Carson is 7!

Best Buddies

We thought it would be awesome if Carson could celebrate his seventh birthday with his best friend and "twin" Anna Whetstone.  Luckily, their birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so we were able to leave Star Valley Friday afternoon and be in Utah for their special day.  We started the day by getting Carson's picture taken at JC Penney in West Valley.  They turned out great!  After the pictures, we walked over to Deseret Book and bought Carson a brand-new blue CTR ring to wear during this year before his baptism.  He had been wearing his cheapy one that turned his finger green for months, which proved to me that he wouldn't lose a nice one.  Boy does that shiny ring look nice on his finger!

We rushed from Deseret Book up to Bountiful, where we met the Whetstones at Pizza Pie Cafe, one of our favorite restaurants!  Carson and Anna loved feasting on their favorite pizzas and were surprised when the employees serenaded them and brought them each their very own Cookie Monster dessert.  YUMMY!!  Carson can out-eat both Dave and me (put together), so any buffet is a smart move with him around.

We got to hang out at the Whetstone's for the rest of the afternoon, just playing and visiting.  It's so good to be with dear friends!  The Coulam's came over for a bit and it felt like coming

home.  It's just that at the end of the evening we had to drive a long ways instead of walking around the corner.  

Getting ready to blow out their candles.

They blew, and blew, and blew, and blew before those candles finally went out!  It was quite comical.

My cousin Cassie was having her wedding reception in Highland that evening, so once we'd finished up the birthday festivities we changed into our nice clothes and headed south.  The reception was lots of fun.  My three cousins who are closest to me in age were all there.  I loved getting to catch up with them and just listening to them tease each other.  So many good memories!  Now we just need an all-out McClure family reunion! 

Me, Carolee, Nate, and Lowell

We stayed until the end of the reception (I was enjoying it too much to leave early) and then rushed back to Orem.  It was LATE when we got there, but we had promised Carson he could open the rest of his presents on his birthday.  So, the party began. . . again!

 

 Can't wait to open all his presents!

 This boy loves his Aunt Eliza!  And his new basketball.

One happy seven-year-old!

All in all, it was an exhausting and awesome day for everyone.  The only bad part was that Joely spent most of that night throwing up over and over and over.  All I can figure is that she got sick from licking the bottom of her shoe. (Yes, I did catch her doing that on the way back to Orem.  YUCK!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR SMART, STRONG, AMAZING CARSON BOY!

I gave Carson a birthday questionnaire, and I wanted to share.  Here are his honest answers (his spelling included)
Who is your favorite person in the whole world?  Anna
What is your favorite color?  Blue
What's your favorite television show?  Phinisa and Ferb
What's your favorite outfit?  Running Stuff
What sport do you like best?  Soccer
What song do you love?  Cars
What's your favorite cereal?  Apple Rolls
 Who is your best friend?  Anna
What do you want to be when you grow up?  Teacher
What is your favorite book?  Star Wars 
What are you really good at?  Running
Where do you wish you could go on vacation?  California
What is your best memory?  Driving a for wheeler myself
What would you buy if you had $1000?  Four Wheeler
What vegetable do you hate the most?  Esperagus
If you could have a wish, what would it be?  Infinite $$$
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?  Cotton candy
Who is your biggest hero?  Daddy
What do you like to do best with your friends?  Ride bikes
What do ou hope you'll get to do before your next birthday?  Dirt bike

Joely

Grandpa and Grandma Robinson came up to the ranch for the summer, so we decided to take dinner up and say hello.  We're so glad they're here!  While we were up there, Joely was being super cute.  I took lots of pictures and had to post them.  I just love Joely's eyes.  They're Disney-princess eyes. . . beautiful!  See for yourself:

Chubby Cheeks!

Sometimes she cracks herself up.

What a happy girl!

Cake Time!

Carson's birthday was coming and it was time to make CAKE! And, of course, the greatest part of cake is FROSTING!!  The girls were kind enough to assist me in my cake decorating efforts.

Boy, were they glad when I realized that I needed to mix my frosting again and had to get out another set of beaters, which, of course, needed to be licked!

Carson had asked for a secret agent cake, which wasn't easy for me to come up with.  After looking around on pinterest, I combined a couple of ideas and came up with this:

I wrote the words backwards so you have to read it with a mirror, kind of a code or something.  And it's supposed to be a secret agent with a magnifying glass.  I kept it simple because I needed to transport the cake to Utah, and I wanted to be able to put the lid on the pan.  I think it worked well, and Carson seemed happy!

Joely's First (Naughty) Haircut

Joely's hair is getting so long, and I just love it.  I haven't cut it at all yet, so she's still got the baby hair that's super blond and curls well when wet.  So cute!  Well, one evening Dave got home from work, walked into the kitchen (where I had been fixing dinner for the last 45 minutes or so) looked at Joely and asked if something looked funny.  Sure enough, Joely's cute little one-up ponytail had been chopped off!  One problem with our current living situation is that the kitchen and the family room are completely separate.  So when I'm fixing dinner, the kids are somewhat unsupervised.  Apparently, Joely found the office scissors up high on the desk while watching Emma do pbskids.org and decided to chop off her sweet little ponytail.  Thankfully, the cut wasn't the end of the world.  She's still got most of her beautiful hair!  But this is one more example of why we call her "the pirate!"

See that cute LONG ponytail in the front?  Yeah, it's different now.

Chop, Chop.

Joely definitely isn't too worried about it.

Since we're talking about hair, I thought I'd throw in a picture of Carson, whose hair is way too long.  It's long enough that he's asking me to wet it down and comb it in the morning so he doesn't have horns.  And that's saying something!

And we might as well add one of cute Emma too.

Exploring at the Ranch

We needed a way to get everyone's wiggles out one Sunday afternoon, so we took the kids halfway up to the Ranch and then "hiked" the rest of the way up.  We started by going through the trees but got tired of that after awhile and just went up the dirt road.  Much easier.

Our trailblazer

The crops are starting to sprout!  Green is coming to Star Valley.

Almost to the top!

Lovin' the wink!

Beautiful.

 

Fashionista

 

I love to see what Joely picks to wear when I let her choose her own outfit.  This was one outfit of choice!  Regardless of the clothes, she's adorable!

Mother's Day and the Intermittent Springs

The day before Mother's Day, we decided to start enjoying the great outdoors of Star Valley and hike up to the Intermittent Springs.  Dave and I hadn't been there for 8 years, but we thought it would be just right for our family.  After a LONG drive up the canyon, we finally reached. . . the parking lot.  It was nice to get out!  When we were at the Springs eight years ago, we'd taken a fun picture of all of the Jex family sitting on a picnic table near the river.  I wanted to recreate that picture, so I gathered the kids together.  Dave asked me to wait a minute and when he returned he had a camera bag that he'd purchased for my birthday a couple of years ago.  It's a camera bag intended for a nice SLR camera, something we'd been dreaming about owning for awhile but had never wanted to spend the money on.  Dave asked me to open it and lo and behold, there was a beautiful new Canon Rebel T3 and a card for Mother's Day!  Whoa. . .talk about unexpected and super-exciting!  I spent the rest of our hike snapping pictures (I probably took 200 that day) and having fun playing around with the new camera.  The kids were good sports and posed for picture after picture.  So, you'll have to bear with me as I will probably post way more pictures than before, simply because I'm loving picture-taking right now.  :)

Here we are sitting on the picnic table, reliving old memories!

On our way up the trail to the Intermittent Springs, we passed a family coming down.  The man was carrying a rifle and warned us that he'd seen mountain lion tracks so we needed to be cautious.  That took us a bit by surprise!

The springs were covered in snow, so we didn't end up going any closer than this.  Next time!

Mountain lion tracks?

 As we were standing looking up at the springs, Dave noticed the tracks the hiker warned us about.  They were pretty fresh and right on the trail.  To be honest, we got a bit spooked.  Suddenly, instead of enjoying our hike we were scanning the tops of the mountains looking to see if a cougar was stalking us, wanting to eat one of our little ones for lunch!  Boy, can imaginations go wild at the first hint of danger!  :)

I'm usually behind the camera, but I just had to get a shot with cute Joely at the Springs.

We didn't spend much time near the Springs once we saw the tracks.  We made our way back closer to the parking lot where we felt a little bit safer.  The kids had a blast throwing rocks into the river and exploring around the trail.  Emma found a rock with fossil prints (maybe?) on it.  And a snail shell.  She's definitely a rock collector!

Our secret agent rock thrower.

Even Joely found great fulfillment in throwing rocks.

A couple of Emma's treasures.

I love her happiness in this picture.  Usually she gives me very practiced, posed smiles when I pull the camera out.  This one was genuine.

I could look at this picture all day!

After a couple of hours, our tummies were growling and we decided to end the hiking/rock throwing experience and head to Pizza Hut. Carson had a Book It! certificate to use before it expired.  Over the next few days we did some more research and talked to some friends.  It was determined that those tracks were most likely. . .dog prints.  Yeah, we feel a bit stupid, but better to be safe than sorry, right?  And we're excited for another trip to the Springs in a few weeks when the snow is melted and the area is totally green.

Trip to the Job Site

We chose to spend one Saturday up in Jackson, since the kids and I hadn't been up there since we'd moved.  Plus, everyone wanted to ride in the new car!  It was a tighter fit than the Blazer, but we were able to get everyone in.  While we were in Jackson, we walked around downtown (it was FREEZING), went up to the job site to see what Dad does all day, ate lunch/dinner at Pizza Hut, and grocery shopped at Smith's.  It was a nice day all-around (especially the chance to just be together), but everyone's favorite part was the job site.  We got the grand tour of Dave's current project.  It is a beautiful house in a very beautiful place.  We didn't get to see any moose or elk while we were there, but the kids were content getting drinks out of the water cooler!  

This was taken in the front entryway of the house. Don't you think Dave needs to build one like this for me?  :)  Just kidding. . .I would never be able to keep something this massive clean.  Or find my children in it.  Or find anything in it.  Or be able to furnish it.  Yes, something a little more modest is on the wish list!  We're so grateful Dave has a neat project to work on and that we got to go enjoy it for a day.

Farewell to the Blazer

After lots of years of love and driving, we had a little too much of this going on. . .

What a guy!  He looks good even in triple layers.  He's our fix-it man!

Check out those icicles!  Fixing the car took on a whole new level when we didn't have a garage and were living in what felt like the Arctic!

And it became time to say farewell to the Blazer.  Dave and his Blazer spent more time together than Dave and I did, so this wasn't the easiest thing to do. . .they were tight!  The kids loved the Blazer too and begged for opportunities to go on rides with Dad in it.  We took it for one last drive as a family.

And then we said goodbye.  Dave drove to Salt Lake for a couple of days of work and traded it in.  We weren't sure what he was going to come home with.  We wanted a larger car because of the winter driving conditions here, but we also needed great gas mileage, given that Dave drives over 100 miles a day to get to work and back.  In the end, Dave came home in a great little Toyota Corolla that is currently getting 40 miles to the gallon!  We have yet to see how things go in the winter, but for now, we're sure grateful for a car that doesn't need to be fixed for hundreds of dollars every month!

General Conference

After years of having Grandpa and Grandma McClure come to Utah for every General Conference, we finally reached "the end."  Supposedly, this April conference was the last time they'll be coming, at least for awhile.  So I'm thrilled we got to enjoy our General Conference traditions with them one last time!  On Saturday, we drove up to the apartment between sessions and had time for lunch with everyone before Dave, Dad and I walked over to the Conference Center for the afternoon session.  Thank you to Grandma, Uncle Riley and Aunt Kacie for watching the kids so we could go together!

During the Priesthood session, we women and children headed over to Deseret Book at City Creek for Ladies' Night.  Mom and I used to always win the drawing, but it hasn't happened in awhile.  Way too crowded!  So, we stood in line and got our door prize and then headed out to explore.  We'd hoped that the Church History Museum would be open, but we were out of luck.  Instead, we just enjoyed beautiful Temple Square. 

Gotta love the Tabernacle

Emma loves the beautiful flowers.

What a ham!

Beautiful girls!

We miss living so close to the Salt Lake temple.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for providing us with so many opportunities to actually BE at General Conference over the years!  We've loved our traditions. . .now it's time to make some new ones (unless, of course, Dad ISN'T released! :)