Our first 6 days in England...

Well my 3 week story from our lovely travel to England begins here... We arrived in England on the 19th of September. Our flight there went better than I had thought it would. We did have a few minor issues with our seats and Aaron didn't get to sit by us on the long flight from Chicago to Manchester but we made it there with big smiles on our faces. Joshua did amazingly well with only sleeping for 2 hours on the 7 hour flight there and then staying awake for most the day until evening of the 19th. We left here mid-day on the 18th and arrived early morning on the 19th so the trick is to stay awake until bed time of the next day otherwise you risk major jet lag. So here I was 12 weeks pregnant and only had 2 hours of sleep in 30 hours. It was crazy but we all did really well.Saturday the 20th began many fun activities for the time we were there. That day we spent resting and then went to visit Aaron's Grannie and Grancha (Grancha was in a home for falling and injuring himself). We had a wonderful time visiting with them and Josh took to them as if he has always known them.
 

That evening Mum secretly threw a suprise birthday party for me. We had planned before hand to have a few of our good friends around for dinner but I honestly had no idea that mum had turned it into a birthday party. We had a lovely BBQ dinner followed by a delicious chocolate fudge brownie cake and fun games.

One game we played is called 'Pass the Buck'. The game is played by rolling two dice that will then instruct you how to pass the buck to the other person. They also roll the dice to see how they will 'receive' the buck. It is such a fun and hilarious game to play with a big group. It can get quite interesting :)

Sunday the 21st we had some family around after church for a lovely afternoon. Aaron's Grannie along with Auntie Alison and Uncle Kim and their families joined us outside for the beautiful weather.

This trip was the first time i've ever experienced nice weather in England. All other times it was always very wet, damp and cold. 

Joshua loved helping Pop's pick apples off the tree and jumping on the trampoline with the kids. After the guys were done playing pool we had some delicious home made apple pie. MMMmmmm yummy!

The 23rd we spent our time at Jonny and Cassie's house. There the guys played video games and we enjoyed talking. Jason and Olivia and their little girl joined us there as well.

24th we headed to Cadbury World. This was an exciting adventure especially because Aaron had never been there and this is his favorite chocolate. We ate so much free chocolate we felt a bit sick near the end of our tour.

That evening we spent at Jon and Maria's house. Maria made a delicious Roast dinner that we all throughouly enjoyed. The kids (along with the adults) enjoyed playing together. The men did an excellent job putting a princess puzzle together!

Our Halloween Fun!

This year we dressed Josh up as a clown for halloween and this is actually the same costume my brother wore when he was three; so it is about 18 years old. Josh had so much fun in it and didn't want to take it off all night. We are so grateful to scott for letting us borrow it! :)

Aaron's work did a trunk or treat for the kids throughout their building so we decided to take Josh there for all the excitement. We had a blast and Josh came back with so much candy we decided not to take him around the neighborhood also because it was cold and rainy. So instead he had fun answering the door with daddy to give the other kids some candy. He got so excited to open the door and yell "Boo" in hopes of scaring the other children.  

Before heading home from the trunk or treat we picked up some Panda Express for dinner (Aaron and Joshua's favorite). We told Josh that he could eat as much candy as he wanted that night after he ate all his dinner. Well we never have a problem with him eating his dinner when it's Panda. He ate so much that when it came time to go through his candy he only ate about 4 pieces and then was done. I think he was also pre-occupied with answering the door but hey, i'm not complaining.

All in all it was a fantastic evening considering this is our most disliked holiday :) We had a lot of fun and had Marcus and Nichole around to share our evening's activities. 

Here are the before and after pictures. When leaving our house Josh was in tears because he wanted to be the one to paint his face and was extremely disappointed when I took over. But as you can see, once he had his bag full of candy he was as happy as can be with a big smile on his face! 

Video - Dress - Congrats!!!

Here is a short video clip from the ultrasound I had. 

You can see her little heart beating so fast and her jaw/mouth move a bit... How Cute!!!

This is a picture of the 'first' outfit. My mom suprised me with it on sunday and I have to say it's made me so excited to shop for little girls clothing. 

This dress is adorable and will be perfect for Easter!! Thanks Mom!

I have to also throw a congratulations out to my cousin Justin and his wife Ashley. 

They had their little girl this week and sent me a quick picture. She is adorable!! 

We are so happy for you both; You'll be fantastic parents!

I'm Pregnant and...

Today I had an ultrasound that revealed we are having a baby girl. I am due April 3rd and we couldn't be more excited. So this explains a bit as to why there haven't been any postings since August 5th. I get very sick in the first 12 weeks and I honestly can't do much.

I am doing great now and we had a fantastic few weeks in Europe. We enjoyed spending most our time in England with Aaron's family and also spent 5 days in Paris (one day of which I got to celebrate my birthday). We had so much fun and I will be posting more info and pictures soon!

June 24th was Taylor's birthday so we celebrated by going to the free water park in Herriman with some neighbors. They had a great time and it was a beautiful day. For lunch we headed to McDonalds and then spent the rest of the day playing games. I think the kids had a lot of fun. Today was also my brother Scott's birthday but with him serving a misison in England he asked that we don't send anything and wait to celebrate when he gets home. He comes home this thursday and we are going to Lagoon on saturday to celebrate. Yippee!!! We are so stoked!

June 27th we headed to Provo to meet up with Jess and Jack for a day at the park. The kids had a lot of fun exploring on the playground and also in the nearby river where we threw some rocks in and let them put their feet in. Josh is always talking about Jack and refers to every baby he sees as 'Jack the baby'. It is so funny.

These pictures were taken with my phone...

The evening brought some of our good friends over, Liz and James, with their 2 adorable girls. After dinner we had a fun little photoshoot with their newest addition they named Kimberly. She is so tiny and adorable. I forget how small newborns are now that I spend all day with two fast paced toddlers.

Here are a few pictures I took that day.

June 28th was our day with Marc and Tara and their 4 kids. We headed up to their house and spent our time in their community pool. It was the first time Josh had used those water wing things and after realizing that they helped him 'not' to sink he was having so much fun. I didn't get any pictures because we were all enjoying the nice hot weather and the perfect pool setting. We then took the kids out for dinner where the kids ate free - I love those type of places.

June 29th was my cousin Andrew's farewell, it went really well. They also had their young women speak about their girls camp experience. I have to tell you, they did an amazing job and sang some beautiful songs, some of which I already knew from our camp. It is always a neat experience to see how other wards put things together and how it turns out completely different although we are all using the same theme. It always amazes me how leaders are inspired to do certain things for particular reasons that we sometimes never realize. I have realized now more than ever how much time, preparation, love and prayer goes into a calling like this. These girls are all so special in so many ways and we want to do everything and anything we can to help them. It's a big responsiblity for the leaders to help meet the needs of the youth today with how much the world is changing. I think of my leaders from YW and all they did that helped me as a youth. Some of them changed my life forever!

Pictures of my 5 teenage cousins and my sister, Andrew and our great grandma and funny little josh.

On June 14th (right after girls camp and right before Lake Powell and Chicago) our good friends Jason and Erin had a joint birthday party at their club house. We got to enjoy the swimming pool and the delicious dessert that Erin made. It was fabulous, everything she makes if so wonderful!

While I admired the moon Josh swam in the pool with Aaron. Josh was having so much fun that he got really upset when it was time to leave. I left to get Josh home, bathed and in bed while Aaron stayed and played the Wii with all the guys.

Aaron's Chicago Convention

While we were enjoying our time at Lake Powell Aaron headed to Chicago for the big eBay convention... Aaron had a great time and brought home a lot of free stuff.
The funniest part was that I 'let' (yes I let) Aaron take our camera with him to Chicago. I told him that he had to take lots of pictures to bring home. I had a hard time parting from my camera but my parents were nice enough to let me have full control of theirs at the lake.
Now the funny part was that Aaron really has no idea how to use our camera because I am always the one using it, that is why I am never in the pictures :) I had given him the camera just as I had last used it (on the full manual settings) not thinking he wouldn't know how to change it back to the 'automatic' features. So he brought home a lot of black and blurry pictures but he did manage to catch a few good ones in the daytime with the manual settings I had set. I guess I shouldn't have assumed he would know what to do. Haha..
It's ok honey, thanks for taking pictures anyway... We loved seeing the ones you did take!

Adventures at Lake Powell

Only four days after returning home from girls camp I had to repack again for Lake Powell. Aaron was originally going down with us but was sent to Chicago for a work conference. So Josh and I travelled down with my parents in my dad's new truck on the 18th of June.

We left around 6am and got there in the heat of the day. We took a more scenic route to Wahweap Bay which took us longer but it was beautiful. As we got to the lake we immediately launched the boat and began our journey. Coming from a cooler climate our bodies clearly had a difficult time adjusting. Only an hour after being on the boat my mom got really sick from the heat. We spent the rest of the day in the water and up against huge cliffs in the shade.

We stayed in a hotel in Page that was actually really nice. We had a suite which had a nice jacuzzi tub right next to the big screen t.v., a small kitchenette, bathroom and a separate bedroom with doors that closed it off. That evening our 'adventures' began. I was up all night cleaning throw up and diarrhea off everything. Joshua got extreme head stroke only those few hours we spent on the boat. Needless to say the rest of the trip I dealt with diarrhea and a few bouts of sickness all over myself, the floors and our bed. All my energy was spent taking care of josh and making sure that he was getting enough fluids in his little run down body.

We still had an amazing time and he did considerably well with the situation he was in. We spent a lot of time site seeing, swimming and watching grandma and grandpa fish. It was so beautiful down there and we wish Aaron could have been with us. One one of the days we travelled to Rainbow Bridge where we had a big hike ahead of us in over 100 degree weather with the sand that is so hot it burns your skin (sounds fun eh...) We got to the arch where we took a couple pictures and then nearly ran back down to the water. Josh was such a big boy and wanted to hike the whole thing by himself. Towards the end of the 100+ degree hike he was getting very weary and so we hurried to cool him off in the water. Nearly the whole time we were down there the water was in the 80's. Sometimes there was no immediate cooling down once you jumped in the water but it was still so nice. We did find a nice canyon we went up where we found the waters to be in the high 70s.

All in all we had a wonderful time. I have always and will always love going to Lake Powell, it brings back so many childhood memories and I love being on the boat out in the middle of nowhere. The surroundings are so beautiful and there is so much to see. The last adventure of our 4 day trip was our 12 hour travel home. Yep 12+ hours! We went out onto the lake in the morning and then left around 1:00pm. We didn't get home until 1:00am. On our way home we had multiple tire problems. We only had 1 spare tire and 3 bad tires on the boat trailer. We stopped half way to get something to eat at Wingers while my dad rotated the tires and changed one of the tires out for the spare.

We thought we were going to be ok when we got about 3 miles out of Payson and one of the tires blew. Yep, it was serious and you can see by the picture I put on here. It completely bent the boat trailer, pulled out all the wiring for the tail lights and caused a few other problems. My dad could not remove the tire and then put another on (we didn't have another spare anyway). So here we are on the darkened freeway on a Saturday night with hardly much of a median to pull off in. Our only option was to try and get a hold of someone to help us while we slowly chugged down 3+ miles to the next exit. It took us forever as we slowly moved and had to frequently stop as the tire and rim would start smoking. We did make it eventually and my dad was able to call a neighbor that had to travel 45 minutes to where we were. All in all they did make it and brought tools to hammer the trailer back to its somewhat original shape, they put a new tire on and we headed home.

We were extremely blessed and taken care of on our journey home. Although it took us 12 hours Josh slept soundly in the car while all of this was happening. Literally minutes after we pulled off the freeway into a safe place as we waited for someone to help us a high speed car chase went flying down the freeway on the same side we were travelling on. We sat and watched as this crazy red car sped down each side of the freeway with at least 30 police cars and helicopters everywhere. It was crazy! Defiantly a trip to remember :)

This post is dedicated to our Stake Girls Camp in June!

Yes, that's right... I am over a month behind...

Well, lets just begin by saying thsi was a once in a lifetime experience -

Those of you that were there know what i mean :)
The first day was spent travelling, setting up camp, and the opening devotional with the stake. Needless to say (amidst all the snow spoken about) a few of us got really burnt that first day.
Nighttime was pretty stinkin cold and it was so hard to stay warm.

The second day we were all so excited to travel down to the lake for our water activities: canoeing, zip line, ah... there was so much to look forward to. Unfortunately this was the day it snowed. It was horrible and we had a lot of girls not prepared for this cold. Luckily we had wonderful priesthood leaders coming that were able to bring up needed supplies.
Most of our day was spent huddled around a fire, squished into heated cars and then the stake leaders offered us their big tent with heaters in it. After what seemed like days, the snow eventually lifted and were were able to have our devotional and dinner.
That night I was actually a bit warmer due to a thick foam pad brought up for me to sleep on. (Thanks so much Sarah!) Before I was sleeping 1 inch off the ground, seriously!

The last day was probably the best day by far. Not because it was the last but because of all the fun things we did and the experiences we had! From crazy hair day to our awesome skit and heather's car getting stuck in the gravel (there is a picture in the slide show that prompted me to put the camera down and help push the car out... you'll know which one it is when you see it :)

Just for my memory and for a laugh to all the other girls who read this I will list a few 'key' words of events we will remember forever: ants, wet tent, anyone need the toilet? I need help...haha, glasses in the toilet, toilets overflowing, ticks, hike hike hike back to camp, Sarah sing us to sleep...please, best chants, tribute to carol, awards, scavenger hunt, shakes, more ice cream... just to name a few.

The girls and the leaders are all so amazing!
It's funny how going from a Sunday setting to a week of camp can change everything and really helps to get to know each other on a more personal level. Testimony meeting with the bishopric had to be by far the best part. The bishop did something different from what I was used to and I loved it. He asked that we go around in a circle and each take a turn to speak. We didn't 'have' to bare our testimony but at least tell about something special that had happened up at camp. This was a fabulous idea as it got everyone participating and every one of us ended up bearing our testimony one way or another. The spirit was so strong!

Thank you so much to everyone who put so much time into this camp, you did an excellent job!

I know that I am so behind with my blogging but I could not pass up posting this youtube video here for you all to watch. A friend sent it to me, It's a little long but I loved it!

We love walks... and seeing ducks...

8th June we took another walk with my parents and got to see all the cute little ducklings.





I think these are Canadian Geese




Could we call these 'teenager' ducks?













Joshua loves walking with his 'bompa'. I can hardly ever get Josh to hold my hand but he 'has' to hold his grandpa's.
















Josh went crazy on this fence shadowed path, he kept calling it 'Joshy's train tracks' and would walk up and down it. He was in his 'train heaven'.