July Events

July 1st brought Brooklyn and I flying into WA, and Joe's long drive with the moving truck. Brooklyn and I, of course, arrived that evening while Joe arrived on the 5th. I'm not sure what would have been worse--flying while being pregnant (I got very motion sick) or riding in a car for 4 days. At least the flying was over quickly I guess. We then only had 3 days before we left for McCall, ID, (a couple hours north of Boise) for the Haworth family reunion. Also squeezing in a doctor's appointment with my new doctor before we left traveling again.

HAWORTH REUNION

Activities at the cabin

Treasure hunt (Brooklyn's favorite part was finding and keeping all the clue cards)

Family scripture reading and Family Home Evening

Crafts

Celebrated Grandpa & Grandma's 40th wedding anniversary.

Brooklyn's 1st time fishing and also the 1st one to catch a fish. She caught it within the first 10 min we were there and was done fishing after that. She had more fun throwing rocks in the water with her cousin Reagan.

The view and things we did in the cute little town of McCall.

Walked by the beach

Ate ice cream in a cute little shop in the alley (it had to be chocolate for Brooklyn)

One of Brooklyn's favorite thing was to carry the flag across the street--she just hated putting it back.
Ice Skating--1st time for Brooklyn and a long time since I had been (took me a while to get the hang of it again, but we sure had a lot of fun)

Following the Haworth reunion was the Jones' reunion in Island Park, ID, just outside of Yellowstone National Park.

JONES REUNION
Activities around the cabin
Family Home Evening
A hot tube full of 17 little grandkids and a couple adults
Marshmallow wars (although I didn't think it was a very good idea with the bear that came to visit our cabin the night before)--luckily no more bears and everyone had a safe and fun time
And of course what Brooklyn had been waiting for was for Grandma to paint her fingernails--we picked out the polish before we left on the trip, and Brooklyn picked a purple polish to do Grandpa's nails although that never happened

Yellowstone National Park

Old Faithful

Wildlife up close and personal

Watched a play of "Beauty & the Beast"--Brooklyn was first scared of the beast and would cover her eyes but by the end, she was wondering where he was

While we were gone to the Jones' reunion, my brother and his family came up and laid tile in our kitchen, utility room, and half bath. It was a big job, and we tried to help out as much as we could with all the prep work beforehand. We came back from the reunions on the 17th to a bunch of boxes but a nice new floor.

OLD FLOOR

Prep work

NEW FLOOR

Joe then had to go to a conference for his new job down in Orlando, FL, the following weekend on the 24th until the 28th. He was sad to be away from us but enjoyed his early birthday present of visiting Universal Studios. I wish we had pictures to share, but I didn't think of sending the camera with him. So by the end of July, it was nice to get back together and start working on unpacking and actually living in our new home.

Major Update

I want to first apologize for my lengthy disappearance. My posts have been pretty sparse. Let me try to explain what has been going on in our lives these past few months and maybe you'll understand and just maybe cut me some slack. We've been doing a lot of work but also a lot of playing I will admit. First obstacle has been that we've been without the internet in our home since mid June until now. Of course there were places we could access essential information we needed but to sit down, blog, and update was not the ideal situation.

Anyway, first line of business I wanted to share is that we are expecting a baby boy in Oct! We'd been trying to keep it a secret from Joe's family for a while so I didn't want to slip and say anything online that would leak out to them. But now they know and so I can share that exciting new with anyone else wondering or didn't know yet. Sorry to keep you in the dark for so long.

Second line of business is that we moved to Washington State! We've been living in Houston for the past 2 years and have now come back closer to family; although, we deeply miss our dear friends in Texas (but I don't miss the weather right now being 7 months pregnant). We didn't expect the move quite so soon but a job was offered and felt we needed to take advantage of the situation. So leaving a place we may never be able to come back to, we had to take the opportunity to see everything we could before we left including a trip to SeaWorld in San Antonio.

It was a long one day trip, but it was sure fun!


Our New Home!

(front)
(back)

I'll have to update you more on our move and the new house next time--hopefully in the near future.

Brighten Up Your Day!!!

Spring Break

No - we're not having Spring Break in May but this is the first chance I've had to write about our fun adventure back in March. This is going to be a pretty quick version so you'll have to get a better idea of what our trip was like by looking at the pictures.

We spent a few days in Orlando visiting Disneyworld and the Animal Kingdom. Brooklyn loved every minute of the parades, musicals, rides, etc. More than anything else she loved the parades, except for when the charachters came right up to her. As long as they kept their distance, she had a blast.

This was our cold breakfast break on our way to Orlando. We made it from Texas to Florida before we even had breakfast. Joe drove through the night so we could make good time while Brooklyn and I slept (it was a pretty short drive for those sleeping).

This is what I found after I came out of the shower about 6pm. We all had a good night sleep!

Swimming at the hotel. The water was nice and warm.

DISNEYWORLD!!!

We figured this picture would have to suffice for the Dumbo ride. Although I wasn't willing to wait 1 1/2 hours to take Brooklyn on the Dumbo ride, we did wait 45 min. to go on "It's a small World." Below is a picture of how much Brooklyn saw of that ride.

Watching cartoons in the hotel.

Finally meeting Minnie Mouse!

Brooklyn was so giggly happy it made me wish we had spent more time seeing the characters.

After Orlando we drove down to Miami to quickly visit Joe's mission. We visited the mission home, office, a few old apartments and tried to track down some old friends. He was able to find one familiy at the end fo the day but unfortunately both the parents were still at work. Even though he wasn't able to find many people it was really fun to go back and see where he served his mission. Just seeing a few streets help to make his stories come to life. Here's a picture of the mission home.

The last couple days of our trip were spent at Daytona Beach. It was awesome to wake up and be right on the ocean. Unfortunately, the water was too cold to get in, but we all had a great time playing together on the beach. Here's the view from our hotel room patio.

It was a really fast but fun trip.