American Fork Canyon

We spent a nice, cool, relaxing Sunday in American Fork Canyon with my family and Riley's dad (his mom was out of town). We rode 4-wheelers up to Silver Lake and let Max play while we cooked fire (well, charcoal really) dinners. It was nice to get out with everyone and get away from the crazy heat. While we were there, I put my HSDS shirt over my schnazzy canyon clothes when it got chilly for a second, and my sweet grandma could not figure out what it meant. After a few minutes, she asked me what HSDS stands for. I told her that it is Hot Shots Dance Studio. She started laughing and said "that's not what I had figured out. I thought it meant 'He Sure Did Something!'". We all got a good chuckle out of it! I guess my big belly had her all confused. :-)
Max swimming in the ice cold lake. With all of the run-off coming into the lake, Riley said the water felt like ice water, but that didn't stop Max from taking the plunge.
Riley wouldn't go in past his shins. He said it made his legs go numb.
I love the look on Max's face in this picture. He loves going riding in the canyon!

Nucul

Max is such a funny kid. While he was busy entertaining himself today, he got out his magnetic drawing thing-y and started writing things on it. After about 5 minutes (I could tell that he had been trying to sound something out) he came over to me with it. It had a cute little heart on it and then said Nucul. A much more interesting way to spell my name, and he totally melted my heart. :-)

Riley's Day is Made

So, we just found out that they are building a new Beto's just 2 minutes from our house. Riley is so excited--excited enough, in fact, that he just had to drive down the the A.F. Beto's to get himself a pork carnitas burrito.

HBDTM!

Happy Birthday to me! Riley surprised me the morning of my birthday with my favorite breakfast: Daylight Donuts! YUMMY! They were everything I could've hoped for and more. What a great way to start the day!

After breakfast, we decided to hike to Timp Cave, Max had been wanting to go to the cave for a while. It was really nice to get out and it ended up being a really great day for hiking. Max loved the cave! I was so impressed with him, he hiked the WHOLE thing by himself (1.5 miles both ways and about 1,000 elevation gain!!! What a big boy!).

Max and dad enjoying the view. Max thought it was neat that you could see "our city" through the mouth of the canyon when we got up a little ways.

Max's favorite picture, the heart of the cave.
Max and mom's cave cuddles.
The end of the tour. Our tour was great, there ended up being only 10 people (our family and another family) on our tour, so we got to see a lot of neat things. Max really liked seeing the "blond cave beetles" at the end of the tour and he says his favorite place in the cave is the "camel room" and the heart of Timpanogos.
The hike down was harder on Max and me. Max made his own pit stops on the way down. He would just sit on the trail for a bit and get up when he felt like moving again.

We made it down the mountain in one piece! I was really sore, but only that night. It was such a fun day, and I'm really glad we made it up there before I got any bigger! Max told me my Timpanogos Cave birthday party was great. On the way home, we ate lunch at the new JCW's by Thanksgiving Point and it was SO GOOD! I love JCW's!
After our much needed nap and showers, Max had his first day of swimming lessons! It is so much fun to watch him in the pool, he loves it (I'll have to post more about his lessons later)! Then, we went with my family to Los Hermanos (thanks mom and dad!). It was very yummy and fun to be with my whole fam. Back at my parents house, my favorite cake was waiting for me! I LOVE cold stone's strawberry cake. SO GOOD! After our fun and calorie filled day, Riley and I finished the night with the new Incredible Hulk show. It was a really good movie!The next night, we got to extend my festivities and enjoy my birthday dinner at Riley's parents house. Yummy tacos and a very delicious cake. Thanks Gary and Terrie!

What a great birthday!

My color

I found this while browsing the internet and thought it was fun.

You Are A Gold Girl

You're dependable and hard working. You never miss a deadline - and you're never late. You have a clear sense of right and wrong. You're very detail oriented. You get frustrated when your friends are sloppy - or when they don't follow through. You're on top of things, and you wish that everyone else was!

What Color Girl Are You?

Birthday Shout-out to Emily

Happy Birthday to my sweet sister-in-law, Em! I hope your day was amazing (even though you had to share it)! :-)

Happy Father's Day!

To the greatest husband and daddy ever! We love you Riley, you are amazing!

Our New Grawlmart

Today on our way to Max's Karate as we were passing the never ending construction that is our new little city, my mom asked when our Walmart would be done. I told her that it would be done in the Spring of 2009 and Max asked how old he will be when it gets finished. I told him that he would probably be 5. We continue quietly down the street.

When we get to the light, Max asks: "Mom, how old will I be when the Grawlmart gets finished?"

Me: "Max, it's WALMART, you know what walmart is"

Max: "No! Not walmart, grawlmart!"

Me: "What are you talking about"

Max (pointing ahead at the new Walgreens): "That store right there, Grawlmart"

Me: "OH! You mean Walgreens!" I could not stop laughing! Walgreens will now forever be known to me as Grawlmart.

Look out Macaroni Grill!

One of my favorite blogs to browse is this one. She has the greatest ideas, especially for little kids. I have been pondering the idea of getting Max a Butterfly Kit and with preschool getting out, I am now all stocked up on old chunky crayons to make these. I love her website.

Anyway, I woke up the other morning and started my regular internet browsing while eating breakfast ritual and when I got to her website I saw a recipe I had to try. We have tried a couple of times to make the Macaroni Grill bread, and we've been unhappy with the results. Not this time! Her recipe delivered! It is SOOOO good! We don't have fresh rosemary, so we used Italian seasoning instead, and the bread was still amazing. The texture and everything was just like Macaroni Grill, and it made two big loaves, so we have been able to eat the bread now for 2 days. YUMMY!

He is 4 going on 20

Yesterday Max apparently decided he was a little adult. He asked Riley if he could watch "that show where the guy helps the girl cook things", which translates to America's Test Kitchen (which mom vetoed. I didn't want to be sick on the couch watching one of my least favorite TV shows). Max also loves to watch Good Eats and Iron Chef with his daddy.Then, he wanted to look at pictures of Timpanogos Cave online with me. He LOVES watching "Planet Earth: Caves" and so he has been very interested in what "our cave" looks like inside. I could have read about Timp cave and showed him pictures for hours. I think we may try to take him up to the cave next week if the weather cooperates.Last night Riley turned on "Modern Marvels: Pumps" on the history international channel, and Max was totally enthralled. He watched the whole episode, repeating new words he was learning from it; "conveyor belt", "pistons", "isolated", "centrifugal pump", etc. Then he looked at me and said "I know all of this stuff, mom".He is so inquisitive, such a little scientist. He just had to go with me the other day to watch me get my blood drawn (glucose tolerance test, blah!). He thought it was so great to watch and he had so many questions about the lab. It is so much fun to watch him learn and grow. He has such an amazing imagination, and the best little personality to go with it.

I've been Tagged!

How to play this game of tag: post these rules on your blog. Answer these 15 questions about yourself on your blog, list 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, and 3 random surprising facts. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they are tagged by leaving them a comment on their blog.

3 Joys:
1. I only have 13 1/2 weeks left in this pregnancy!
2. My family. I love hanging out with my cute little family. I am so lucky that Riley has so many days off with his work schedule so we have lots of family time. We are really good at filling his time off with fun stuff!
3. Traveling. I love going and doing whenever I can.

3 Fears:
1. That it may never get warm this summer. :-(
2. That my belly is going to get gi-normous in the next few weeks. I got so huge with Max!
3. Losing someone I love.

3 Goals:
1. To get the baby's room painted.
2. To get the laundry room and my bedroom cleaned. . .they both have the same problem, stacks of clothes--my clothes. I really need to just get rid of a lot of them.
3. To get a good tan this summer (when it DOES finally decide to get warm).

3 Current Obsessions/Collections:
1. The internet. I am always checking my email, reading the news, blog surfing, shopping, etc. What do people do without the internet?
2. I have a calendar for Max. It includes the things he does each day and a monthly summary of his growth, development, new words, etc. I started one of the cute little baby calendars when he was born, and I just have never stopped. :-) It really comes in handy when I get around to doing his yearly digital scrapbook.
3. I collect magnets. My fridge is full of them.

3 Random Surprising Facts:
1. I hoard money. That may not be surprising to some of you. :-)
2. I hate being alone.
3. I love eating nacho cheese doritos with bean dip--it's one of my very favorite snacks. YUM!


I tag Cat, Cassidee, Tanya, Ali, and Amber.

Funny Little Conversation

In the car this afternoon, an ad for Father's Day gifts came on the radio. Max was interested:

Max: "Mom, when is Father's Day?"

Me: "It's June 15. What should we get for your daddy?"

Max: "I dunno. . . Mom, when is Kid's Day?"

Las Vegas: Day 2

After sleeping in (our hotel was really quiet from about 6am-9am) the pregnant woman needed donuts and cold milk. :-) Luckily, I had scoped out the donut places while we were on Fremont Street the night before, so I knew right where we were headed: Dunkin' Donuts. I don't really know why I NEEDED Dunkin' Donuts, but I did. Something about the whole controversy around Rachel Ray's scarf in their ad was intriguing me I guess. The donuts were just OK, and they were out of milk. How can a donut place run out of milk??? Luckily, we found a store with milk on the way to our car. I told Riley from now on, I am just sticking to Daylight Donuts, no other donuts even compare.

We then spent some quality shopping time (and $$$) at Fry's, Riley's favorite store in the whole world. I found a cute little Mario Kart remote controlled car for Max while we were there and Riley got a fun Nerf gun with a laser sight.

We decided to spend the heat of the day in a movie theater, so we went to see The Strangers. It was one of those scary movies where you're almost hoping that they die in the end because they are being so stupid. And, after finding out that it's hardly "based on true events", I'm even less impressed by the movie. I was very surprised by how many parents brought their LITTLE kids to this movie though. Sad.

For dinner, we went to one of my favorite restaurants in Vegas, Ricardo's. It's a cute little Mexican Restaurant off of the strip that has won a bunch of Best of Vegas awards. The food is yummy, and the service is excellent!
Finally, we were off to see LOVE! It was everything I had hoped it would be and more! What a great show. Riley and I are in agreement that it is now tied for 1st place of all of the Cirque Du Soleil shows we have seen in Vegas. I can't even begin to describe how cool it was. The music was, of course, amazing, and the talent in the show is so impressive. This show had a lot more dancing than the others we have seen, which I loved, and the sets, effects, costumes, just everything was so awesome! It was well worth the money we paid to see it! The only Cirque show we haven't seen in Vegas now is "O" at the Bellagio, so I'm sure I'll be bugging Riley to take me back soon. I love Las Vegas!
After our show, it was off to our noisy hotel again to sleep so that we could drive home in the morning. We got an earlier start on Monday morning than I thought we would, both of us were missing Max and wanted to get back before dinner. :-) We both had a great time in Las Vegas, yet again!

Las Vegas: Day 1

Las Vegas was awesome! We had so much fun on our short little trip down there.

The drive down was very nice with hardly any traffic. We made sure Riley's Mp3 player was ready to go with good driving tunes and we headed out right after he got off of work. We made it down in pretty good time and Riley got a much needed nap when we arrived!
That night, we had dinner with Jed and Cat (and Cat, we better not have to travel to Las Vegas again to hang out together. . . come on, we live like what? 2 miles from each other!?!) We ate at The Feast buffet at Boulder Station, one of my favorites. The food was good, and it was nice to sit and chat with Jed and Cat!
Fremont Street was our final destination of the night, where Riley and I were able to enjoy some of the local color. :-P It was really busy, so we got to see our fair share of Las Vegas crazies! The street's hired entertainment was fun to watch too, especially the guy singing "Baby got Back" to the tune of "Sweet Home Alabama". After the Fremont light show, we headed back to our hotel thinking we'd get a good night sleep, but NO! Our hotel room was very nice, but the walls were extremely thin. You could hear the people in the rooms next to us, and all of the people coming to and from their rooms outside. At around 3am, there was a group of partiers who felt the need to yell back and forth down the hallway for about an hour. . .aaaggghh! Needless to say, we won't be staying at the El Cortez again.

Only 100 Days to Go!

Yeah! I love having the countdown from the little baby widget on the side of this page. I now have just 100 days left and I'm so excited! Max is getting pretty anxious too, a few days ago he said, "Mom, lets go to the Doctor's office and tell him to cut the baby out."

I have so much left to do, but I am a total procrastinator so I'm sure most of it will get done in the last month or so. :-)

We're headed down to Vegas in the morning. . .Happy Birthday to Riley and I! We decided that we would go and see "Love" this year for our birthdays. I love the Beatles and am so excited to see the show! I will let you all know how it is when we get home! TTFN.

Happy Birthday Cat!

Tesla, Me, and Cat at Backyard Adventures.

Happy Birthday Cat! You are such an amazing friend, I love ya! I hope your Birthday vacation in Las Vegas is awesome!

A Few Fun Pics

I was just looking through some of our newly downloaded pictures and I thought I'd share some of my favorites. I love the picture of Max on the tramp doing his "bum-and-ups". He has been loving the trampoline this year.
Max on the horse of his choice at Thanksgiving Point Farm. He loves to ride the horses, and it's always fun to watch him. He always and pets the horse's mane and tells it "good horsey". I don't know what we'd do without our Thanksgiving Point passes! Now that we live so close, we spend a lot of time there.
This is what happens when Max spends too much time with Aunt Natalie! :-) He loves to play with the fun things in Natalie's bedroom, and a few nights ago, he came down with her crown on and told me that he was King Mario, Princess Peach's boyfriend.
And, he's never the only one being silly! Love the crown, dad!

Dance Concert

The Dance Concert was last night, and it was awesome! I was so impressed by how quickly we were all getting our girls ready and on stage! My little girls did amazing, they were so adorable! I still need to download some pictures of them, I'm sure I'll get around to it sometime this week. :-)

Busy, Busy, Busy

This past week has been a crazy one! We have been so busy with Max getting sick, home projects, the end of school, and the dance concert!

Last Friday at about 5pm, Max spiked a fever of 103. He had no other symptoms, so I was pretty nervous about WHY he had such a high fever. When we gave him tylenol and motrin, his fever would go down, but then a few hours later, it was back. On Saturday afternoon, he started telling me that he needed cold water to make his throat feel better, so Riley looked in his throat (which we had already checked multiple times), and sure enough, he had Strep. After about 1/2 hour and an unholy amount of money, we were out of the instacare with some anti-b's. Max told the Dr. that the "strip bug" was eating his throat and that he needed some meddies to help get rid of it. He was such a trooper while he was sick, and for the most part he stayed pretty happy (especially when his fever was under control). Lucky for us, he was pretty much back to normal on Sunday evening.On Sunday morning, Riley and his dad painted the playset that we gave Max for his birthday. It only took them a few hours, and Max was very interested in watching and helping.


Sunday afternoon, we went up to American Fork Canyon to ride 4-wheelers. When we got up there, we found out the roads above Tibble Fork were closed, but that we could ride the Alpine Loop since it was closed to cars still. It was so much fun! I love the Alpine Loop and it was even better on 4-wheelers. Max had fun riding with Grandma Colleen and Natalie, and then Riley and Grandpa Gary. Afterwards, we all went to Riley's parents house for hamburgers. . .Yum!Tuesday, Riley and his dad spent the morning/afternoon putting together the playset! We are all so excited to have it up! Max loves it. He has already eaten at the picnic table, and has had some quality playtime with the neighbor kids on it. We're all sad that the weather has been so yucky outside! What is up with this crazy weather!!!
This week, I spent most of my time getting everything ready for my preschoolers and dance students. There was treats to buy and put together, evaluations to fill out, certificates, pictures, a teacher gift to figure out (for Max's teacher), a program and newsletter to do for the dance concert, a circus clown costume to figure out (for circus days the last day of preschool--being pregnant made the costume even MORE fun to figure out), and a few extra dance practices. It has been fun, and I have felt very productive, I kinda like keeping myself busy.

So, now we just have the dance concert left, and I am really looking forward to seeing my girls , especially the 3-4 year olds who will be performing for the first time! They are always so fun to watch, and are so adorable. My classes have been so much fun to teach this year. Also, their costumes are so dang cute! I'll have to post some pics of them.
Our family is very excited for summer, and we're hoping that the weather decides to get with it.

Mexico in Pictures