We Miss You, Billy!

I can't believe it's been 3 years since Jon's brother, Billy, died. We still miss him everyday. I'm really glad his good friend put together this video to remember him.

More Fireworks

Jon and Caleb with sparklers

Alex spelling his name
Leah with a sparkler
Grandfather Lanier gave the kids more fireworks when we saw him at Christel's house, so we did a few more fireworks at our house once we were home. Jon got pretty close to spelling J-O-N with his sparkler while I took the picture.

More of our Vegas trip

On Saturday we took the kids to the park by Shane and Katie's house that has sprinklers coming out of the ground. It kept them really cool. Even with all of the sunscreen, our kids got burnt shoulders. The adults sat in the shade, but we were still extremely hot.

Here's a cute video of the kids playing:



The kids dried off by playing on the playground. After about 5-10 minutes they were totally dry and we were all roasting.

Leah was Katie's little side-kick. She just loves Aunt Katie. She was especially cuddly with her while we were watching a movie.

Then, Sunday it was time to drive home with another long drive. Our kids do pretty well with traveling for hours...as long as we have movies playing.

We stopped in St. George for a break. We got to tour through the visitor's center and watched a film about pioneers. It was so nice. (This first picture is a bit fuzzy...it was taken by my camera sitting on the van across the street from us)Passing through Nephi we stopped at the Hosie's house for lunch and visiting. Then we visited with Jon's sister, Christel, and her family. The kids played with 3 of their cousins there, Eve, Eden, and Eliza. Ezra was taking a nap while we were there.

We STILL didn't go home after that. We stopped in Springville to have fast Sunday dinner at my parent's house. It was yummy and I'm glad I didn't have to cook anything all day long. When we got home we unpacked some stuff and waited for it to get a little dark so we could do more fireworks. I'll post more about that later.

A HOT Rockin' 4th!

We decided that since I didn't have to teach a cake class on July 5th that we would take a road trip to Las Vegas to visit my brother, Shane, and his family. We left after Jon got off of work on the 3rd and drove into Las Vegas at 10:30pm. I did not like driving through the gorge at night--scary!


On the 4th of July the local rec center outdoor pool had a free swim day. How nice is that? So, we all got there early and went swimming. I'm glad we got there early because the pool reached their maximum capacity and would only let other people into the pool as people were leaving. It was a nice cool activity to do to keep us out of the 110 degree weather.


That night for dinner we had BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, salad, watermelon, and root beer floats for dessert. It was yummy. We played "restraunt" with the kids. Katie and I were the waitresses and we made menu's for the kids to pick what they wanted. We called it the Patio Restraunt and ate outside. It was pretty pleasant. The wind was blowing just enough to keep us a little cool.
After dinner the kids all got in the tub to get clean. As they were taking turns taking baths we had them color some 4th of July coloring pages to keep them entertained. Alex wrote "to Uncl Shan" on his. I thought he did really good sounding out "uncle Shane" and told him that those words had an 'e' on the end of them.

Once we were all ready for bed we went outside and did our fireworks. We kept things simple with pops and sparklers. The kids had a lot of fun, and we also got to see some of the "bigger" fireworks that other people were doing down the street. We had stayed up really late the night before, so we opted out on seeing any BIG fireworks shows so we could put the kids to bed a little earlier.

After the kids were in bed we enjoyed visiting outside. Jon's sitting on Shane and Katie's fabulous always-green astroturf grass. Then, we played games. When I say "we" I mean me, Shane and Katie. Jon's not a big gamer. He did play one game with us one night, so I was happy about that.

Weekend Fun

Jon always comes up with great things to keep the kids busy and fun things to do with them. One night he suggested that they build some bird houses and bird feeders. Caleb got especially excited and said, "Ok! I need to go get paper and pencils and tools!" Jon let them each draw up their own plans for their bird houses on paper, then Jon transformed it into a real life one out of wood (with some minor changes from their drawings...so that it could work in real life). This is what they came up with.

Caleb's birdhouse has 3 doors and the roof hinges open on one side to fill it with bird food. Caleb also said, "Hey, we can take these wood shavings and make a nest in the bird house!" So, his has a little nest inside of it. Alex's bird house has a front porch where the birds can stand and eat their food, or a covered area to seek shelter from the weather.Leah's is smaller than the other ones and Jon strategically placed hers at a lower height in our yard so she can help fill it full of bird food. She loves to see when birds come eat from it.

Friday I had my Annual Instructors Meeting in Salt Lake City with other Wilton Method Instructors. Jon took the day off of work and spent the day at Oma and Opa's house with the kids while I was at my meeting. They went to the cemetery to see Jon's two brothers' graves. The kids love climbing the tree next to Adam's grave. Oma and Opa spoil their grandkids and great-grandkids a lot. Opa always has a plastic bag for each kid full of candy. This time it was gummy bears. Oma treated them all to some ice cream. What a nice break from the heat of summer.

I had a good time at my meeting. The A/C was broken in the room we were in, which makes cake decorating extremely frustrating. We all had 6" cakes frosted and ready to decorate with fondant and gum paste decorations. By the time we got to decorate them the frosting was melting! I was melting too! I'm glad we finished up early so we could get out of that hot room. When I went outside to wait for Jon it was actually COOLER out there than it was inside! Crazy! I learned a lot of new things at the meeting. I also received two awards. The first one was for becomming a member of the century club. I have taught over 100 students as of December 2007. My supervisor also gave me a recognition award. I got to pick out a gift from a catalog and she also gave me a Gebera Daisy plant.

After my meeting we met up with Jon's dad and went to eat at Sweet Tomatoes. It was really good food. We had a great Friday.

Saturday was equally as busy. I had a demo to do at the store, then I taught a class. The demo was really fun. We played a Wilton Cake Decorating Class trivia game. I had some free gifts to give away to the winners who found the answer and was the first one back to Customer Service. I think it went really well. Jon kept the kids busy by going fishing with them. They only caught 2 fish this time, but had a good time fishing together. Jon's other adventure involved replacing our alternator in our van in the Checker Auto parking lot (and with 3 kids in tow). He amazes me sometimes.

After my class was over I had a fun girls night. We went to dinner at Red Robin and then played games. It was a nice kid-free stress-free break.

Time Flies!

It's been way too long since we've gotten all of our friends from high school together. We had a BBQ/farewell party at our house tonight. Haley and Devin are moving to Mississippi (so Devin can go to school in Memphis). It will be sad to have them so far away. Rachelle just moved back to Utah from Texas, so we're happy that she'll be around more. We've all grown and gone our different ways, but always enjoy getting together again.

Devin, Makenna, Eric, Jon, Alyssa

Haley, Randa, Makayela, Rachelle, Drayton, me, Jacoy, Kiley

Camryn, Ethan, Kai, Leah, Alex, and Caleb

All that was missing was our friend, Tiffany. We had a good time and all of the kids had a ton of fun running and playing with each other. I'm glad we have such a large backyard. There was lots of space for them to run to get their energy out. I'm sure they'll all sleep so good tonight.

Search and Rescue

While Jon was at home with the boys cooking up the fish they caught, Leah and I went to Wal-Mart to see my dad. He was there with Search and Rescue showing off what they do, and the equipment they use. They had all kinds of things there to see. They had the Motor-home, a helicopter, ski-do's, 4 wheelers, and much more. Leah had the chance to get into the helicopter, but she was too shy. She settled for just standing in front of it with Papa.