Birthday's Birthday's Birthday's!!

The past couple weeks we've been involved with Birthday's and Parties! We got to celebrate Emmie's second Birthday on the 14th. She had a cowgirl themed party and they brought the pony, "Trigger" from Fredonia for the occasion. Kandice did a cute cake and had some fun games for the kids to play. This is a picture of the cake because I didn't get it on the scrapbook page.

Then last night we got to celebrate Riley's first birthday. Tara and Jordan went all out and had such a fun party for her. They fed us and let us swim at the pool. It was a great way to cool off and celebrate a first birthday! When I watch Riley and how smart she is I look at Julia and think "I'm just not ready for her to do that." She's my baby. I don't want her growing up too fast. I love living close to family so the kids get to play with their cousins. We had a great time and we're looking forward to the 24th coming up. We're going to Enterprise where they have some of the most fun activities planned for Pioneer Day. I knew I'd be taking pictures so I needed to blog about these so it's not an overwhelming blog.

The 4th in Hatch

This year for the 4th of July we decided to cool it down a bit and travel to the mountains. We spent Friday evening fishing at Navajo where I totally skunked the rest of the family with my four whoppin' fish (ok so they were just planters but I was the only one to catch any). Then we went to "the 40" on Cedar Mountain for the Esplin reunion (my mom's family). We had a great dinner with dutch oven potatoes, homemade root beer...the works! It's been several SEVERAL years since we all got together and all my cousins kids are HUGE so it was good to get re-acquainted again. After that we drove to Hatch to spend the night with Cheri's family in the "Hatch House"--that's my grandma Turek's house that we've kept since she passed away. The next morning Todd went fishing with Cheri's hubby and the rest of us slept in until about 9 then we gradually stirred so we could see the parade and festivities by 10. We at least made it to the park for the races and games--missed the parade. The kids loved to run and they even had a fun sack race for the kids. After that there was a fish pond, bean bag toss, car race, dunking booth, ring toss, ball throw and face painting to enjoy. It rained off and on through the day but it felt soooo nice and cool but not too cold! It was awesome! We headed back to the house and played games, flew kites, ate lunch on a stick (watermelon, strawberry's, cantaloupe, grapes, lunch meat, cheese...you name it we put in on a stick to eat), rode 4wheelers and then had dinner and watched fireworks by the river. Yes, the husbands made it back in time for fireworks which was a good thing because when the fireworks were over and we were starting the cars to go back home Cheri's vehicle wouldn't start. Thank heaven's for jumper cables. We came home 30 minutes before we had to be to church Sunday afternoon but it was a WONDERFUL weekend! I hope it's one my kids will love and remember.