Bear Lake

We spent a few days last month in Bear Lake with Suz and her kids. It was a nice relaxing break to sit in a chair for hours under an umbrella and watch the kids have fun. Overall, everyone got along really nicely and they entertained each-other for hours.

Paul joined us on Saturday and the kids were glad to have him:

Abby and Julianna:

Alexandra and Andrew:

Tilly and Anthony - they are the cutest cousin pair and best friends. They play so cute together.

Austin and Timothy - these two were "hot and cold" with each-other - but I guess that is normal for 2 year olds.

Lake Powell

Although there were many reasons to not go, including being 8 mo pregnant and moving the next week, we decided to accept an invitation to go to Lake Powell with Cheryl and her family and some other family We just couldn't refuse such a generous offer to go to one of our favorite, and most beautiful places on Earth.

Here is Paul taking some of the teenagers out for twilight wake-boarding:

Abby and some cousins enjoying a fire and smores.

Andrew on the waterslide:

Girl cousins playing Mermaids.

Here is a really funny, embarrassing picture of me jumping off the rocks at 8 months pregnant. Suz loved the picture and wanted me to post it as my new profile picture on Facebook - I don't think I'll go that far - but those of you who happen to read this blog can enjoy my awkwardness:

The banana - we borrowed this from some friends of Cheryl's and it really saved the day. The kids all loved it and the fights over tubing turns came to an end when we started using this toy.

Mothers' Day in St George

We had a fun little escape last weekend to St. George. Cathy and Pete and their kids came along. We went on a couple of fun hikes at Snow Canyon (hopefully Cathy will post some of those pics since I forgot my camera that day), went swimming a lot, ate great food, The Dads took the kids to a movie, and we did some garage sale-ing. One of our best finds were the pool chairs pictured here for just a $1 each. I was almost not going to buy them because they looked so junky and dirty on someone's driveway - but they were a hit! It is funny how junky things can look at yard sales. Oh yes, and we spontaneously bought a new puppy for Mothers' Day. (next post)

Fall Break in St George

We had a great long weekend in St. George for UEA break.  It was so nice to be in warm weather again.  Suz and her girls stayed with us one night and the kids had fun swimming together.  We had a great time on Saturday wakeboarding and surfing behind Kimberly and Robert's boat at Sand Hollow Reservoir (even though the water was a little cold).  Abigail lost her first tooth and the toothfairy found her at our St. George home!  We are now trying to adjust to a greater than 30 degree temp drop!

Quick trip to Washington

We made a blitz trip out to Washington to support the Cougars against the Washington Huskies.  Paul, Austin, and I flew to Spokane on Friday.  We arrived late and stayed up late talking to Rob, Eva, and Jeff, we also happened to see Al and Paul that night.  We woke up early Saturday and drove 300 miles to Husky Stadium for the game.  We met Paul's dad and brother, Tyson at the game and had lots of fun cheering for BYU.  The weather was really great for Seattle, too.  After a fun game that was a little closer than we would have liked, we drove back to Spokane and stayed with Jeff and Tami.  Sunday morning, we drove to Coeur d' Alene Lake to check it out, then back to Spokane for a little tour of the city given by Rob, Eva, and the girls.  It was a fun trip, but I would like to stay longer next time and bring the whole family.  Rob, Eva, Jeff, and Tami were great hosts and provided lots of good food and hospitality.  Thanks so much to Stephanie for watching the three amigos in Provo!

Cute little Cougar Fan

At Husky Stadium in Seattle - we were very glad to have a victory!

Austin with Cousin Leo

University of Washington Campus

Coeur d' Alene Lake, Idaho

St George and Zions

We had a fun time last week in St. George.  We went down to celebrate Grandpa Hatch's 60th birthday.   It felt great to escape the spring snow storms and enjoy the warm sunny weather of Southern Utah.

We were glad to have Pete, Cathy, and their 2 cute kids with us.  The kids loved being able to swim so much.  We also had a fun hiking adventure at Zion National Park.  See Cathy's blog for a funny video of Phillip hiking.

Curacao Trip

We just got back from a fun week in Curacao. It is a small island in the Caribbean just north of Venezuela. It is owned by the Netherlands just like Aruba and Bonaire. These pictures show some of our highlights from the fun week: (We got a new digital video camera and I thought it would be neat to add video to our blog, but when I tried to upload the video the computer kept crashing....I guess it is time to upgrade to a Mac. like Al, Cathy, Emily, and Cheryl.)In Willemsted - Punda district. The kids loved all of the colorful buildings and the floating bridge.

They got their faces painted with a Curacoan Flag at the Kids Club.

Jumping on the floating trampoline with Daddy and Grandpa.

Sailboat snorkel trip.

Andrew and Abby were so brave to snorkel all by themselves.

Kayak rides and searching for crabs.

Playing at the beach! (Anthony's favorite activity)

Abigail's favorite part of the trip: doing "tricks" in the swimming pool.

This is the kids enjoying their last "Miami Vice" drink before we left. (mix of Strawberry daquari and Pina Colada). Andrew said that was his favorite part of the trip - drinking lots of Miami Vices.

Busy 1st Quarter

I guess it is too far into 2008 for my blog to say "Merry Christmas." (Easter is only 10 days away).

I have been extremely busy the past 10 weeks and right now I am feeling all of it as I am very exhausted. But as I have learned from Al, that is no excuse to not update a blog and keep in touch with those you love.

This January, I started back at work part-time at Larson & Rosenberger helping with financial audits of insurance companies. I was only planning on working 16 hours a week, but things have gotten very busy, so I have picked up more hours lately. The kids enjoy their new preschool/daycare that is close to home. They do fun art projects and like playing with the other kids.

In addition to going back to work, our traveling pace has not slowed a bit. In January, we spent 5 days in Sun Valley, ID. It was a winter wonderland with Mountains of snow piled up everywhere. We went sledding behind the house and without snowshoes, I sank up to my hip in the snow. This was a great trip full of fun winter activities: skiing, sledding, ice skating, bowling, and hot-tubing. Paul made great progress with Abigail and Andrew and at the end of their ski day, they were both going down by themselves with Paul following. They were so cute encouraging and racing with eachother.
February started very uneventful, until the terrible flu hit our home. We had about 2 1/2 weeks with at least one person in our family very sick. I was wiped out for about 10 days myself. Check out Al's blog to see an even worse case of this flu.

After feeling better, and working a 40 hour week to make up for sick days missed, I went on a business trip with Paul to Cancun. He had a conference there for the Printing Industries of America. The conference kept him pretty busy, so I mostly just sat in a chair at the beach under a canopy and did nothing. It was very nice and relaxing. The beach and the water are beautiful there.

We arrived home late last Thursday night and drove down to Emily's house in Mapleton to pick up the kids. I had to quickly re-pack and the next morning we were at the airport again on our way to Phoenix with the kids. Paul is part of a networking group in SLC that had planned a trip to Phoenix for a Jazz/Suns game. We had to bring the kids with us since this is their favorite vacation spot (even over Hawaii and Disneyland according to Abigail). While Paul went to the basketball game, we drove over to Suz's house and the kids were so happy to see eachother. Julianna was so cute and had saved her money and bought little prizes for each of my kids from her school book fair. Even Matilda was excited to see us - she gave me a huge hug when I got there and patted my back several times. Saturday we spent the afternoon at the hotel swimming and going on the waterslide.

We really wore the kids out - Saturday night Julianna was actually begging to go to bed! On Sunday, we headed back to Utah, but not without stuffing our suitcases, plus an extra box with fresh grapefruit and lemons from Suzanne's and her neighbor's grapefruit trees. Those are so yummy. It is alway fun to visit Suz and her kids. We also love the AZ sun and the yummy grapefruits.
We are now home and I have mountains of laundry calling to me, but not enough energy to fold it all--so I decided to type this up instead.

Las Vegas Bowl

We joined thousands of other Cougar Fans for a pre-Christmas road trip to Las Vegas for BYU's bowl game. We had fun staying at Kimberly and Robert's new home in St. George on Friday night. On Saturday, the whole family went down to Las Vegas and we stuffed ourselves at a buffet on the strip before the game. We were lucky to find a good babysitter in Las Vegas so that our kids did not have to sit in the cold. BYU was even luckier to win the game by blocking a last minute field goal attempt by UCLA. We rushed the field with hundreds of others to celebrate. GO COUGARS!

Disney World!

We just got back from a week in Orlando, Fl, where we spent 6 days at Disney World. It was a great trip and the kids are allready asking to go back. We really wore the kids out as you can see by the last picture of us on the way to the airport. There were so many fun things that we did, but here are just a few of our trip highlights:

Spending time with John and Kaley. See John & Kaley's blog for more pics. http://jkwirthlin@blogspot.com/
Getting free upgrades on both our rental car and our timeshare room.
Princess breakfast
Pirates of the carribean and hearing Anthony sing "yo ho yo ho a pirates life for me"
Buzz lightyear ride
The petting zoo at Animal Kingdom
The Safari ride with real African animals
Jedi training - watching a live fight between Darth Vader and Jedis
Abigail in her Pocahontas outfit.
Tom Sawyer's island - Anthony and Andrew loved exploring the caves there.
Paul doing most of the pushing of all three kids in the stroller at once.
Seeing fireworks almost everyday.