Fairy Princess

I got these pictures on Sunday afternoon. I didn't think fairy princesses were real, but I think I caught the evidence. Call the Weekly World News... I promise that these photos have not been altered!

You'll notice she's not looking at the camera... this breed of fairy princess you have to catch on memory card unawares... if she sees you trying to take a picture she immediately charges the camera and demands to "see pictures." =)

My daughter is 2...

...which, apparently means the beginning of whining, full-blown kicking and crying on the floor temper tantrums, more need for time-outs and lots of saying "no" and "I don't like it" (which means "Thats not what I want"). Yay...

Its been a long day.

2!

My baby is 2! Happy birthday, sweet pea!

The cute castle cake I made her. It should have been double layers on everything, but I didn't want to make that much cake. =) She LOVED the princesses on her cake.

Look at that happy face!

Opening presents... she's getting good at that.

On her new bike... she loves it!

The House of the Lord

The Oquirrh Mountain Temple in West Jordan is in open house right now. This is the second open house in Utah in 6 months. Brian and I skipped the Draper open house, and we're glad we did. It was busy all the time from what we heard. We did decide that we couldn't pass up the opprotunity to take the kids to the Oquirrh Mountain open house.

I'm so glad we picked this open house. The temple is beautiful, and while it was busy, it wasn't too crazy to be difficult with the kids in tow. We thouroughly enjoyed our morning there.

By the way, the sun was bright and we were facing it, and it was windy... it was really tough to get a half-decent picture of the 4 of us there.

Hike up Timpanogos

Brian and I have been talking about hiking up to the Timpanogos Caves since we got married. This past weekend we finally did it! We all had lots of fun. Allison did really well... I'd say she walked at least a quarter of the way (a 1.5 mile uphill hike) by herself... she got to ride the rest of the time on daddy's shoulders (and all the way down... we didn't want her running down the trail). And she LOVED being outside and touching, picking up and throwing the rocks

She was so excited to go hiking too... while we were touring the caves she kept asking to go back outside and "go hike!" It was pretty difficult to keep her from touching inside the cave, and she REALLY didn't like it when they turned out the lights and showed us what zero light looks like... it took quite a while to get her calmed down after that.

Carter enjoyed the hike too... he took the luxury mommy carriage both up and down. =) Here's a picture of all four of us. We all had fun, but boy were we wiped out afterwards!

Provo's Freedom Ballon Festival

Brian and I have lived in Provo for 5 solid years. Apparently Provo's Freedom Festival is one of the biggest, best 4th of July festivals in the country... who knew?!? And in 5 solid years we have never willing gone to participate in any of the activities. We did see the parts of the parade our first two years, but we don't count those as willing participation... we lived on the parade route. It was much more like being a, literally, captive audience as it was incredibly difficult to get out of the driveway during the parade when you're on the parade route.

Anyway... every year they hold a hot air ballon festival. I decided that this year we should go. It would be fun and Allison would love it!

So, thanks to Carter's bad night last night, we were all awake by 6:15, which finalized the decision to go. It was so much fun. Allison loved seeing the big balloons. She also got to meet Smokey the Bear and give him five. That was pretty much all she could talk about the rest of the day.

I'm so glad we went. It was a tons of fun, turned a bad start to a day into a good one and we even managed to get this half-decent family photo of all four of us (thanks, Emily!).