Mother-Daughter getaway...

My sister Michelle wanted to do something fun for her birthday this year... so we decided the only option was to go on a girls retreat. :)

We reserved a hotel room in Park City and set out for a weekend full of good food, good company, lots of shopping and beautiful scenery! It was really great to get to spend such quality time with my mom and sisters, although we did miss having our sister Heidi and sister-in-law Irene along with us.

My mom and I were determined to catch some fun nature pictures while we were out... so now I am going to pleasure you with loads and loads of pictures. Most of which, do not include people.

The view from our room

 Don't you just hate it when people take pictures in front of something big and they stand way back by the item they want to take a picture of??? Yeah, I broke my own rule of never letting your subject stand more than a couple feet away from your camera...

 This is my sister Michelle, the birthday girl!

 Since my mom and I are both always hidden behind the camera, I thought it only appropriate to have a picture of her taking pictures. 

Happy Birthday Michelle and thanks for planning such a fun weekend getaway!

Teething is rough...

Aubrey made it to 15 months without a single tooth...

(I never expected Maddie's 12 month record to be broken)

We knew she was teething but continued to have nothing to show for it. Until one day, Karl was fishing something out of her mouth...

and she BIT him.

That was when we discovered her first 2 teeth.

How did we not notice that she had 2 teeth?

The fact that they were her top canines and were hidden further back in her mouth would probably have something to do with it...

Here we are about a month or so later. We know she is teething yet again because our otherwise perfect sleeper has been waking up screaming during the night and won't let you touch her mouth.

But this time I can see the teeth she is working on.

All 4 of her front top teeth are either on the verge or beginning to break free. There may be more but these are the only teeth I can see in the short amount of time we are given to look inside.

Needless to say, I think this girl is pretty miserable.

But she has found a way to help ease the pain.

Gives a whole new meaning to the words teething ring. :)

On a side note:

Do you remember playing Cowboys and Indians as a kid?

I walked in to find the girls tying up the bad guys with Daddy's tie the other day. Made me giggle.

So close... yet still so far.

Our yard is getting closer to being finished!

We found a guy who could trench our yard for less money than it would have cost to rent a trencher for 2 hours. It took him almost 4 hours to trench our yard...

Worth EVERY penny!

I have found myself guilty of yard envy as all our surrounding neighbors have paid to have their yards installed for them...

For example: Our new neighbors that just moved in about 3 weeks ago already have their yard looking like this...

(Don't you just love the port-a-potty on the street look? We're looking to start a new trend in our neighborhood. :)

I have to keep reminding myself that we have a beautiful rock wall and fence that have added a lot to the look of our house... hence they had the money to pay someone to do their yards and we didn't...

But yesterday the real fun began.

The installing of the sprinkling system!

Have I told you lately how grateful I am for my wonderful Dad who knows how to do absolutely everything???

After a long days work, we were only able to install the front yard sprinklers. And I say only able, but really, the front yard was the hardest part of our whole yard.

Remember how I mentioned that our neighbors sprinklers like to flood our left side yard? What a muddy mess we had to begin our day.

There were also places that the trencher guy couldn't exactly trench for us... Like in our flower bed above the rock wall.

All of this trenching had to be done by hand.

And you can't forget the part where we had to dig under the rock wall and then back up so we could actually get the pipe in the flowerbed somehow...

Now that we've got all those battles under our belt... the rest of the yard should be a cake walk right?

We have decided we are going to lay sod now instead of spraying hydro-seed. The decision was pretty much made for us as we watched Brooklyn walking outside after our orange marking paint had been sprayed. Within 2 minutes half of the lines had to be repainted. There is no way we would be able to keep the girls off of our lawn for at least 7 weeks while the seed took root. That and we decided we would rather put our money towards buying sod then bringing in more topsoil.

So hopefully, within a week or two, our yard will be as pretty and green as our neighbors.

Yay for a hard days work!

(I'm going to be so happy when this whole thing is finally finished!)

Quirky maybe?

As I sit and watch my little Brooklyn play,

one thought comes to my mind.

"It's a good thing you are cute!"

That girl has a way of getting out of trouble... like no one I have  ever met. I don't know how she does it...

But one thing is for sure,

she's always there to give you a good laugh when you need it most.

Exhibit A: Sitting on my computer desk...

And then Bang! Made you laugh!

Haha, that's what you get for sitting on Mommy's computer desk.

Too bad that post it note didn't have something funny written on it...

 I think you've got a little something on your face love...

 Lately Brooklyn has been waking up a lot at night and coming in to our room. We couldn't figure out why she suddenly was waking up so much. The other night we finally were able to figure it out and oddly enough it all had to do with this...

We recently bought a new clock to hang in our entryway, just outside the girls room. Apparently she doesn't like the sound of the clock ticking at night...

So now we have to take the clock down every night before bedtime and then hang it back up in the morning.

Kind of silly, but hey, it works.

This little girl though, has no trouble sleeping in any circumstances.

Like in the middle of the floor with her face smashed into the carpet...

Ahhh, I love my girls!

Sneak Peak...

We have been very busy at our house lately.

There has been a lot of playing and having fun for all...

(watching football with aunt Heidi... Aubrey didn't really know who she was cheering for but she enjoyed it anyway)

But there has also been a lot of working going on as well.

We are pushing ourselves to have our yard completely in by the end of the month (the deadline for when the Hydroseed has to be sprayed in order to set roots before the winter season hits)

We have planted trees, hauled dirt, pulled weeds and tilled cement
(aka: Utah lake bottom clay).

I've also been working on designing our own sprinkling system, which is something that 2 months ago I knew nothing about.

I have called and visited many garden specialty stores and talked with numerous experts over the course of the last few months trying to figure out how to make our yard work the way I want it... Something I had pretty much decided was nearly impossible. But I'm happy to say, I think I have finally figured it out (mostly) all on my own! Of course my Dad has helped me work out the kinks and perfect my plan but the fact that he didn't tear apart my plan makes me feel pretty good. Seriously, I had no clue what I was doing when I started.

I know it may look kind of random and such but I was trying to design it with future plans in mind. So you might just have to trust me on this one. :)

We also took in to account the fact that our neighbors to the left pretty much flood the side of our house every time they water their lawn... 

We've also been busy trying to finish up some projects in the house as well. I know I STILL have not shown any pictures of the finished house yet. But here's a sneak peak at one of the many projects we have been working on...

The pantry my Dad built for us is almost finished! Just a few more doors to be hung and a finish coat of paint.

 You can also see a better sneak peak of the cupboards in the background of the top two pictures.

I'm so excited for all these projects to finally be finished.

The only problem,

somehow my list of projects I want to accomplish is actually getting bigger everyday, not smaller.

I'm starting to think we might never be done. :)

Changing of the seasons...

Don't you just love this time of year? When it's finally starting to get cool enough that it's actually enjoyable to play outside? Ahhh... fall how I love you! Not only is it finally getting cooler, this week we get to play with one of our favorite people we don't get to see very often. Aunt Heidi came to town! The last time we got to see Heidi was in February when she came for our Grandma's funeral. She was only in Utah for less than 24 hours so you can see why we are so excited to spend every waking moment with her while she is here.

And since the weather was so wonderful, of course I had to pull out the camera and take way too many pictures. :)

 Hahaha. 

Don't you wish you knew what she was thinking?

 We tried taking pictures of all 5 grandkids... and this is what happened.

 All the girly-o's

 Playing in the almost 100% finished playhouse. More pictures of this beauty later, when it is completely finished.

Gotta love this wind blown, food chewing beauty. :)

We're so glad we still have 3 more days to spend with Auntie Heidi!