Happy Birthday Dallin!

5 Things I Love About Dallin

1.  He is my BABY

2.  He loves to eat vegetables

3.  Every morning he comes into my bed, snuggles, and says "I love my mommy so much!"

4.  He looks exactly like Justin and Troy mixed together

5. He has friends calling to play EVERY day because he is so much fun to be around

It doesn't seem fair that I can only write 5 things, since I could come up with 100 more. Happy Birthday Dally-Boo, I love you so much!!!

Lagoon

After our long, fun day at Bear Lake, we drove back to Salt Lake to the Hughes' Bed and Breakfast (since that's all we were really there for. Thanks Liz!) to prepare for our last leg of our trip-  two days at Lagoon!

Now, I will freely admit that I have never been a big fan of Lagoon. Growing up with Disneyland has made me a bit of a snob, I admit.  And the times we've been to Lagoon in the past, we've usually had a small baby that required more work than it was fun.  Or else, I was stuck in Kiddie Land all day while Adam took the big kids on the big rides.

BUT, I'm happy to report that I'm starting to actually LIKE Lagoon.  My kids LOVE it, Adam LOVES it, but I will reserve the LOVE for the Big D.  But I really am liking Lagoon more and more.  I could write a whole book on why Disneyland is better, but the important thing is making fun family memories together and that's what we did.

We started out the day with me taking the big kids (yes, Audrey is now big kid status) on the BIG rides.  Adam thought it would be good to start Dallin out in Kiddie Land to work up his courage, and it totally worked.  By then end of the two days, Dallin went on Wicked and Colossus with everyone!

First ride:  WICKED!

Wild Mouse.  One time was enough for me on this ride.  I got a huge bruise on my leg from the wave runner so all the jolting from these rides killed me. But Audrey loved this ride!

The Spider.  I don't have a picture of him on it, but this became Dallin's favorite ride.

The boys ready to go on Spider.

Meeting back up with everyone for lunch.

After lunch, ,we decided it was time to get WET on Rattlesnake Rapids.

Not sure what setting my camera was on for this one, but I get dizzy looking at it.

Aw, look at the happy parents!

Yep, our plan worked.  We all got soaked.  So we decided we might as well ride it again and get more wet!

It was my idea to go on the Log Ride against Adam's wishes.  Unfortunately the ride broke down right when we were about to go up the hill.  So here we are pretending to be happy while we waited for 20 minutes.

Fake smiles!  I promise we won't go on this dumb ride again!!

Adam's favorite ride:  The Rocket!  Audrey and Dallin weren't tall enough for this one :(

So I took them on the Odyssey instead.

Day two was mostly spent at Lagoon-a-Beach so again, it was really hard to take pictures when I was going down all the slides with the kids.  It was a hot day, so it felt great to play in the water.

The power ended up going out in the Park for over an hour on our 2nd day, so that was a bummer.  So we hung out under a shady tree and relaxed while we waited for things to start up again.  Because of the power outage, we were offered free tickets if we were to come back within the next two weeks, but by this point we HAD to get home.  I don't know if we had the energy for three days of Lagoon after the busy week we had.  Good times.

Bear Lake

Moving on!  We spent the weekend with Webb cousins and were having too much fun to stop and take any pictures (sorry).  Sunday night we drove up to Bear Lake and stayed at Great Grandma Webb's now vacant house since she is in a nursing home.  Monday morning we went to visit her before we played at the lake.  She's doing well, but it's still sad to see her growing older. We have so many fun memories of playing at Great Grandma's house, it was very different to stay in it without her there.

While visiting Grandma in the nursing home, we noticed this family picture hanging on her wall.  This picture was taken a few years ago but somehow we never got a copy of it.  So here's my copy of a copy of the whole Webb clan.

On to the lake!  We've been cursed the past few times going to Bear Lake with cold weather, so we were thrilled with only a few scattered clouds throughout the day.  It was a crowded day on the lake (Pioneer Day) but we were still able to have a great time together.  We rented a wave runner for a few hours (which turned into half a day since Adam was having too much fun to stop), and all the kids enjoyed multiple turns playing out in the waves.

 

Good bye Bear Lake, see you next summer!

Summer Vacation Part 1

Finally a summer vacation that we got to go on as a whole family, and there was no camping involved.  I will have to break this up into three separate posts since we crammed a lot into one week.  We started off our trip on July 21st by going up north to my cousin Korbin's wedding reception (Sorry, no pictures.  We were busy cleaning up Dallin's vomit out of the parking lot).  Sorry, I won't go into details about that one.

The next morning (after cleaning up even more vomit out of the van), we played in Salt Lake with Puriri, Marion, Hughes, Maher, and Niederhauser cousins. Yes, that means ALL my sisters were together!  Love that!  And of course, Grandma and Pooh Pa Blunck were there to play too.

We started off at Temple Square.  The Conference Center was closed to prepare for a concert so we had to settle for looking at the pretty waterfalls outside.

 

The reflecting pool outside the Salt Lake City Temple.  Can you believe that NO one fell in?!

We love our cousins!  Ok, so you may be noticing no dark-haired Puriri's in any of these pictures. 
They were off getting their own family pictures taken so they met up with us later.  And no cute Nieder-cousins either.  They were car shopping and came later as well.

Family shot!

Cute cousins, Abby and Audrey in the Visitors Center.

We then went over to the Church History Museum where there was this amazing Book of Mormon Children's Display.  The cousins had so much fun playing with different items from Book of Mormon times.

Justin realizing how heavy the gold plates must have been!

Audrey dancing the tortilla dance.

Playing dress-up and dancing to some South American music.

Troy sailing on Nephi's ship to the Promised Land.

Dallin caught some fish to feed the family.

Putting on a puppet show.

Dallin, Griffin and Truman mixing up some music.  Not sure how this was Book of Mormon related, but I'm sure it was fun!

The girls making dinner in the kitchen.

Cute Tessi Mo, we love her!

After a quick lunch, we headed over to Seven Peaks for some waterslide fun!

Whitney and Audrey having a blast!

Here come the boys!

Justin and Dallin

Dad and Troy making a splash!

It was such a fun day at Seven Peaks.  Unfortunately, it was really hard to take pictures and go down all the waterslides with the kids so that's all we have.  We then went to Liz's house to celebrate our July birthdays- Dad and Kelly on July 23rd, and Diane on July 24th.  Liz made a variety of homemade ice cream- delish!- so we pigged out all night!

The birthday babes.

 

The next morning, Mom and the girls met up at Gardner Village in Salt Lake for some shopping and lunch to celebrate the birthday weekend some more.

Look!  We're not standing in age order, but we color coordinate fabulously without even knowing it!

Thanks to MaryAnn for providing the cowgirl hats.  Can I get a yee haw?! And yes, we're in age order now. Sorry, but this is how we always take pictures when we're together!

The birthday girls.  So much fun to be all together!!!

Happy Birthday Dad, Kelly and DiDi!  Thanks for a fun weekend.  I love my family!!!