McCall's Birthday 25!

McCall turned 'old' as Lydia would say this last week.  We won't go into detail on how old.  It was nice to have President's Day on Monday because we were able to celebrate two days.  On Monday, Mom watched the kiddos and we were able to go to Planet Play and be teenagers again (laser tag, go karts, mini golf, arcades).

On her actual birthday, I had to work all day but when I got home we made the most of it and took the family to Rubio's and afterwards went to icecream at Coldstone.  Gotta love free birthday stuff, only cost us 4$ for the whole night.  Here's some pics of the icecream eating:

And then McCall got the best birthday present of all, when she got to go clogging with her team that night.

Lydia and Emree were being so cute together this night so we had to take a picture to catch their cuteness.

Valentines

Sadly this is the only photo I took of Valentines, but it was a good one.  We had our Valentines date on the 13th of January, since we did a baby swap and watched kids on the 14th.  We went to Noodles and Company and a Grizzlies game.  Since I knew the dentist on call, I was able to go in the Grizzlies locker room and watch him stitch up some players who were in some fights.  McCall was gorgeous that night, but that's nothing new.  

Then on Valentines, McCall surprised me with chocolate covered strawberries and a huge sugar cookie heart.  I came home with a redbox and cupcakes so we could watch a movie with the kiddos.  I also gave her horse back riding lessons, a motorcycle, a rose garden, a chocolate factory, and a diamond ring.  I felt like going way out this year. :)  I love my Valentine. 

On Friday we were able to go on another date to Red Robin and the mall and look for some wedding bands, we figured it is time after 4 years of being together.

Blanding

Oh Blanding,UT how we miss you.....NOT! Ok, so instead of focusing on all the not so fun parts of being in a city with 3,000 people, one grocery store and zero phone reception. I've decided to focus more on the positive parts of our 3 week visit to this small small little town. 

First off after two weeks of being bored out of my mind I informed JD that we were going out to eat. So out of the 3 choices they had in town we decided to try a place called "The Patio." It kind of reminded me of Purple Turtle....if any of you have been there.. 

YUM!

JD got the famous Big B Burger (the only difference from mine is that it had pickles and sauce.)

Cool.

Luckily the house was stocked with 4 wonderfully large puzzles for Jd and the girls to work on. I think they finished 3 of them... Lydia and emree loved helping daddy finish these. 

The young couple downstairs were so nice and allowed us to go out and feed there bunnies what ever we wanted. So that is what we did.....every....single.....day. The bunnies were fun to see and they really did eat anything the girls gave them, which made it fun for them. 

One of the weekends that we were there we decided to go down to Farmington, NM and visit some of our good friends Brad and Mary. We had such a blast with them and feel so lucky to have such wonderful friends. There little boy is so adorable and guess what they named him?  JD! This is Jd holding his name sake   JD junior. 

We wanted to stop by the Four Corners Monument on our way down to NM, but alas it was closed by the time we got there. So this is as close as we got. Don't worry we weren't too sad about that.

Sorry some of these pics are out of order, but Brad and Mary took us to a really fun indoor swimming place.  They had a huge water slide there that both of our girls absolutely could not get enough of. That's right, emree was squealing the whole time down and after going down it once didn't want to do anything else. 

Here is a pic of our good friends. And can I just say how kind they were to drive out over an hour to come pick us up after getting a flat tire in the middle of the night in the middle of no where in the rain. They even let us stay an extra night with them. We feel so extremely blessed to know such wonderful people.

After visiting an Indian Pow wow down in Monticello on the Indian reservation, (see video below) We stopped off in Bluff  to visit a balloon glow they were having and also to see the Historic Bluff Fort. 

This was taken from within our car since Lydia was so scared of the giant balloons, and for some reason JD thinks it's pretty cool. All it reminds me of is how dirty our car is. But to each their own I guess.

Here is JD and emree inside an authentic Navajo Kiva. This is a huge circular hole in the ground where they would cook their food.  Pretty cool.

Here is a clip from the Pow Wow we went to. We felt a little out of place with our platinum blonde pale faced little girls running around, until the missionaries walked in of course. 

We got to see a few of the beautiful arches there and our girls were such good troopers and hiked 3 miles round trip to see one of them. It was a lot of fun.

Kiva

Over all it was an interesting experience, not one that I would like to experience any time soon. But at least we have some good memories to look back on.