Cara's Birthday Celebrations

Grandpa and Uncle Marty had to work so we celebrated early!

THREE YEARS OLD!!

She was absolutely a doll opening up all her presents!

She still didn't blow out her own candles!

How To Cram A Whole Summer's Worth of Fun Into One Long Weekend.......

Seriously.  My Mommy must have panicked because August is knocking on the door.  The funny part is that no body in our family is in school.  So August coming doesn't really matter.  Although, I will be starting preschool!  Maybe that's where it came from.  Or maybe she just loves summer so much she never wants it to end!

Anyway, we took a little vacation up north this weekend and basically kamikazed it!  From Thursday night to Monday....in a total of about 100 hours...we accomplished:

-road trip
-sleepover at grandparents house
-visited another state
-played outside on trampoline for almost 6 hours
-quick ride on a four wheeler thingie
-laid on a tramp and looked at the night sky
-camped out
-competed in a triathlon (okay just Daddy!)
-floated a canal on tubes with friends
-attended a backyard Crawdad Festival (only daddy partook!)
-slept over with cousins
-family reunion of sorts (we were missing a couple people)
-watched 12 hours of Olympics
-2 trips to the zoo
-played at a water park
-oh and celebrated a birthday!

We might be a little tired today.  But we had a fabulous time.  We headed up north to watch Daddy compete in the annual Spudman in Burley, Idaho.  It's another Olympic Distance tri and he did FANTASTIC.   We are so proud of him.  Mommy hadn't even realized it was the Olympic distance because he was so calm about it!  We enjoyed our evening in Idaho with Daddy's friends and my friends Ruby and John.  We got to sleep outside in our new tent and played for hours with Ruby and John.  I even loved floating the canal (although nobody had a waterproof camera so we have no photographic evidence!)

And then of course when we headed back to Salt Lake on Saturday afternoon we began the cousin mayhem.  We love our Aunt Rachel's house and all her toys.  (Mommy and Daddy said the arrival was only soured because they had obtained a GIANT rock chip that led to a three way crack and cost us a Disneyland Park Hopper ticket in the form of a new windshield!)  We played and played and then after going to church on Sunday got to go to Aunt Margaret's house and find our cousins from Seattle there and ready to play!  It was so good to see Aunt Whitley and Smith, Lainey, and Rosey!  We missed Uncle Adam though.

Cara blew out some early birthday candles with Rosey since their birthdays are just three days apart!  (Or rather Cara DIDN'T blow out the candles.)

Mommy was easily talked into staying one more night in SLC so that we could hit the zoo for the second time and then play at Seven Peaks in Provo.  It was very much worth it.  Cara and I both loved two of the water slides that you used a tube for!

What an amazing trip!

Zoo Highlights!

Oh and I almost forgot! Mommy got to be in the bird show and have the raven named Jarro land on her arm and take money out of her hand!  She loved it.  She's always wanted to do it!

Idaho Highlights!

He's AMAZING!

I was grumpy with Mom.  I didn't want to go back to St. George!

Quick Lake Trip

Yesterday Mommy snuck in a quick lake trip.  She had even told Grandpa the night before that we WEREN'T going so he didn't throw our lifejackets in the boat.  That meant we were only allowed to play on the beach.  I was really bummed about it this time though. I really wanted to go and get towed by the rope for a little practice.  Oh well.  We had a fun water fight with Uncle Phil and Uncle Eric.  I also practiced more swimming.  Big surprise.  Mommy made me put on floaties though.  Cara even got in to her chest!

Look at this picture.
It looks like we caught a bird flying through the shot!

Cara did want to be in the picture despite how it looks.

A Fabulous 24th of July!

We had great 24th of July.  We were originally going to head back to Grandpa's favorite swimming hole in Zion, meeting the rest of the family there after they did a slot canyon, but we had to change plans quickly when a massive thunderstorm woke us all up at 7 am!  The original forecast didn't include thunderstorms all day but boy did it cloud burst on us!

With plans changed, we headed up to the Veyo pool instead.  We were so lucky going "up high in the mountains" (my own words) because it was sunny up there for a few hours.  I swam so well.  Mommy was so surprised.  I loved going into the deep end and jumping in with Mommy.  I can swim in water WAY over Mommy's head!  She loved it.  We also ate the yummy fried food and had fun with Aunt Angie.  We loved having her there.  Uncle CJ had played in the Utah State Amateur Golf Tournament over the weekend and placed SECOND.  We were so proud of him.

Oh yeah and the night before our neighborhood does a bike parade.  Last year I rode my little tricycle.  This year I actually rode my big girl bike, but I'm still a little unsteady so I certainly wasn't the fastest but I still had a GREAT time!

We also got together for more firework fun because Grandma and Grandpa were actually in town and I like fireworks this year.  Grandpa lit of smoke bombs for us during the daylight hours again.  Lots of fun!

Grandpa had made a request for no boring fireworks this year and we did not disappoint.  Of course it ended having more to do with our aerial fireworks malfunctioning than how awesome they were to begin with.  Our first aerial firework to be lit off, malfunctioned on one of its little balls and shot it sideways into the neighbors closed garage door.  It bounced and exploded on the street.  Kind of shook us all up.  We still chose to light another one however....moving into the middle of the street where another road t stop into it.  It shot off it's first 5 beautifully...and then it tipped.....and fired out 6 different shots under our cars, into our house, into a different neighbors house, and yet another neighbor's house completely across the street.  It was SCARY!! And to make it worse, one of the neighbor's had come out to complain about the noise and was almost pelted with the exploding ball.  All in all, we were all adrenaline rushed.  AND WE STILL HAD TWO AERIAL FIREWORKS TO SHOOT.  We ended up driving up to the high school parking lot and had a wonderful finale with no problems.  What a great  24th!

Overheard at our House

Two little girls coloring at a kitchen table, Mommy in the bedroom:

Cara: "Siena! I'm freaking out!"
Siena: "Don't freak out, Cara..."
Cara: "I am! I am just freaking out!"

Both go back to coloring and talking about something else.

Earlier this morning:
Cara: "Dad, you should get Siena a new yo yo."
Dad: "Oh yeah?"
Cara: "Yes.  A blue one.  Blue is a charming color."
Dad: "Charming color?"
Cara: "Yes.  Blue."


Oh yeah and Mommy and Daddy won a mattress set!  Mommy was really hoping to win the Southern California trip for a family of four but she'll take the mattress!  It's nice and then Aunt Becca can have a new mattress when she gets married! So anyone who wants to visit, might want to do it in the next 6 months.  We actually have a guest bed!

What works for us!

So Mommy and I had been planning on telling you all about our schedule and what has worked beautiful for us and then my friend's Mommy posted her schedule for a day and what works for her on their family blog.  It was really funny!  Hers is actually more of a how to survive becoming a Mommy though so I think it's different and Mommy and I will still tell you what has kept this household running this summer.

My Mommy has been a stay at home Mom (who teaches group exercise classes) for 6 months + now.  And I think she finally figured some things out.  Previous to this, Mommy had two days off during the week and considered weekends for family play.  So laundry, cleaning, and shopping were all done on those two days.  Monday and Friday.  Laundry was a twice a week thing.  And that does really work, but Mommy finally perfected what works for HER.

In her own words, staying at home had been kind of a rough transition because it always felt like you could just clean ANOTHER day.  You had tomorrow.  Go out and play today.  Spend all your money at Target.  Go!  It will be fun!

After seeing a couple of chore charts for grown ups on Pinterest, Mommy finally set herself up on a schedule. :)

We do one load of laundry every day.  Make considerable efforts to run the dishwasher once every day AND unload.  (oh no!)  We spot clean the kitchen, bathrooms, and do that whole pick up your toys every day.

But here is the rest of the schedule and our house has never been cleaner! And we still PLAY every day!

Monday: Vacuum whole house, Colors load
Tuesday: Clean girls' bathroom, Girls load
Wednesday: Dust, Towels load
Thursday: Clean master bath, Whites load
Friday: Mop (Seriously we used to never do this!) Sheets load

Saturday and Sunday are not for cleaning...they are for adventures or so Daddy can mow the lawn!

Mommy has loved this.  Our sheets are actually washed, the shelves are actually dusted, and there is a rhythm.  Our day to day stuff is a little different.  We get up when we get up a couple of days or we make it to the gym by a certain time on others, but I think Mommy is happier now.  Her daily chores are done by 11:00 am normally.

Jimmer!

Yes people, I, a UTE fan to the core even at my tender age, was star struck last night.  I got to meet the man.  The man who has really dreamy blue eyes according to my Mom.  Last night, I met the Sacramento Kings #7....Jimmer Fridette.  And his cute bouncy BYU cheerleader wife.

They came and supported the only 5k my Mommy ever runs.  Chelsi's Run happened last night at 10 pm.  We lined up at Grandma's church, I begrudgingly climbed in the stroller only after securing a promise that I could run across the finish line, and then we were off.

Actually we were there really early and had time to realize Jimmer was there and have Mommy teeter totter back and forth between going and asking for an autograph for a little boy in our ward or just leaving him alone.  In the end, she got the autograph.  And then in the very end, after we were all gross and sweaty and it was really dark...she even got a picture with the whole fam and Jimmer.  (Dang night time photo quality on an Iphone!)

Isn't Grandma so teeny?!

Mommy and Daddy did pretty well as far as the running part was concerned.  Even pushing us big girls, Daddy ran it in 25 minutes.  And Mommy didn't hardly train and she and Aunt Becca did it in 28 minutes!  Wahoo!

And Mommy loved that her friends came with their kiddos and ran with us.  It was fun!

Where to begin?

We have been busy!  Mommy spent most of last week up on Cedar Mountain with a bunch of Young Women braving the rain and cold.  (Actually it was really only ridiculously cold the last night she was up there!)  She was gone for three whole sleeps.  We missed her very much but had fun playing with Grandma and getting schnazzy new Merida undies.  It feels almost impossible to catch up the blog.

Aunt Rachel has been putting Mommy and me to shame!  Although really we have been mostly business as usual.  I do swim lessons and gymnastics.  Mommy teaches at the gym.  Daddy works.  Cara learns how to pee on the potty.  Oh wait....we weren't quite business as usual.  Mommy got so sick before she went to Girls Camp.  She had a killer sore throat for 3 days that had her in tears.  Even the good medicine didn't work.  And then it was a moderate to mild sore throat and a congested nose and a dry hacking cough.  None of it has fully resolved and we are coming up on the two week mark.  I think we will just be glad that she was the only one to get it fully....although Grandpa and Uncle Eric ended up slammed with it too.

Oh yes and we HAVE to mention how Mommy was the only one who needed the first aid kit at camp. She describes it as running because she's late, trying desperately not to lose her footing on a gravel slope, "Supermaning" down the hill, cheese grating her arm, horror and embarrassment, afraid someone saw, relief no one saw, and then totally bummed that no one could even laugh at her because they didn't see!!!

However, now that she's home we've also been back to hanging out and being silly!

Aren't we fabulous?!

Jumpin' Jacks...it's the place to be...until you have a potty accident!
We also have great video of us going down the slides if you're interested!

Dancing in a summer rainstorm!
It should be on every bucket list!

Oh and Daddy is ward clerk which in our church means he has to sit up on the stand and count how many people come to sacrament meeting.  He does this with his phone and so Mommy (apparently in an irreverent mood) started sending him silly pics of us.  Aren't they silly?

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Big Girls

Quick note from Mommy:

My little girls are turning into big girls so fast.  I can't quite believe it.  Just this last weekend, Cara went from no concept of how to pee on the potty to almost entirely potty trained.  (Yesterday was kind of a bad day but since everyone in our house has some kind of CRUD, I'll let it slide.)  Siena started out the summer in Level 1 swim lessons and I never dreamed she'd advance past Level 2...well on Monday she starts LEVEL 3!  And not only that but she's become a real fish who loves to swim in water over her head.  Just yesterday she began doing back flips in my parents spa.  True back flips.  Twirling her little arms to help her roll backwards.  I was blown away!  And just yesterday the girl grasped the concept of pumping while swinging. Now she's an animal!

Cara (who will be three at the end of month) and Siena play and fight together but with real words and conversations and rules to games.  It's kind of pleasant.  Siena has chores which she completes and Cara has started helping!

Oh yeah and they learned my trick of claiming things are "broken" or "closed" when I don't want to do them and try and use it on me.  "No sorry Mom the vacuum is broken, you can't vacuum."  "Target is closed we can't go."

But they still love to climb into my bed in the morning and snuggle up.  We can spend a half an hour in bed giggling with each other.  So sweet.

Happy FOURTH of July!

I hope you guys had fun Fourth of July.  We celebrated with all Mommy's sibling except Eric because he went with Grandma and Grandpa up north.  We missed them, but still had fun.  We improvised a little barbecue and played Kinect on the XBox and swam a little bit.  The weather was not being very nice though.  It was so windy when Mommy and Daddy tried to ease me into fireworks that we couldn't keep anything lit!

I love doing Track and Field on the Kinect

We had to do it inside because of the wind!

Iphone not so great for night time pics!

I ended up really enjoying the fireworks this year and didn't even hide in the back of the car!  Big steps for me!  We might have to do even more fireworks for the 24th because I enjoyed them so much!  And while we were swimming, I was practicing swimming to the bottom and touching the gecko design on the surface of the pool!  I'm growing up so fast!  Cara also spontaneously started peeing in the potty the day before and had NO accidents all day on the 4th!  (She had a big accident today at the gym but she finally shows total interest!!!)

We snuck into our friends the Petersen's backyard to watch the fireworks.  Very cool.  Perfect spot.  St. George did a nice job this year! In that very poor quality photo you can see their dog Hallie giving me big kisses.