My Favorite

This is my new favorite picture and completely explained my weekend in Grand Junction. This was Willa's first time being away from her daddy and she wasn't particurally happy about it. This is the position Willa took most of the weekend. She is aparently now a daddy AND grand-daddy's girl! I guess I can try when she likes make- up!

Lions and Tigers and ....Dinosaurs, WHAT?!

While in Grand Junction I decided to take the girls to the Dinosuar Museum in Fruita which is about 5 miles from Grand Junction. I told my dad and grandma and thought that they would like to come too. Soooo we all piled into the cars and made our way down the interstate to Fruita! Hazel was very excited but Willa slept. She didn't car all that much about dinosaurs. It was a pretty cool exibit! If you asked Hazel about the museum she would tell you that she hurt her knee and it bled on the floor. This happened but it wasn't as dramatic as she recalls! Here are some pictures!

You can't pass up a ride on a long neck! Haha, bad joke!

My girls with the stegasaurus. The dino's moved when you pushed the button. Hazel wasn't to crazy about this feature but she got used to it.

This is where Hazel decided to fall off of the step to the dig box and bust her knee. (Again, not as bad as she would tell you!)

Here Tricia and Hazel are digging up real dino bones. They made a huge sand box and buried gigantic bones in to be dug up. It was pretty cool, expecially the fact that they got to dig for REAL bones.

Here we are waiting for the spitting dinosaur to spit on us, yeah!!!!

She decided to wake up just in time to get back in the car! Yeah me!

Here is our "Dino Group" and we are on our way to screaming children in the car!! Again, Yeah Me!!!!

Another Hotel pool!

As most of you may know, Hazel's favorite thing about leaving town is getting to swim in the hotel pool! We went to Grand Junction for my Cousin, Andrea's, wedding. Tim couldn't get out of work so my sister flew into Casper to drive with me and the girls. After an eight hour drive all Hazel could talk about was the flippin pool! Willa got to go swimming for the first time! At first she didn't really know what to think (the water was sort of cold). She got used to it pretty quick and loved it. She was in the pool for about an hour and a half and she slept like an angel! It was a great time!

Here is Tricia and Dad with Willa.

Grandpa and Willa lovin' the water!

Shake your booty!

Here is Hazel at the parade shaking her booty at the parade. This is aparently her new dance! She is a pro! There was a reporter from K2 filming her but I never saw it on the news. To bad- it was pretty cute!

Up, Up and Away

Here she is flying through the air! What an adrenaline Junky!

Oh, the rides!

This year Hazel was tall enough to ride a lot of the kiddo rides at the fair. She was excited to get to ride. We started with the boats and that seemed to be pretty uneventful. She wanted to try the planes and I thought that that she would be scared since they go up and down. I was wrong! First of all, the kiddo gets to pull a lever that makes the plane go up and down so she got to decide if it went up and down. Second, she ABSOLUTELY loved it. She would pull the lever and hold it up so that she would go circles in the air. She would look down at us when she went over us and scream with excitement! It was great fun. I can't remember laughing that hard in a long time! Aunt Sommer went on the roller coaster with Hazel and I was wrong again. I thought that she would be scared but she did the whole ride with her hands in the air! What a crazy girl!!!

Yay!! It's Parade Day!!!

Well the all-special day of the parade has arrived! Mercer House closes during the parade so I packed up all the junk, went to the gas station for goodies and made the insane sprint for a seat on the sunny street. This year I planned on sitting at the very beginning of the parade. This was a good thing and yet a bad thing too! It was good that we were done by 11:30 and I could get the girls to Jane's house before having to open up at Mercer House at 1:00. The bad part was that the beginning of the parade always gets doused with candy and Hazel acquired more candy in that hour and a half than she has collected in three years of Halloweens!!!! It has been a fight ever since. She wants candy breakfast, lunch and dinner (and every time in between)!!! Of course, she doesn't like it when she hears no.
Anyway- the parade was a hit. We found a place on a corner where I could hide the stroller behind a light pole and block the majority of sun for Willa. Hazel and I lubed up on sunscreen and sat it out. A couple of ladies with a four year old sat down beside us and the two girls had a great time picking up candy. Some of the floats handed out some great stuff too! We both ended up with Popsicles AND hotdogs! Plus they were handing out free water. It was a good time and a good crowd. Here is Hazel and her prized bag of candy! It is not even a quarter full at this point! Arg!!! She ended up filling up this entire bag and the tray on Willa's Stroller! She was very proud!

Willa had her first popsicle at the parade and she liked it! She was pretty funny trying to gum it. She drooled a lot but when does she not?!

She is a very happy girl! Their is a very big grin under that darn plug!

We had a great time. I know that we will be looking forward to the parade again next year!

My Fam-Damily

For the first time in almost 4 years I got to see my cousin, Amber, and her kiddos, Destiny and Haley! Andrea, her sister, was there too and we got to spend the evening together and let our kids get to know each other. The last time I saw them I was in the hospital in labor with Hazel. It is so strange to be together and have our own kids now. I remember being in Jr. High and having Amber and Andria come stay with us for a while during the summer. We had so much fun! It feels like forever ago! Now our kids are having all the fun and they seem pretty good at it! Hazel and Haley are almost exactly 6 months apart and they are now best friends for life! They were unsepartable the whole evening! They had to eat the same thing at dinner and walked around holding hands. I just know that they are going to have a blast in Grand Junction this weekend! This is my cousin, Amber, and the two best friends. Aren't they cute?!

Here are all the girls (minus Patricia) at dinner with GG. She wanted to have her picture taken with all of her great-granddaughters and we thought that we would throw ourselves in the picture too! We missed you Patricia but we will have LOTS of Photo-ops this weekend!

Here are the girls at my house before dinner. We had a great time! Destiny just loved Willa to death. She played and held her most of the day! Destiny OBVIOUSLY needs another baby sister! (Note: check out Destiny holding Willa's head so that she will look at the camera!! Hahaha Priceless!)

Hazel and Wyatt with Bottle Rockets

Hazel and Wyatt did this for atleast a solid 20 minutes. After every bottle rocket they did a happy dance and it was quiet humorous! We had a good time and I think that the kids had a GREAT time!

BBQ's and Sparklers!

Since Tim and I were in Deadwood on Tom's Birthday and they were leaving for Mexico that week they pushed his birthday celebration back to the 4th of July. It was a large group and there was lots of good food! Since it was the 4th of July we had to drag out all of the fireworks from last year and Hazel and Wyatt got to practice their sparkler skills. Wyatt is Tom and Sommers neighbors kiddo. He is 2 and half and he actually liked it when Hazel bossed him around. I was in shock! Anyway, Wyatt had never had sparklers before and I think that we had more fun watching the kiddos that they did actually playing with them. Hazel was pretty practiced so whe wasn't as much fun to watch. (Not to mention that she is a dare-devil and not afraid of anything!) Wyatt on the other hand was not to keen on holding fire. He kept forgetting that it was in his hand and trying to set his mom, missy, on fire. It was soooo funny.

We also had poppers and Wyatt caught on to that art pretty quickly. Hazel was helping him throw just right so that they would pop every time. Again, the boss! During all of this mayhem, Willa slept through her first 4th of July. She wasn't all that interested and couldn't really care less about annoying things that made a bunch of racket.

Happy Birthday Tom and I hope that it was a good one. You definitly kicked my behind at Ladderball!

Photograpy By Hazel

I think that Hazel may aspire to be a photgrapher like her Aunt Sommer. She loves to steal my camera or Jane's camera and take as many pictures as possible. My dad was in town a couple weekends ago and she caught him with his morning cup of "joe". I thought that this was definitly a picture to share. I might have to frame it! Thanks for being a good sport dad!

A very curious baby

Willa can be very serious. She is interested in every one and likes to watch what everyone is doing. You can look at her and see the wheels turning in there! Here is a little video of her the other night before bed!

Willa and Hazel in the Tub

Willa is getting big enough to keep herself up in the tub. So I started putting the baby tub in the big tub with Hazel. Willa thinks that it is hilarious and Hazel just wants to wash her up. It was pretty funny. After Willa was laughing and kicking hystarically I thought I should be video taping it. This is what I ended up with.

Family Fun in South Dakota!

Everyone loves a family trip to Mount Rushmore! I must speak the truth because their were thousands of people there last week! My mom's family was having a get-together in Deadwood South Dakota and my Aunt and Uncle really wanted to see Mount Rushmore and Bear Country. Sooooo...turns out, Deadwood isn't the greatest place for a three year old and infant. I know who'da thunk it? Sowe piled in the car and made the beautiful jaunt down the highway into Keystone. It was a beautiful day. There were a ton of people at Mount Rushmore. We saw the sights and went through the museum. And no trip is complete with out the honorary t-shirt!

During our trip to Mount Rushmore I FINALLY caught Willa's first smile on camera!!! Here it is, she is beautiful!This was Hazel and Willa's first time to Mount Rushmore. I think that they enjoyed it. (To bad if they didn't) HahaAfter finishing up our rounds in the gift shop we went down into Keystone and ate some lunch at one of my favorite places. The saloon in Kestone is amazing and I would recomend it to everyone! It is a definite stop!

We made it down into Bear Country. I have been told that this is very cool and my uncle really wanted to see it. I, on the other hand, was skeptical. Even more so when I found out they charged $15 a head! We piled into one car (so we could all enjoy Hazel shreiking) and started on our way. It was actually really cool. We saw huge Elk, even huger (yeah, not a word) Reindeer, Wolves, and lots and lots and LOTS of bears! When you are done driving through you stop at a miniature zoo and get to see all the babies. That was a surprize and really made the trip. The baby bears were soooooooo cute! It was a ton of fun!

All of the babies were climbing in this tree. They were growling at each other and trying wrestle each other out of the tree. Sooooo Cute!

The girls were great. It was a long day with no naps. Hazel was very happy to play with her aunt, uncle and grandma all day! Willa liked to people watch, she is very curious like her sister.

Willa was laughing at her dad and she was making us all laugh! She is going to be a total ham!
Thanks so much Aunt Georgia and Uncle Jim for a great day!