Happy Birthday Hamilton!

Our nephew Hamilton just celebrated his 9th birthday. He chose an awesome place to have his party - The Incredible Pizza Company. They have everything there: mini golf, laser tag, bumper cars, go carts, mini bowling, plus a rad arcade. What a fun place to have a party! I'm looking for an excuse to go back!!!

Ready, Set, Go! Here we are driving the go carts!

Going for a ride on the Carousel - I think we're too big for this one!

Playing a heated game of laser tag... red vs. blue. Blue won, of course!

Our little nephew Gavin needed all the help he could get in earning tickets for the prize booth!

Pioneer Day Fun

We celebrated Pioneer Day with a fun Rodeo in Kamas! It's a tradition in my family to go to the Rodeo which is followed by awesome fireworks! Gotta love those bull riders, the barrell racing, and my favorite - the cowhide races!!!

Oh, Canada!

Summer vacation this year was a road trip up to Canada! The first night Dad forgot to book us a room, so we ended up sleeping in this teepee! Just kidding! We sat in that teepee for all of five minutes to take pictures and we both ended up with several mosquito bites - ouch!

Our next adventure was driving through Glacier National Park - I've never seen anything like it! It was gorgeous! There were waterfalls everywhere and several stretches of road that were a sheer drop off! It was some scary driving!

Here is a picture of the whole gang at the Banff Springs Hotel! The weather was perfect for us tourists! We had a fun day of seeing the sights and getting acclamated with the locals! We had fun trying to figure out the currency exchange and the local language... we heard a lot of eh's and aboot's! Gotta love that Canadian accent!

This is a picture of Banff, Canada! Isn't is beautiful? We left our hotel, drove for about one mile and almost got side swiped by a black bear! It just barely missed us and then darted across the road. After our scary encounter with our little bear, we headed up to Norquay ski resort. A short 5 minutes later, we encountered another bear - this one grazing off the side of the road. Two bears only a few miles apart!

Welcome to gorgeous Lake Louise! As you can see in the picture, the lake is fed by a gigantic glacier! Although the water is FREEZING, we were daring enough to take a canoe out on the lake! It was amazing! My brother Chris took his girlfriend Karen out on a canoe also and in the middle of the lake, he proposed! Yay! We're so excited to have our fun new sister-in-law!

We finished off our fun adventure through Canada with horseback riding through Banff National Park and a one of a kind evening steak fry! We saw all kinds of wildlife: mosquitos, ducks, mosquitos, Canadian geese, mosquitos, and even a coyote! My horse was named Dally and James' horse was named Jackpot. It was a blast and a perfect way to see Canada! All in all, our trip was super fun - thanks to my family for helping us make such awesome memories!

Adoption Update!

A few weeks ago we attended our orientation and were overloaded with information regarding adoption. We left there with a minor headache, but with huge smiles on our faces! We are totally ready to get this process started! We stopped off for some yummy Chinese food on the way home and I had to laugh at the fortune hiding inside my fortune cookie. It said "Life is a series of good choices. Today yours are good ones." As if we needed a fortune cookie to validate our decision to adopt, but we had to laugh at how appropriate it was!

Shortly after our orientation, we were introduced to our caseworker - her name is Shannon and she is going to be awesome! We had our first meeting with her to get the ball rolling. She sent us home with paperwork galore and a massive checklist of things that we need to get done over the next few months. So... officially, this marks the start of all things adoption! We can't wait to finish all of the paper work so that our profile can become active on itsaboutlove.org and prospective birth parents can start getting to know us! Yay!!!

It's Independence Day!

We started out our fun 4th of July festivites with a ReAL Salt Lake soccer game - ole! It was super fun and they even won the game and had awesome fireworks afterwards!

The next night, we had a BBQ with James' family which was full of yummy food and steet fireworks - always a classic!!!