Playing Catch Up

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The 4th of July is one of my top three favorite holidays! This year we celebrated our Independence Day with a family get together at Kim and Jerrod's house. Also, that morning we celebrated my cousin Jennie's new little baby, Leila, by attending her baby blessing. We were joking that everyone was celebrating her blessing day by having fireworks. We are silly. But then later that afternoon we headed out to Tooele to party with the Phillips family!Steven, Mama P., Dave, Jennifer, Jerrod

just us
Alli and Grandma are too cool in their sunglasses. Looking good girls!

Aren't my sister-in-laws so pretty? I think so.

Kimmie, Jennifer, Jenn

Alli loves to wrestle with this giant stuffed bear. She usually wins even though the bear is bigger than she is!

And she loves to play with Jenn and Steve's dog Mindy. All day long she was walking Mindy around on her leash and giving her kisses.

The girls spent a lot of the day playing at the park and elementary school across the street.

Allison loves to swing! She is such a happy little girl!

More swinging...

Love her!!!

This was the only picture we had of us together. Blurry and not flattering at all but we need it in for the family blog book so oh well...you all get to see it too.

The night ended with smores in the backyard. We could see some great big fireworks that the neighbors were setting off way up into the air. We also did a few little ones of our own in the street. We had a very fun day. Thanks Kim and Jerrod for hosting!

Silver Lake

A few weeks ago (June 27, 2010) we took a lovely Sunday afternoon drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Lake. It was a seriously wonderful day. I love nothing more than spending time with my little family. As we drove Alli kept saying/asking, "mama happy" and I could honestly reply, "yes mama is very happy, are you happy Alli?" and she would say, "Alli happy" and then I would say, "is daddy happy too" and he said, "yes dada is happy"! I will remember this day for a long time. I can't describe what I was feeling that day. I felt peaceful, happy, whole, grateful, and content to name a few.

I am in love with my family!We saw this moose on our way up. That's always fun. Allison really likes the moose on Nick Jr. so it was fun to show her a real one. I was worried that she couldn't see it but I said Alli show mommy where the moose is and she pointed right to it! After that we continued up to the lake and walked around it. Lots of other families had the same idea we did. Oh well.

We walked all the way around. Allison threw lots of rocks into the water (a current favorite thing to do). We saw fish, ducks, ants, bugs and a beaver. We kept asking Alli if she could see any fish and she always said "turtles!" So lucky Alli saw lots of turtles but unfortunately Dave and I didn't see any :(
After our walk around the lake we decided to drive over Guardsman's Pass. Dave had never driven up there and it had been many many years since I went. The views were beautiful but parts of the drive were kind of scary. Like huge drop offs to the side of the car! I hadn't remembered that. But then it got better. We stopped at the top and took some pictures. Then we continued down into Deer Valley/Park City and onto home through Parley's canyon.

....this day was perfect....

Haven't laughed this hard in a long time!

A few weeks ago some of the Phillips girls had a Girls Night Out. We do this maybe once a month or so. Usually we go out to dinner or make something together, indulge in a sweet treat and try to watch a movie. Although we rarely end up watching one. We just like to talk too much, I guess. Well this GNO began like any other. Dianna, Kimmie, Jenn, and I went out to Benihana's. I had never been there before and it was yummy! We then made our way back over to mom's house. As we were going to the store for some ice cream I was informed of Kimmie's evil plan to scare the neighbor girl (Sunni) who she works with. We looked for some sort of play knife at the store but couldn't find anything. Then I saw some scissors and said what if we use one blade of these. The plan grew from there...Ninja Jenn helped tape the one half of the scissors to a broom stick. We were trying to resemble a bamboo stick with a knife on the end because someone had been stabbed while hiking close by and that was what Sunni was afraid of. Mean, we know. :)
Ninja Kimmie was the mastermind of this whole thing! The Phillips and Sunni's backyards are connected so we went back there and Kim tapped the kitchen window with the knife-stick. All these friends came running outside. We were hiding and trying not to laugh while overhearing things like, "it has to be bamboo man" and "man they must be experts"! So funny!
We snuck back inside and waited awhile until everyone went back inside. I, ninja Melanie, wrote a note sloppily with my left hand so it wouldn't look girly. We then stabbed it on the blade and planned our next move.
Don't mess with us!
We got another stick. We were going to ring the bell and leave the knife and note on the porch while at the same time knock on the back kitchen window again. Mom and I were look outs and on my signal Kim and Jenn knocked, rang, and ran! From inside we could see boys running up and down the street looking for people. We were laughing so much!
The note. Creepy... To top of the prank we blocked our number and called her house. Kimmie just breathed loudly into the phone.
Well two days later we went over to tell her it was us. Good thing Sunni has the coolest, funnest parents ever because while we thought they were out of town when we pranked, turns out they were home the whole time. With their big, cute, fun family pranks like this are normal and they are just glad their kids have fun. And Sunni was shocked that it was us! She just graduated high school and never thought three mid-twenties, married girls would do this. She thought it was hilarious and so did we!

Was this... a Flash Back to high school-yes!

Mature-no!

An incredibly fun night making memories--YES!