Family Visit

I think I've mentioned this before, but living halfway between Salt Lake and Orange County has made our house a place for family to stop by, visit, and crash (either on their way through or as a destination). A couple of weeks ago, my brother and his family were on their way through to go visit the grandparents in California and we were able to visit with them for a couple of days (and meet our newest cousin/niece):

Brooke is very good with her younger cousins, and Easton is no exception. Here they are playing with Silly Putty:
















Kara enjoyed holding Kendree. Kendree was so calm and happy the whole visit. It was wonderful! Kara didn't know that babies could go so long without crying!




















Brooke and Easton watching some tv... this was either Spongebob or Hannah Montana or some similar show:
















Brooke got to hold Kendree too:

Amber didn't want to be left out... she loves babies! Poor KaLee had to keep fending off her affection:

All the attention wore Kendree and Grandma right out:

We had a fun weekend and hope they'll come back soon! :)

Back to School!

Today was the first day back to school for Kara & Brooke. Dropping them off this morning felt like we haven't even had a break. And I can't believe how excited they both were to go back! We must've either had a really fun summer and they were ready to go back or I bored them so much they had to get out.

Two happy kids together:

















Our 3rd grader:
















Our 5th grader:

This one's for Julie...

And I'm ashamed to say it took me over a year to get this done for her... From a pile of her husband's t-shirts from his crew days at Yale to this fun quilt!

One more thing crossed off my to do list (and this was one of the oldest items on it still!).

More digital scrapbook

This is getting really fun! The last post were from a template... this one was from scratch.

Digital scrapbooking

I should be sleeping, but instead I'm playing with photoshop elements & digital scrapbooking layouts that I found online for FREE! :)

This is fun and I suspect will become addicting. Now I need an external hard-drive (or do I?) to store all this stuff on!

Same layout, subbed in Kara's photo for Brooke's photo:

Jeff's Birthday

Living an hour and a half away from Las Vegas is nice! We didn't even have to get a dog sitter when we made an impromptu trip down there on Saturday to celebrate Jeff's birthday. We got there early (about 9:30am) and stayed until around 3pm (PDT).

Here we are on the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Blvd outside the MGM (with a view of New York, New York behind us):



















We walked through M&M world and then headed over to Coke world where we tried 16 beverages Coke distributes around the world... Most were pretty good (there were several fruity flavors the girls loved). The worst one was a clear drink called "Beverly" from Italy. Jeff said it tasted like cloves. It was terrible! In this picture Brooke is drinking the mint flavored drink called "Sunfill Mint" from India:















Planning ahead saved us lots of $... we took our own food and had a picnic at the Excalibur hotel... that was fun!
















Walking through several hotels near the same intersection was fun (and HOT)... we saw the lions at MGM, walked through Excalibur, New York, New York, the Luxor. The girls took time to smile at one of the hotels in front of Spongebob:















Later we drove to the old part of Las Vegas and caught a free show at the Circus Circus... perfect timing on our part!


We had a great time in Las Vegas (and only spent money on the drink samples from around the world)... we can take a vacation (for a day) for cheap! :) Good times! And a great way to celebrate Jeff's birthday!

Kara's Party

Some fun shots from Kara's birthday party today:


Karaoke (Jeff had to break the ice and go first):
















Mad Libs during pizza time:
















Singing Happy Birthday:
















Dance Party! (and Breakdancing by Brajon & Dominick):















Kara had a lot of fun and we're glad it's done for another year! :)