The fruits of my labors! Of course this picture is a little old. We are now getting lots more. We even have two pumpkins and about four watermelons growing. Yay!

Addison's Baptism

Saturday Addison finally got baptized. She has been wanting to for a very long time. We did her baptism seperate from the stake baptisms because we had a wedding to go to. So I put the program together. It was all done by family. It turned out really good. After the baptism the family went to Golden Corrall for dinner. It was a great day!

The Garden

So I promised pictures of our garden...so here they finally are. The tomato plants are doing great as always, the squash plants are not doing as well as they normally do. I even fertilized this year. I don't know what is wrong. Oh well. As long as I have tomatoes I am happy!

Sunset Days

This last week was Sunset City's Heritage Days. To end the week of course they had a parade. Addison is in Kids Club and they had a float in the parade. She was very excited to be on it. I could not decide what pictures to post so you get all of them!

Addison had fun and it was fun to see her in the parade!

Donate to an Awesome Cause

My sister, Becky, has been running marathons and and various other races for a while now. I am so proud of her for having the determination and self discipline to come as far as she has. After running for herself for so long she has decided to run for a cause. Becky is raising money for a marathon to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) here is a link to her blog. You should all check it out and help her raise some funds. http://pages.teamintraining.org/snv/nikesf09/biverson

GO BECKY!!! We are rooting for you!

Las Vegas

June 9-12 we spent as a family in Las Vegas. We went out to spend some time with my sister and take a little break from life. So here are a few highlights:

It was the first time Nathan, Addison, and Donovan had been on an airplane and my second. We stayed at Circus Circus. After we got all checked in we went to see the Lion at MGM and walked to the M&M Store and watched the 4d movie. Then we went to dinner at Chili's with Becky and she took us to see her appartment. The next day Becky had some business to take care of so the four of us walked up to the Mirage to the Dolphin Habitat. It was reaaly cool. Addison was waving to the dolphin and it started waving back at her. On the walk back to our hotel we walked through the Venetian and saw Whoppi Goldberg, and the awesome fake statue. When we got back we hung out at the pool for a bit. That night we walked down to the Stratosphere and went up to the top. It was the first time we had been up there at night. It was pretty cool. We were very suprised when Addison told us she wanted to ride some rides up there. Nathan took her on the big shot and I took her on x-scream. It was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. It was actually kind of lame. The next day we played at the pool again for a bit and then met up with Becky. We got ready and went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. Addison really enjoyed it...but once we got to the deep part Donovan wanted to leave. He wouldn't even touch the sting rays. Then we walked over to MGM and ate at Rainforest Cafe. That is one place I will never go to again. The food was expensive and not that great. Donovan fell and got a nasty bruise on his leg when we first got there and he cried every time the thunder and lightening came on. The kids and Nathan all tried Calamari and loved it. Donovan ate almost all of it on his own. After dinner we walked down the strip to see the water show at the Bellagio and the pirate show at Treasure Island, (which, BTW, I think is dumb since they changed it). We then walked back to the car and went back to our hotel. Donovan fell asleep in the stroller on the way. We saw several interesting people on our walk. One of which was high on something and kept following us and saying weird stuff. Addison said to me "mom what's wrong with that guy?" It was a perfect teaching opportunity. My reply was "thats what happens to people that do drugs Addison". A little while later we saw a homeless man in a fountain picking up all the change. The funniest part to me was all of the tourists sitting around just watching him. I should have taken a picture. The next day Becky had to go back to work. We were sad to say goodbye. We took the kids to the Adventure Dome at the Circus Circus. We spent the entire day there. We left at 6:30 ish to get to the airport. We ended up being delayed for a bit so we walked around and tried to keep the kids entertained. Much to our surprise...Donovan fell asleep on the plane only a few minutes after the cabin lights went off. Overall it was a pretty good trip. We had fun and it was good to see my sis.

Snakes, Lizards, and Cacti...are we in the desert?

I have been wanting to go hiking really bad lately but Donovan is not a big fan. So I found some short trails to start him out on. This morning we went for our first short hike. My cousin and her two kids came with is. She is also trying to break in her kids. We hiked the Birdsong Trail in the mouth of Ogden Canyon. It was about a mile long. It was a great hike for starting the little ones. We saw some surprises along the way.

Its really hard to see because my camera sucks at close ups, but there is a lizard in this picture! I tried to catch one....but my lizard catching skills are a bit outdated. We saw a total of three lizards.

I am glad Brody(my cousins 8 year old) was paying attention because he was the one that spotted this guy. At first I thought it was a rattler. Thank goodness it wasnt. It is definately the biggest wild snake any of us had seen. After further inspection of the pile of logs we found another smaller snake.

There were little Cacti all over the place. I was begining to feel like I was in the desert instead of the mountains.

And then we saw this little waterfall and it felt a little bit more like the mountains.

Katelyn

Brody

The kids all did pretty well. It was a fun little hike.