Life in the Summertime

Yesterday was such a fun day! My brother Todd flew in from Iowa for a visit. His wife will be here today. We are so excited to see them. They moved in January and this is the first time they've been back. To celebrate Todd's arrival yesterday, my whole family got together at Kristen's sweet party house to play volleyball and eat dinner and hang out. It was seriously so much fun. I forgot that I do actually like to play volleyball...it's been so long.

Here's me and Bran playing volleyball.

Todd helping Amy with her serve.

Roasting marshmallows in Kristen's sweet firepit. That little guy with Brandon is Jack, the last time we saw him he was an infant and now he runs around all over the place and is so stinking cute.

We have a bunch of fun stuff planned for the next 4 days while Todd and his family are here. I am so excited!!!

A few other things we've been doing...

A night walk on the Provo River Trail.

I have a little obsession with the trail right now and can't spend enough time walking or running on it. I've been trying to go running on the trail every morning this week. I only failed once so far...Here's a picture of what it looks like in the mornings. It's the best way to start your day. I love it!

My pathetic attempt at taking a picture of the awesome sunset while we were driving home from the Provo Temple on Tuesday night.

And another not so great picture of Brandon playing softball. He plays on Tuesday nights which is the same night I have Young Women's so I don't usually get to go watch him play but I did this week. He doesn't usually play catcher...he spends most of his time making awesome plays in the outfield that for some reason I never see... I'm bad at paying attention at those games. But I'm working on it...

Stay tuned for documentation on our Labor Day fun!

MY Perfect Vacation

This last weekend I finally got to go to the cabin for the first time this summer. I don't know what took me so long! We have a cabin in Fairview Canyon and I owe a lot of great childhood memories to this most wonderful cabin that my grandpa built like over 30 years ago.


I think the only summer I didn't take a trip to the cabin was the one summer that I was gone on my mission. Other than that, it is a must do every single year! I can't get enough of this place.


This is our breathtaking view out the back windows.


We usually only stay at the cabin one night because there's no shower but this time we were lucky enough to stay over two nights. The first morning I woke up early and saw some deer outside.


And we saw plenty of hummingbirds. In fact, they almost attacked me once. They're not shy at all.


There are certain things we always eat at the cabin for breakfast, pancakes and hot chocolate. And for some reason they always taste twice as good as normal.


Another huge tradition we have that I've done every year ever since I can remember is go to the frog pond to catch frogs. I don't know why it's so fun. Especially since we just catch them, bring them back to the cabin, and then let them go in the pond again. Here's me and my dad searching for frogs.


The frogs were tiny this year. I don't even know if you can tell, but I'm holding one in my fingers.

Me and Amy went on an awesome 4-wheel ride. They have the most amazing trails up there for 4-wheelers with awesome views. We had so much fun!

On the trail...

We took a really long hike this year on a trail I've never been on before. It ran right along a stream and was so beautiful.

This is something we don't always do, but wish we did more. Swimming in the lake! It was surprisingly not that cold and sooooo much fun. We are so glad we brought our swimsuits so we could do this!

My dad caught the splash of my not-so-graceful jump off the tube. We laughed so hard after this we thought we might drown.


My mom got so jealous of all the fun we were having and finally decided to float around in the tube in her clothes.

Brandon didn't come with me. He's not a big fan of the cabin. But when I came home, this what I found.

He had cleaned every corner of the house and yard, and was actually a little sad because I came home a little earlier than he expected and caught him in the act. He wanted to surprise me. What better way to end a vacation? Thanks Bran, I love you!

The long awaited upgrade

We've been married over two years now and have only ever used hand-me-down TV's and entertainment centers. When we moved in to our new place over 4 1/2 months ago, we decided we would finally buy a nice TV. And right on schedule, after 4 1/2 months of Brandon doing research and going multiple times to stores to look at TV's, we finally bought one! Then last night we bought a TV stand and it was an assemble on your own deal.

Notice the old TV on the ground (if you can even find it, it's so small) and the ghetto setup we've had for the last few days since we got our TV.

After three hours of fun for me and fun/frustration for Brandon, here is the finished product. I love, love, love stuff like this! I had so much fun helping Brandon put it together.

And voilah! We are slowly becoming less white trash. Now on to a computer desk. (Brandon now wants to get one that is already built and I want to get one we have to put together.)