Visit from the Hutsons!

My sister Jenn and her husband and 2 girls finished up an epic summer road trip with a visit to Utah! It was so fun to have them stop by and hang out for a day. I felt bad that they were SO tired and more than ready to go home, but they were good sports! 

On Saturday morning we drove 20 minutes to visit the Salt Lake Olympic Park in Park City. We had such a great time!! 

There were some ski jumpers practicing in the pool which was so fun to watch!

Then we went over to another area and the big kids, along with Adrian did a high adventure ropes course with a zip line at the end.

The kids rock climbing wall was pretty fun too!

Once I'm up at the computer Ill add a couple videos from my phone from the ski jumpers...

Thanks Jenn and fam for a fun visit!!

SL Bees & Happy Birthday Adrian!

It was social media night at the SL Bees game the other night so I got to take whole fam! It also just happened to be Adrian's birthday so it was a fun way to celebrate. 

We all had a fun time! The Bees lost as they usually do, but it was the experience that counts, right?!

Sticky cotton candy fingers!

 We chased Bumble around the park until we could have a photo-op with him. Fun!

Towards the end of the game Leah was getting restless so we had a little girls photo shoot...

July 4th 2013

We had a BBQ and fireworks at our house for the 4th of July. It was fun! 

We ate dinner and played games until it was dark enough for fireworks. The water ballon toss was a big hit- the kids really got into it.

I swear we feed Leah. After she was "done" she walked around to the other kids plates and just helped herself, LOL!

We moved out to the front yard to get ready for fireworks. Sparklers were fun but I think we all lived the parachute men fireworks the most! We've got to get more if those for next year!

Running to go catch the parachute man.

Got him!

Colin showed off his pole-climbing skills. This kid is a monkey!

Just as we were about to start the fireworks I remembered I got a box of glow sticks. Who knew they were going to be just as, if not MORE popular than the fireworks, LOL! The kids had so much fun with them!

Pineview Reservoir - A Sandy Beach in Utah!

A few weeks ago we found we had an open Saturday so I quickly came up with an idea to take the kids to a nearby lake. Adrian was game so we did everything we could to get ready the night before and the next morning we were off! 

I remember when I was young doing fun stuff like that seemed so easy, I oftener wondered why we didn't have outings like that more often. Now I know! I'd say we had about 4 hours of prep work go into that half-day outing. It's so exhausting but it's one of those things you just do because the kids just love it.

I'm so glad we did too. As I get farther along in this pregnancy it's just getting hard to do a lot. So it was fun to have this afternoon together at the lake. 

Leah adored digging in the sand! Her swim bottoms were a magnet for it too. We affectionately called her "Saggy-Bottomed Leah" all day.

Colin decided this was a great time to pull out a new swim suit from the box if Thomas hand-me-downs. Too bad it was about 2 sizes too big, LOL!

Sandy cookies taste better! At one point she even leaned down and licked the sand. Yummo.

Jackson Hole Getaway

Earlier this month Adrian and I had the chance to go on an overnight trip to Jackson Hole, WY as part of his company's 40th Anniversary celebration. Each employee got to choose between several overnight excursions happening throughout the year- all expenses paid! We chose earlier this year...before knowing baby #5 was on the way and as luck would have it, our trip was dubbed "Saddles & Paddles." As in, horseback riding and white water rafting. Awesome. We weren't sure if we could change trips after we'd already made our selected, so instead we just decided to go and participate in what we could.

The trip was fun, but it was also filled with early mornings, long rides on a tour bus and limited sleep. It was really nice to have a chance to be by ourselves {thanks to Christy and Keoki for watching all 4 kids for us!!}  Jackson Hole was a quaint little town which neither Adrian or I had never seen before. We did get a short time to do some sight-seeing and I think we saw about as much as we needed to in that 2 hours, lol! Really, for us the trip was about getting a little break from normal life and that's exactly what we got. No cooking meals, no picking up the house, no tag-teaming getting 4 littles ready for bed... it was a very welcomed trip.

Here are a few pictures we got from along the way. We didn't take a camera, so these are just some we got on our phones.

Yeah, they live life a bit differently there in Wyoming. LOL. This was of course, taken near where the rest of the group rode horses. They'd split into 2 groups- one went and got lunch while the others took the horseback ride. So we opted to just hang out and have lunch twice, lol! No, the second time we got dessert. It was fun. 

We took a walk after lunch and before dessert- this is what we saw.

This was as close as we got to riding a horse, lol. Really though, I think I'm okay with that!

We went to Bar J Wranglers for dinner. I'd heard it was a fun show, and it was! Dinner was "camp" style- they had feeding hundreds of people down to a science. There were 4 main entrees to choose from and everyone got the same side dishes and dessert. Beans, a biscuit, applesauce and spiced cake. The food was pretty good! Although we were pretty tired by that point and the benches you had to sit on were so incredibly hard, by the end of the show I was pretty much DONE. We had a great time though and the singing was excellent! 

While the rest of the group was white water rafting Adrian and I got to go do a little sight seeing. It just so happens there was a classic car show going on, so we did a little shopping to get souvenirs for the kids, then sat down in main square and watched all the cool cards drive by. 

This was my little friend who visited while we were watching the car show. This little guy had no fear- the kids would have loved him!

Here's our tired pose while watching the car show. Several more hours of sleep would have been very much appreciated. Oh well. 

Our view of the town from our little bench.