Sleeveless in Seattle

So we're sitting in the Seattle airport waiting to fly back to Salt Lake, and thought I'd pass some time. We have been here for the past 5 days and have had a great time. It was my first trip to Seattle, and it was full of activities and fun times. My Grandpa Hansen has been living here for about 8 years now and I have never been able to make it up here. We stayed with him and Emiko over in Gig Harbor. It is a beautiful little town with a small harbor full of boats. We spent all of our first day with Grandpa and Emiko seeing all of Gig Harbor. I think we saw 8 years in 1 day. Needless to say we were all extremely tired when we got back to Grandpa's. We slept well. The other days we were here were spent at Rob's wedding and seeing Pikes Place Market and other downtown attractions. I won't say much about that as I'm sure Beth will want to write as well. It has been absolutley amazing weather here. Everything is so green and pretty here. 75-80 degree highs and mid 50s at night. Too bad there is only a couple months a year like this here. Well we are about to board the plane so gotta go.

Happy 8th Birthday Emma!!

My Emma is turning 8 today! Wow I can't believe it! We had a birthday party for her last Saturday night. She really wanted a sleepover, but instead we had a p.j party with pizza, movie, and popcorn until 10pm and then they all went home. The best part was the pillow fight in the backward at 9:45pm. My neighbors loved the 10 screaming girls at that time of night! We really had a great time and Emma's friends are a lot of fun. I got to meet some of her friends from school and am pleased that she is choosing good friends.

Here is the group, just getting started. We had pizza and lemonade - man those girls sure drink a lot of lemonade!
Oh the story of Emma's cake: first she wanted me to make it. . .AHHHHH!! I love to bake, but frosting and me don't get along. I said maybe your friends would like to decorate their own cupcakes - no go. When we were at Sam's Club I just happened to stop and look at their cakes, lucky for me she picked one, I was off the hook. The day of her birthday party Ben and I went to pick it up and it had flowers on it - not at all what Emma had wanted. I looked at the order and in two places I had specified the celebration streamers. The lady who decorates the cakes was just finishing cleaning up, so we asked her about it. Ben said, "these are really nice flowers for my grandma, but not my 8 year old." He is too funny. Luckily the lady had another white cake in the freezer and quickly decorated it for us! That was a close call!

Here's every one watching the movie - Emma had picked out the Nancy Drew movie. It was fun to hear the girls scream when they saw the guy with two colored eyes!

We had a great time. Emma's b-day party was great. Now we get to relax because they don't get a friend party again until 2010! I'll put more pictures up of today after we go and celebrate!

What a relief . . . for now!

YEA!! We got Ben's results back about celiac disease and he doesn't have it!! He is a carrier of the gene and this makes him 2x more prone to gettting it then the rest of us, but for now I can keep baking every Sunday and not feel guilty! Of course if his tests had come back positive I would have changed the way we eat - it would be hard but could be done. I would have to become a meat and potato girl with Thai food thrown in. Probably a lot of Thai food :-)

As it is nice to know Ben doesn't have celiac I wish we could figure out why he is so tired all the time. I know why I am so tired all the time - we have been on the go non-stop this summer! I love it, but it is exhausting at times. Ben and I get to stay home this weekend! The kids are going with their Grammie and Grandaddy up to Heber to go camping. Although I will have a quiet and relaxing Friday night, Saturday night will be anything but quiet. We are having 10 of Emma's friends over for a birthday party. She really wanted a sleepover, but I wasn't up for it - (I have some opinions on sleepovers that we don't need to go into here), so instead the friends are coming in their p.j.'s with a pillow for pizza, games, cake, and watching a movie. The invitation says until 10pm. . .what have i done? :-) No, seriously I'm excited for Emma, she has been talking about this for so long!

The kids and I have a fun couple of days. Yesterday we went bowling, today we just got back from the zoo, tomorrow we are going for a bike ride, and friday we are picking their cousin up in the morning so we can have lunch and go swimming before I drop them off to Grammie's to go to Heber! Wow! These kids sure have a fun life. . .and so do I!

Bear Lake for the 4th of July!

We spent the 4th of July at Bear Lake. We had a great time! I haven't been there for so long. When I was a child I remember going there with my family and playing in the water and thinking it was so cold. Yes, the water was chilly, but not any colder then Rockport. We drove up Thursday night and set up camp and then went for a little walk before climbing into our sleeping bags.

Friday we drove to Aunt Heather's house in Logan for a 4th of July breakfast with Ben's side of the family. While we were driving Bridger fell asleep playing air guitar! He would start playing guitar in his sleep when a song came on! He is so cute!

It was great to be around family. Whitney and their dog, Maxwell, sure had a good time running around and scrounging for food! Bonnie was visiting from Texas and it was nice to see her. The kids had a great time playing with their second cousins, and Bridger spent a lot of time with his great grandma Campbell. After brunch we went back up to the lake and did a little boating. The water was really choppy and it was windy. We didn't spend much time boating. We gave Emma a knee board for her birthday and she really wanted to ride it, but was having a hard time staying on the board with the water being so choppy. This photo is of the kids trying to get warm after tubing in the lake. I do wonder why they cuddle up to me when I am covered in goose bumps and I didn't even go in the lake!!Luckily we knew we had more time on Saturday. When we got back to camp we roasted hot dogs over the fire and then went to play with the sand toys at the beach.

I love taking candid photos of the kids and this one is really cute of Emma. It captures Emma. She is quiet and observant. I don't know what caught her eye, but she notices the little things in life. She is so special to me!

Saturday we got up, had breakfast and were on the lake for a day full of fun in the sun! It was a beautiful day and we found a beach that was sandy instead of rocks. Both kids got up on the knee board and Ben and I wake boarded!

Emma loves to do "rock on" and Bridger is always trying to pull some new stunt in the tube. He likes to stand and "surf". We finally got them to go faster than 5 mph!

We had a great time - I jumped off the wake board tower and Ben just loves to be on the water! He works really hard to make our boating trips fun for everyone. He is always busy driving, hooking up the next toy, helping the kids in and out of the water, organizing, playing with the stereo (it wouldn't be a good boat if it didn't have a great sound system) and wake boarding. I did get a picture of him laying out in the sun, but he said he didn't want it on the blog - believe me you are missing out! We never seem to get photo's of us together. Here is one picture of me and one of Ben, pretend we are in the same photo.

I love how blue the water is! Bear Lake is so pretty. We really loved our time there. I don't think we will stay on the east side again because we were in the middle of a bunch of mexican family reunions. Don't get me wrong - I think it is great that they enjoy being with their family, I just don't need to spend my 4th of July listening to their music :-)