Dinnertime Snooze

This has never happened in our house, but it actually did today. Rease fell asleep at the dinner table. I didn't think it was real, but after a few minutes we realized that she was just that tired.

Poor girl. This is what happens when its Sunday and the girls don't get a nap. We took her straight to bed and she slept all night.

Laying Sod at Uncle Justin's

Uncle Justin always has some project going on at his house. This particular day he was laying sod in a part of his yard and we all went over to help. I put Liev in the swing and he was happy just watching.

Always happy for an excuse to get together!

Luckily we had enough helpers that it took less than an hour to get it all done in the small corner of his yard.

Just playing

I pulled out this toy mat for Liev the other day and couldn't help but laugh at him taking in the new things he had to play with.

This mirror was my favorite. He couldn't stop looking at himself and trying to figure out who that person was staring back at him!

Chicagoland!

Josh invited me to Chicago when he went on his latest trip for work. I was more than happy to take him up on his offer! I left the kids (the girls went to Aunt Betsy's house and had a blast and Baby Liev stayed with Grammie and loved it) and headed to Chicagoland for a few days with Josh. He was still working when I got there so I took the shuttle to the hotel and hung out until he was done for the day.

Our good friends live downtown and I was lucky enough to spend one day with sweet Heidi and her kids. They live right downtown along the Chicago River. She showed me around town and I have to say I was proud of us for how much we got done and saw in one day. We walked a lot but we had fun!

This is just down from their house along the river.
The famous Bean. Oscar and I posing in front of it (along with hundreds of others.)

This fun fountain that I could tell the boys were just wanting to jump into.

Josh took me to a White Sox game. We had a great time and mostly loved the people watching. Our favorite guy? The beer vendor who growled instead of talked. "Beeeeeeeer. Got your beeeeeeer." Seriously growling.

In typical fashion, we left early because we were tired and the Sox were losing anyway. Watching ESPN later we found out that we missed a good game - some sort of drama right after we left that put the game into a bunch of extra innings and Sox ended up winning. Nice.

The Taste of Chicago was in town while I was in town. We took the Ainges with us and had a great time and some great food.

There was a crowd of people and we just joined right in. How it works: Buy tickets. Tell the booths if you want a full portion or a "taste" portion of their food. Eat a lot. Enjoy.

And we did enjoy. We ate about $50 worth of food and enjoyed all of it. The best? Either the meat from Texas de Brasil or the crab wontons from some asian booth. I did have a Chicago dog and Chicago pizza too - of course.

Unfortunately my camera broke just as we were leaving the park, so we borrowed Heidi's camera for the rest of our trip.

Josh and I took a boat tour of the city on the Chicago River one afternoon. It was an architectural tour and came highly recommended.

We really loved it and had fun learning about the great city of Chicago and its architecture. Our guide was awesome and even talked about the upcoming "Transformers" movie that was filmed in Chicago and showed us which buildings were destroyed in the movie. He was right.

We strolled around downtown for a while and did some shopping. Funny - you'd think we would find a place to shop that we don't have in Utah, but we ended up in the Gap and couldn't get outta there.

The weather while I was there was perfect. Not too hot and cloudy - around 75 degrees and perfect.

Enjoying our last night in town. Just down from Tanner and Heidi's house along the river again. It was beautiful!

Thanks to:

Josh for taking me along on his "work" trip and showing me is home away from home.

Tanner and Heidi for letting us hang out and crash at their house one night. Great times and great conversation - they are such good friends!

Aunt Betsy and family for watching the girls who had more fun there than they could have possibly had with us.

Grammie and Aunt Hayley for taking Baby Liev for a few days. (Mom had him then had to fly to California to be with her dad for an emergency surgery so she passed Liev off to Hayley and Caleb.)

We got home Sunday night and started a new week the next day. We were tired but had a great trip together!

BYU Soccer

We have had so much fun this spring and summer watching Uncle Garrett play soccer. He plays as a forward for the BYU team and is awesome. The girls love watching him play and we are sad to see it come to an end for the year. We snapped a picture of him and all of us on his last game of the season. Looking forward to next year already!

Dolls eat dinner too

When Josh is out of town we usually have pretty casual dinners and it's not always right at six o clock like it normally is. This particular night, it was getting pretty late and I realized we hadn't had dinner yet. So I stopped whatever it was I was doing and went upstairs to get something on the table for the kids. I found that Rease had already decided it was dinnertime and everyone was already sitting up to the table.

"My dolls are ready for dinner too mom."

Uncle Mike's Wedding

Uncle Mike's wedding was at the beach near Pismo Beach California.

It was really fun to be there and see all the family that I haven't seen for such a long time - and some that my girls have never met.

Rhen got to keep one of the flower girls' bouquet and she was in heaven. Mom was in charge of all the food for the wedding reception, so the day before we cooked all day long. The food turned out amazing and the reception was really great.
I'm not sure who made the cake, but it turned out beautiful.

I wanted to get some generation pictures since all the family was together. This is my grandma (my mom's mom - can't you see the resemblance?) mom, me and my girls. And this is my great-grandma next to me, my mom's stepmom on the left, mom, me and the girls. 5 generations! Pretty amazing. My great-grandma is still healthy except that she has lost her eyesight. It was so fun to see her and spend time with those that I love so much but just don't get to see too often.

Disneyland 2011

I've been trying to come up with a way to take my girls to Disneyland and the perfect opportunity came up when my Uncle Mike announced he was getting married in California. I told him we would be happy to come help with the wedding and at the same time we could stop by Disneyland for a day. Josh couldn't take time off work, so he stayed home with Liev and I took Rease and Rhen with me. Grammie and Great Grammie Wisniewski and Hayley and Caleb joined us. So we packed into the van and drove all night (while the kids slept - the only way to go!) The drive actually went pretty smoothly and Caleb and I swapped driving while the others slept. We were definitely happy to be there once we finally were!

We got there mid morning and weren't able to check into our hotel for a little while, so we strolled around downtown Disney.

Got ice cream...

Tried on some crazy hats...

Got more treats to keep the kids occupied...

Rhen was leashed to the stroller - she wasn't happy with it but it kept me from going crazy trying to find her!

We found out that there really is a "Disney Vault."

Our hotel was right across the street from the park and that made it so easy on us. We took a nap when we were able to check in and then that night we all took a dip in the pool (and hot tub.)

The kids went to bed early that night because the next morning, bright and early was...

Disneyland!

We got the girls all dressed up like princesses that morning. Before we left I threw their princess dresses in at the last minute just in case they wanted to wear them. I'm glad I did cause they looked so cute all dolled up!

Uncle Caleb was the "prince of the trip" and got kisses from the princesses!

We spent most of the morning with the princesses. That was what Rease and Rhen were most excited about. So we bought some autograph books and they couldn't wait to have each of the princesses sign them and get a picture with them. First in line was Belle.

It is so fun how they were able to spend time with each of the princesses and talk, get pictures, twirl and just be girls together!

Next: Ariel

The princesses stay in character so well and were so sweet to the girls.

Tiana was next.

Tiana's dress was so beautiful - I liked her the best.

After that we went to a little princess show and all the little girls could go dance and talk to more princesses. Cinderalla was there...

And she taught the girls how to curtsy!

Then we stood in line to see Rapunzel. I think Rease was most excited to see her because she is her favorite princess at the moment. Rease thinks one day she will be Rapunzel if she lets her hair grow long enough! While we were waiting in line, Rease was drawing a picture in her book.

Rapunzel had a bonus with her - Flynn Rider was there too! Rhen calls him "Eugene" and she was very excited that he was there too!

Prince Caleb.

After we had our princess fill, we decided it was time for some rides. We went to the new Ariel ride first.

After a couple of rides it was obviously time for a nap. We took the kids back to the hotel and they took a nap for a couple hours.

After sleeping and once more rejuvinated, more rides were in store. The carousel was of course a favorite...

Mommy and Princess Rhen waiting in line for Nemo.

Princess Rease looking beautiful!

The Nemo ride is one of my favorites. I love going into the submarine and taking a ride under the ocean.

Rease is in this mood of making funny faces whenever the camera comes out. Someday she'll be embarrassed by this! Rhen was very interested. And Rease - scaredy cat that she is - was scared of the noises.

Later on, Uncle Caleb found a quite place to read while us girls did something princessy. We went on the Dumbo ride which is a favorite for Rease. Rhen didn't want to go high so she opted to stay off with Grammie.

We ate corn on the cob for a snack and the girls loved it!

Hayley, Caleb and I took a ride on Splash Mountain while mom stayed with the girls - always one of our favorite rides!

That night we waited in line to see the new show "World of Color." It's a color light show on the water at California Adventure and was really amazing.

We ended the night after the water show. We were pooped and full of wonderful memories!

See you next time!