Sunday Shenanigans 08/19/12

We had a pretty busy week.  Lots of fun things to do and lots of yard work. Daddy recruited all of us to help paint the shed.  But we made more work for him.  And the girls were covered in red paint after three nights of "helping".

They did clean up eventually and left a mess of red paint chips behind in the bathtub.  Lily especially enjoyed painting with Daddy.  She was so proud of the work she did.

Our church Relief Society put on a fancy dress tea party for the mothers and their daughters.  The girls loved every minute of the party.  There were lots of delightful finger foods, dress up stations, nail painting stations, and friends to play with everywhere.

I had so much fun with my little princesses.  Unfortunately the magic wore off around 8:00 p.m. and Annie turned into a pumpkin right on the front porch.  She was so grumpy and had a total meltdown between the car and the front door.  I guess she partied too hard.

The next day we went to the county fair to see the animals and play with our friend Sarah.  The chicks and bunnies were the girls favorite.  Annie liked the pigs, but they were too stinky for Lily.  Lily liked the horses, but they were too big for Annie.  The sheep were a happy compromise.

After the fair we went to the park and played.  It was fun to visit a new park.  We will go back again soon.  We enjoyed a picnic lunch and then both girls fell asleep in the car on the way home.  Mommy confession: after putting them to bed for a nap, I passed out on the couch.  Shhhh!

I had some big boxes laying around after a run to Sam's Club.  The girls convinced Daddy to give them rides in the boxes.  I think their smiles say it all.  Playing with Daddy on a Saturday morning is so much fun!

Our 13th wedding anniversary will be on August 21st.  To celebrate, we took a day trip to West Yellowstone for dinner and a show at the Playmill Theatre.  We saw "The Drowsy Chaperone" and had a great dinner.  We also shared a double chocolate orange ice cream....yum!  Happy Anniversary to us.  We feel so blessed to be together and still feel so in love.  What a happy week in our family!

Route of the Hiawatha

We rode the "Route of the Hiawatha" with Papa and Brady on August 4th.  It is a beautiful trail, very easy for novice riders to handle.  The girls loved being in their trailer and going through the many tunnels that are on the trail.

The longest tunnel is just over a mile and a half.  It gets pretty cold and dark in there.  It felt good to emerge and see sunshine again.

There are so many cool historical signs to stop and read.  Unfortunately, we were confused about the time and thought we needed to hurry to the bottom so we'd have time to eat lunch and turn around for the ride back up.  Once we stopped for lunch we realized we had plenty of riding time left in the day.  So we relaxed and enjoyed feeding the chipmunks.

Mommy and the girls were tired after lunch.  There was no way we'd succeed at a 15 mile uphill ride.  So we hopped on the "shuttle", really a big school bus with some seats taken out to store the bikes.  Lily and Annie wanted to sing "The Wheels on the Bus" for the whole 9 mile drive.  Thankfully all the other riders thought it was adorable.

The guys all braved the ride back up.  Papa's derailer broke off so they had to stop for about 45 minutes to make repairs.  They were able to get it working again but Papa still needs to do more work on his bike.

The shuttle dropped Mommy and the girls off 2 miles shy of the end.  We enjoyed a short ride and lots of play time at a beautiful stream and waterfall.

And we were waiting for Daddy, Papa, and Uncle Brady when they finished.  It was a beautiful day.  We will do this ride again someday.  Thanks for coming with us Papa and Brady!

Hall Family Reunion 2012

We got to spend three days with this crazy bunch last week.  Lily had a blast playing with her cousins.  She grew up right before our eyes trying to keep up with the big girls.  The cousins got along better at this reunion than they ever have. 

 Lily, Annie, and their "ginger" cousins.  What adorable redheads we have in this family. 

 Our view of heaven - right off the back porch of the cabin.

We did some shooting and gun safety.  Lily liked the ear protection and the bigger guns.

Jeremy organized a family 5k race.  Here are the few who were brave enough to run it. My brother-in-law Jared won this year.  My sister-in-law and I somehow missed a turn off and ended up running a shorter race than everyone else.  The sad thing is, we still got lapped by almost everyone.

Jeremy had fun waterskiing and riding jet skis.

Lily and Annie swam until they cried from exhaustion.  Then we took a nap and swam some more.  Lather, rinse, repeat over three days.

 Lily liked riding in the paddle boat.  She especially liked being driven to the floating dock and climbing out to play with her cousins.  They danced and played games out there all day long.

Annie was a fearless swimmer.  She charged right into the water every chance she got.  She like swimming with and without a life jacket.  The water was so warm.  Mommy was happy to swim too.

And here we are looking a little more well behaved.  It was so great to be together.  We really missed our youngest brother Josh and his family.  Hopefully next year we can get everyone together.  We played, hiked, watched Olympics, swam, ate.....it was a packed couple of days.  Thanks Mom and Dad for the beautiful cabin and wonderful family!  We are so blessed to be Halls.