The Best Worst Camping Trip Ever

After Ron and Shirley's open house, we took off up to Pine Valley for a trip we had booked months ago.  When we finally pulled up to our campsite we got a sinking feeling when we saw a sign that said "Parking for sites 18-23" (ours was 23, an even worse feeling).

When we chose to reserve a "tent only" site we were thinking, awesome!  No generators all night, just the sweet sounds of nature and of our baby crying:)  But as it turns out, we had to carry all of our stuff from the truck up a narrow gravel path for, I kid you not, probably almost a block.  It was insane, and it wouldn't have been that bad if we had realized this and planned accordingly, but as it was, we had our large tent, 2 dutch ovens, three ginormous sleeping pads, a camp stove, a cooler, water cooler, and a barrel of wood.  Thank heavens we had our large double stroller which we could load down and make only maybe 7 trips with that.  And to make matters worse, the toilets were down by the parking lot.

We were the camp site farthest up the mountain, and it was BEAUTIFUL!  Seriously, it felt like we were the only ones up there.  There were deer sightings, the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen, and a small creek which was just gorgeous!  Two days of absolute heaven...until you remembered the toilet was a block away!

Father's Day

Our little Pine Valley Adventure was really part of Father's Day, but I need to get the pictures off Logan's phone to post about that.  Father's Day was really pretty low key.  We came home, cleaned up camping stuff and ate leftover dutch oven.

We were, however, able to surprise Logan with a gift.  I gave up long ago on buying Logan presents, too picky;) But he did order himself a new rash guard on Thursday and I thought there was no way in heck it would come before we left for Pine Valley on Friday so I took Chap to pick out some small things for Logan.  We ended up with some Father's Day rootbeer, some chocolate covered raisins, and a "poop cup" (Anisa's kids have him thinking that the poop emoji is hilarious).  But lo and behold, the rash guard did come on Friday so we wrapped everything up and hid it downstairs. Sunday afternoon when Logan went outside for something, we went and got the present and Chap was so excited to yell "surprise" (He does this frequently for no reason other than he thinks it is hilarious).  Logan was very surprised, and he even liked all of his Chap presents!

Happy Father's Day Logan! We are very glad that you are our daddy:) xoxo

Grandma Shirley

We have a new grandma!  Grandpa Ron married Shirley on June 17th and we couldn't be more excited!  It makes us so happy to see them so happy:) She is a sweetheart and is great with my kids, and we look forward to many years and many many memories to share with Grandma Shirley!

Summer Lovin' Had Me a Blast:)

We are LOVING this HOT HOT weather!

Carnival

When we were in Richfield a carnival was in town.   We left Merit at Kristy's house and went to the carnival in the rain.  We scored though because it was the first night and everything was only 1 ticket per ride and the tickets were only $1.  It was awesome and bad because there was hardly anyone there so there were no lines and they ran the rides for a long time.  This gave you almost no break in between and after our probably 4 minute tilt-a-whirl ride, Logan was feeling sick.  So Me and Chap went on the gravitron, and then I felt sick.  And then Chap talked us into going on one more ride, which I can't remember what it was, and I'm pretty sure we were all sick, but we still had to carry a crying Chap back to the car because he loved it so much! Moral of the story is this: We are getting too old for carnival rides! Haha!  But we're going to Lagoon in a couple months:)  At least we know Chap will like it!

Moab

After we went to Jacey's Graduation we went to Moab for the rest of Memorial Day weekend.  We had lots of fun, and got Lucas' trailer all to ourselves:) That makes it nice when you have crying babies:)

Our days were filled with swimming, 4 wheeling, a boulder park and Arches!  We went to these cool wind caves and there was one where you had to crawl in on your belly and then it opened up really big.  We all went in except Merit, I couldn't coax her to crawl into a dark hole, smart girl!

 Chap has been dying to see Balanced Rock because it's in one of his books:) He named a bunch of rocks he could see.  There was a Brenner, Joren, Terek, and Merit rock.  So cute!  We took pictures of all of them, but honestly, I don't remember which is which except I know the Merit rock was tiny.

Jacey's Graduation

I'm mostly blogging this to document my debut as a master lei maker, haha.

I don't know what I was thinking, but it took me and Logan actively working for around 4 hours to make this beast....and she didn't even wear it.  Womp womp.  Oh well, we love you anyway:)  Good luck with the next phase of your life!

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day I took the kids to see all the graves of the ancestors they were named after.  (Except one of Merit's is in Vernal, and I didn't make it that far).

I grew up with the tradition of decorating graves and of knowing about my ancestors who were buried there, and I'd like to pass that on to my children, especially since we live in an area where there are so many buried locally.

 Chapter at the grave of my Great Grandfather Fredrick George Gardiner in Panguitch, Ut.

 Merit at the grave of Logan's Great Grandmother Rosena Eliza Blickenstorfer Gubler Blake in Santa Clara, UT.

Chapter at the grave of Logan's Great-Great Grandfather Benjamin Fredrick Blake in St. George Utah.

Butterflies

Aunt Kristy sent us a butterfly kit after an unfortunate incident where we brought a caterpillar home from the park and grew a really gross and disappointing moth:(

But this was fascinating!  I think I enjoyed it more than the kids:)

Allergies

I knew something was up the first time I tried to give her yogurt.  Everywhere it touched her face she got a red bumpy rash.  I didn't really think much about it until she got closer to a year and she tried a little ranch dressing, a little frozen yogurt, a little milk.  Each thing had the same reaction.  So we bought some goat milk.  Same thing.  I finally mentioned it to my doctor at her one year appointment and he referred us to an allergist.  A lady from our ward actually works there, so that was nice.  They did what they called an "infant panel" of tests, testing for Dairy, Egg, Nuts, and Soy.  The dairy wasn't really a surprise, but the eggs were.  They actually recommended that we feed her small amounts of milk and egg baked into muffins as sort of an immunization for her allergies.  Apparently baking the proteins change them enough to make them less reactive.  So far on our journey we have discovered that chocolate almond milk is tasty.  Vanilla Coconut milk is AMAZING!  And Vegan ranch dressing is actually pretty nasty, and so is rice based ice cream. (I have some egg free, dairy free mayo that we haven't tried yet).  I've also discovered that it is very difficult for me to cook without butter:(  You really don't realize all the things that contain milk and eggs until you can't have them anymore!  We are very hopeful this will be a short lived childhood allergy that she'll only have to deal with for a year or two. Poor kid, no frosting, no cheese, no milkshakes.

Merit's Birthday

This little cutie turned 1 on March 29th.  We let her open her presents from us and we went and got Donuts and we ate lunch with daddy on her actual birthday. She also sported her very first pony tail:)  And then the Saturday after (Conference Saturday) we had a party for her.  Kristy and her family came, Ron came, and Ryan brought the kids.  It was a fun day and as always, I never take pictures of the decorations or the people, haha.  Her party was rainbow themed.  I made her a smash cake that was a giant cupcake with rainbow batter.  We had french bread sandwiches and a rainbow vegetable tray.  And for dessert I made a 6 layer rainbow cake that was a total disaster and only ended up having 5 layers.  But at least it tasted good!   It was fun having the party in our new and improved house.  Much easier to have people over with the wall gone!  Yay!

Here's what she looked like when it was over!

Merit's Birthday Photoshoot

We had the FABULOUS Hayley Bradshaw do Merit's 1 year pictures in her cute studio and as always, they turned out better than I could have imagined.  

Here's one Hayley did of Chap at his 1st birthday, proving that although my kids look the same now, they do not look the same at the same age.

Anyway, Merit at 1 year.  I don't really know what to say other than she is wonderful, and she is our little princess.  She likes to run and play.  She is a big fit thrower and does this thing that Logan calls "minnowing" where she just goes kind of limp and throws herself backward.  She really commits and if you don't have a good hold on her she falls.  She is also a very cuddly girl.  She likes to fall asleep laying on my belly.  She is very dainty and picks food up so delicately in her fingers and eats it.  It's so funny to me how she has a completely different personality than Chapter did at her age.  I think I could have 15 children and never figure out what the heck I'm doing because they are all so different.  We love you Mer Mer Mooey:)

Easter BBQ

Sunday, after church, we headed up to Kanarraville to freeze our butts off having a family BBQ at Cash and Kali's house.  It was a good time, despite the cold, and Chapter made a few new best friends.  He had SO MUCH FUN with his 2nd cousin Braylee and they spent the whole afternoon "making soup" for Cash's dog Lucy by stirring dirt, rocks and grass into her water trough:) I'm sure Lucy and Cash were very grateful.  

Chapter also made friends with Uncle Heff.  They played all afternoon  driving the 4 wheeler "around the bend" as Chapter says.

Easter

We dyed Easter Eggs

We hunted Easter Eggs 

 We shook Easter Eggs

 We ate candy from Easter Eggs

And we got photographic evidence that I may, in fact, have the grumpiest, most suspicious kids in the whole world.

We went to an alumni Easter Egg hunt at Dixie and it was SO FUN!  They had all kinds of games and food and activities and an egg hunt.  It actually turned out perfectly because Saturday morning it was way too cold to go to the city one, but I bet the people who went got a lot of candy because no one was there, haha!  Good times, Chap got probably a dozen or more eggs and MerMer got 2 all by herself!