Summer Flew By....

I can't believe summer is almost over.  This summer was probably the busiest summer we have ever had.  It was definitely fun-filled.   From swimming, to hiking, to road tripping, to four wheeling, to escaping for a kidless weekend anniversary getaway, to hanging out and being lazy with the family.  We did it all.  The highlight was definitely having my sister and her family in town from Scotland for 2 months.  

Fourth of July

We spent 4th of July weekend up in the mountains near Park City with Tyler's family.  We went fishing and crawdad trapping on Strawberry Reservoir and had a quiet weekend up at a cabin.  Fourth of July day we went to the Park City Parade and went back into Salt Lake for the evening festivities.  It was a memorable weekend.

    

Top 5 - August

Payton Millie - 4 Years 2 Months

1 - Payton loved swimming this summer and as long as she is in her floaty she has no fear.  I tried to do my own version of swim lessons with her without her floaty on and people probably thought I was torturing my child.  When she is very afraid of something there is no way to rationalize with her.  So I gave up on that very quickly.  She has made such progress this summer so I am happy with that.  Next summer we will try again.

2 - We have a dog in our neighborhood that Payton loves to take on walks.  Even since she started doing that she asks me constantly for a pet.  She found a snail in my moms garden and brought it home.  She tortured the poor thing and spent hours in the backyard playing with it.  But it was the highlight of her summer.

3 - Payton got to spend 2 months straight with her cousins from Scotland and loved every second of it.  They both love super heroes and they persuaded Payton to step outside the box of princess land.  Payton asked to be Iron Man for Halloween!  It's fun to have a little change of scenery around here.  

4 - She has making friends down to a science.  Everywhere we go she has a best friend within 5 minutes.  One day she even gave me a 10 minute explanation of how she makes friends so fast.   

5 -  Payton mastered her balance bike this summer.  She loves to take it down steep hills and is awesome at balancing.  I think she is ready for a real bike.

Cooper Seth - 16 Months

1 - He finally learned to walk last month and he couldn't be prouder.  

2 - He is seriously the biggest cheese ball.  He laughs at everything.  Even when he just sees people laughing.  He laughs right along with us even though more than half the time he doesn't know why.  

3 - He takes the word HANGER to another level.  If we don't get him a banana to eat within 10 minutes of waking up he gets MAD.

4 - He loves to hide in our kitchen cupboards and play peek-a-boo.  He also loves playing hide and go seek.  Payton will hide and Cooper will be the first person to find her.  

5 - This boy is all about sticks, rocks and dirt.  He is not afraid to get dirty.  We went camping and within minutes he was covered head to toe in dirt. 

Payton's Birthday

Payton turned 4 this summer.  We sure love this passionate, fun-loving, outgoing, nurturing, silly girl.  We are so lucky to have her in our family.

 She is very easy to please when it comes to birthdays.  Her only two requests were that she had donuts instead of cake and that she had a piñata.  This was the first year that we had a birthday party with friends and she absolutely loved it.  

After her party, Tyler and I took her to see an outdoor performance in the park of The Little Mermaid.  She loved it.  I will never forget when she asked me to stand up when Ursula was singing and tell her to stop singing about mean things.  She is so funny.

30th Birthday Trip

I have always wanted to go to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon in particular.  So for my 30th Birthday we spent a weekend in Portland and it was amazing.   

Top 3 reasons why we LOVED Portland:

1 - The food.  Usually when I go on a trip I have to stay somewhere with a kitchen because of being Celiac I don't have many eating out options.  We didn't use our kitchen once.  Seriously.  Almost every place we went had a gluten free option and I didn't get sick once from cross contamination.  In addition to all the awesome GF options, the food in general is AMAZING.  I wish I would have taken pictures of all the great food we ate.  When we first got in we went to the downtown Farmer's Market.  

  

This is a picture of Payton after trying a shot of oyster in spicy hot sauce.  This was the first and last taste she had but she is really good at trying different foods.   

2 - The people.  They are seriously so nice.  Before coming here I read a lot of blogs and even though everyone mentioned how nice the people are in their blogs you don't really believe it until you experience it. 

3 - The green.  It is so green there.  The pictures don't do it justice.  We went to these amazing Japanese gardens that are 5 minutes from downtown.  It's crazy how close this beauty is to the city. 

We also went to the famous Multnomah Falls.  Wow.  That is all I can say.  But unfortunately our phones died by the time we got to the very top.

Portland Temple

Almost every blog I read said to go to an ice cream place called Salt & Straw.  We drove by the first two days we were there and the line was wrapped around the street.  We came back on the last day and got lucky with no line.  I think it was because it was a monday morning.  It was AMAZING.  Like seriously amazing.  They had some really cool flavors.  And we tried just about every flavor. Some of my favorite were: Pear & Blue Cheese, Honey Lavender, Strawberry Balsamic with Black Pepper.  They sound weird but were so good. 

Portland we loved you and we will definitely be back.  A lot.