Labor Day splurge

We didn't have any plans for labor day, and just figured we would take it easy and have a low key weekend. Well I guess we are both a little antsy because that lasted maybe a few hours. As we started hearing of all our family and friends having all these fun plans of going here or there.. we said what the heck! That day we called the the Marriott down town and booked a room! And that was that, if everyone else was partyin' we weren't missing out!

We had lunch at Happy Sumo, walked around gateway and bought some much need maternity clothes for this expanding body of mine. What are the chances we ran into the Morgan Green family while we were there? So we joined forces and decided to do something the kids wanted to do, since this was a "family vacation"and took the kids to Build a bear. Cash picked a skate boarding hockey player bear. When the kids were done building their bears you go make a certificate for them and name them, Cash didn't have a name so I asked Amy for famous Hockey players name to which she responded Wayne Gretsky. So the rest of the trip all we heard form Cash was "wheres Waaayyynnnee?"

After shopping, Mason or I have never been to the melting pot, so Morgan and Amy talked us into it. I probably wouldn't recommend going with small children; Sharp sticks, hot pots, and 2 hrs of doing one thing and a two year old don't mix really well, but delicious none the less. The kids were just fine though when the dessert fondue came out.

After dinner, we went back to our room (not before getting pulled over of course) , Cash played in the tub, snuggled up with Wayne the bear and watched a movie on the lap top, while me and Mason rented a movie and called it a night.

It was a fun splurge of a weekend, and decided its a tradition we want to do every labor day.

Cheers to day's of No Labor!

Our summer of 2011

This summer has been crazy. Just recently have I felt like its slowed down a bit. The beginning of the summer I remember thinking that I really wanted to make the most of the summer with Mason not in school, and I kind of made mental list of some things I wanted us to do. I'm pretty sure I checked most of those things off and more. In no particular order here's a run down of our summer.

Back in July we got invited to the premiere opening of the Cinaplex in Farmington. I can't even tell you how glad I was for this to open and for this job to be over! Mason was managing all the concrete work at the theatre and there was a good couple weeks there where I maybe saw him about 20 min. a day. It was fun to go to opening though and pick any movie we wanted with free concessions!

One night I packed our dinner in a back pack and met Mason up at the Centerville Dual Creek hike. What I thought was going to just be a leisurely stroll turned into a little more intense hike than I had planned on, especially with Cash on Mason's shoulders the whole time. whoopsi. But it turned out to be really fun as we just chatted and enjoyed the scenery on the way back down..

Took a fun Cabin trip with some of the fam over the 24th. We always love the cabin for a quick getaway. Notice the winking.. for some reason on this trip he thought winking was really cool.

The end of July we went and met Mason at Lake side, he's really been getting into golfing this summer so I wanted to see him in action. We just hit a couple buckets of balls, but Cash thought it was awesome. Not so sure the people around us thought so when Cash would yell something really loud like "look out!" every time Mason hit the ball.

We went up to the alpine slide one Saturday afternoon with Morgan and Amy. Mason took Cash while I waited at the bottom. I loved that I could hear Cash cheering and yelling before I could even see them. We grabbed some dinner on our way back down at Hapa grill which was delish!

the fourth

When I heard that Centerville was doing all their fourth of July festivities on Saturday I was a little bugged. But it actually turned out to be one long party all weekend long!

Saturday started out with the Centerville 5k, followed by the parade, Hot dog BBQ at the Green's residence. After a quick nap to recharge it continued with a pool party/more BBQ at the Salmon residence. Last minute Sunday night I decided to run the Kaysville 5k Monday morning, I was trying to make up for all the food I gorged on all weekend. We then took Cash to "Cars 2" and lunch. Later that day we hung out at "Rancho". Rode horses, played with the bunnies, chickens, rode the tractor, and picked veggies. To end all the celebrating we watched Davis High's fire works.

My favorite things about this fourth of July:

*Watching Cash figure out that the candy being thrown at the parade as actually for grab and keep!

*The food. Oh my the food. Morgan and Amy did an awesome Hot dog bar complete with the Phili cheese dog , chili dog, Chicago dog, and a taco dog. Homemade ice cream, and ribs by my Mom. By far my favorite "Food Holiday".

*Cash clapping at every exciting part during "Cars"

*Cash absolutley loving Rancho. He has always liked it, but now he is at the age where is really starting to love it. He was loving the bunnies, and kept yelling "yee haa" riding the horse.

*While watching fireworks up at Davis, we could practically see all the firework shows throughout the whole valley.

Snap shots of April

2nd birthday

We had a great time ringing in Cash's second year of life, actually third but you know what I mean. The celebrating got spread among a few days due to some ear infections and what not..tis the season!

The day started with his Favorite Breakfast: French Toast with butter and powdered sugar

A few hours later a double frosted peanut butter cookie. I don't know where in the world he came up with that idea...

Corn dogs at Arctic Circle followed by running like a crazy man on the toy. Two year olds are so easy to please.

And a couple days later a little cake and present action at Nana and Pop's house.

Cash's gifts this year included: a Buzz and Woody tent, t ball set, tickle me Elmo, alligator hat, buzz gun, and cars. The kid has a serious love for any thing toy story.

He thought it was so funny to scare all the kids with his alligator hat.

Although its really freakin me out I have a two year old, I'm loving this age. I love that I can somewhat carry on a conversation with him, and he can generally understand everything I'm saying. I love seeing his little sense of humor develop. He loves to make people laugh and crack jokes (what he thinks are jokes in his head) and laugh, and laugh like he is the funniest thing ever. He has such a sweet little personality. He gets seriously stressed out seeing other kids cry and is always trying to hug them and make them feel better. At least a couple times a day out of the blue he will stop what ever he is doing and wrap his arms around me for a few seconds and then continue with whatever he was doing. Its times like that I consider this the best job in the world.

Cooked'

I had never heard of the Cook Islands before planning this trip. All I knew was that it was located in the south pacific somewhere, and that's all I really needed to know. Well after spending a week there, I am trying to find a way to go back as soon as possible. It really was the most amazing place, a trip I will never forget.

Along with my Mom and Dad, Luke and Whitney, and Troy and Jemaica we soaked up as much sun as we could, got plenty plenty of R&R, and cruised around this little island all week. The Rarotanga Beach Bungalows, the place we stayed at was the coolest place. They only have 5 bungalows all together, and we rented 4 of them. So we really had our own little slice of the island all to our selves. We rented scooters, which for me was probably one of the funnest things we did there. You can drive around the whole island in about 40 minutes, so we often would jump on our scooters, wind in our hair, and cruise around and discover the island.

Our day would start out with the most delicious breakfast. We all so much looked forward to mornings just for fruit that they had at the breakfast. It was a first for me having passion fruit or papaya, and I cannot believe what I was missing out on.. oh how I will miss that fruit. You just can't get fruit like that here in Utah. After breakfast, we would usually get our suits on and some of us were off to snorkel, and some of us were off to read in the sun. Side note; I read two full books while I was there, and I am by no means a fast reader. That just tells you most of my time was spend lounging in the sun, sipping on a diet coke reading. After a couple hours, we would either go explore the island for a yummy local place to eat, or just break out some more fruit for lunch. I'm tellin ya the fruit.. wow.

After lunch, more lounging, or snorkeling, or scooting around, or napping. Nights usually consisted of dinner, something similar to a luau, but cook island style. A little show put on by the locals.. man they can really move those hips! After dinner we played some pretty intense, competitive card games, all while munching on some Tim-Tams (a really yummy chocolate cookie made in New Zealand) or coconut chocolate.

Our own little Bungalow

And in between all of this there was a lot of laughing and joking, deep conversations, and sun burns. Quiet front porch reading while listening to the tide coming in. Trying to figure out what we were going to do without our luggage for the first two day.. damn you delta.
Missing snuggling our kids, talking to the friendly locals, and realizing we may never see this place again so trying to remember every little thing.

While on the scooters, the boys got caught in a serious down pour. So they just took there shirts off and decided to embrace it!

No biggie, just drinking fresh coconut juice.

This picture is cute, and kind of creepy all at the same time.

A little bit of the gorgeous scenery

There is a mountain in the middle of the island that Mason, Troy and Luke hiked to the top of. They said you could see ocean surround the island on all sides from the top.