Yellowstone….

This trip to Yellowstone was one of the greatest ever.  Andy and I have been telling the kids for so long about the beauty of the park and the treasures to be found there and telling them all about the animals that you can see, and the park did not let us down.  It was amazing and perfect in every way.  It was also so fun to go with Aubrey and her kiddos and KayLee, it was just a special experience for all of us I think.  I love our family and am grateful for this experience and opportunity to go to Yellowstone, even if for just one day.

As soon as we entered the park, it was perfect, the Buffalo were blocking the road, which is exactly how you want to start any trip to Yellowstone to start. We had us girls in Aubrey's car and the boys were in our van with Andy and KayLee. The girls had a blast signing Frozen songs at the top of their lungs and the boys had fun trying to ignore us… We drove around the park for a bit making our way to Old Faithful. We stopped there to see the geyser go off, hit the gift shop, and we ate lunch at the Old Faithful Inn. The highlight at this stop were the Chinese people taking our pictures. We were laughing so hard and started making funny faces at the cameras, and finally we asked if they would be in one of our pictures!

After leaving Old Faithful we were going to head straight out of the park and into Bozeman for Grandpa Coil's 90th birthday party, but we had a minor distraction! A momma Grizz and her cub! We saw the ranger cars pulled over and they are usually only out if there is a big animal, so we knew we had to turn around and see what it was. It was so exciting and nearly brought Carlee to tears. It is so rare to see a bear in the park, I felt so lucky, and I was so happy for all of the kiddos we had with us, and I am just hoping they will always remember that moment. We spent way too much time watching the bears, but needed to leave to get to Bozeman. The party for Grandpa Coil was fabulous. It was so great for us to see all of Andy's family and his cousins that he hasn't seen in so long. After the party, we loaded up and made the rest of the drive home to Helena. We had such a wonderful weekend and trip!

Family pics and another good visit to UT….

We are so lucky to live close enough to drive to Utah and see our family whenever we want.  We got into Utah in the evening and stopped and the Tyler's to drop off the kids and pick up Chris and Aubrey and the four of us headed to the temple to meet Matthew and KayLee to do sealings.  It was a great night, so fun to spend some time with Chris and Aubrey and to be in the temple together.  It is always special to spend time with Matthew as the sealer, it truly is an honor.

The  next day we spent running errands and going to the race expo in Ogden.  We also got to have lunch with Lauren and Cache, he is such a cute kid and growing up way too fast!!  After lunch we had to rush back to Centerville and get ready for family pictures down at temple square and dinner at Olive Garden.  I love doing pics at temple square.  It is such a pretty setting and super fun for the kids to see the temple being that we live so far away.  

I love the pictures that we got, I think they show our family and personalities perfectly!  Thanks D for setting this up!

Ogden Marathon….

We just ran the Ogden Marathon!  Andy ran the full marathon and I ran the relay with Summer, Allison, and D!  The race was a blast of course, but super hot and not downhill like I thought it would be!  I am pretty sure that at the finish line it was 85 degrees!

My heart went out to Andy who had been training so hard for this race with hopes for a Boston Qualifying time, but with the heat, that just didn't happen.  He still did amazing though, he is such a natural runner and so fast!  I am so proud of his hard work and dedication.  He is such a great example to me and to our kids.  And he ran the first leg of our relay which really gave us a head start, so thanks honey!

 

  

Mother's Day tea….

Carlee's 2nd grade class hosted a Mother's Day tea party!  Carlee was allowed to invite two guests to attend, and when we found out Nana had to work she immediately knew she wanted to invite Mishel.  The classroom was so nicely decorated when we got there, the kids had made giant paper flowers that were hanging from the ceiling and all of us mom's got our own vase with paper flowers.  We had yummy treats and some hot cocoa.  It was so nice to be in there with all of the mom's and special guests.  I am so lucky to be Carlee's mom, she truly is such a sweetie.

Halcyon….

Mishel and I had the most amazing girls weekend!  And to think there was a moment where I was considering not going!

Lauren told me months ago that Ellie Goulding was coming to Saltair in SLC and immediately was dying.  I have been waiting for her to come close to me for years!  She has always been one of my favorite people to run to.  Her music is just the bomb and I had heard that she is a great performer.  We left on Thursday morning and drove down to SLC where we stayed at the Sheraton right downtown because I had hotel points for there.  It was such a nice hotel and a great location.  We were meeting Lauren, KayLee, Erin, and D at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner.  We didn't have much time to get ready, but it was fun to do each other's hair and get ready together.  We hitched a ride to the restaurant, had a blast laughing and chatting over dinner, and then we loaded up in Lauren's car to drive to Saltair.

The venue was crazy small and all general admission, but that is what made the whole experience what it was.  We were able to get right up in the front and had an amazing view of the opening artist, Conway.  She was a total rocker and now she has a new fan.  And then it was time for Ellie!  She was everything I hoped she would be in a performer, just so fun, full of energy, and rather funny.  Two of the things that stick out the most is that she did the running man dance move during "Anything Can Happen".  It was just so unexpected and awesome all at the same time.  Second thing was that she made a comment about the cup that was provided for her.  It was one of the plastic mason jar looking cups that are so popular right now.  Ellie just held it up and talked about how she had never seen anything like that and that it was so cute.  It was funny to me because I love those cups!  I really just cannot say enough about how awesome the show was.  It was so fun to be there with Lauren and Mishel, rockin' out, and singing at the top of my lungs.  (Lauren, I love you and love that you were so willing to go to the concert and have a good time.  I love we have this special bond with music and  thanks for the great memories!)

















The next morning Mishel and I woke up and decided to hit the temple. I called KayLee and we decided to meet at the Bountiful Temple for the morning session. It was so great to see her and get to spend some time with her, and it was such a beautiful morning! After the temple we went and had lunch at Zuppas down at Farmington Station and then stuck around there and had too much fun shopping. While we were shopping around, I got a call from my friend who's family own's Max's Zip-line down in Provo Canyon, she had invited us down to do it. We were pretty far away but we decided to go for it! We had to hurry back to the hotel to change first, but we made it to the zip-line right on time. I was so nervous at first, but once I got going I had no regrets. It was a total blast once you get over the initial jump off the platform. Provo Canyon is so beautiful too, I had no idea, it was just such a great experience, and super fun to see my cruise friend Andrea again. After the zip-line Mishel and I were starving and we were on the prowl for some sushi. I called D, the food queen and she suggested a place called Monster Sushi back at Farmington Station so that is where we headed. The food there was amazing!! I could not believe how much we ate, but it was too good to let it go to waste! At this point it was about 10pm and the night was still not over, so we decided to go all out and go see a movie!! We were totally living it up, kid free and no schedule, so we took full advantage. I think we were getting a little tired crazy, but it was so fun, I didn't care. We saw The Other Women which was okay, I think parts were funnier to me because I was so tired. After the movie we finally headed back to SLC to the hotel.

We slept in a little the next morning and took our time getting ready to head home, and even did a quick stop at Nordstroms and Down East for some last minute shopping. The drive home was great, we even stopped in IF to see a friend of Mishel's and had some Cafe Rio for lunch. Needless to say at this point I was ready to vomit from all of the amazing food we had, but it was worth it!!


















It was just such a fun quick trip. I feel so lucky to have a friend like Mishel who lives so close to me and who I love dearly like a sister and for the chance we had to go to the concert and the temple and do all of the fun things we did.  I am super grateful for a hubby like Andy who will support me to do things like this and stay home and take the kids camping by himself!