Utah Part 4 - Tooele & Ksville

My last Utah post!  It only took a month and a half for me to finish all these...teeheehee.  We're just having too much fun out here, no time to blog. :)

Okay, so back to the Utah story...

After the crazy river adventure we came back to Tooele and had some fun just hangin' out.  It was nice to have Gma & Gpa Banbury to ourselves. :)

One day we drove into the Salt Lake Valley and got ourselves some In-N-Out burgs, then Sweet Tooth Fairy cupcakes, and then went to the Living Planet Aquarium.  Lulu had a blast looking at all the fishies.  I thought the jellyfish and the octopus were the coolest things ever!  I have never seen either of those so up close.

 Lucy's favorite part was watching the penguins.  They were soo cute and playful.  I wanted to take a few home with me.

 Lucy just loved being in Gma & Gpa's backyard.  I thought this was such a sweet picture that Trey snapped.

Lu also loved hangin' out with Chuckles on his big comfy bed.

 One day we went to the Deseret Peak complex pool.  I've never been there before, it was a pretty fun place.  Don't you love her little swimsuit?  I love the little girl rashguard swimsuits.  I could just take a bite out of those chubby little legs.

 Lu and Gma Robby...I love Lu's little wedgy bum in this picture.

 This girl loved to play with all the sticks in the backyard

 Hilary and Dennen came for a visit!  We sure love these humans.  Especially this itty bitty one named Finn.  That was his favorite position to be held in.  Such a sweet little guy, isn't he?

 Mama Hils

 We had some old friends over that night and Robin cooked up some amazing burgs and salmon...mmm...we always eat like kings/queens when we stay in Tooele. :)  It was really fun to see Trey's friends from high school and their wives and catch up a little bit.

 Joe and Karli had a new addition that we got to meet.  Her name is Claire, isn't she so adorable?  She was such a good baby, I don't think I heard her make a peep once.

 The next morning we took a drive up Middle Canyon (Oquirrh Mountains)which took us right above the copper mine.  I couldn't believe how high we were.  You could see the whole Salt Lake Valley on one side and the Tooele Valley on the other.  It was an amazing view!  I'm so sad I forgot the camera.  It was really cool to see Kennecot from a bird's eye view.

Then the Fraziers had to head home.  This was our parting photo, Finn was so sad he had to leave.  Lu girl was napping and therefore not in this picture.

 Then it came for us to head back to Cville to see my parents get set apart as missionaries(they got their call to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania mish).  Chuckles and Robin drove us out.  Here are our farewell photos before they left...

 I thought this one turned out really cute.

My parents were set apart (and are now living 2.5 hours away from us!) and we had a little party with the fam.  Then we headed out to Mike & Mandy's house for the last 2 nights of our Utah trip.  We had some good laughs, played some Ticket To Ride, Mandy kicked my butt with her crazy workout, and got some super yummy Sub Zero ice cream for FHE.  Here we are enjoying the goods...

The cute and crazy monkeys

 And the craziest monkey of them all, Max.  He is the funniest little guy.  He enjoyed having Lucy around because he had someone smaller than him to pick on. :)

 We were officially bushed by the end of our long Utah trip.  I loooved being there and seeing our friends and fam but after 5 weeks it was definitely time to come home.

Lucy did great on the flight home, she slept for a good 2.5 hours of it.  Here are my 2 babes taking a snooze on the plane.  Awww...

It was so nice to come back home to our car (we missed her so!), our beds, and our own place.  Lucy loved getting reaquainted with all her toys.

There really is no place like home.

P.S. A huuuge THANK YOU to everyone who let us crash at their house, eat their food, and use their cars and carseats.  We love you and miss you mucho!

Utah Part 3 - Tooele & The Snake

There are lots of pictures in this post, just warning you.

So on the 3rd of July we went back to Cville for the day.  Here is me mum, Luce, Mckell and Alyssa walking to the big Cville parade.

 Lucy loved it!  I didn't think it would keep her attention but it did.

 That night we headed out to Tooele for some fireworkage.  Here is Lu and Dad.  Yeah, she's chewing on a glow stick.  She thought those were the coolest things ever.

It got a bit chilly.  Cute Wren and Morgy.

 Lo and Heatha

The boys doing what they do best, play with fire.

The works.  I had fun with the firework setting on our camera.

Here is Lucy doing her happy 4th dance, glow sticks and all

The cute girlies in their matching shirts that Auntie Lolo made them.  Adorable aren't they? 

Luce just loved playing in the backyard at Gma Robin and Gpa Chuck's house.  They had all sorts of fun toys and sticks.  She just loves sticks.

Diggin' with Dylan

Aunt Lolo made Luce this cuuute owl dress for her birthday.  I love the fabric!

 On the 7th we headed up to the Snake River for the annual river trip.  This year it was quite eventful.  The day after we got there we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Banbury in Afton and helped clean up their yard a little bit.  When we got back to our campsite we found each and every one of our camping chairs slashed(even the little kids chairs) and all the awnings too!  A little stinker of a boy came and wrecked havoc on all our stuff, for no reason at all.  I think the total damage was like $600 worth of stuff!  We were all pretty upset by the ordeal.  And the kid was only 12!  We had to get the police involved and hopefully it will all get resolved and everyone will get their money back.  So yeah, we had quite an eventful beginning of the trip and not a lot of chairs to sit on for the rest of it but we made do.  And we still had a good time.

This was on the way up to Wyoming.  Luce discovered her nose!  You ask her where her nose it and she gets all serious and points to the right nostril or up the right nostril.

This pic was taken the day we arrived(pre-chair slashing).  Those kids had themselves a grand old time.  Lucy loved playing with all the older kids. 

Lu and Wren bird

Those girls were the best babysitters ever.  They played with Lucy all day.  It was nice and relaxing for us. :)

We had spaghetti the first night and this girl pounded it.  She was really sad when it was all gone.  Can ya tell?

 The day after the yard work and chair slashing incident we decided it was time to go on the river.  It was sooo cold this year.  The rapids were pretty awesome, especially Kahuna!  We took Morgan and Dylan with us and got pounded on Kahuna.  We all fell out of the boat and had to scramble to pull ourselves back on before we hit Lunch Counter, which was also huge this year.  We threw the 2 traumatized kids back on the boat first and eventually got everyone on right before we hit Lunch Counter.  Heath saw his visor floating in the water so he dove out after it and rode through LC out of the boat.  Trey was the only one who actually got his oar in his hand by the time we hit LC so he steered us through and we all stayed in the boat through that.  Ha ha, all the adults were laughing and the kids were bawling.  Poor kiddos, the water was so cold.  I thought it was great fun though! :)

The next day we went to a little lake up the canyon for a change of scenery.  It had a rope swing!  Here we are dinking around on the ride up...

 This girl looks so much like her daddy, can anyone else see the resemblance?

Yeesh!

Dylan and Eddie the Basset Hound enjoying the lake

 Lucy liked it too.  This girl is such an outdoors gal.  I love it.

The Arizonians

Heath rockin' the rope swing

Trey's turn

 Hey look, I found a rock!  I think I'm going to put it in my mouth now.  Everything goes in the mouth!  I can't wait until she gets over that stage.

Luce loved having all those fun doggies around.

Awww!

Luce was pestering Eddie with a stick while he was trying to sleep.

It thought this was cute, napping with the doggies.

There was not a time when this girl did not have some kind of stick in her hand.

Dylan joined in on the fun

Lucy was being such a silly in the tent.  She would run around and jump on the bedding and run into the sides of the tent and then fall backwards.  Don't you love her dirty camping boogers?

Camping photoshoot...we are sooo hot.

Getting better...

Yes!  Lucy came to join in on the fun.

Nice...

Kissy wissy...

Don't really know why I'm biting Lucy's finger...

Trey and I have matching double chins!...awesome.  I know you are all just overcome by our attractiveness.

{end photoshoot}

Lucy was a much better camper here then she was when we attempted to camp in PA.  She slept right in between us at night and slept like a champ for the most part.  She would wake up every morning so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Here's the little stinker sleeping away.  We had to strip her down for her naps because it got a little warm during the day.  The nights were so nice and chilly, perfect sleeping temperature.

One more incident I must share from our trip was our kids float experience. 

The weather looked good (just a few clouds) so we thought it would be fun to take the little kids on a very lazy float down the part of the river where there isn't any rapids.  There were 3 adults(Trey, Chris, and I) and 4 kids(Lucy-1, Wren-5, Morgan-8, and Logan-3).  It started out just fine and then all of a sudden dark clouds started rolling in behind us.  We thought if we just kept paddling that we would be able to stay ahead of it, but that thing was moving a lot faster then we were.  It started to rain...no big deal...and then it started to rain a bit harder and the kids were getting cold.  We thought it would be okay to go a little farther and then pull off on the next island, turn the boat over, and wait the storm out.  Then, it started to hail!!  We're talking marble sized hail people!  It hurt!  I took my life jacket off and put it over Lucy to sheild her but all the other kids were getting pelted!  We quickly pulled up to the island, got out and propped the boat up using the oars and hid under it.  All the kids were crying, I'm sure they probably thought we were going to die.  Lucy was actually content chillin' there for a good 20 minutes while we waited the thing out.  The wind started whipping at one point and we thought the boat might just fly away.  Luckily, it didn't!

As we were sitting there I was trying to think of ways we could calm the kids down and make them forget about how cold they were.  We started talking about other things and then it popped in my head, "Say a prayer."  Duh!  Why hadn't we thought of that sooner?  We said a prayer and soon after it calmed down and we were able to finish the float. 

So there you have it, our crazy 2010 Banbury river trip adventure.  This one will go down in the books!  And I'm pretty sure Morgan is never going to want to get on a boat ever again after those 2 experiences she went through.

For the final 5-week Utah trip post, we head back to Tooele and then to Kaysville to stay with Mike and Mandy.

Yay I'm almost done with my Utah posts!