Camping Again

We have really enjoyed camping as a family and only wish we could be going more often. It forces us to take time out of life and focus on our kids and it has been such a nice thing!

Shaersti loves to fish but it's much nicer at the small ponds stocked with fish where they actually catch something. Enterprise Reservoir is beautiful but the fish sure weren't biting.

Rather than fishing, Anne just plays with the bait.

Paysli pretty much lives in this front pack while we camp and she loves every minute of it, especially on the 4-wheeler.

Family Home Evening

For FHE we decided to take a small tour of Southern Utah to find a great place to camp this weekend. Although we didn't make it as far as we wanted, we did find some fun places.

Our first stop was Sand Cove by Dammeron Valley. Scott did a little crawdad hunting and the girls found a great tree to play on.

Our next stop was Baker Reservoir. It was so pretty ! We are camping there this weekend so there should be more pics to come. Maybe we'll make it to Honeycomb Rocks before the summer.

A Fuller Easter

This is the traditional Easter egg hunt that was passed down to my dad- and he does such a great job at it! Thanks dad and mom. As always, it was awesome! This is just one section of their yard that is covered in eggs filled with candy and money.

Anne and Shaersti are showing off their buckets full of treasures.

Just a few hours later, we had a bunch of families come to our house for potluck and another egg hunt. It was a lot of fun- even though the wind wouldn't quit blowing. We were really excited to have the Richins in town this past weekend. We love their family!

Marshmallow Eggs

For quite a few years now, my mom and I have made her delicious marshmallow eggs at Easter time. Although it is a ton of work, they are one of my favorite things in the world and my mom is nice enough to keep doing them with me. Here are our beautiful eggs (after a combined 8 hours spread over two days). Aren't they fabulous?

Then, of course... here is Paysli enjoying one.

Mom's Party

Is this the most fabulous cake you have evere seen? Although we re-decorated my mom's house a month ago, yesterday was her actual 50th birthday so we did a little party. (That was after she took 23 of us to Samurai for lunch- it was so good!)
Happy Birthday, Mom!

More Camping

My crazy husband decided to add a 4-wheeler to our list of things that we own with no place to park. So of course we had to go camping again. We went back to our little Leeds spot last Thursday and stayed until Sunday, which gave us lots of fun time to explore Silver Reef. It was pretty cool.

This was the coolest thing. They had little silver mines everywhere but this was the "big daddy". They have closed off the top with some major steel to keep people out but this is the original structure of the elevator they used to lower themselves down into the mine. They would climb these bars them lower themselves into the elevator you can see at the back. If this was still a big, gaping hole, it would be really scary.

We took our "little" Josh with us for a few daysEven though I'm sitting on a major structure, I was still a little scared to be over the top of this huge hole.

This is Scott's newest love- his 4-wheeler.

This is a kiln where they would burn wood to make charcoal then use the charcoal somehow in the mining of the silver.

Nature walking- Paysli loves the front pack.

Mom's 50th Birthday

Can you believe my mom turns 50 this month? A few weeks ago her mom took her and my dad to Hawaii for almost 2 weeks. We (me, Amelia, Jason and Michelle) took that opportunity to completely re-do her house as our present to her. It ended up being way more of a project than we originally thought (like- we ended up re-painting the whole thing and Jason did tons of awesome updating projects) but it turned out beautiful!
This is her front room. Michelle and her friend painted the orange striped wall and we did a few other pictures and stuff.

Her kitchen was already beautiful but has always had empty plant shelves so we decorated those.

We painted the accent walls green and added decorations in her dining room.

Her bedroom got a new green wall, curtains, wall hangings, and all new bedding.

Her bathroom got cute decorations and lots of awesome Jason-fixes (new caulk around tub and floor, new faucet, towel racks, etc.).

My dad's bathroom got great Jason-fixes and new decorations.

Riley's bed got put on a frame and he got great decorations (all Amelia's cute ideas).

Becca's room got new paint, bedding and deco. It turned out really cute.

Happy birthday, mom. We sure love you!