Anniversary Present

I spent last week in Atlanta going to an electronic expo, and for the first time in our 11 years of marriage, I missed our Anniversary.  To make up for being gone I took Aly to stay at the St. Regis in Deer Valley the weekend before I left, bought her a nice necklace, and sent flowers while I was gone.

I thought that I did pretty good until I came home to the girls wanting me to go downstairs with my eyes closed.  I figured they had straightened up my music room for me, little did I know Aly did an extreme makeover as my Anniversary present.  She definitely beat me this year on the gift giving (I guess it makes up for the past few years of not getting anything!) and I couldn't be more excited about it.  I mean, look at this place, it's pretty impressive.  

Lets see what she comes up with next year!


**The designer Aly has been using took these pictures and wrote about it on her blog, you can go here to see what she said:  http://6thstreetdesignschool.blogspot.com/2010/09/game-room-surprise.html

Halloween Pajamas

Tonight was the first time the kids wore their Halloween pajamas and once we turned the camera on, they wanted to do all sorts of weird poses. The girls are cute, but I think Brooks tops them both with his new skeleton pj's!

He's Getting Big

Brooks is 3 and a half months old, look how big he looks in his new pajamas



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Our Girls Imaginations

Isabelle & Gracie love to watch music videos and try and recreate what is going on in them. Today they were watching The Band Perry's "If I Die Young" where the girl that has died is laid in a boat and float down the river. Here is their re-creation of that scene.




Gracie wins for staying in character the longest

Lion King

Aly, Isabelle, Grandma Barker, Ben & Shannon, and Aunt Norma went to see Lion King tonight. We went back and forth on whether to let her go since it was a school night and Isabelle needs her sleep! After dinner at Kneaders it was off to the show.

They had a great time and Isabelle really enjoyed it, let's hope she wakes up happy in the morning!




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Midway for Dinner

We had a gift certificate to use up at Zermatt for their Buffet so drove up tonight to use it before it expired at the end of the month. When dinner was over the girls wanted to ride the carousel but it was closed but Gracie wouldn't settle for going home without a carousel ride. As Aly was explaining to her that it was closed and Gracie was balling, a very nice worker came over and said she would get them to open it for her. Thankfully Gracie got her ride and we left Zermatt happy for the ride home.

End of Summer BBQ

We had both families over today, Labor Day, for a end of Summer BBQ. Since we decided to do this on Sunday and we didn't have any pork shoulder to smoke, I went to the store at midnight to get everything we needed. After getting the smoker ready the meat was started about 1:30 in the morning and cooked for 12 hours.  Everyone came and it was a good way to say goodbye to summer

This the Place State Park

I don't ever recall going to "This is the Place State Park." I know that it has been around for years but we have never made the drive up. It was Labor Day Weekend and we originally thought to go to the Zoo, but once we pulled in the parking lot, we drove across the street. We only had an hour and half to explore since it closed at 5:00, but we were able to see quite a bit. It makes you really grateful for those that settled this area and what they had to go through. How many of us today would live in a 400 square foot home with 10 kids? It was a good reminder how blessed we are to have what we do.

Entering the park

Doing laundry the old fashioned way

How about 10 kids in this house?

An old Hotel

Riding the train up to the Indian Village

Inside a wigwam

Seeing how small the living space was for people that traveled across the ocean

Changing our gold that we panned out of the river for candy at the Bank

Brooks sitting patiently in his stroller

ZCMI Store

This is the Place Monument

Old TImes

Last week a member of the church from Nova Scotia was in town and he was nice enough to email me and let me know so we could get together. Charles McGuigan and his family took care of me for 6 months in my second area of the mission. It was in the North Sydney area which has a very small presence of the church, a little branch with about 25 members. Him and his family fed me well and made sure we had everything we needed.

We went to Red Butte for dinner and had a good night catching up. I haven't seen him in over 11 years and I enjoyed reminiscing about that time in my life.