My birthday

My birthday was on a Sunday this year, and Keith made me a yummy snickerdoodle cake and Lexi and Scott came over to help celebrate.

  Cute little Keeley wanted to use a fork to eat her cake like everybody else.

 She is such a silly poser!

Keith and I had received letters that we needed to renew our driver's licenses and get a new picture taken, so me and Keeley spent the 31st of July at the MVD. Yeah, we put it off until the very last day of the month. Keith still hasn't done it yet.

Keeley just looked so cute that day! I remember she was pretty squirmy and climbing around, and when she got really restless, I had to push her in the stroller around and around the perimeter of the room. However, I can't even imagine taking her there now--she is so much busier an crazier! Love this cute girl!

Stake Acheivement Day

We had originally planned on staying overnight at Grammy Jo's house on our way home from Utah, even though they wouldn't be there. Halfway through our trip, however, Sareny mentioned how excited she was for the stake acheivement day activity and asked when it was...that's when we realized it was in the morning of the day we planned to get home from our trip--which meant we would miss it. So instead of sleeping at Grammy's, we drove all night and got home in time for the special mother and daughter achievement day.

It was such a fun time! We made hair accessories, learned a new type of braid, and tied quilts together. So glad we got to have this special time together.

The Dinosaur Museum

 Our last morning in Lehi, we went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was a lot of fun! They had a hands-on room with some fun things to play with.

 The kids had fun making parachutes.

 Then they put them in a wind tunnel that launched them into the air.

 It was pretty cool!

 They played with these magnets things, and Josh made a face.

They built some structures using Keva Planks.

Then we went on to the dinosaur portion of the museum.

We played with this sand and water table and built a pretty cool dam. Plus they had little plastic dinosaurs that I would hide in piles of sand for the kids to dig up.

Keeley loved playing in the water.

This shark is massive. Truly. I don't say this about many animals, but I am so glad these guys are extinct. I can't imagine ever even dipping a toe in the ocean with these brutes swimming around.

 We were all appropriately frightened.

 The last room was a giant sandbox. The kids loved it, but the air was full of sand.

Keeley was a good girl and had fun with us.

 Charlie playing with the sand.

 IJ uncovering some dino bones.

If you look at the side of the building directly over the green awning, you can see a sign that says Keeley's Ice Cream. We had to take a picture!

We left about mid-day and drove straight through to Phoenix. We would have stopped over for a night at Grammy Jo's, but they were living it up in Cancun at the time, so we stopped in to drop something off and then went on our way. It was a fun summer trip!

Spending Time with the Keel's

After spending a couple of fun days with the Fallstroms, we drove five miles to visit Jake and Liz, who also live in Lehi.

I love their backyard--so green and pretty! Plus it has a green park right behind their house as well. The kids had fun playing around in the sandbox.

 The kids had a great time and they all got good and wet.

 It was fun to see cousins we don't get to see very often.

As soon as Jake got home from work, we loaded up and drove up American Fork Canyon. It was pretty and relaxing.

The kids loved playing around in the stream. Except for Finley, who fell in and got all wet. It was pretty cold, at least for us Phoenicians, and it was a good thing I had some clothes in the van for her to change in to.

 KeeKee and her daddy.

 Cute Finley girl.

 Me and baby William.

 More fun in the water.

Then it was time for dinner. Before leaving their house, we had made up some tinfoil dinners, and Liz had the makings for s'mores. Yum!

 I couldn't believe that William would just hang out in his playpen. Seriously--that has never been any of my children.

 They're more into things like this:

 Isaac loves talking to babies and making them laugh.

 And Sareny loves posing.

 So does this girl.

That night, Keith and I slept in Josh and Charlie's twin captain beds, and the kids had a campout in the backyard. What a fun idea!

 Here they are in the tent, ready to settle down and go to sleep. Yeah right! They were pretty good and let the adults play a game inside before Liz came out and slept in the tent with them. What a good sport she is! Anyway, it was a really fun day.

The 24th of July

We celebrated the 24th of July at Noel and Jewell's house. First, we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Lehi! Actually, I think it is the only restaurant we've eaten at in Lehi, but that is because we liked it so much last year, we went back this time around. It's called Thai House and it has some pretty yummy Thai food, which I really like. Then we bought some sparklers, and the kids were ready for some fun.

 Daddy and Uncle Noel tried to light them. They tried for quite some time, but ultimately only two sparklers lit. Isaac and Finley were the lucky two.

 We gave up on the sparklers and moved on to these turtle guys.

They didn't do a whole lot; they moved a little bit and that was about it. Still fun though.

Then Noel and Jewell broke out some glo sticks, which we used in place of sparklers. It took some fiddling with the camera, but we got a couple of cool pictues of them.

Here are the kids lined up and shaking their glo sticks around. Kind of cool, right? Well, not quite what we had hoped for, but no matter. It was fun anyway. We went inside for ice cream and more games, of course!