got of Damon making his way to home plate.

 

We attempted to go to one more Chukars game, but when we got there Blake started feeling sick and threw up in the parking lot, so we ended up going home.
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I also had a birthday this summer and turned 29. I had a pretty good birthday. My friends took me out to Olive Garden, and then we had a little party with the kids. Once again, nothing too exciting but we still had a good time.

 

 

Shortly after my birthday it was the kids first day of school....

Blake on his first day of 3rd grade. Mrs. Drouin's class.

(As you can see, Blake had to get glasses over the summer. But he has already switched to contacts. He sure looked hansome with them though!)

Ashlyn on her first day of 1st grade. Mrs. Brooks' class.

The two of them together.

(I've got some good looking kids!!)
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One weekend when we had nothing to do, we decided to go for a drive and find a place to shoot guns. We grabbed some sandwiches from Subway, then headed out to Bone. We found this little place with a little creak running through and decided to pull off there. It was so HOT that day but we had a good time. Here are some pics we took...

Damon brought along his toy gun so he could feel like a big kid.

Getting down to aim at the target.

Terry

Me

Blake can handle his own!

 

Ashlyn getting a little help from Dad.

Damon got his turn with the real gun! Doesn't he look cute holding that big gun!

And I had to get a closeup of Ashlyn's cute little red cheeks.
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This year for Labor Day we went down to Utah to spend it with my family. We usually get to spend the weekend with all of my sibblings and their families. Unfortunately Aja's family ended up canceling due to Daniel having some church obligations and with Jenna living in Peru we knew they wouldn't be making it. We were disappointed they couldn't be there, but were glad to be able to spend the time with my brother Ricky and my parents, and we made the most of our time while we were there. While driving down to Utah, the most wonderful thing happened. I looked back and saw this....

THEY ALL FELL ASLEEP!!!!!!

This NEVER happens. Damon has been the absolute WORST traveler his entire life. He never falls asleep in the car. So you can imagine my excitement when all three of them were asleep!! I could already tell this was going to be a great weekend!

The first thing we did while there was go to Hogle Zoo. We did this on Friday so only my mom was able to tag along with my family. My dad had to work and my brother had either work or school. (Not sure which).

Here we are posing in front of a giant elephant statue.
The kids really liked this thing cause it blew water out of its trunk, and it was a super hot day!

My mom with the kids.

The elephant exhibit.

We really enjoyed watching the elephants. There were trainers out there with them making them do tricks for us. The one in the water was a baby and was super cute.

The giraffe exhibit.

I was super excited about going to see the giraffes but was disappointed cause they were pretty boring.

Posing on the bear statue

The monkees were our favorite.

This one monkey in particular had the hugest face. I tried taking several pictures of this big guy, but the lighting was terrible so I couldn't get a clear enough shot of him.

 Damon and blake watching the seals swim.

Nana and the kids on the train ride.

 

Before leaving the zoo we took the kids to play at the playground...

Here's my little monkey hanging on the giant spider web.

Blake getting eaten by an alligator

He thought Ashlyn looked pretty tasty too.

 

The next day it was time for a annual trip to Lagoon. The kids had lots of fun but its never the same without all of the cousins...

This was the first ride of the day. Damon was a bit unsure at first and was not loving all of the attention.

Once he got used to the rides, he had a ton of fun!

Here's a shot with Blake and Ashlyn in it.

Damon on the bumper cars. He did amazingly well on these, and loved it. We spent lots of time here.

I hate these things but the kids wanted me to go with them. They make me nauseous!

 

We had lots of fun at Lagoon, and I was so proud of Ashlyn. She rode every ride that she was tall enough for, including the Wicked. She has gotten so brave over the last year!

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Here's a random picture of the kids on all of their toys. We got lots of 4 wheeling in this year. Damon insisted on wearing his helmet while driving his jeep!

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Crazy Hair Day

at school....

Here's Ashlyn's hairdo for the day. The picture really doesn't do it justice. It was actually alot more crazy looking in person.

(We woke up to snow this morning, so Ashlyn wore snowpants to school)

Blake's hair was just in a bunch of little rubberbands.

The two of them together

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HALLOWEEN

All of us posing under our carved pumpkins.

(This was actually the same day as crazy hair day for the kids. You can see what the day has done to their hair.)

Damon the Pirate, Ashlyn the butterfly, and Blakenstein.

Ashlyn at her school costume parade.

 Blake at his school costume parade.

 

We had a good halloween. Terry and I went to our friends' costume party and dressed up as bacon and eggs. Terry was bacon and I was eggs. (Somehow we didn't get a picture.) The kids also had a Halloween party that they went to. On Halloween night we took a golf cart from Terry's work, over to our friends' neighborhood and drove all of the kids around to trick or treat. It was alot of fun and the kids got a butt load of candy. The best part was the weather. It wasn't freezing cold like every other Halloween that we've had here. It was wonderful!!