Beach Bums :)

For the 4th of July this year we took a last-minute trip down to Panama City, FL to have a nice, relaxing family vacation on the beach! We literally were bums all weekend - it was great! We totally slept in every day, then lounged on the beach and at the pool and that was it!!! It was great to have a trip with no agenda! Panama City is a beautiful beach, and we are very blessed to be able to visit there!!! I know I have posted pics of this place before, so here are just a few this time:

Araleigh had the right idea :) She took "relaxing at the pool" to a new level!

The boys had a great time jumping over and into the big waves. There was a lot of seaweed, which is why the water looks green. We all came out covered in green slime :)

Araleigh loves the sand. She never fails to get it absolutely everywhere! I am still washing it out of her hair...

The morning we left there was a storm moving in, which just looks awesome!!

Traeden is 9!!!

My baby is 9. Whoa. I really can't believe I am old enough to have a 9 yr old. Well technically I'm not old enough :) But still, that's an old kid! Traeden had the option to have a party this year, but he kept insisting that all he wanted to do was Delta (the happiest place on earth) and the "alpine slide", both in Utah. Well, wish granted, to Utah we went! We allowed Trae to open his gifts a day early, because we weren't going to bring them all with us, the lucky guy! He also received a set of golf clubs (Dave's heart continues to leap for joy) along with a new basketball and even, thanks to Jax, a Bakugan!!

We miraculously made it to SLC despite some monsoon-like rain in Chicago (no exaggeration - the cars were basically floating down the streets!) but unfortunately my poor hubby had to sleep in Denver again due to an unexpected delay! He has the worst luck! Unfortunately there was anticipated bad weather in Utah as well, so our Delta plans went down the drain. He was pretty devastated, but a good sport, and still had a fun day, getting plenty spoiled by his aunts and uncles and attending "Up". Thanks Grandpa :)

I still made his cake to look like the water trampoline we have at Delta...sort of :)

He then had an extended bday on Sunday with the Smiths, which resulted in more spoiling and even another cake!

We went to Lagoon with Jeff and Liz on Monday, which was a lot of fun! Jax proved to be the adventurous one that day, riding by far the most thrill rides - over and over! I think Trae was a little tired, because he was a little difficult and didn't want to ride anything non-kiddie. I was not very happy about that. But we still had fun!

Araleigh loved the train the most - it has animals so of course it was her favorite!

She also loved having Traeden "drive" her around in the little cars.

She didn't want to do the swings at first, but after a minute she loved them!!!

But at least we were able to grant one birthday wish, the alpine slide in Park City! Trae loves this thing, ever since we took him on it when he was 4! For 2 years after that all he talked about was how he couldn't wait until he was 6 so he could drive it by himself and race us! It was so fun being up there with him! The first time, Jax and I went together and he went by himself, the second time, we had to race! We were having a blast until he got stuck behind an EXTREMELY SLOW kid about halfway down the track!!! He was pretty mad, and still claims he would have beat me if it wasn't for that kid!

He then got to climb the climbing wall, which he is very good at!

Jax and Araleigh had fun on the little train!

Then we were off for lunch and swimming at the fabulous Tuhaye!! We had an amazing meal with a fabulous view! The food was great, and we were out on the patio by the pool! It was such a beautiful day!

My little princess enjoyed a dainty lunch...

Then time for the beautiful pool! The scenery was absolutely perfect!

Thank you, Liz for the perfect day!!! What a fun time!

Happy birthday, Traeden!!!

The end of an era...the end of bad weather!!!

Baseball season has finally come to an end, at least in the little league world!!! Youth baseball is its own religion out here, and with 2 boys in at the same time, our lives became pretty consumed! We had practice or a game nearly every day! It was a lot of fun watching the boys play and have fun making new friends. They both improved a lot over the course of the season, as well!

On another note, it seems summer has FINALLY arrived in Chicago, which meant time to break out the slip n slide!!! I had to post some of my favorite pics!

This one is just plain awesome :) Trae is the master slip n slider!!

Jax preferred the body board approach

And Araleigh would pretty much just splash in the pool in between the boys' turns! Yay for summer!!!!

Jaxon is 7!!!!!

I can't believe our Jax is 7!!! That's so huge! For his birthday this year we let him have a party with a few friends from school. He originally chose a laser tag party, but after he had been to 7 laser tag parties (apparently it's the cool thing to do when you turn 7 out here) he decided he wanted to do something different so we did a bowling party instead!!

He of course chose a bowling alley cake, which I think turned out pretty well, considering I had originally planned to do a bowling ball and switched at the last minute!

The party! Traeden had his last regular-season baseball game that day, so Dave was with him, and I was left alone with 6 seven-year-olds!!! It was a little overwhelming, but they had a lot of fun! It was cute to watch them cheer each other on and laugh at the funny cartoons on the screen after each play.

It amazed me how, even though we had the bumpers up, we still managed to lose our balls into the next lanes several times. The boys are pros at bumper-jumping :) It was a good thing we pretty much had the place to ourselves, because we really put the employees to work!!!

Those who know Jaxon well know that when he is "into" something, he is really into it!!! He gets very passionate about it and wants nothing but said thing! Well this year's "thing" is Bakugan - similar to Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh, it is a card game but it actually comes with little action figures that start out as a ball, and then pop open when placed on metal. Before his birthday, he had one, which he bought with his own money. Well apparently when his friends asked what he wanted for his birthday, he told all of them the same thing. He now has 21. He is so excited. :)

His other big gift this year was his very own golf clubs!!!

Not sure who's more excited, Jax or Dave, who has been wanting to teach his boys to play for years!!! He can hardly wait to get out on the course with them! His birthday was super busy, he had a baseball game in the morning, then karate testing, where he earned 2 stripes!!! We then went out to dinner at our favorite breakfast restaurant, Walker Bro's for an awesome breakfast-for-dinner!

Happy birthday, Jaxon!!

Zoo Day

This is kind of a random post, but I wanted to get these pics on here before I move on to bigger events :) I am very lucky to hve some great friends here in Chicago, and we all have memberships to different places so we all get each other in for free! It's a nice system! So this was a trip to the Brookfield Zoo with my friends Sarah and Amber and our cute kids (just the little ones, big ones were still in school) It's a really nice zoo and we really had a great time! Araleigh loves animals more than any kid I have ever seen, it is so fun to watch her get so excited!!! She is all smiles and squeals of joy all day!

This huge dinosaur roars and moves his tail and spits water! It is very life-like! There is actually an entire dinosaur exhibit with more Jurassic Park - like dinosaurs which is really cool. Araleigh is a little freaked out by it, though!

The giraffe exhibit was really neat, the giraffes could get so close to us! This one came right up to Araleigh, she was so excited!!!

This was some kind of monkey, I can't remember what kind. One of the big ones, but not a gorilla. The kids thought it was so hilarious when he decided to relieve his bladder right in front of us, he seemed to enjoy the laughs he got. I think he was showing off a little :)

We ended our day with a little play time at the park, climbing on fun animal statues and posing for pictures. What a fun day!!!

We are runners!!!

I have never been a "runner". I have hated running my whole life! In school when we had to run a mile, I ran in exactly enough time to pass and not have to do it over and that's it! So the decision to train and run a 5k was pretty huge for me :) But I did! I ran an entire 5k without walking any of it! I know most of you who read this will be like, yeah, big deal, I run marathons all the time. Well for me this was a big accomplishment!!! Yes, I was super slow, but in part because I was recovering from food poisoning 2 days before the race...ok who am I kidding, I'm just slow without an excuse :) But I have to say, I actually like to run now! It's actually kind of fun! I know I'll never be insane enough to run a marathon, but this 5k thing is pretty good :) So of course, Dave joined me and trained for a week, if you can even call running twice "training" and he kicked my trash with master blisters on his feet! The boys ran the kid's mile, Traeden did awesome, and Jax did pretty good even though he wasn't feeling great that morning! This is going to be an ongoing thing for our family, we go running together every Saturday now! Such a fun way to have something we can all do as a family to keep us healthy!

We've been really busy!!!

So... where to begin! I have been really busy lately, hence the lack of postings for what, 8 weeks??? Well, in May we were extremely excited to welcome a new member of our family - no, not a baby, Jeff got married to an awesome girl who I am super excited to officially call my "sister"! Yay Jeff and Liz!! So I totally stole this pic off of their blog, sorry guys :), but I think it's really cute!



Their wedding was a great event, it was a beautiful day and we had a great time! It was fun to spend time with the family, even if it was only 2 days :) It was also a nice to get to know Liz's family, they are great and a lot of fun!



Here's all of us except the happy couple who were off getting their own pictures taken. I stole this one from Kelsi. Sorry. I didn't have a camera with me! Now that I think of it, I didn't take a single picture in this post. They are all taken off of other's blogs or facebook pages...

Memorial Day:

For Memorial day, we started off going for a family run, training for a 5k, which was a lot of fun! The boys really enjoy it and it's a thing we plan to keep up this summer! Then we went to a church picnic where we played 16 in softball!!! We had a great time, and it was fun to play a game with the adults and older kids! We then had a few families over to our place for a BBQ, but of course that is when it started to pour, so we had to pull it inside! I think we had about 22 people in our house - pretty cozy! But it worked out, and the kids all had a fun time!


Araleigh and her best little buddy, Claire! Such cute girls!



We then went up to our favorite little ice cream place, the Dairy Bar, for dessert:)



I think the kids were pretty excited that the rain had stopped and they could be outside! They played some weird, made-up game in the parking lot, and had a lot of fun!



Our group! (Except for Sarah, who took the picture, actually all the pictures!)

The Aquarium:

Thanks to an early birthday present for all the kids from grandma, we are members of the Shedd Aquarium in downtown Chicago. We LOVE the aquarium! I couldn't wait to take Araleigh and some friends to see it!

This is a little play area where the kids can touch fake sea life. Araleigh didn't want to touch this fake anemone...



Araleigh loved this little spotted turtle, she had to keep going back to see it!



Araleigh and Brady playing with the penguins. This is a new exhibit that is so cute - the kids can put on a penguin costume and slide down the "ice". Of course, Araleigh didn't want to do that, she just wanted to play with the puppets. The babies hatched out of little eggs, which was quite exciting!