A Stop Over At The Other Bishops...

On our way up to Bear Lake we stopped over at Eddie and Brindie's house to break up our trip. It was really fun to be back in Utah Valley and it brought back a lot of memories! It was fun to spend the night with them, we will see them again soon when we go camping next month in Zions with Todd's family!


Kaylor and Thatcher playing on the stairs


Uncle Don with Thatcher and his intruments, Thatcher LOVES pretending to blow into them!


Brindie, Kaylor, Eddie, Don, Todd, Thatcher, Me, and Taggy

Bear Lake

Last week we went to Bear Lake with my family. It was a BLAST! We stayed in this really cute condo that I called 'festive' because it really got you in a lake mood with murals all over the walls of trees and bears and outdoor scenes...it was really cute. We went out on the lake, went to a play, played lots of games as a family (cat balou!) ate the famous Bear Lake raspberry shakes, and just relaxed and enjoyed spending time together. It was a great vacation. Thatcher loved all the attention from Papa and HiHi (that is what he calls my parents) and Uncle Juan (Jon) and Uncle Davis (David) and Taggy loved the attention too. We had a lot of fun!


The whole gang infront of the Lake


Bear Lake from the boat


The condo we stayed in at Bear Lake


A view from the condo, it was such a pretty area! I loved some of the cabin homes around there.


Thatcher playing with Uncle Jon's cell phone


Jon and Taggy on Sunday afternoon

Of course going to Bear Lake we did lots of water activities! We went boating and went out on wave runners and of course went swimming. It was really fun and Thatcher loved it! He is turning into quite the fish. Taggart was really good all day boating and was content as long as he didn't get splashed. The best part for me was watching everyone on the tubes. I don't think I remember laughing so hard in my life.




Jon and Dave on the tubes




Wow who is this hottie?




Jon and Todd on the tubes


Todd and Thatcher on the tube


I even went tubing, I am just not as young as I once was!


Taggy was so good on the boat, this is how we saw him most of the day. He wasn't a big fan of the lifevest, but he got over it.


Thatcher in the tube, don't worry he didn't go by himself


Taking a break from tubing just to swim around


Thatcher driving the boat! AGHHHHHH!


Thatcher and Papa on the boat


Thatcher riding the water banana with Daddy, Uncle Jon and Uncle David

A highlight of Bear Lake is going to the Pickleville Playhouse! It is this cute melodrama/musical play that is really cute. The play that we saw was called 'A Pirates Life' it was really funny and had a lot of cute little Mormon puns. They poked fun at Provo for having young kids get married so quick and Hillary Clinton running for president. It was a really fun night!

Here are some candid pictures from the trip. I just thought that some of them were too cute not to post!




Jon and Thatcher having a gay ol' time!


Todd and Thatcher getting ready for dinner


In our down time Todd read the new Harry Potter book. Harry kills Voldemort, for those of you who haven't read it all yet! Ha!


Taggy kissing his reflection

On Friday morning we went to Seven Peaks water park. It was a BLAST. We have never seen Thatcher have so much fun. He absolutely LOVED it. He loved the little kiddie section of the park and LOVED the kids water slides. As soon as he would go down he would come out of the water and say, 'AGAIN!'. It was really cute to watch. Taggy also enjoyed going down the lazy river with Grandma and Grandpa. I guess I am getting older because all I wanted to do was go down the lazy river and go in the wave pool. Todd was a little more adventurous (he isn't a mom!) and went down some of the bigger slides. We had a really fun day!



Thatcher 'smiling' for the camera.



Jon scoping out the ladies at Seven Peaks...

We went over to my Grandma Masons house and spent time with my Mom's side of the family. My cousin Jessica was there with her two boys Caden and Kyler. We had a fun time visiting all together and eating pizza.


Thatcher playing with Grandpa's cell phone



Dave doing a dance...'you can dance if you want to'


Thatcher and his impish smile


Cute little Taggy


Todd stiking a pose


Great Grandma Mason and Taggy


Da Boyzzzz...Scott, Jon, and Robert.


Taggy trying to take a bite of Caden's pizza!


Thatcher and Caden, long lost buddies!


Grandma Monson and Taggy


Four generations. My Grandma Mason, my Mom, me, Thatcher and Taggart.

For the trip back home we got up really early again and left Provo at 3:30am! Dave decided to take over our empty hotel room and I had to shoot a picture of him trying to sleep as we were loading the car. We woke the boys up and loaded the car for the long drive home. The drive home seemed a lot longer then the drive up there! I guess it is more exciting to go on vacation then to come home. The boys did really good overall for such a long drive. We had such a great vacation! It was so fun to see everyone and spend time with everyone.

Tag You're It!

I saw this on a friends blog and thought it would be fun to be the one to START this one...so...I have been tagged...but this time is a little different. I am suppose to list 7 different facts about myself; funny, random, silly, whatever. Then I will choose 7 new people to tag. If you tagged, then please list the rules when you post.

1. My new obsession is LOST. I love it. I have friends who love it and we talk about it all the time. We talk about the characters like they are real people. Pathetic? I know. But fun.

2. All the places I have lived (in order): Utah, Texas, Arizona, Taiwan, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Idaho, Utah, Italy, Malta, Utah, and now Arizona and there is talk of another move in another year or two...it never stops!

3. My first job was at Wendy's when I was 15.

4. I hold my pencil/pen differently then anyone else I know.

5. I have a touch of OCD. I HAVE to make the bed before I take a shower (it drives Todd nuts!). I have to have the towels on display in our bathrooms lined up just perfectly, and I have to have things in a certain order or it will drive me crazy! Like I said, OCD.

6. I have a freckle on my left hand and I was convinced that a 'sign' of who my future husband would be is that he would have a freckle on his left hand as well. When I started to kinda like Todd I asked to see his left hand and low and behold he has a freckle on his left hand! Coincidence? Maybe, but I like to think we gave each other that freckle to find each other...kinda like Pam and Jimmy had a special thing they did, except we aren't twins.

7. I used to want 10 kids. I thought it would be fun. Notice that I said USED to want. I admire women who can remain sane while having a lot of kids. I know some of these women, and they are good women and I admire them, immensely. I also know women who are either crazy from having too many kids or were crazy enough to have a lot of kids...I don't know which one came first. After having two boys close together, I now want four kids.

Now it's your turn...Jill, Shalee, Sharla, Sara, Suzanne, Emily and Jessica. It is up to you to carry this tag on. I am hoping to find out new interesting facts about each of you. I hope that you all learned something new about me.

"There are places I remember...."

Summer time seems to be reunion time. Reunions have been on my mind lately as I am currently planning a 10 year reunion of a program I went on in the Fall of 1998. I cannot believe it has been almost 10 years. My freshman year of college I went on this exchange program with Ricks College and I met some really great people that I have remained friends with these last 10 years. My good friend Kaylyn and I are planning a big shindig next summer where we will all meet back up in Rexburg and have a good time seeing and hearing what everyone has been up to. It is amazing to see how much has happened in 10 years!

We also have my family reunion at Bear Lake that we are going to this upcoming week and Todd's family reunion in August where will be going camping at Zions.

This past weekend we also had a reunion of sorts. We got together with Killian Herring and Jill (Carter) Holyoak who we were in the MTC with. Killian Jill, and I were in the same MTC district and Todd was in our sister district. Jill and her cute family drove down from Phoenix and it was really good to see her and finally meet her little Macy who is just a doll! We had a fun night with dinner and games and laughed pretty hard (you're killian me!). It is always such a nice feeling to reconnect with old friends. I am sure this is what heaven must feel like. Jill and I are kindred spirits and I think our relationship is a lot like that of the pair of friends from Beaches. We met in the MTC and became really good friends right away. I have lots of funny memories with this crazy girl. Jill went to the Rome mission and I went to the Catania mission and we wrote each other our whole missions. I used to look forward to her letters because they were so dang funny and would brighten my day. We both came home and married elders from our missions and now we both live in Arizona. We talk almost every day on Google chat. In a nut shell I love this girl. I know she was one of the people I was supposed to meet on my mission. It was really fun to see our kids playing together. It was love at first site for Taggy. He couldn't stop staring at Macy. Or maybe he was just amazed to see someone around his size, after hanging out with us and Thatcher all the time. The Holyoaks are moving to Seattle soon, we will miss them!

Sign Our Guestbook!

Hey Everyone! If you scroll down to the bottom of our blog we have this cool picture guest book we would LOVE for everyone to sign and post a picture!

Crawling Taggy...

Cutie Bug

A friend of mine emailed me this picture she took of Taggy, isn't he cute? He is growing up so much I can't believe it!

Oh Beautiful For Spacious Skies....

Happy 4th of July! We had a great holiday yesterday starting off with a neighborhood BBQ. Yesterday was 109 here in Tucson and it was HOT! We lasted about an hour at the BBQ before becoming too miserable to have fun. Last night we went up to the foothills to watch fireworks with our neighbors the Tonks. Thatcher had a blast playing with the balls and Frisbees before the firework show started. We are grateful for our beautiful country and the freedoms we enjoy. At this time of year we remember our troops who are overseas "who more then self their country love". We are proud to be Americans!


Hanging out in the stroller.


Chris and Melanie James. They are in our ward and I work in the Primary with them. We feel so lucky to have so many members of our ward that live in our neighborhood!


On the blanket after playing waiting for the fireworks to start.


This is the way the cowboys ride...


I don't know how well you can see this picture, but Thatcher is throwing a frisbee with some older kids we met at the park...he thinks he is 8, not 2.