When Lily came to play

Ashlee and her daughter Lily came to visit at the beginning of July.  The girls loved having Lily around.  It was so fun to visit with Ashlee and have her over for the day.  We met her in Price a week later and went swimming and ate dinner with her and her parents too.  These pictures are from the girls playing in the sprinklers in our backyard.  The day was so super hot so this was nice and refreshing.  I am not sure what Lily thought of it though.  She had the best facial expressions. 

Ashlee and Lily

My dear friend Ashlee came to visit in Utah a few weeks ago from Connecticut and brought her sweet 8 month old baby Lily along.  Allie was so excited all morning for them to come.  She loves babies right now.  Brailie too.  The girls took to Lily as if she was their sister.  Allie and Brailie were finding her all kinds of toys, the were hugging her and holding her and it was pretty much the sweetest thing ever.  This picture is Lily's first glimpse of TV.  She was enamored with Backyardagains to say the least.  When they left and for the next few days Allie kept asking when they would be back and I tried to explain that they lived far away but she just kept saying that they would be back.  I sure hope they will be too.  Ashlee and I go back to Ricks college-1999.  She was my first roommate.  My first memory of Ashlee was that she was taking the earliest possible class on campus and she was so afraid that she would be the only one in the class and she had an alarm clock with the most blood curdling alarm.  The first time it went off I think I nearly wet the bed it startled me so bad.  I woke up at the crack of dawn with her every day that first summer term.  After Ricks college we were roommates at BYU and had the best of times together.  We laughed and cried and dealt with crazy roommates.  We played pranks on neighbors and tried to understand boys.  Ashlee's visit was like a huge dose of therapy for me.  We just chatted about old times and new.  She is the type of person that makes you feel so good about yourself.  She is so kind.  My mom always told me in High School that you make your greatest friends in college and that is certainly true because most of my best friends are from college.  I needed a visit from Ashlee in the worst way.  I wish she lived next door-though I would probably never get anything done.

The Beach

School started on Wed (Aug 24th) and the girls were a bit bummed that dad was for sure going to be gone all day.  I decided to take the girls out to the beach (a big sandy area by the river).  I felt like I should call and see if we could find any friends to go with us and it turned out perfect because there were friends that wanted to come and so the girls had lots of kids to play with.  At first we thought that we weren't in a good spot for them to play by the water so they were just playing in the sand but they really wanted to get wet and so as we started walking we found the perfect spot with just enough sand for kids and a perfect place to get wet.  My girls had a blast and didn't want to leave.  I for sure will be taking them back as many times as I can before the summer ends.

Elise, Byron and the girls in the sand.

Allie and Katelin

Katelin thought it was so fun to roll in the sand.  I bet her mom's car had much more sand in it when they got home than ours did.

Brailie is a good copy cat these days.

What a fun morning with friends. 

Splashing with a friend

After we had set up our new pool Allie was really excited to have a friend come over to swim.  I called our neighbors to see if their daughter Katelin would like to come over.  She is one year older than Allie (and Allie wears all of her hand me downs which she LOVES) but they are cute little friends.  They had a blast in the pool.

Brailie acted slightly perturbed that someone else had come over to play with her sister and she wanted to have nothing to do with it. 

Temple Square Lights

Last year we started a tradition with my long time college friends, Tali and Preston and their son Miles of meeting in Salt Lake in December.  Last year we got together and ate at Olive Garden and then Greg and I took the girls around temple square.  This year we decided to do it all together.  We walked around temple square some while it was still daylight and watched the nativity they have (Allie was sure she needed to go and touch the baby Jesus and was very disappointed that she couldn't).  We threw money in the fountain (a huge hit with the kids) and took pictures by the beautiful tree in the Joseph Smith Memorial building.

 Then we walked down to the Olive Garden and ate dinner.  The girls played in the window inside while we waited for our table.  The food was excellent and we were stuffed and grateful for the walk back up to Temple Square to burn off some of the calories.  We then walked through and saw some of the lights.  That is one of the most spectacular things I have seen.  Every branch has lights right to the tip.  The crowd was enormous and we were tired and the girls were restless so we kept it short and to the point.  One of these times when we don't have strollers and diaper bags to deal with I want to go on a carriage ride.

 After we parted ways we went to our hotel and went swimming.  The girls had a blast and the water was the perfect temperature.  Then we slept on the big poofy beds (Allie did a very thorough jumping test on both) and got up and enjoyed their free breakfast then headed down to Auntie Helens for a visit.

The visit at Aunty Helens was great-minus Allie throwing up her whole dinner in the kitchen and Brailies blowout diaper requiring a bath and full clothes change. 
All in all it was a great getaway.  We had so much fun being together and being with our friends.  We are making it a tradition and I can't wait until next year.

Friends

It is rare to have a post just about me because it is rare that I get to do something that is just for me but on Thursday the 16th Greg took the day off work so he could watch the girls and I could go to Provo to do some last minute shopping for stuff for my Melon Days booth and get together with some of my best friends from my college days. We haven't all been together for I don't know how long. It was too short but soooooo fun. We had lunch and visited. It was so nice to have a little break and have some girl talk. Being in Provo and driving around BYU campus to pick up Rachel took me back to my college days and almost made me want to cry. It was a really great day.

Here we have Brian (Jills son), Jill, Rachel and I
Jill, Me, and Tali

Rachel, me and Tali.

Thanks ladies for a wonderful afternoon. I love you all.