Celebration!

This coming Thursday is my oldest son's birthday. He will be 3! I cannot believe it! I'll probably say that every time for his birthday. "I cannot believe he's 4...16...40!" In order to celebrate my 13 hours of labor and ultimately A's BIRTH of course, we had a party on the 19th. A good friend of ours has his birthday on the 20th so we decided to celebrate his day as well. We had our friends and family there. So hopefully each person felt like we were celebrating their day! Daddy M and I set this up about 2-3 weeks before the date. We bought all the yummy food and told people to come play with us and enjoy a nice day! I am glad we had enough food for everyone. There were little cousins there for A and E to play with as well as plenty of adults to keep track of all the kids.

Daddy M was stud. He lived about 70% of the time at the BBQ.

No smiling at the meat station. Its too manLy of a station for smiles. :) However as I was photographing M, I did catch a friend of ours in the background.

 Love it!

A and E took full advantage of the busy parents situation and dominated the food. You'll see a few pictures of fun cousin that came to play with us. We're so glad they got to be there.

 

I feel that A and E's shirts are fitting for their food massacre. We have the little A's shark and the little E's bull. :)

A party of course is nothing without a party cake! A loves Blue's Clue's so we made our cake blue. I'm not ingenious enough to order an actual cake that looks like Blue. Plus, we didn't want to spend the extra money on that. I think A was perfectly satisfied.

And so were his party observers/helpers. Next time we'll have to make a bigger cake to accommodate everyone's sugar tooth!

Check out the kid in the bottom right of the last picture. I don't even know WHO that is or why his eyes are buggin out of his head like that. haha. Although I do know E on the other side- chowing down on still more watermelon! And then cake once someone handed him a piece. Mmm MMM

 

The party was wonderful. We had some squirt guns that the kids and adults played with. :) I say that was worth the $6 we spent on them all. Our friend and the other birthday "boy" Chi... was massacred at least once in honor of being one year older. I guess getting sprayed down is better than getting spanked. Depending on who is doing the spanking that is. :P 

Toward the end of the party I noticed that I was not in any of the photos. So as proof that I WAS actually there. A and I took a picture together. It took us about three tries to get it right.... and even then, the right smiles are not lined up in the photos. So I guess that means we never got it right. But we still had fun taking the pictures!

So close A. We were so close.

Bridal Veil Falls

I'm having de'ja'vu right now. I could have sworn I've already written this post! And if I have and have completely forgotten about it. I apologize. So here goes.

The boys and I along with some friends went to Bridal Veil Falls, us for the first time! I have to admit I was slightly surprised. I had envisioned something completely different than what I saw.

This is what I'm used to as far as waterfalls go. Long hike to the top. A nice spot for a picnic up there. Lots of little trails you can go off on.








This is what I found instead. A nice short flat walk. The waterfall is right off the trail. No spot to really sit and picnic. At least not by the falls. BUT it was still beautiful. It was still a nice lovely day and I still had great company.

Ethan sat at the bottom of the falls and made his own little pool of water.

Step 1: Find an ideal dig site.

Step 2: Make sure you're sitting in a dry seat and watch your hands turn red.

Step 3: Dig a bigger hole and continue to observe your hands turning purple now. :)

Step 4: Finish your masterpiece half frozen.

While Ethan was working on his hole Ayden and Chris played in the falls. McKay was too sick to come. :( We missed him very much, but we were glad that Chris was there to play with Ayden and show him cool man stuff... whatever that is! Bugs, dirt, rocks.

After they had finished playing, Ayden joined Ethan on the ground.

The boys really had a blast! Ethan sat in the same place mostly the entire time working on his ice pool and of course once Ayden saw what he was doing he decided to fill Ethan's pool.  Mommy decided that instead of annoying Ethan that we would throw rocks in the other direction.

Problem solved.

And Ta-Da!!! Here is the only picture of the kids looking at the camera! I couldn't get either one of them to look up until we were about ready to go. Ethan was so focused the entire time that his cute little face is absent, so we have only Ayden. But he's cute enough for the both of them.

We're just happy its warming up!

Festival of Colors!

McKay and I don't get out often, which is why you mostly see our kids on this blog. BUT McKay and I actually had a chance to get away for a few hours this last Saturday. So, what did we do? We went to the Holi Festival at Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple! It was spectacular, wonderful, cold, and dirty and I loved every minute of it! . . . except the cold. 

I'd heard of the Holi Festival last year from my sister I think, which is odd since she doesn't even live in Utah. She came down from Idaho with some friends of hers and they had a blast, so this year McKay and I bought some $4 shirts and carted ourselves down with some friends of ours, Chris and Amy.

Here is the before shot of our day. McKay is looking wisely off into the distance... or maybe he wasn't quite ready for the shot and was blinking. :) I like to think the first. 

Anyway, half of you on here are probably wondering what Holi Fest even is. A simple explanation is Holi Fest is to welcome spring and celebrate life. The Indian Dust that is blown around soon makes everyone look the same, no race, no colors, just people enjoying life. Kate explains it wonderfully and has some beautiful pictures of the festivities. If you have time you should check her    post    out.

Here is a very tame version of what went down. As we were coming around the hill driving up we could see a cloud of dust hovering just below the Temple. You can see people's shoes on the roof there.

Some of the after shots of the fun. We came late so we didn't get as caked as some of the people you see in the above photo.

People would walk past us and throw chalk our way. My friend Amy had someone smear it all over her face as she walked past. We were so clean compared to everyone else that we were desirable targets to assault.

Chris kept getting people throwing it at the left corner of his face.

McKay lifted me up like it was nothing.

I had to get a picture of the temple on our way out. Its so beautiful.

We saw this sign on our way out. "No Praking" I don't even know what that means!!

I hope a child wrote this sign. Because that's just embarrassing.

Amy caught McKay stealing a kiss on our way home. :)

This picture just does not do justice to how horribly he was hammered with chalk, BUT its still a great photo eh!

I know, gross feet. I just had to show you guys the pattern the chalk left there because of my shoes.

We had such a wonderful time. We danced a bit. Watched people crowd surf. Watched girls get tossed in the air, one was nearly dropped. And for some reason she wanted to be thrown in the air again! Next year we'll have to bring a lot more of our friends with us. And get there on time so we can enjoy the full scale chalk massacre.

Brian Regan

Booooy am I jealous! Look at how comfortable these two look! 

I was so excited! They actually stayed like this for a while! The chances of getting Ayden AND Ethan to sit still at the same time and actually be awake is like a one in a million chance. As you can see the little while I was talking about didn't last long seeing as Ethan is already wriggling out of his little nest. But I'll take what I can get.

Also a little about mwah! I was able to go to Brian Regan's concert this last Wednesday with my crazy friend Monica! It was a blast. We drove to Sandy Utah and then rode the tracks or max or whatever you wish to call it down to Salt Lake. This way we didn't have to pay for parking OR find parking for that matter.
We got to enjoy Olive Garden. mmm mmm. Can't EVER go wrong with Olive Garden, at least that's how I feel. We had to walk there, which was only about a block and a half walk. On our way there we saw a homeless man with a sign asking for food. Just as we passed him he shifted forward as if he were about stand and the next thing I know Monica is practically on my lap. Hahaha. She didn't say anything until we got into the restaurant, but I guess him moving startled her... *cough*I mean, freaked her out big time! Lucky for her, he didn't attack and we made it to the restaurant and then the concert in one piece. Maybe a little cold, but that's what we get for living in Utah and not thinking that it could be below freezing level in MARCH. As always Brian Regan was spectacular! I couldn't stop laughing; my cheeks hurt, my eyes hurt, my back hurt, all from laughing so hard! The guy that opened for him was pretty funny too- I just WISH I could remember his name.

By the way we were about 8 rows from the front. Too perfect!

Brian Regan was doing a live recording that night for one of his DVDs. I'm not sure if he just does a live recording for every show while he's on tour and then just uses the best out of the bunch, but it was fun to be involved in that IF he actually uses our night, IF that's how he does things that is.

Whatever the case may be, it was soo much fun. And it was a nice reminder that sometimes going somewhere a bit expensive with friends is worth it.... and almost necessary for my sanity and overall temperment.

Oh and footnote- on the way home on the tracks there was a guy with some pot in his mouth.... or something. I obviously know nothing about drugs and don't wish too. But it looked like a crazy skinny cigarette minus the filter. Monica was so polite to point out to me that it WASN'T a cigarette. Who the heck just does that in public!? What an idiot... although no one called the cops, so maybe he's not such an idiot, its just the rest of us there that didn't do anything about it who're the idiots.

I guess that was a lot more about me than them. :) Ah well.