Is there anything cuter than babies learning to walk?

First Fairy Visit

It happened. Lulu lost her first tooth.
A year ago or so she would tell me she had a loose tooth. I would wiggle it and play along, although it was not loose at all.  She was just so excited about the prospect of loosing her tooth.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago.  Lulu again told me that she had a loose tooth on the bottom, so I wiggled it, and to my surprise it WAS loose!  Really loose actually.
How is this possible?  Don't you loose your first tooth in first grade?  Or at least in Kindergarten?  I didn't want to think my baby was old enough to be losing teeth! 
But alas, we could see the other tooth already coming in behind.
Ollie tried to convince her to let him pull it out a few times.  She was never quite ready.
Then she came in our room in the middle of the night, well Saturday morning actually.  She told Ollie excitedly that she had pulled her tooth out and should she put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy?  He told her it was too late, the tooth fairy had probably already passed our house. So she handed him her tooth and crawled back into bed.
That day I made a little monster pocket pillow for Lulu to put her tooth in.  She was so excited to leave the pillow and the tiny tooth on her bed that night.  Luckily she was really worn out from the day and went right to sleep.  She didn't even move when the noisy tooth fairy knocked over a book as she took the tooth and slipped a dollar bill into the monster's mouth.
The next morning she found the money and made great plans of going to the dollar store to buy another "barbie."
Oh the excitement.
And the cuteness.

The tooth fairy has a pretty great job!
And Lulu told me that she now knows that fairies DO exist.  I had told her they weren't real when she wanted to go out in the garden and find some.  I didn't want to dash her hopes, but I also didn't want to see her disappointed that she would never find a fairy.  So I told her the truth.  Fairies aren't real.
Well then the tooth fairy made her appearance and there's no denying that she got a dollar in her pillow. She told me, "Mom, fairies are real.  The tooh fairy is a fairy. See, tooth FAIRY," as she flapped her pretend wings to emphasize her point. 
So fairies ARE real.
At least for a few more years.

They think I do not know a buttload of crap about St George, but I do

Our annual trip to St George with my family has come and gone.
It started on the morning of the 4th, when we drove down to Grandpa's birthday party and had our annual family pictures taken outside.  Yes, this was actually the best family picture we got:

The big family one is a little better.  Cute patriotic family:

Here is the birthday boy.  I kinda love how he's holding on to the flag.  And his blue suspenders.  And how cute his sweetheart Grandma looks by his side:

And then we drove all the way down to St George, making only 1 bathroom/gas stop and 1 diaper-change-in-the-car stop. We arrived in time to go shopping, make dinner, and celebrate the 4th with some Pop-Its!:

This is the view from our condo.  So beautiful:

So there are a few things that we do every year, and a few things that were new this year. I was pleasantly surprised that even after 5 years of summers in St George we still found one thing to do every day that we had never done before. What we did every day, and what we've done every year... lost of swimming:

It was Mr T's first time in a real pool.  He was in love with the water:

Every year we also do a little shopping at the Outlet mall, get to play with family, go out to dinner with the whole family, and watch lots of Disney channel while babies take their naps. We also always get to visit the Temple and Tuacahn (pictures coming for those last two).
Something new on July 5th... a pizza picnic up the canyon of Pine Valley.
Hammer enjoyed his pizza:

It was beautiful up there!:

Mr T was just dying to get his feet in the water, so we let him splash just a little:

There was a deer just calmly munching his dinner right next to us.  It was fun to watch him.  It's definitely worth the hour drive from St George for this view:

Something new on the 6th:
We had never hiked around Snow Canyon before.  It was insanely hot though, so we only did some mini hikes with the kids:

All the kids wanted to do was play in the sand.  It was beautiful.  We'll definitely be back. Next time we will have to visit here when we can actually hike and then let the kids play to their heart's content in the sand.  Maybe in the winter???  Here is Mr T just loving the only shady spot in the Park, and Lulu making "Christmas time for the ants" as she called it.  She hummed Jingle Bells as she covered the ants in hot red sand.  So festive:

New to Lulu on the 6th... her first play.  We saw Aladdin.  She stayed awake for the whole thing and really enjoyed it all (except the scary cave of wonders and how loud it got sometimes):

New on July 7th... a visit to Pioneer Park in downtown St George.  We went as early as we could in the morning, which ended up being about 9:30.  You can tell we got nice and hot again, but it was so much fun climbing up the rocks:

Then on our last day, Sunday, we attended church, hung out with family, then headed out to visit the Visitors Center and the beautiful Temple grounds:

After dinner and baths, we packed up the car and took Aunt Biff back with us, dropping her off at Grandma's house in Salt Lake:

The kids did really well on the way home.
We had a great time.  Hammer keeps telling me he's ready to go back to "the condo."
This was the last of our family trips that we have planned.
I'm already itching to plan something else fun and exciting!

Butterflies, Band-aids, and Rattlesnakes

That pretty much sums up our first family camping trip. That and lots of good food and family fun.
We went up Logan canyon with Ollie's family for 2 nights.
We saw tons of butterflies, especially on our hike.  One landed right on Lulu's hat, but I wasn't fast enough to get a picture.
We also used multiple band-aids per kid. I think my kids tripped over every rock in our campsite, which resulted in sad crying and the use of Grammie's first aid kit. 
And, sadly, there were way more rattlesnakes in our campground than I liked.  Let's face it, 1 is too many!  The camp host chopped one in half with his shovel that was making his way over by our tent.  Then the next day the men in the family found one by Rashelle's camper.  They killed him and threw him in the fire.  Yikes. But no one was hurt and we still had a fun time. It was a lot cooler up there than our sweltering heat we've been dealing with down in the valley.  It was even cold enough in the mornings to turn on our tent heater!  This was our home away from home:

My little Buddy did pretty well. He got really dirty crawling around in the dirt and checking out the ashes in the fire pits:

We were camped really close to a little dam, which made for some good fishing apparently.  Lots of locals make they way up there in the early morning and in the evening.  Ollie even got into it.  Here is is out at the bend of the river.  It hard to see him, but you can see how beautiful it was:

Some of the kids waited patiently with him as he tried to catch the trout.  They gave up after a while, but Ollie did eventually catch one.  He let it go though.  It was a little too small for all the work of de-boning and cooking:

If you look closely at the next picture you will see Hammer barefoot. Lulu too.  That's because they had stepped in the stickiest mud you've ever seen.  It sucked Lulu's shoe right off her foot. Their shoes and socks were completely covered in mud. So, their shoes were drying in the sun while it was craft time. Grammie brought stickers and painting to do with the kids, which was a hit:

There was a good climbing tree by our tent.  All of the kids wanted to follow Uncle John's lead and climb it with him:

On the second day we climbed a trail up the canyon where we were staying:

Lulu wanted to stop and pick every wild flower on the way:

It was actually quite a strenuous hike for some of us, but it was beautiful!

And then Lulu's hat fell into the river.  The bridge was out so we crossed the fast moving river on a log, both Ollie and I holding on to Lulu's hands.  Her hat fell in and she screamed as if she had fallen in.  She was just heartbroken to loose her princess hat. 
Luckily for her, Daddy and Uncle John got in the water and John saved it!

Speaking of Uncle John,Hammer thinks he's the coolest.  He followed him around everywhere.  It was pretty cute actually:

I thought the sunlight streaming through the smoke looked pretty awesome:

The kids had a lot of fun with their cousins, of course:

What's camping without roasting marshmallows?  Daddy helped Hammer get his marshmallow perfectly roasted:

and then eat it. They were giant marshmallows, and they were messy!

And here's Lulu roasting the mallow:

and then not particularly enjoying it because it was so sticky all over her hands:

And then it was time to go home.
2 nights was plenty for me with a crawling baby.  And kids getting dirty and scraped up and tired.
Plus I missed my bed.
And the shower.  When we stopped at Grammie's house to drop her off, Ollie turned off the car as she unloaded her things out of our van.  After a few seconds Lulu sniffed the air and said, "What reeks?" It was pretty funny because she didn't realize that it was us! That's part of camping though. 
Thanks for the fun trip everyone!