A Quarter of a Century

25 years old today!

. . . I wondered how the day would go when within the first hour of being awake I was looked straight in the eye and lied to twice and said an "I love you" to my 5-year old and he looks straight at me and says "I don't love you" and walks away . . . sigh . . .

It probably didn't help that Eric is away all week . . .

But I had nothing to worry . . . besides missing Eric like crazy, I had a wonderful day.

I am so appreciative of all the phone calls (my dad even called!), emails, and other kindnesses.

We made my yummy birthday cake.

And then I demanded the little kids sing "Happy Birthday" to me so I could blow out the candles.

We got a very special (do you even know how fabulous you are and how much you made my day?) lunch. My mom sent me a birthday box so we got to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey"

Thanks for coming to my party, neighbor kids! :)

I guess I should mention the doughnuts Eric surprised me with when I got home from girls camp on Saturday!

It was a memorable birthday!

Park City

We checked another one off of our list of things to do before leaving Utah . . . Pretty much on the spur of the moment, we drove up to Park City. It was really cute there! We looked around at some outlet stores, then headed to Main St. . . .

We love coupons so we used one to eat at some pizza joint.

The food was good, the service was . . . enetertaining? . . .

We were told a couple times to choose any table we wanted. We could choose any of them.

We sat down in the back with our menus . . . and the same waitress walks over and asks us to move . . . but we could choose any other table (she wanted to move our table to combine with another one or something).

We ordered and ate a pizza.

There was one slice of pizza left.

We were sitting there waiting for that waitress to come give us our bill.

We got bored.

Kacin asked to eat the olives.

Kyler wanted the onions.

I wanted the crust.

The pizza ended up like this (in the end, minus the cheese).

So the waitress finally comes and asks us if we'd like a box.

It was tempting, but we opted not to take this one home . . .

We looked around at some art galleries. Eric laughed at me and my spatial intelligence while I tried to put this polar bear puzzle together.

In the end, there was success!

We ended the day by looking around a book store . . . Kyler chose Peter Pan . . . Kacin took Wizard of Oz . . . so we now have some cool chapter books to read together.

Then we got chocolate. Sweet.

What do you think, any other musts we should do before leaving Utah?

Sunday Smiles Courtesy of Kacin

*When the hometeachers arrived (sorry, Tom) . . .

Kacin: He's bald! (a HUGE smile spreads across his face). I think Jesus made him bald.

*As we are leaving on our Sunday family walk . . .

Kacin: It's raining!

Laura: Ohhh, Kacin. Why do you think it's raining right now?
Kacin: I think Jesus is squeezing the clouds just a little.

SOLD

We felt a huge relief this week when we got an offer on our house . . . the house is now SOLD! Yippee! What a stress it has been this last month and a half not knowing what was going to happen. I guess I just needed to go to girls camp . . .

Since I really haven't seen Eric too much the last 2 weeks, I had arranged to come home Tuesday night from girls camp and then go back up on Thursday. On Tuesday, I kept debating if I should really come home . . . would it be worth the drive, the hassle, leaving the fun times at camp just for a day. But it was perfect timing.

Wednesday morning we spoke to our realtor because someone had put an offer in on our house! It was so good that I was home to sign papers and put our counter-offer in. I went back to camp on Thursday and got a text from Eric saying "SOLD!". I was ecstatic!

We feel so grateful and blessed that the house was able to sell in such a crazy time. As hard as it is on me, we know that we are supposed to be back in AZ. We are certainly being watched over by a loving Heavenly Father.

Girls Camp

LOVE the girls, LOVE our theme, LOVE the Heber Valley Camp, LOVE the mountains, LOVEd the week!

I just got home from a week at girls camp! I have such good memories of girls camp from when I was in Young Women's so it was fun to be a part of another year at girls camp as a "leader" (ha ha--the girls teach me way more than I give to them!).

Our stake theme this year was "There's No Place Like Home" and our ward were the Tinmen. Pink was our color and Got Heart was our ward theme.

What went down this week:

*Lots of games, like "Dip, Dip, Dip", "Don't Eat Pete YW Leader Style", etc.

*Planning the skit with some awesome, creative, organized YCL's. Our skit turned out to be the best by far! We had two girls "watching TV" and seeing cool shows and commercials like Wizard of OZ, Jeopardy, Dr. Phil, Twilight, Tinmen Michigan (Hannah Montana), a Beauty Pageant, and Got Heart? which all had to do with service and love. It was pretty funny!

*Facilitating the Mohawk Walk at the challenge course.

*Being scared to death, but climbing the huge, very high up rope ladder, going across the wire bridge and riding the zip line down. I don't really like heights, but I was so glad I did it.

*Singing Tree and Singing News

*Getting Pinked Out and glittered up (including some glitter to the inside of my mouth--yuck)

*Testimony meeting around the campfire

*A beautiful night sky

*A big hill to climb each morning and evening

*And more!

Too bad I didn't take pictures a whole lot, but they are making a CD ofpictures so I'll probably add some on later.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

What a cool experience to be able to attend the Oquirrh Mountain Temple today! Kyler's favorite room was the sealing room because he said it reminded him of our sealing as a family. He said you feel smiley all the time in that room. Kacin's favorite room was the Baptismal Font room (I think he wanted to swim in it). He's also just really excited to be baptized when he is 8 (only 4 more years . . . ). Eric and I thought it was a beautiful temple--it was a neat experience to attend the open house. We love temples!

Happy 4th of July!

The 4th of July . . .a day to celebrate our country . . . a day to have fun with our families . . . a day to remember our freedoms and those who have sacrificed . . . a day of fireworks.
(contributed by the boys)

In America, we are free to buy Fireworks (well, at least in Utah).
We are free to use giftcards at Chile's and share chocolate milk.
We are free to make silly faces.

We are free to wear cowboy boots with shorts.We are free to roll down hills.

And free to bonk heads.

We are free to say "cheese" for the camera.

We are free to stroll along pretty paths.

We are free to nearly fall into streams and scare our mommies.

We are free to sleep under the trees.

We are free to use mommy's camera (with permission and care).

We are free to play in the water with good friends.

We are free to splash!

We are free to have fun!

Eric thinks he is free to start gasoline fires in hopes to kill tree roots.

He's not. It's too scary (especially when the day before a house a few blocks away burnt down!!)

We are free to admire all of our fireworks and anticipate the fun.

We are free to sit in chairs that fit us perfectly.

We are free to laugh and smile and stare in awe at the fireworks going off.

We are free to follow our daddy's example and try to start the grass on fire.

We are free to wave sparklers all around through the air.

We are free to chill with our buddies and enjoy the show.

We are free to be a family!!