Zoo Fun!

We had a great time at the ZOO in IF last week with Nathan & Alisa, as you can see . . .

Summer Fun

We've been very busy around here lately. We went to Utah for a few more horse pulls and had fun there. We stayed with Karen & Dave and had a great time, thanks guys! The girls had a great time playing, of course. Nick was able to shoe a lot of horses while we were down too. He has stayed very busy with horse stuff this spring/summer. My Mom & Dad came up after dropping off Brian at BYU. We had a fun time with them! Lucy always has a hard time when they leave. Wish we lived even just a few hours closer!! While they were here we celebrated my Dad's 49th birthday, next year is the big one!!

We also went down to Lava Hot Springs and had a lot of fun tubing down the river and enjoying the hot springs, of course.

We also went to the "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" production they had in Idaho Falls. Nick's uncle played Joseph! It was amazing!! I'll have to get those pictures. The girls always have fun at the Splash Park in Rexburg!
We had a great 4th of July. Took the horses in the parade in Menan, sadly we have no pictures. Right after the parade got over we headed down to Utah for another horse pull in Lewiston. The horses did awesome! Nick placed 2nd in the HEAVYWEIGHTS! That was real exciting. My Mom & Dad came with Janelle and Brian and Nathan & Alisa also were there! We watched fireworks after and then made the trek back home. Here's a pic of Nick and Lucy on Howdy . . . And here's the best I could get of Kate for now. She's become quite the little walker and is into everything!! She makes life exciting.

Can't Wait!

It won't be long before I get to use this beauty that came in the mail a few weeks ago! My Mom, Janelle, and I have a trip planned to Europe just a few weeks away. Wahoo! I can hardly wait. While I'm there we plan to do some of Germany and Switzerland. My Mom and Janelle will be there a couple weeks longer and will do France and such. Anyone been to Switzerland? Or Austria? Any suggestions of 'must-see' places or neat things? I'm sure it will be amazing no matter where we go. And we will have some awesome tour guides. My aunt & uncle are living in Germany right now, so that will be so fun to see them and have them show us around. Mom & Janelle, see you in Munich!

Kate's Birthday & More . . .

So much to blog about! Our internet has been down since we made it home from our trip to “The Oregon,” as Lucy calls it. But first I have to write about Kate’s eye surgery. The procedure went well. However, they were only able to get a tube in one eye, darn it. But that eye is doing great and is clear! When they went to put the tube in the other eye, as suspected, there was no lower duct there. So they tried to just make a duct with a probe, in hopes that it would stay open. The doctor said the upper duct was very tight, so he used his biggest probe to open it up. Poor girl, doesn’t sound fun does it. Well both eyes were doing great after surgery and no goop for one whole week. But now the tubeless eye is back to “normal”. The doctor that did her surgery has referred us to an Occuloplastic surgeon in Salt Lake to figure out what our next step is for that eye. I guess the good news is we are half-way to being there! Kate came out of surgery and anesthesia quite well and after a quick recovery we hit the road for Oregon ( I know we ARE crazy). Both girls did great for the trip, as did both horses. Yes, we couldn’t go somewhere without horses and a 36 foot horse trailer. That would be way too easy. The morning after we got to Klamath we headed over the mountain to a horse pull in Jacksonville. Nick and the horses did great (I think they pulled 10,000 pounds . . . awesome) and we were on our way back to Klamath to make it to Brian’s graduation. It was fun to go back to good old Henley. He plans to start at BYU next week. Not much of a break for the poor guy. We enjoyed a few more days with the fam in Oregon and then had to come back home. We celebrated Kate’s first birthday while we were there too!

She’s becoming quite the busy little girl. I didn’t think it was possible but she may be busier than Lucy was. Wow. Between the two of them, I feel like I never stop. Kate is beginning to walk and will soon be running, I’m sure. Then I’ll really be in trouble! She loves to empty out anything she can (drawers, bags, cupboards, etc.) and is in the toilet every chance she gets. Kate loves all the animals around home . . . until they get too close. Then she has a panic attack. She’s like me, I guess! She loves to climb up and watch the horses out the window. Kate is such a sweetheart.

The day after we got home from Oregon, Lucy had an eye doctor appointment. They just never end! The doctor that did Kate’s surgery wanted to look at Lucy too. I decided I'd get outside and try to attempt a little weeding in the garden before we went. Lucy came with me and Kate was napping. I'm weeding away, and all of a sudden I hear Lucy screaming. She somehow was attacked by the fence. I think she was pulling on the wire and it came back and hit her in the face. I ran over and she was holding her eye. Oh no. I was sure she'd poked her eye out. Anyway, she scratched herself just below, barely, her eye and down a little. I figured it was just a minor scratch and cleaned her up. Then it was time to go to the doctor . . . and NO GLASSES! We could not find them anywhere. She had them on earlier, but had no idea where they went. So we were off to the doctor with no glasses and her eyelid split open. Great. The doctor obviously asked what happened to her eye, and checked it out. He looked through his thing, and said that the wire had perforated clear through her lower eye lid. Lovely. He was more concerned about that than her crossed eyes. Poor Lucy. Anyway, he told her to keep wearing her glasses and put her on an antibiotic eye drop. We go back to see him tomorrow about the cut, which is doing much better. Long story, but makes me laugh now (I wasn't then).

We went to another horse pull last Saturday in Utah. It went well and we'll be back for two more this week. Any Utah friends that want to come, we'd love to see you!! Karen & Dave and their kids were able to come to the pull last week, which was great! Lucy loves to play with their girls. We also got to meet up with George & Karen Boone and Jordan & Meghan and their girls! It was great. This is who we stayed with while we were in Florida a couple years ago. They are the greatest. George & Karen are out here from Florida to visit their kids. It was so fun to see them and visit! Sadly, I have no pictures. Well, this is getting to be incredibly long. As you can see, Brian took some cute pics of the girls while we were in Oregon. Their dresses are from Marianne, aren't they so cute!!? Thanks Marianne!

And Crazy Aunt Ga! Love ya Janelle. It was so fun to be home and see family. Wish we lived a lot closer though, that 12 hour drive just doesn't seem to be getting any shorter!

Tomorrow's the Big Day

Kate goes in for her eye surgery tomorrow. Poor thing. Hope we can get the problem fixed . . . and have no more goopy eyes! Yay. Then we are off to Oregon to see my family! And my little brother graduates, crazy! Here's a cute pic of Kate today . . . we couldn't seem to catch her smile.

Mesa Falls

Yesterday we took a trip up to Mesa Falls by Ashton. It is always such a beautiful place to go. It's so pretty up around there. (I'm jealous Morgan!) We took Nathan & Alisa along with us, I hope they don't get sick of our adventures. And trust me they are adventures with two little girls! We got there and it started pouring rain. So we waited a few minutes until it was only sprinkling, then we walked down to the falls. Just after we took a few quick pictures by the falls it started pouring again. So we all huddled under a tree and Nathan entertained us with a couple of stoneflies. Thank you Mr. Shannon. We made it out and found a nice firepit to roast some hot dogs. It turned out to be nice and we all had fun!Lucy has broken her glasses AGAIN! You'd think they could make those things a little more sturdy for kids!

SPLASH PARK!

Yesterday the girls and I went to Rexburg to the Splash Park! It was so fun. Nathan & Alisa came with us, too. We have never been and the girls enjoyed it. Kate probably more so that Lucy, surprisingly. It took Lucy a while to warm up to the idea of running through the fountains and going down the slides. They also have opened up the old carousel, so Lucy of course loved that! Had we know it would be her favorite thing at Disneyland, we would have just drove to Rexburg! Just kidding, Disneyland was a blast! Anyway, it was a beautiful day. Seems like it turned from winter to summer in a day! It's super hot today and I love it!

Awesome- Watch This!

This is an arrangement by my favorite, Jon Schmidt, combining Taylor Swift & Coldplay songs. So amazing! I could listen to it over and over all day. He is extremely talented and so awesome!

A Rough Week And . . . A Lovely Weekend!

Yes. Lucy started throwing up on my birthday and did so for about 5 days. No fun. The poor girl had some nasty flu bug or something. None of the rest of us got it thank goodness. It was all we could do to get her to come outside with us one day and play bocce.

Lucy was doing better so we went to Utah with a team of horses for a horse pull on the 16th. Lauren, my old roommate, and Skyler and their little girl Cali, met us there. It had been a long time since we had seen them and so it was way fun to catch up! Becky and Brad also came! Lauren & Becky & I had a great time reminiscing about the good ole days and had lots of good laughs. The girls loved the parade before the pull and got lots of candy. Nick did great in the pull and we all had a fun time. He even got the "Horsemanship Award"! Go Nick. He has big plans for several more horse pulls this summer. Hmmmm. We'll see. I didn't get any great ones of the horse pull. Sorry Nick. I was busily trying to manage two crazy girls. But here's Jet & Andy.

The girls when they finally 'crashed' at the very end of the horse pull, of course. Needless to say, I didn't catch a whole lot of it.

Just when we thought Lucy was getting better, she started throwing up again. So sad, she was so completely worn out and weak that she just layed on the couch all day for a few days and slept. She definitely wasn't her usual self. I think I got to hold her last week more than I got to hold her since she was a newborn! She's definitely not a cuddler. So that part was kind of nice for a change. She finally started feeling better the middle of last week, gratefully, because we had a trip to Yellowstone planned with Becky & Brad! It was such a blast! And Nick had never been there, so that was exciting! Can you believe that? I sure can't. Crazy. To live less than 2 hours from something so amazing and never go!? We camped and spent two nights and saw a lot of the cool sites. Nathan and Alisa came up on Saturday and it was fun to have them there. We saw "Old Faithful" of course, and several other geysers, waterfalls, and hot pots. We also saw Yellowstone Lake, which was still quite frozen and "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". So amazing. It was probably my favorite part. I thought it was better than the Grand Canyon. Not as deep, but the sides were straight down and beautiful. Wow. Okay this is getting really long. But we had tons of fun! Thanks for coming with us Harrison's! You guys are great. Now we're looking for where to go on our next camping adventure. Any ideas?

Here's Nathan & Alisa with Lucy while we were waiting for Old Faithful to spout. Thanks for being such great entertainers for the girls all the time!

Lucy roasting some marshmallows at the campfire!

Becky & I

Lucy & Nick at Tower Falls

That there is a black bear.

Lucy loved camping and was so sad to leave!