Taylee's 4th Birthday

Way back in January, at Brynlee's birthday Taylee saw her pink castle cake and thought it was so cool. She had been wanting since then to have a "pink pony castle cake" for her birthday. I was thrilled cause Taylee doesn't usually choose the girliest things. This lasted all the way up until she went and saw Toy Story 3. Then it became all about Toy Story. I convinced her we could have a cowgirl party since Woody and Jesse were cowboy/cowgirl and with a few stipulations, she thought that would be ok. So this is Taylee's 4th Cowgirl Carnival/Toy Story birthday party.

All I had to do was tell Tiff my theme and her talent took over from there. Give all credit for the cute decorations, invites, party favors... the list goes on, to her. Thanks so much for helping me pull this off.

I loved the food table, so fun.

We had a total of 12 kids, including Taylee. 5 of them were cousins, but we had a few friends over too. Each of them got to choose a bandana and a cowboy hat to wear.

Both Tiffany and Lacey were there to help me and I don't know how I would have managed with out them. Each kid got to come fill up a goody bag with their favorite candies.

Here is a picture of the bunch. Top row: Ryker, Conner, Quintion, Weiland, Ellie (and a tiny bit of Brynlee). Front row: Shelby, Coulson, Bella, Caydence, Taylee (Evelyn behind Tay) and Holland. All lookin good.

The first part of the party they did little games like a ring toss, pin the tail on the horse, and knocking cans over with squirt guns. I have to say the best part of the party was having two real horses come to give horse rides. My awesome neighbor down the street was so so so nice to bring her two horses over and make this extra special for Taylee. It was a little nerve racking at first because the kids were so excited and they kept running up and around the horses and I was just hoping no one got hurt. Rob and Cathy were smart enough though to sit them down and tell them a few safety rules before we got started.

Taylee wasn't sure she wanted to do this at first. She let a few other kids have their turn before she decided to get on, but once she did she loved it!

They each got to go once around the yard...

Weiland's turn, he could hardly wait!!!

Then miss Ellie...

Ryker the pro....

Quinton

And Conner....

Now the Toy Story comes in. Here is her Toy Story cake. I couldn't find all the characters in mini form so her birthday present from Aaron and I was a huge combo pack that had everyone bigger. If you can't tell, this is supposed to be a bed. I did the best I could....

Blowing out the candles, which got done a little pre-mature so we had to re-light in the middle of the song...

Present time! Her special requests this year were a pillow pet (which is what she is getting here)...

And...... Buzz Lightyear of course! Thanks grama for fulfilling those wishes!

She was so pleased cause all her guests seemed to know that Toy Story stuff was her favorite right now. She got a Buzz towel, sunglasses, visor, backpack, coloring pad, stickers, water bottle.... I can't even remember it all, but she was a very happy girl. A little bit after her birthday her Gram and Papa came to visit and brought her lots more good Buzz/Toy Story stuff. Then Bonnie, Molly and Andy showed up and she was even more spoiled with a Buzz costume, a soft Buzz to sleep with and even Toy Story popcorn and container. It was quite the birthday and I was so exhausted by the time all the little 4 yr. olds left, but I was so glad Taylee had a great day. I count every birthday as a major blessing for me to get to watch her grow up. Happy Birthday Tay!

Oh and Makay and Addi, she loves doing those beads that melt. Thanks for thinking of her too!

6th Anniversary

Aaron and I take turns planning what we will do for our anniversary. This year it was Aaron's turn. Some guy who owns this ranch up past Island Park (closer to Yellowstone) came in to Aaron's shop over a year ago and traded him horse back rides for computer stuff. I thought that was a fun trade, but we just hadn't made it up yet to use them. They worked out perfectly though for a really fun/unique anniversary activity...

I rode behind Aaron on the way up and not too far into the ride, I renamed his horse gassy. We laughed a lot on this little trip!

For some reason my horse (Ross) would get behind and then all the sudden realize he was slow and then would run to catch up. My behind was KILLING me by the time we were done.

It was a long process getting everyone on their horses and all the workers would try and freak everyone out by telling them some crazy habit their horse had. They told some they were riding rodeo horses, horses that just like to lay down, horses that bite... I got told mine was a kicker and the funny thing was on the way down Aaron was behind me and when his horse got too close, mine actually would kick at him. We had a good time. It is always nice to spend a whole entire day with your best friend and celebrate how happy we still are to be married.

FHE at the Drive-In

One of Aaron and I favorite things to do in the summer is go to the drive-in. We have it all worked out perfectly. First we drop Tay off at Tiff's (since she is always so nice to let us put Tay to bed at her house), then stop at Maverik for some good snacks and then on to set things up. We put our back seats down, blow up an air mattress in there and get comfy with pillows and blankets.

As soon as we saw that Toy Story 3 had made it to the drive-in we decided to let Tay in on the fun. She thought it was so fun to lay between mom and dad, eat some snacks and watch a great movie. We thought it was great cause when her movie was over she went to sleep and we watched our double feature. So fun!

My Favortie Moments

So tired...

These moments are too few and far between... there really is nothing better then having your baby asleep on you.

R Mountain

So we live pretty close to R Mountain out here in Burton, but had never climbed it. It wasn't till Aaron went with the YM for a mutual activity that the obsession with this mountain started. I'm joking of course, but it sure seems that way when you climb it like 4 or 5 times in one summer. Actually the truth is, it is what happens when all of Aaron's family comes to visit in one year at different times. There just isn't that much to take people to do here so we duplicated activities many many times. Too funny.

Hey I look just about as cool as Micah in my Yellowstone post....

The first climb was just Aaron, Taylee and I. This is not a long hike, but a pretty steep hike. Taylee just ran practically the entire way except when it got a little scary and then daddy carried her. It is pretty cool to get up there and find out it is a volcano on top and to see some of the cool features of it that were formed from Yellowstone.

Ok I lied, I do have a few pics from my parents visit...

I really can't remember much of that week my parents were here, not because it wasn't fun (cause it always is) but mostly because I didn't take enough pictures. So bummed.

We did get to go have a fire at the pond which is always fun...

Aaron showing off his mad soccer skills...

And we did go to Rigby lake which was in much better shape this year.


Oh yeah, and we went to Jackson Hole for the day and tried to ride the free Gondolas, but they are closed to the public on Saturdays.... so dumb. But we ended up eating our picnic in the park, going to the candy shop and getting an ice cream cone. Then we went and did the Alpine Slides.

Me and Taylee starting off...

Everyone went down, including Grama and little Holland too. Love these things!

Heise Hot Springs

This particular day Lacey and I took our kids out to Heise where they have a pool and a water slide and a diving board and some hot pools too. This was the first time we went this year and Taylee was very much attatched to her floaty and didn't want anything to do with the waterslide. We tried so hard to get her to go, but no convincing worked.

I post this because we actually ended up coming here a total of 3 times this summer and each time we came Taylee got more and more brave. We came back the 2nd time with Bonnie and Aaron and we took her in the warm pool and she went under water. I mean actually dunked her entire head under the water. Now if you know Taylee this is a HUGE deal and once she did it once, she just kept doing it again and again and we laughed and cheered for her and she thought she was so brave and so cool (and so did we). Still no luck though on the waterslide. The third time we came was with Danny and Makay when they came to visit (sorry absolutely no pictures were taken on that). Anyway, her cousin Addi and her baby cousin Isaac all went down the waterslide and I kept trying to bribe her and convince her she would like it, but still she was not interested. She was definatly more comfortabl in the water and played hard. We had used up almost all of our waterslide tickets and had just enough left for all of us to go one more time. We had been watching Uncle Danny go down and Taylee was laughing at him, but still showing no signs of being interested herself. Then, funny thing, she saw a Scooby-Doo life jacket in the pools pile of loaners and she really wanted to wear that life jacket. So just with that she decided to go down the waterslide. She wasn't scared the whole walk up and wasn't scared getting in and laughed and laughed the whole way down. We got done and she said, "lets go again!" But of course those were our very last tickets. What a funny, stubborn little girl.

And then there is Conner who isn't afraid of anything. Here he is about to jump off the diving board. Fun, fun times!

Kyaking

So I have to apologize because we had lots of visitors this summer and did lots of fun things with all of them, but for some reason I was just a slacker on getting pictures of it. I know my parents came to visit and Bonnie stayed with us an entire week and this was only event that got documented.

Aaron and I have been up to Island Park many times to float the river and usually get a big nice cushy raft and just relax and float down the river. Well, we tried to do that with Bonnie, but they were out of rafts that day so for some crazy reason we decided to try the kayaks.

Taylee started out with Aaron in his kayak, but these weren't the best quality kayaks and with Taylee and Aaron in one, it almost tipped over every time he tried to paddle. Which of course made Taylee flip out. She was not enjoying herself which of course made Aaron frustrated and at first I was sure this was a miserable mistake. This was my first time in any kind of kayak and it took me a bit to get comfortable, but as soon as I did I took Taylee with me and things got a whole lot better for all of us.

Bonnie was just having an easy time probably laughing at us trying to make these dumb kayaks work and just about falling in so many times... She was nice enough to carry our snacks though!

All done and feeling better.

Notice we are dry, luckily no tips!

We had a good time, but I am sticking with the raft next time.

4th of July!

We had another great 4th! It really is probably my 2nd favorite holiday. We started the day as usual, getting up early and setting up our spot on Main Street to watch the parade.

Waiting in the super cold weather for it to start...

Blankets and sweatshirts on the 4th? What is this? So not right to be freezing in July.

My sisters were with us of course, but we even got Nate, Chelsea and Broden to come with us. Too bad it was the worst Rexburg parade we've EVER had... too much lame advertising, not very much music and fun.

As long as they throw candy, the kids are happy. For some reason this year everyone decided to stand the entire time and we couldn't see unless we were standing too so, so much for all our hard work setting up... Oh well!

Lacey, Brynlee and Brad

See what I mean the kids are practically in the middle of the street! Funny....

Nate brought donuts!

We still had fun cause hey, its tradition!

That afternoon we had a BBQ down at the pond with Brad and Lacey, Tiff and a bunch of Brad's fam. Then we headed to I.F. for the best part of the day. Dinner and Fireworks!

You can just sit and watch the fireworks from the tables, but we like to be comfy. Just waiting for it to start...

Nothing better then watching fireworks snuggeled up with Aaron.

We brought Dawn along, she has lived in Rexburg forever and had never been to the best firework show "this side of the Mississippi"!

So one of the great things about living in Rexburg is that even when the 4th is on a Sunday we still get to do all the fun stuff cause it gets moved to Saturday. Unfortunatly Bonnie couldn't get there in time for the fun on Saturday so we did some fireworks to celebrate the real 4th of July.

Taylee ran like crazy every time she got some sparklers... so grateful she didn't catch on fire!

What do we got left?

Like I said, another great 4th of July!