Heber Valley Camp-Day 1 and 2

We have been on vacation with Eric's family these past few days. We left on Friday and stopped for the wedding of one of Eric's friends at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. Am I the only one who consistently forgets how to pronounce the name of this particular temple? After the sealing we went to Heber for a family reunion of Eric's moms side of the family. We stayed at the Heber Valley Camp, which is a girls camp for a number of Young Women in Utah. The camp is HUGE! Although we stayed in cabins, the bunk beds had no mattresses or padding, so I don't think anyone slept well. However given my distaste for camping, I welcomed a cabin in any form.

Eric's family was assigned two cabins, so the girls stayed in one and the boys in another.

All of the people at the reunion.

The kids playing with Grandpa.

Sade's has a great time! EXCEPT, there was one little boy there named Eli that clawed her face, and then on another occasion pulled her hair. She woke up everyone morning of our vacation, asking us if Eli was still there. As soon as we told her he wasn't, she visibly relaxed.

After breakfast on Saturday, we went to the Challenge Course! At our first stop we had to get on these boards, and all communicate to make it up the hill. As the name Challenge Course implies it was quite challenging. The team Eric and Jackson were on beat everyone up the hill. But on the way down we were not allowed to verbally communicate, and Megan's team won.

At our second stop we did a rope challenge. We had to each climb on a rope, grasp hands, and make it to the end without falling off. Again, quite challenging! But everyone did great.

Megan and Brenden.

Megan and C.J.

Jackson and Brenden.

Me and Autumn.

Eric and his Dad. They are both so tall they barely had to lean over!

Our final stop was the zip-line. Megan went first, and was her fearless self.

Happy with her accomplishment.

I was up next. The climb, and the actual zip line did not frighten me. However, walking across the small log so high off the ground did!

Eric's turn:

See, he found it frightening too.

Unfortunately Jackson was a bit too small to do the zip-line which made him quite sad. But he made an excellent hat rack. FYI: If you ever want to see massive amounts of Seahawks clothing, just visit Eric's family for a day. You will see it everywhere!

That afternoon we packed up and headed off to spend a few days with Eric's immediate family at Bear Lake.

Monday, Monday, Can't Trust That Day

Laundry is still winning at my house. I fear I will never conquer it.

Yee-Haw made another appearance recently. This time there was singing and ukulele playing involved.

Speaking of singing: Sade put these goggles on, and sang "I'm so pretty" all around the living room. She is beautiful, but in my opinion even prettier when her eyes are not being smushed by goggles and she keeps her cute tongue in her mouth. I just agreed with her.

Eric brought home this enormous bug he found at one of his properties to scare us. All I will say is, It worked!

I purchased this at the D.I. for $5 and need some ideas about what to do with it. Anyone, anyone??

Speaking of the D.I. check out my newest shoe purchase. $8 (seemed a bit high to me), but brand new.

Now onto my newest home decorating project. I was really tired of my current photo wall, and have been wanting to change it for the past year. I knew exactly what I wanted, but had to wait to go to IKEA to buy the frames before I undertook it. So last month, while in Utah, I stopped into IKEA, and.......The frames I wanted had been discontinued! I thought my hopes were dashed, but ended up finding similar ones (albeit smaller than I wanted) at Michaels. So I saved up my 40% off coupons for a couple of weeks, and finally had enough to purchase the 12 frames I wanted. This was quite the feat for me, because generally I am not that great at delayed gratification. Anyway, they are finally on the wall, and I am quite happy. Not totally happy (I think they need to all be moved up about 2 inches, but happy until Eric has the time to do it).

Here they are laid out on the floor. It took me quite a while to get the order correct. I did a number of finishes on each of the pictures to change the color, and added a black vignette around each one. It ended up making some of the pictures a bit grainy, but I am willing to overlook that because I love the colors.

I have also been wanting to paint the inside of my front door, but am frozen with indecision about what color. Any ideas?

Jackson's 6th Birthday Celebration

Jackson started off his birthday by opening a couple of gifts that he could play with during the day.

He opened a new Slip-n-Slide and Lego's, which both got a lot of use:

Jackson wanted to go to the Mini-Grand Prix for his birthday, so after Eric got home, we headed out.

We rode lots of go-carts:

Megan was just a smidgen too short to ride the big go-carts by herself, so she rode with me. She kept wanting to go faster. On the other hand, Jackson rode with Eric and asked him to slow down. At one point Eric looked down, and Jackson had his hands over his eyes.

Jackson's cautious side continued when it was time to go down the big slides. I had to go down with him the first time, but after that his inner bravery kicked in, and he went down by himself.

There was no way we were getting him to put his hands up on the roller coaster:

Sadie didn't want to ride anything, so she stayed on the side-lines and cheered everyone on:

After riding the rides, and playing lots of video games to earn the all important tickets to buy junk, we headed to dinner.

Jackson chose IHOP, which ended up working out great because our Kids Ate Free!

After dinner we went home to open the rest of his presents.

We played for a while, and then had cake!

Just like my face-painting skills, try not to be jealous of my mad cake decorating skills. In case you can't tell, that is Drago from Bakugan (which is what Jackson requested).

It was a great day, and we were all worn out at the end of it.