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Friday, August 29, 2008

Foto Friday!

STOP! GO!We made Stop & Go signs for Lilly to play with and she LOVES them! It's pretty amazing what some construction paper and sticks can do for a 2-year-old :) We've been using Lilly's ABC squares for train tracks, Lilly has me hold up the Stop and Go signs and she will run around the 'track' as fast as she can and then stop when the stop sign goes up, it's pretty funny. Lilly tried the other day to do this game while in her princess shoes, she is pretty good a running in heels. That is something I could never do.

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Saturday, August 23, 2008

Go RVing!

We had an awesome vacation and I wish it could of been a little longer :) Lilly was amazing the entire time and I think she LOVED being able to cruise around in the RV. We started out the trip by picking up Mike's brother and his family in Rexburg, ID and headed up to our campsite at the Snake River KOA. Uncle Steve brought his Jeep along and Lilly and her cousin Belle had a blast jeepin' it up. The drive up to the campsite was VERY steep and absolutely gorgeous, I should of taken more pictures, but I was busy enjoying the view.
On Day two we headed off to spend the day shopping in Jackson Hole, we visited a few cool shops and Mike & Steve browsed the fly fishing shops. Later that night we roasted marshmallows, Lilly was a little nervous of the campfire and kept commenting about firefighters :) Once we showed her how to roast the marshmallow in the fire she relaxed a lot and thought that the HUGE marshmallows were awesome. She usually gets the mini ones when she goes pee in the potty so the big ones where a suprise to her. I bought Lilly and Belle matching t-shirts for the trip that said Best Friends, very cute!

On Day Three we travelled through the Tetons to Shelly Lake, but we couldn't go past the gate, no RV's allowed - BUMMER! So we decided to head over to Jackson Lake. This was a very beautiful lake and we all enjoyed playing in the water and Mike was able to show off his mad rock skipping skills. (he had a sore arm the next day from it too). One more reason why our Keen's (shoes) are so great is we were able to just walk into the water with our shoes on and not worry about them getting ruined, they are waterproof and machine washable! Oh yah! Mike, Lilly and I all own a pair and we were all wearing them :) We were able to go to our West Yellowstone campsite a day early (this is were we saw the bears too) so we didn't have to back track that night and loved the new campsite. On our way to the new campsite we stopped off at Old Faithful and Lilly thought that all that steam was neat. Our new campsite was pretty neat, it had mini gold, an indoor swimming pool, a playground and bikes to rent. It was a really fun campsite and we decided to take advantage of the pool that night. Lilly loves to swim and enjoyed splashing daddy.
On the fourth day we explored the geizer basin and went on a short little hike. Lilly thought that the 'stinky pots' were interesting and had fun riding around in the hiking backpack. We also so a herd of bison on our way to Yellowstone Lake. By the time we got to Yellowstone Lake it was REALLY windy, I almost lost my hat in one of the hot pots too. We bought Lilly some binoculars of her own and she loved looking at everything through them. In the parking lot at Yellowstone Lake the rangers had coned off a section because a tree was going to fall due to the harsh wind. We headed back to the campsite and made foil dinners and played a round of mini golf. Lilly played on the playground for a while and climed a HUGE slide all by herself.
Lilly liked sitting in her camping chair next to Grandpa, they both had their own red chairs :) Lilly thought that golf was fun, but only played for about 10 minutes and then we decided to play on the playground.Lilly and Belle had fun playing in the dirt looking for rocks and bugs while waiting for dinner. Grandma M. was cooking us authentic Chinese fried noodles with chicken and brocoli. Grandma & Grandpa brought Lilly and Belle their very own chopsticks too!
On the last day we went back to Rexburg to celebrate Uncle Steve's birthday and headed back home. It was a wonderful vacation and I enjoyed spending time with Mike's dad and his wife Karmen, they are very kind people. Lilly loved Grandpa's World Famous cookies and ate probably 20 of them during the trip. We are hoping to go on another vacation sometime with Grandma & Grandpa M. It was nice for me to get to know Mike's dad a little better, you would think that after 9 1/2 years of marriage we would of spent more time with them... but this trip helped with that :) Maybe next time we will go to Hawaii???? (just kidding, maybe) :)

Friday, August 22, 2008

Foto Friday!

Look what was crossing the road on our way from the Tetons to West Yellowstone!

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Monday, August 18, 2008

VACATION DAY!


Question: How do you fit food for 8 people for 5 days plus all your other things like clothes, sleeping bags, entertainment for a 2-year-old....
Answer: Your husband is a tetris champion! :)
I don't know how Mike did it, but he fit all of our stuff plus all of the food for our vacation with 8 people in our little hatch back car.
We are leaving for a week long R.V. trip through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I am very excited. We went to Yellowstone last year and there just wasn't enough time to see everything so this will be a great opportunity to see the things we missed last summer.
See you in a week!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Gottcha Day! (Foto Friday)

August is a pretty cool month for our little family on August 4, 2006 Lilly was granted as legally ours deemed by a judge. After placement of a child to their adoptive family there is a waiting period (yes MORE waiting) it's usually around 6 months. During the waiting period a caseworker comes to your home for a post placement visit to make sure everything is still going well. The adoptive parents have to go to the caseworkers office twice for meetings to make sure things are still good then the caseworker sends in their paperwork to the courts giving their recomendation. You hire a lawyer to do all the legal leg work of amending the childs birth certificate and then you can go to court, meet with a judge and get his stamp of approval.

A lot of adoptive families call this special day "Gottcha' Day" I like the term, and use it with Lilly.

We Gottcha in our hearts before we met you, We Gottcha in our arms the day we met you, We Gottcha legally the day the Judge met you, We Gottcha forever, we are so happy we get you!!!

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Foto Friday! (just a few days late)

Lilly is quite the little climber, the other day she climb up the rock wall at the park. She didn't do it just once, though she did it every time she wanted to go down the slide!
I am glad to see that she is getting a little braver. She has always been a little timid at trying new things, so watching her climb the rock wall totally made my day.

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Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Still recovering from a weekend of FUN!

This past weekend was stuffed full of adventure and plain old fun! I took Friday off from work and we headed out to stay at my parents house for a fun three day weekend. Friday I helped my sister make jam and syrup with the apricots that we picked earlier in the week. On Tuesday I made pancakes for lunch to try some of the syrup and it is sooooo yummy.

Friday night my sisters, Mom and I all went to a "Breaking Dawn" party and waited in lines for wedding cake and to get the book at midnight! My younger sister (Liz) and Mom pooped out and didn't last until midnight so it was just Angie and I. We won a chance to play in a frozen t-shirt contest, it was sooooooo fun. Neither of us won, but we got to keep our frozen black t-shirts! We also scored some pretty cool stickers too. The party we went to also had live music and lots of fun games and trivia about the Twilight Serries. It was so much fun. I am about 1/3 of the way done with the book and am dying not being able to just sit for a day and read it all at once.
Don't mess with "Vampires Amanda"
Saturday we all went to a family reunion in the early afternoon and then we went to the local county fair. Lilly had her first experience with a clown and wasn't too freaked out, he even made her a balloon animal - a pink poodle with a leash. Lilly thought her poodle was the best ever, she walked around the fair going "Arf, Arf"
We decided to try out our hiking backpack at the fair, Lilly loved it!

Saturday night my parents offered to watch Lilly for us and we went on a date! We hadn't been on a date for a looooooooong time and it was a total blast! We went to a demolition derby. I was laughing so hard at the carnage and crashing that my eyes were watering. Our favorite car almost won. It was this old station wagon that an 18 year old guy driving, he was totally agressive and awesome. The best part of the car was the number, number 2. If anyone knows Mike they know that he does like to joke about #2 :) :)

Car Number 13 was the winner of the demoliton derby, this driver was so crazy! One of the highlights was a girl came in 3rd place! I totally want to try a little demolition derby now, I thought the figure eight racing look like my kind of sport. :)

Friday, August 1, 2008

Foto Friday!

Do you like Lilly's outfit after swimming? She was cold so I put her in sweat pants, but she also wanted to wear her reading bug library t-shirt and of course topped it off with princess heels! :) Such a diva :)

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My new hobby

We have a fantastic garden this year and last year my Mom taught me how to can tomatoes. So I felt confident that I could can other things after her lesson. Yesterday I researched a little and figured out how to can PICKLES! I love pickles and I really love homemade pickles, so this was very exciting for me. The hardest part was finding the dill at the grocery store. :) For some reason it was by the torillas instead of in with the herbs.


Lilly really enjoyed helping stuff the jars with all of the ingedients. She called the dill "sticks" and was very good at helping me.
Here is the end result, aren't they pretty pickles! I loved the poping noises after they had been processed as the jars were cooling. Canning is such a fullfilling thing, you end up with great food that will last a few years. I just love how food looks in jars too, I think it's so neat to know that I made those.

Here's the next project, JAM! My sister Angie and I picked all of these apricots yesterday too. Today we are going to can jam and maybe even apricot syrup, yummy. When my tomatoes turn red I am going to can salsa too, I think that I have discovered a hobby that I like. I love that I get to wear my cute apron while canning and I also love that I am making something that can be useful. I guess it brings the practical woman out in me.