A visit to Grandma and Grandpa Belnap's House

 One of the highlights of my trip to Utah was spending some time at my Grandma and Grandpa Belnap's house one day!  It was so great to see them, chat, enjoy their DELICIOUS produce and Grandma's cooking, ride the 4-wheeler, and just sit and enjoy their company in their beautiful backyard.  My Grandparents are well into their 80s but they are truly AMAZING and so full of love and life!

Jack was super excited to get some rides on the 4 wheeler with Grandpa around the church parking lot.  I had fun giving both boys rides and going a couple of times by myself too so I could go fast! :)    

 Here are some fun pictures from our visit.  Jack and Z both mowed down their corn on the cob and enjoyed popsicles on the porch.  In the bottom middle picture they are showing off some of the yummy veggies that we got to take home with us!  Yippee!  
My Grandma is so beautiful and sweet! She always says I am a girl after her own heart, and I am happy to be!   She is amazing, and I am glad I have things in common with her.  I love to visit with her!  She was so fun with Jack in her back yard.  She showed him snap dragons and how to make a doll out of another kind of flower!  I bet she was such a fun mom to have! :)

Grandpa!  What a guy!  

 I absolutely love this picture of my Grandma and me!  I will treasure it always!

 And I love this picture of my Grandpa! This is how I will always remember him, in his boots, in his garden, and in his element! :)  While I was there he taught me about how corn and potatoes grow (no.  I didn't know before) and about how he plants and waters his garden.  It was interesting, educational, and I sure am appreciative of his garden!  

 Another great picture!  This picture shows my Grandparent's beautiful flowers and Zander having way too much fun playing in the dirt! :)

 Oh it was a wonderful visit, and I am so thankful for the times I have to spend with my amazing grandparents!

On the way home we stopped at Kirk and Amy's house.  Jack had a great time playing with Miss Mylee.

 We also made a stop to see the beautiful Brigham City temple that is being built!

My 10 year Logan High School Reunion

I can barely believe it, but this summer was 10 years since I graduated from high school.  I can't believe I am that old!  So while I was in Utah I was able to attend my 10 year high school reunion.  My sweet husband drove out to Utah alone just for the weekend to be with me!  I was so thankful to have him there and it was good to see him in the middle of our long trip away from him!  

I was kind of bummed/annoyed that so few people came to the reunion.  There was probably only 10% of my class that came.  Many of my friends that live in Logan or close by somewhere in Utah didn't come.  Seriously, how often do we have a class reunion!? But it was SO great to see so many people.  There were people I haven't seen in years.  It was fun to see people and chat.   

This picture is from the day portion.  With kiddos demanding attention it was kind of hard to visit, but it was great to chat with some old friends.  This is me and my friends Brooke and Carolyn!

 These were the friends at my table that we sat with for dinner :  Amber and Ann

  Me and Smalls (Angie)

 Some of my good friends there: Chalice, Jason, and Kara

 It was pretty fun to see how many kids people had, what jobs they had, who they married, and what they look like now!   

Here I am with my sweetie after the reunion!  

I was glad I attended.  It was great to see the people that I did!  Hopefully more people can show up to the next one!  

More Utah Fun!

Our good times in Logan continued with a fun trip to the Logan Aquatic Center!  My boys LOVE to swim.  They had lots of fun, and even though Grandma and Aunt Lisa were worn out, my boys wanted to stay!  

 The little fishies!  Check out Z diving into the water! He was crazy!  

Me and the boys enjoying the pool!  

And isn't this a great picture of Jack and Lily, just chilling and taking in the scene during a break at the pool! :)

 We went for another walk on the Logan River Trail by the golf course.  It was crazy to see how high the water had been with the flooding just a couple weeks before!  I love this walk!  I also got to run a 5k  on this trail on the 24th.  It was super fun!    

 Here is Lisa and me being dorks doing some planks!  I don't think this is real "planking" but we were definitely holding a plank position! :)  

 One perk of staying in Logan is access to some of my favorite eating places, all of which I got to enjoy while I was home: Costa Vida, Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse, and of course Chick-fil-A! :)  

There is a park just up the road from Grandma and Grandpa's that is always fun to go to! 

Just some random pics of my boys being dorks at breakfast time.  In the one picture Jack had stuck dinosaurs in his crocs and was showing me.  

  And, oh yes, still more to come!  

LONG Utah Trip!

In July I headed to Utah for a long trip.  The journey started off on a very low note with the drive out, but I will spare you the nasty details by just saying that by the time I pulled into my parent's driveway our car smelled of extreme vomit from both boys, and I had projectile vomit on the back of my seat and my arm!  (So nasty! And yes, I was freaking out!)  

Shortly after I arrived I was off with my sister to play in one of her city league basketball games.  It did not improve my mood because we played against many of the people I greatly despised in high school.  It wouldn't have been so bad if these now 30+ year old mothers were not still serious beasts!  They were so bratty and tallking trash.  Needless to say, my sister and I both came home in quite bad moods!  But it was fun to play on the same team as her again and have some sweet sister to sister baskets!

 We seriously need to get us one of these little car things.  My boys LOVED it!  They would push each other and Lily around and around.  And please take note of Jack's amazing trick of standing on top of it in one of the pictures.

 It was so fun to take my boys to many of the places I enjoyed in Logan growing up.  One day my mom and I took my boys and Lily for a picnic at Willow Park and then went around and saw the animals.  It is actually a pretty weak park, but to little kiddos, there is some cool stuff!  (BTW, the bottom right picture cracks me up!)

 It was like a dream come true for my boys to just play in my mom and dad's big backyard every day.  They could spend all day out there!  I loved sitting back there and enjoying it too! It is a billion time better than our small  weed/dirt/mud yard at home.  My mom had her little swimming pool set up too, and my boys LOVE water so they had lots of fun playing in the pool and with the water hose!  Lily and Jack were pretending to fill up the car with gas!

Jack had a blast doing the slip n slide with Britney and Dillon and then just playing pretend and chatting with Britney.  

  Lots more backyard fun!  We played golf with Grandma and Grandpa, played with lots of balls and other fun toys Grandma has, played on the swing set, ate lots of popsicles on the porch, chilled in the lawn chairs,  and cleaned off golf balls that Zander threw in the muddy window wells.

Cute kiddos in the bathtub after a long day of playing!  

 My dad, Kirk, Rick, and their boys went fishing in Montana while we there.  Kirk, my dad, Ryan, and Drew were so excited to come home and show off their fish.  Dillon and Brittney were visiting too.  They were super brave with touching the nasty, slimy fish.  I was not.  But Jack was!

 It was fun to be there for Pioneer Day and participate in some fun festivities.  They had some fun stuff for the kids to do like face paining, hair painting, making hats and crafts, a candy cannon, and these blow up slides and jumping things.  Jack had lots of fun, except when he went down the big slide.  If you can see, his face is terrified!  We also went to the Pioneer Day parade.  It was actually really long and really good!

That night we had a little barbecue.  Kirk and Amy's family came up for it.  We ate yummy food, played with cousins, and did some typical Utah fireworks:  fountains - woohoo!  

Isn't this an awesome picture?  I love the sky, how high Jack is, and the look of complete terror on his face!  The kids loved this game with Lisa's boyfriend, Pace.  They would go down the slide, and he would catch them and throw them in the air!  

I love these pics of the kids watching the fireworks.  Mylee and Jack are best buddies.  And I love their looks of oohs and aahs during the fireworks!

Another day we took a picnic to good old 1st Dam.  We ate, climbed trees, fed the ducks, and had fun playing in the water and trying to skip rocks!
Jack enjoying 1st Dam
 
Zander enjoying 1st Dam and obviously getting very wet!

Fun!

More to come!  

4th of July in Kansas!

Still playing catch up on the blog.  But now I am at least to the month of July! 

We once again headed out to Kansas for the 4th of July.  They really know how to celebrate that holiday right!  Here are some pictures from our long drive.  The boys are happy.  They never sleep but they remain happy and entertain themselves....or want me to constantly do things for them since I am in the passenger seat and available to them.  That is why I look like I am going crazy.  Dustin is apparently angrily focused on the road! :)  

 We of course had to do lots of snuggling and playing with baby Audrie while we were in Kansas!  Jack especially absolutely loved holding her. I think he wants a little sister.  I think he needs one too! :)    

 Then came the 4th of July festivities.  Patty always organizes an awesome bbq!  The food was so good!  This year also Patty decided to do a little surprise 30th birthday celebration for Shawn and Dustin too!  Here they are with their cakes and their gifts from Patty.  The gifts consisted of some old man and aging necessities! :)   

 

Here is Jack with Gillian and his other friend that he played the whole time with.  I love the pics of Gillian and Jack!  

We made some attempts to get some family pictures.  Here are the attempts of the grandkiddos and my boys!  We never did quite get a good picture!    

Here is our little family and Shawn and Melissa's little family!  

Our crazy family!   

I really like how this big family picture turned out! Lynn, Patty, their kids and spouses, and the 4 silly grandkids!    

 And just a few more random pics of the fam!  

After lots of yummy food, lots of dessert and ice cream, and birthday festivities it was on to the fireworks show!   I love the picture of Jack below when he was begging to finally begin the fireworks.  He loved them!  People spend lots of money on some pretty awesome fireworks.  The show did not disappoint!    

After the cops came and shut our party down because of some new city rules with fireworks, we had to move our party out to the Baalmann's house, outside the city limits, to finish the fireworks!  We were all pretty tired so it was nice to just sit and snuggle in some blankets and watch the rest of the show!  

We had lots of fun going golfing one day too!  Jack got to come out with Dustin and me and was very excited about it!    

Grandma and Grandpa also had their fun pool set up so we had lots of fun in there too.  The kids were very excited to be joined by Marshall, Melissa, and Dustin in there!  It was lots of fun to dump buckets of water on each other.  And Grandma even got in with Zander one day!  

Isn't this a great picture of Melissa getting water dumped on her head by Jack!? 

And we got to do more fireworks another night, but more of the Utah variety type: smokeballs, snakes, and sparklers!  

Great Grandma Enslinger cooked us a delicious fried chicken dinner one night.  The food was super yummy then we had fun playing blocks with Grandpa, wrestling with Daddy, playing peekaboo around the chair with Grandma, and watching Zander's crazy walking attempts!     

The boys with their Great Grandma and Grandpa Enslinger

 Our family with Grandma and Grandpa

And one last collage:  Jack and Gillian have a funny little relationship.  They can play so well together, but they are pretty competitive for attention, especially Grandma's attention.  These pictures crack me up.  There is one of Gillian looking away and Jack giving her the stare down, then one of Jack looking away and Gillian giving him the staredown!  What cute, silly kids!  Such fun little cousins!  I love when they are able to get together to play!    

It was a short, but very fun visit to Kansas!  A Kansas 4th of July never disappoints!  We had a great time!