Book Week!

On Friday the kids got to dress up as a book characters.

Evelyn as The a Princess in Black written by Shannon Hale.

Isaac is Harry Potter.

Lydia as an evil librarian from the Alcatraz books by Brandon Sanderson.

And this week prompted by the need for a Harry Potter wand, we made wands out of chopsticks!  It was so cool!  I found hot glue at the craft store in different colors!  Awesome!

Bridget is 3!

Bridget had her third birthday!  Finally!  I swear every almost three year old cannot WAIT for their birthday.  A third birthday is such fun too.  Old enough to understand what the day means and young enough to get ridiculously excited about balloons in their favorite color!

Our three year old Bridget!  

She got a Barbie, a bowling set, and her Oma and Opa Three Book.  

Enjoying the book with Evelyn and Daddy.

We had a purple doll cake!  Yum!  This poor doll has been through a lot of birthdays.  Her arms are hot glued on and her hair is falling out.  Might be time for retirement.

We got to share cake and ice cream with the Rapps who are her nursery leaders.  She calls "Bro Rapp" on her key chain phone.  She loves her teachers.

We love our Bridget so much!  She is so kind and sweet!  She's also a bit of a kleptomaniac of stuff she finds around the house and shoves under her bed, but we're working on that.  A bounding energy of curls and fun!  Happy Birthday, sweet girl!  

Big Climbing in July

Our family hiked up a mountain!  Every year people in the branch get together and hike Mt Larcom, a small mountain not far from Gladstone.  We love a good nature walk and came along.  Mike carried Alice in the front carrier and we didn't expect little Bridget legs to make it very far, but we thought we'd see how far we got.  We started our "walk" at 8:30 and finished at 2:30.  It was an arduous 6 hour hike!  Like a serious hike!  Lydia and Isaac bounded ahead with the other kids, Evelyn kept pace with us adults in the back and there were plenty of men to carry Bridget on their shoulders.  It was a long hard day, but we did it!  

Someone else is climbing great heights!  Alice!

 She started crawling at the end of July and is getting faster.  Usually I have to listen for her huffing to find where she's gone.  

She likes to crawl around in search of paper to eat.  We now have to be sure all books and school papers are off the floor.  And she loves to stand up on things!  She's getting so big.

A Fabulous 3 Week Holiday!

It would take too long to cover all 3 weeks, but let's just say we had an amazing time with our families! A Johnson reunion up in the mountains of Idaho where we visited beautiful places like Yellowstone.  A Tammen reunion in Heber, Utah where we had some fun walks and a lot of great playing.  And we had a few fun days enjoying Utah ourselves.  Here are random photos.

Starting the long 22 hour journey with a sunrise at the Gladstone airport.

We made it, yay!  Eating ice cream at the BYU Creamery.

Enraptured with replicated Gold Plates at the Church History Museum (which is incredible)!

At Cave Falls in Idaho.  Gorgeous!

The Johnson lot.

The Tammen lot.

Bowling with the Tammen cousins.  We love bowling!

Lydia receiving punishment at the school house in the Pioneer Heritage Park.

The looong journey home, which turned into a 44 hour ordeal.  Two delays, two hotels.  Too long!  Evelyn and Isaac fell asleep in the lobby of the first hotel. 

But in the end we made it home.  After three fabulous weeks of over eating and too little sleep (because you stay up late talking) it was good to be home!  Thank you everyone for an amazing time!