some randoms

We are spending the morning cleaning the house this morning after we discovered a giant spider. Yuck.  I smashed it with a jar of Aquafor and and Jonah said that I "gave Spiderman boo boos."  Yes I did.

Here are a few photos from this morning.

Harper makes this face when I try to take her picture lately.

Jonah: "I am a cow. Moo."

Harper is self-accessorize.  She is pretty much always wearing a headband and a necklace, and she always wears socks on her hands these days because of her eczema.

Well after spending the month of June on vacation, we are happy that things have quieted down around here.  We have just been trying to get caught up and unpacked and back to normal.

sweet girl 

Harper had her friend Zoey over to play

silly boy

One thing that we have been working on is improving our diet in hopes that it will help Harper's eczema. I have been reading the book Disease-Proof Your Child and we have pretty much gotten rid of processed foods and are focusing on making sure that she gets plenty of nutrients and less allergens.  So far her eczema has improved and we are all happier with what we are eating.

Utah trip

On Friday my little brother Chase got married!  He has the cutest new wife, Makay, and I am so excited to have her in our family.  We left on Tuesday, spent the night in Vegas, and made it to Salt Lake in time for family photos at Wheeler farm.

Our hotel room in Vegas overlooked the swimming pool.

 And then we at dinner at Firehouse Subs.

 We picked up some fireworks to do at my parents' house.  Jonah loved the poppers.

 Harper loved the sparklers.  They made Jonah a little nervous.

 But he warmed up to them.

 We got a couple of other loud firework-type things.  Jonah got really scared when they were going off, but as soon as it was over he would say, "More!"

On Thursday we tried to go to the Alpine Slide in Park City.  It was raining and the roller coaster was still open so Tom decided to buy day passes for him and Harper.  Non-refundable day passes.  While they were walking from the ticket counter to the coaster, it closed!  We waited around for a couple of hours but it never re-opened.  The manager was not interested in budging on the whole non-refundable thing, but luckily she called us back yesterday and changed her mind.  Instead of the coaster we spent afternoon at the Park City outlets with some friends from Provo.

Jonah waiting out the rain.

On Friday Chase and Makay got married in the Bountiful temple.  It was just beautiful.  There was such a strong feeling of family togetherness while we were in the temple and it really had a big impact on me.

Carly with Harper.

 Tom and Jonah.  It was pretty hot outside.

 Jonah upside down.

 The cousins, Hailey, Harper, Gavin, and Jonah.

 Handsome :)

 My beautiful Mom and sister Kara.

 The kids had fun dancing.

 Jonah loved the cupcakes.

 Jonah and I did some dancing.

My EXTREMELY talented and amazing friend Rachel was their photographer.  Seriously, she was so awesome.

We headed back on Saturday, had breakfast with my Dad and family on our way out, and then were able to stop by Tom's aunt and uncle in Orem.  It was a really quick trip, but the kids were so great in the car and I am so glad that my wonderful husband was willing to drive us all the way to Utah to see my little brother get married :)

A visit from my Mom

When my Mom found out that Tom was going to be away at trial for the month, she bought a ticket to come out and spend a week with us.  And then when his case settled, she came anyway.  Yay!  Here are some instagram photos from our trip because I have gotten really lazy about carrying around my camera and really addicted to instagram.

While she was here . . .

Jonah opened his birthday presents from her.  Here he is with Super Why.

 My Mom had a birthday!  Here we are with her birthday cake.

 We did A LOT of shopping.  Jonah was so tired one day that he fell asleep in the shopping cart.

 We ate lunch with Tom's aunt Judy and she got us totally addicted to this cheese, so we had to get some of our own.

 We ate Indian food.

 My Mom watched Jonah while Tom and I took Harper to see Brave (so cute!).

 We had burgers at the Counter!

 Yummy!

 I made a bag for my Mom as a birthday present.

I normally hate it when my Mom leaves because I really miss her, but this time it wasn't too bad because she left on Friday and we left for Utah on the following Tuesday for my brother's wedding.

Hawaii trip part 2 - Maui

Definitely my least favorite part of the entire trip was the plane ride from Oahu to Maui.  We were on this little plane and it was very windy.  It was a very long 25 minutes.

We found a place to stay in Lahaina that had a bedroom and a kitchen, so we were able to spend a lot of time just relaxing at the hotel.  There was a little sitting area with a pull-out couch and a TV and Harper was very happy to have her "own room."  

The hotel also had 3 really nice swimming pools.  The kids were in heaven.

And we were right on the beach.

We had some yummy tacos at this little place that was basically just a guy outside of his house cooking the meat on his grill.

The second day in Maui we decided to take a Road to Hana tour.  Our hotel was on the west side of the island and the tour took us basically around the entire island.  The eastern side of the island is actually a rain forest.

Here is Jonah in a tour van.  There were 12 people total and I don't think that the other people were super excited to see 2 little kids on the van, but the kids actually did really well.  I was a little reluctant to do the tour because it meant spending all day trapped on a van, but the tour was definitely worth it. I think it was probably everyone's favorite day in Hawaii.

 Jonah likes to hold Tom's hand.

We stopped at a stand on the side of the road and bought macadamia nut banana bread.  It was fresh out of the oven.

 We stopped at a black sand beach.

And saw a big waterfall.  We were all a little damp - it rained pretty much the entire time we were there.

 It was really crazy because one minute you were in a rain forest and all of a sudden you are in a desert.  Our tour took us the rest of the way around the island on a VERY bumpy road.

The next day we spent more time swimming and then checked out main street in Lahaina.  We had the best shaved ice ever!  The place actually makes the syrup out of real fruit and it was delicious.

 We drove around north of Lahaina a little bit and saw this pretty snorkeling cove.

 Despite a bunch of missed naps, these guys were really pretty good natured during the trip.

 Our last morning in Maui we spent some time at the aquarium.

I wish we had been able to plan our trip ahead of time so we would have been a little more organized, but the trip was really amazing.