Happy Birthday Jennifer

Nate's cousin (and mine!) had a birthday on July 2nd. Happy birthday Jennifer! We love you!!! She invited us to her birthday party and it was a lot of fun. Jennifer is so great. Nate and I just love her. We have grown really close to her and her sister Kayla and they actually want to get together with us which is cool since they are both single and we are old, married and have a kid. Of course they adore Max (and what's not to adore), and most of our time together is spent watching "the Max Show". I just want to say to Jennifer, Happy Birthday! We really love hanging out with you guys, thanks for letting us tag along!
Sitting around talking.
Kayla "flying" Max, He LOVED it!
Snuggling with Aunt Darla, good times.

Sweet Outfit

I bet you can't guess who insisted on his outfit. It was one of those times when it is just better to go with it then fight about it, so he wore this all day. When you add his Spider man sunglasses to the mix it is a pretty rockin' ensemble.

Hiking Adams Canyon

The other day I gave Max the option of going swimming or hiking and he chose hiking. So we packed up and drove to Adams Canyon, a great little hike not to far from our house. On the way there, Max kept telling me how excited he was. The conversation went something like this;

Max: "I'm so excited to go hiking mom! Are you excited to go hiking mom?"

Mom: "I am excited to go hiking Max! I love hiking! Do you love hiking?"

Max: "I love (nub) hiking mom!"

He was giggling and dancing in his seat. Of course when we actually started hiking he wasn't to interested. We had only walked about 100 yeards when he started asking me for the elevator "alligator". I tried to explain to him that there are no elevators on the mountain. He had it in his head that he was getting a ride up and he is one stubborn boy, so of course I ended up carrying him.
The trail starts off with maybe 1/2 mile of switchbacks. They are west facing so its hot and sandy and hot. Once we got to the top of the switchbacks Max wanted to walk so we hiked and hiked. He was a champ. We made it about half way up the trail and he loved it. He just held my hand and walked, climbed, jumped and ran. We had a great time! We played in the river, looked for deer, saw lizards and hornets, spiders and ladybugs. It was a great hike!
I love this picture
Playing on this rock
Cute
Relaxing
Snack Time
Mom and Max

The Dark Ages

So, I don't know if you've noticed but I haven't really posted anything since the end of April. I think that was a while ago. I swear I have a good reason. May was really busy. June was ridiculous, let me just say that Nate spent a total of 4 nights at our house in June. July was the recovery from June and then my computer died. And I mean dead, it wouldn't turn on. I figured that wasn't going to be an easy fix. I put off taking it in for a while because I didn't want to know how bad it was. It was bad. Apparently there is a reason for those power strips. My computer had a power surge and fried the whole thing, the power source, the motherboard and the hard drive. I basically had to get a whole new computer. Which is fine because it was under warranty until the end of August. That was really close. Its not fine because I, like an idiot, didn't back up any of my pictures. They are all on the fried hard drive. Fortunately the guy that fixed the computer thinks the data is recoverable, unfortunately it is going to cost a lot of money. So the moral of the story is A): back up all of your important information. B): Put your computer and other essential electronic devices on a power strip. I've definitely learned my lesson.

Anyway, I'm back from the dark ages of no computer and hopefully soon I will have some pictures to post. :) Luckily, I had never taken the time to delete pictures off my camera so I still have all of the pictures from the first of June until now ( roughly 1000 pics) on my camera.

Happy 27th Birthday

So it was my birthday on Saturday April 25th. I share my birthday with one of my best friends that I have known since I was 13, April. We decided to go away for a girls weekend with some girls we grew up with. My parents have a condo in St. George they let us use. Thanks so much Mom and Dad!

So we left friday afternoon. Four of us live pretty close to each other (April, Brittany, Alyson and me)so we all drove down together. Katie lives in St. George so she just came over. Rachel lives in L.A., she flew to Vegas and rented a car. Thanks everyone for making time in your busy schedules for some fun girl time. We had a blast. We went to dinner, went shopping, stayed up all night (really until 5 am) talking and laughing. Saturday we woke up and some of us exercised while Aly made breakfast for us. Thanks Aly, it was delicious. Then we all went to see Grafton Ghost Town about 40 minutes outside of St. George. Apparently it was where some of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed. It was really pretty. We had a good time. After that we stopped at a little souvenir shop on the way home and looked around for a while. We stopped on our way into St. George and did a little shopping at the outlet mall. Then it was time for dinner. We went to Benja Thai and Sushi. It was delicious. We all enjoyed it thoroughly, even Britt who didn't like Sushi until then. She had just never had good sushi. They even brought us out a birthday dessert of sticky rice with fresh mango's and a sweet sauce over the top. It was really yummy. Then of course it was back to the condo to play games, talk, laugh and stay up all night (only until 3am). We drove home sunday. It was a blast. Thanks for a great Birthday weekend getaway girls. Thanks for the many years of friendship and here's to many more!

While the weekend was great, I was also very excited to come home. Nate had been in Chicago the week before. He came home friday at 11:30am and I left around 1pm. So we didn't get a whole lot of time together. I got home sunday around 5:30pm and he left for Chicago again monday morning at 9:30am. That was really hard. I felt bad just sitting on the couch crying as he walked out the door but it was all I could do. So he is home now and he doesn't have to leave again until June so HOORAY! He is so great for letting me get a way for the weekend, even when it cut into our time together. It was a much needed break. Thank you so much Nate. I love you!
All of us Girls
Lounging on the couch bed after a long day of travel
Aly, April and baby boy
Katie and Rachel haven't seen each other in 5 years
Friends
Grafton Ghost town church
reading the sign
this lady was born and died on the same day, it also happens to be Katie's birthday
he and his wife were killed by Indians
random tractor
Its a good thing these two didn't live back then
Walking
April sat on a cactus, YIKES!
She met a new guy while we were there
He was hitting on us too
Watching a movie
Eating popcorn
Trying to ride in a car that is WAY to small. After I got in I discovered it was broken. I was pretty disappointed.
This guy got a lot of action from us, a kiss from April
a nose pick from Britt
All of us after dinner, it was really delicious! And it converted Britt to Sushi, yeah!