A Few Bits & Pieces

So it's been forever again....and nothing amazing has happened with our family...but our boys are still fun and cute! So here are some new pictures and videos - for your enjoyment.

In Our Spare Time

Since I've been blog absent for a while...this is what we've been up to this summer. Traveling...picnics....swim lessons...roommate trip to St. George that was amazing, which I will probably not blog about at this point, but you can read about it here and here ....visiting and playing with Jes' family while his sisters were here from out-of-town...hiking...and hanging out at home.

These pictures are from our hike last Sunday where we ran into a rattlesnake! Luckily things turned out ok, but it was a tense few minutes!

And here are a few pictures from the Bees game we went to a while ago. It was so much fun! I love going to the ballpark!!!
And here are the boys with our 1st harvest from our garden this year. Hopefully it's not the last! (The watermelon didn't come from our garden....we only wish it did!)

Youth Conference

So my life for the last little while has been totally focused on Youth Conference. I stressed and stressed about it because I was the only YW leader going. Everyone else has nursing babies or kids with special needs. Luckily there ended up being 2 moms that came with us so that I was not alone!

We had THE BEST time!!! I really love my calling and I really love all the girls in my ward. This was also a great chance to get to know the young men...and I must say I was thoroughly impressed!

I'll try not to be too long and annoying with details, but here it goes.

We left on Thursday morning and went to the Bountiful Temple to do baptisms for the dead. It was a neat experience to be there with the girls - and for some of them it was even their first time! Then we headed up to Idaho to Lava Hot Springs to swim in the pool. It was so much fun! They have diving platforms that are Olympic regulation height, and if you are a minor, you have to have a permission slip filled out by a parent before you can jump off them! (That right there is a major warning to me that it's not a good idea to do it!) I caught a few pictures of the kids jumping, but this is one of our bishopric members!

After Lava we drove to Alpine Wyoming where we had reserved some campsites in a campground. When we finally got there at about 6:30-7:00pm we found out that there were already people in all of our campsites! After a tense scramble and search we found out the the campground had doubled booked most of their campsites! So, we weren't the only one's without a place to sleep that night! It was a big dilemma for the leaders to try to figure out what to do, but the kids were all laughing and having a great time. I didn't hear one person complain at all!

We ended up finding a much better and much cheaper (i.e. FREE) campsite about 1 mile up the road. This place was gorgeous! The pictures I took don't even do it justice. It was so isolated and peaceful and beautiful! Here is the view from my lonely 1-person tent.

The only issues with the campsite was no running water and no bathrooms! We were able to get by with no running water because we had tons and tons of bottled water...but the bathrooms for the young women were a different story. The girls toughed it out for the first night, and the next morning at 6:15am we had port-o-potties delivered to us in the middle of nowhere (thanks to our YW president's mad skills!) After that it was smooth sailing! I could have stayed there for a few more days...and that's saying a lot because I'm not a huge camper!

On Friday we went rafting on the Snake River...what a blast! The water was freezing, the rapids were great, and all the girls on my boat had a major crush on our guide! You can check us out on the river at http://snakeriver.elevationimaging.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?&category=692037 and https://www.snakeriverphotos.net/findphotos.asp?InfoID=43950

Here's the whole group before we got on the rafts. Friday evening was the big spiritual devotional by the bishopric, which was really great but much to complicated to explain here, followed by an amazing testimony meeting! I had a great time and loved every minute of it!

Sam is 2!!!

Sam's 2nd birthday was a few weeks ago. We had a great day to celebrate! We met with our family at a park in Bountiful for lunch and cake, then it was on to the pool for swimming. We went to the South Davis rec center, and they have an awesome outdoor kids pool with a splash pad. I highly recommend it. My kids had the best time!

Beautiful Bear Lake!

Last weekend we were able to go on the annual Allred Spring Vacation. This year we took a break from driving down south and decided to try Bear Lake. I am definitely a fan!!!! We were there just 1 weekend before their big tourist season starts, so we practically had the place to ourselves. The beach was never crowded, we didn't have to wait in line to get raspberry shakes, and we didn't see any other 4-wheelers out on the trails. The weather was perfect, and the family time was great! I didn't take any pictures of the cabin we stayed in, but it was great! This is the first vacation where we have had a place big enough for the whole family to stay together. Usually we are split up in condos, which makes it hard to hang out as adults after the kids go to bed. This time we were able to stay up as late as we wanted playing games, watching movies in the theater room, and talking. The boys loved playing with their cousins, and Isaac especially loved playing with the huge train table they had there!

Here are a few pics.

Here's Sam playing at a park during Jes's work party we went to on our way to Bear Lake.

Isaac at the same park

Digging in the sand at the beach. The water was freezing, but they had a great time!!!

Sam's still smiling even though he just fell in the cold water. Aren't the mountains and water beautiful? Oh yeah, and my baby boy too!!!

Here's my niece Maja getting our cool kite in the air

Here's the kite flying high. It was shaped like a Macaw (parrot)

Here is the pool that Jes helped the kids build. They had a great time building and demolishing it. Isaac is in the back with the blue shirt. The other kids are my brother, Mark's kids. They're all so cute!

Our last day there my dad and my oldest brother decided it would be so fun to dress the same!!! Just kidding, it just so happened that they wore the exact same thing. Like father, like son....except when it comes to the choice in schools. Dave is definitely the black sheep in the family not only for attending BYU, but for wearing their hats!

What a great vacation!!! I love Bear Lake, it's just so beautiful there and peaceful. Thanks so much for mom and dad for putting it all together, and thanks so much to my awesome family. We all get along so well and really enjoy being together!!!

I hope my husband will still love me!

A few weeks ago our ward did a talent show and the Elder's Quorum presidency did this cute lip sync to the Wiggles. Jes and I both thought it was so funny - so we voted for it to move onto our Stake's talent show. Little did we know that one of the guys wasn't going to be there that day...and guess who they asked to fill in???? Yes! Jes became a wiggle for one night only. They did the "Hot Potato" song, for those of you who know. They did it complete with the hot potato, the cold spaghetti, and the mashed banana! My only regret is that my camera is not that great, and I am not that great at using it - so the video I have does not do it justice!

Jes is the green one on the end.

I love you Jes!!! Thanks for being a good sport!

The Potty!

So - the before mentioned reason that I have been unable to catch up on my blogging (or cleaning my house, or anything else really) is that we are offically in full potty training mode at our house. Isaac's been wearning big boy underwear for going on 4 days now. He's doing really well, but it still is no fun at all. I hate cleaning up the "accidents" and it's really hard because I know that I'm not giving enough attention to Sam, but I don't know what else to do! So - my life now consists of watching Isaac like a hawk for the "signs" that it's time to sit on the potty, and cleaning up after the misses. Sounds like fun, huh!

I know he's going to get the hang of this soon though, and then it will be one more parental rite of passage that we have made it through!