Utah

How great of a Mom am I that I only have pictures of Rodney while we were playing at a park. Not one picture with Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandma, Jeff or Stephaney... nothing. It almost makes me want to cry. We won't get to see them for another 6 months and by then Rodney will almost be two. TWO!?! What?! ugh. Well here are some pictures anyway.

Rodney was sitting very well on a concrete barrier around the park. And then we realized he was trying to be just like somebody...

His Dad who was just sitting up a little ways. Mom thought of taking the picture from this angle. And I am so glad she did, because really, how cute is that!?

This is the only picture that I have from our trip to Utah for the family reunion...again, I'm a LAME-O! But at least it's a good one. We took him to the pool for the first time and he had a ball! We went to a pool that was huge and he would have stayed there so much longer if we would have had time. His favorite was jumping off the edge of the pool to Mark or I. He also loved to wander deeper into the pool until the water was all they way up to his chin. EEK! He sure was brave for his first time in any kind of water outside of a bathtub or shallow pool in the backyard. We had a blast.

For our trip for the family reunion we had a quick trip because we were close to the end of the semester and couldn't miss very much. We got there a day early which is when we went swimming and the next day we went up to the Heber Valley Camp which was very fun. We got to spend quality time with Sean and Anna, Brad and Angela, Justin and Sarah, Amy and gary, and Jeff and Stephaney. We had so much fun doing not much of anything but enjoying each others company and I wouldn't have changed it for anything! We did do the paddle boats and a ropes course that included a zip line which I braved for the second time. That thing is tall...

The second time we were just in Utah we spent 8 days of our break between semesters. I brought my Jean quilt that I cut squares out when I was pregnant for Rodney (yes that was almost 2 years ago...don't laugh!) But it's completed and another smaller one for Rodney is mostly finished but we didn't have time to finish both. We got to go through a session at the SLC temple. AMAZING! So beautiful and I am loving the tradition with Jeff and Stephaney we have started. Every time we go to Utah like this we go to a different temple for a session. We decided that next time we will go to the Draper temple. Quite exciting! We got to eat a few meals of the delicious Wallaby's grub. Went to a few parks. Mom, Dad, Mark and I went on a double date to Sundance to use some tickets they were given to a dinner and a play. It was a pretty good play. Mark and Dad would have much rather been fishing which they did all but 3 nights that we were there, but they were good sports about doing what us women wanted for a night. Jeff and Steph were nice enough to watch Rodney so we could go. But really the quilt took up quite a bit of our spare time. Mark loves it. Makes all the time spent on it worth it. And it is nice to finish a project that took so long to finally finish.

Camping!

Mark and I have been talking about camping for ever since we have been dating...and we finally got to go! With company no less! One of Rodney's very best friends is Liam. They are about 5 months apart in age and get along as well as you could expect 1 year olds to get along.


Rodney was making too much noise while Mark and my friend Amber were resting so we went for a walk and I took a picture to mark his age of 19 months.

Liam thought it was great fun to sit in this backpack whether it was on somebody's back or not. Which meant there was one less toddler to chase! Wahoo!! Especially for his prego mommy! Kudos to her by the way for camping and sleeping sans air mattress the first night...

This is Justin and Amber our great friends that are cooking up some breakfast for us. Donuts I believe!

This was us all hanging out at camp. I don't remember which day. We were up there for two nights. Although I don't know if you would call them nights or not because we didn't sleep very much. Well, maybe I should clarify that Rodney didn't sleep very much which meant that we couldn't sleep very much... He decided that wake up time was 4:00 am both mornings. The first day we were up there we took turns watching kids so we could all rest up as much as possible to catch up for lost time.

All in all it was great fun and we found an even better place to camp that will be FREE!! next time we go up there. We went up to dowdy lake and found our camping place next door at westlake. I think I would rather take up our own water to this new place we found than to worry about our toddler keeping the whole camp up with his very capable lung strength! So we are excited to go up again. Especially with such great friends!