Anniversary Trip - August 2014

     Andrew and I celebrated our 7th anniversary this year.  It  is crazy that we've been married that long! We're old. ;)  Andrew has really been wanting us to have a getaway with just the two of us for a while.  So, I finally agreed and we let the kids stay with Becca, and then with my Mom while we went to Midway. We were away for 3 nights.  The first night, Sunday night, we stayed at The Homestead Resort.  On Monday we went mountain biking at Dutch Hollow.  It was so fun!  We are certainly not pro mountain bikers or anything, but we both enjoy it, and haven't been in several years. It felt great to hop on our bikes and hit the trail!  There were some pretty awesome views from the top!
     We were planning to stay at Johnson's Mill the second night, so after mountain biking we went to check in.  It was an awesome place.  There was a pond at the Mill that we took a canoe ride on, and tons of land to explore, so we hiked around for a while.  It was a bed and breakfast, and their breakfast was delicious!  I had never been to a bad & breakfast before, and had always wanted to.  It was a lot of fun.  Tuesday, after breakfast, we drove to the Park City Outlets, did some shopping, then headed to Salt Lake and saw 'Wicked' at the Capitol Theater.  It was SOOO good!  I LOVED it! Andrew thought it was ok, but I was blown away by how awesome it was!  However, I was really missing the girls by this point.  They were in Orem and the musical ended at a late hour, so we slept at out house, and I picked the girls up from my parents house Wednesday morning.  We had a really fun little get away!  It was fun to eat a lot of food, watch a lot of our favorite shows, just relax, and hang out together.  I'm happy I'm married to this guy. :)

Flaming Gorge-July 2014

We LOVE Flaming Gorge!  We had so much fun!  This is another trip we would like to make a tradition out of.  We went to Flaming Gorge 2 years ago for the first time.  We went again this year and it was such a blast!  We all stayed in a house together that my parents rented for the weekend. We rented a motorboat and went knee boarding, water skiing, and jumped off some of the red cliffs into the lake.  We were nervous about how Ivy would do on the boat because she would have to wear a big puffy life jacket the whole time, but she did great!  She even fell asleep in our arms while on the boat. :) We jumped off a few cliffs, which was really fun.  Well, Andrew and Darian jumped off a few cliffs, I only jumped off one. :) We also went water skiing and knee boarding.  Andrew had a goal to complete a 360 on the knee board and he did it!  He was also able to go in and out of the wake on the skiis. He is pretty athletic. :)

 The next day we rented rafts and went river rafting down the Green River.  It is such a fun river.  Very smooth, with just a couple of little rapids to keep things fun. :)  We played games every night and had a lot of fun together.  Flaming Gorge is so beautiful.  We were surrounded by tall, red rock cliffs while boating and when we were rafting.  I am excited to go again!

July 2014 Cecret Lake

One of our favorite hikes is the Cecret Lake hike up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  The wildflowers are so beautiful during the month of July.  We didn't get any good pictures of them but they were awesome!  The girls did great on our hike!  We were hiking for like 3 + hours because we had to take a longer route, I don't remember why, but they did great!  Jenna liked to climb like a mountain goat, and have piggy back rides, and Ivy LOVED riding in the hiking back pack.  G & G Hughes came with us and we all had a great time. Oh, and we saw a moose! :)

Happy Girls

We were swinging on the swings and playing dress-up and Princesses one day in July, and I captured some of my favorite pictures ever of my cute girls.  Totally in their element,  These sweet, joyful, full of fun moments make my Mommy heart so happy. :) I'm so glad my little camera phone captured this moment so well. :)

July 2014 - Palisades

We have done a lot this summer that we would like to do every summer, or at least every other summer.  One of which was camping at Palisades State Park.  We went over 4th of July weekend with our good friends, the Fowlers.  We went out on the canoe and paddle boat, fished, ate a lot, played at the campsite and on the beach, roasted marshmallows, and had a great time!  On the 4th of July Andrew and Jenna drove into Manti for a Daddy/Daughter date and watched the fireworks. :) Good times!

June 2014

We have done so many fun things this summer!  I am going to try to do a recap one month at a time. Let's start with June. We got to babysit the Blacks for a few days.  We had so much fun!  We went to a celebration of National Dairy Day in Midway, UT.  There were rides, a petting zoo, games, ice cream, pizza, different flavors of milk, and it was all FREE! We had so much fun!  The line for ice cream was too long so after our fun in Midway, we stopped at Leatherby's for our ice cream fix. :) One of the days tey were with us, we went down to my parents' house and took a walk to see and feed the horses.  The top pic is Sadie, Jenna and Griffin playing on the swing/hammock with Uncle D (Darian). We love living near cousins, Jenna and Ivy had so much fun spending so much time with them!

I already posted about Ivy's 1st birthday.  Just a little before her birthday we spent lots of time with Grandma and Grandpa Hansen as we said goodbye before they left to go serve as Mission President and Companion in the Cochabamba, Bolivia mission.  We love them so much and are so grateful for their incredible examples and sacrifice.  The adults were all able to attend their setting apart in Salt Lake.  We met Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles.  It was a wonderful experience.  We also had a few dinners, BBQs, and a nice breakfast with them.  We were able to have spiritual discussions and a sweet family prayer preparing for their departure. Andrew drove them to the MTC.  We miss them greatly but know they are doing the Lord's work and we are all being blessed because of it.

Grandpa has special powers. He is really good at calming Ivy down when she is being held by someone other than Mom or Dad. (This is pre-calmed down) :)

A few days later, Andrew participated in the Spartan Beast race, which he and all of his teammates say was WAY harder than the Tough Mudder race.  Andrew's a stud!  We are so proud of him for working so hard and getting in good enough shape to participate in such events!