one more bath photo

as you can see...eleanor has been spending A LOT of time in the bath. She's getting into everything and is constantly in the need of a bath...

surgarhouse park

Wednesday while John was at work, the power went out and they sent everyone home....well at least we thought. Right when John pulls into our drive way he got a call telling him that the power was up and running and they wanted everyone back to work. When he told me this I seriously thought he was just trying to get me. But nope, he had to go back to work. I was totally bummed because I had made plans for a fun afternoon with John. So instead of just staying home I went up to SLC with him. Eleanor and I dropped him off at work and had an hour and a half to burn. We headed to trolley square to hit my favorite stores, Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware. We are in the process of finishing our basement so I'm looking for some decorating ideas. I did find the couch I want....but its $7,999. I could furnish my entire basement for that amount!

After shopping, it was time to pick John up. We thought it would be fun to take Eleanor to the Surgarhouse Park. I LOVE this park! They have a huge pond with TONS of ducks, a lot of hills, a little stream and plenty of playgrounds. It was fun watching Eleanor feed the ducks. She kept trying to reach out and touch the ducks. I had to keep pulling her hands back to keep her from getting bit. Of course we had to take her on the swings. This little girl is a dare devil! She loves the swing....but only if you push her pretty high. She laughs the entire time. We could have spent a few more hours just swinging.

After the park we headed over to the soup kitchen for a quick dinner. I of course got the chicken and rice and John the clam chouder. I will admit just going to the soup kitchen got me anxious for the fall. Nothing beats the fall in Utah. I can't wait.

So, after the soup kitchen we headed to Nordstroms Rack to get me a new pair of running shoes. I was shocked to find that the first pair of shoes I tried on fit really well...so I bought them. NEVER has it taken me that short of time to pick out shoes, yet alone running shoes.

After Nordstroms Rack we show Blades of Glory at the $1 show. I know, I know. I hate going to the $1 show. But after having a kid you get so behind in movies, and you don't really want to spend full price on a show when all you are doing is trying to keep your kid entertained. And, now that Eleanor can crawl she wants down. The thought of her crawling around on the $1 show floor about makes me puke, but you can only fight them so long. I let her crawl around for about 15 mins and then she was out cold for the rest of the show. Dumb show, but had some pretty funny parts.

So, even though John had to go back to work, we still had a fun evening. I just wish we could play every evening and not worry about household responsibilities. Like right now, John is outside weeding the flower garden and I just got done cleaning up the house.

clean baby

my nudist

This past week Eleanor has decided she does not like her diaper. The weather has been abnormally hot this summer, so I've been letting Eleanor run around the house in just her diaper. The last few days I have gone to check on her while she's playing and have caught her in the nude! She loves being naked!! This morning I went in again, and her diaper was off and she was having a great time. She's so funny!

cousins

Last night we had David and Mindy over along with their two daughters. Eleanor was born just one month before Katelyn. It's been a few months since we've seen them and this was the first time to two little girls actually interacted with each other. It was really cute to watch them play together. They had a little hard time sharing toys, but I think they really enjoyed having someone their own size to play with. Hopefully we can get them together more often.

park city

This weekend we headed up to Park City with a some Goldman Sachs workers from Philly and Boston. They are in town for 2 weeks of training and John's been able to entertain and show them around Utah. Of course we had to make our traditional stop to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a Carmel apple and white chocolate covered pretzel. Eleanor also enjoyed some good icecream!

island park & yellowstone

Last week we did a little trip up to Island Park and Yellowstone to visit Theron, Amanda and Ty. On our way up to Island Park we made a pit stop in Back foot to visit my grandparents. It was fun visiting with G&G Wolfley. Eleanor needed to get some of her energy out after the 3 hour car ride. She enjoyed some ice cream, crawling and showing off her puppy dog After we got to Island Park, Theron and Amanda took us to Big Springs to feed the birds and see the HUGE trout. The mosquito were HORRIBLE...just ask Theron.One of the many geyser is Yellowstone. They are so interesting, but man they do stink! It has been years since both John and I had seen Old Faithful. It's funny how things seem so much larger when you are small. I remember Old Faithful being SOOO big. I still thought it was impressive, just a bit smaller then remembered.
It was fun having Eleanor and Ty play together. They were having such a good time playing in the cooler.

movie, croquet and tinfoil dinners...

I think we may have started a new tradition....or at least I would like to. This year John and I had a little get together with some of our neighbors on the night before the 4th. We thought it would be fun to play a little bit of croquet, make tin foil dinners and watch a movie outdoors. It was so much fun! I must admit, the movie (chosen by the men of course, Indiana Jones, got a little too long) so me and a few of the girls ended up inside talking for most of the movie. I didn't mind, John and I had just watched all 3 Indiana Jones, so I was well caught up! I'm afraid we may have smoked out our neighbors with our fire pit. I swear the neighborhood smelt like smoke all the next day.

John was pretty proud of his "surround sound theater". He insisted on bring out a few of his "Bose" speakers to make sure we could all hear okay. I'm sure the neighbors behind us loved hearing the theme to Indiana Jones all night!

We are having another bbq this sunday and are hoping to do the movie thing again. I LOVe summer and spending time outside!

I absolutely LOVE the 4th of July! Every year I look forward to celebrating this great holiday. I just can't believe how fast it creeped up this year. We had such a fun day. I was a little disappointed we didn't make it to an early morning breakfast. Our city doesn't do one but we found out our friend's city does, so next year we'll have to hit it! So, instead of an early morning breakfast we all slept in pretty late. We were all so tired from

the party we had the night

before. I'm normally not

much for sleeping in, but

every now and then it's great.

Once we got rolling we did a

little yard work and let Eleanor play in the sprinklers. We had to get use out of the 4th of July bikini Mimi gave her. ~thanks mom!

After yard work we ran a few errands around town. We are starting our basement this next week and needed a few supplies. (I'm so anxious to get it done. Every since Eleanor came around, we have no room! Funny how that happens!)

Every year (well 2 out of the 3 we have lived here) our neighborhood puts on a bbq. It's actually quite nice. Both years they've had a huge screen with a movie playing and this year the Riverton Symphony performed 1812 Overture with live cannons. We weren't able to stay for the entire performance because we had a few friends and family over to light some fireworks and then watch the Thanksgiving Point fireworks from our little park. This year John and I bought the largest package of fireworks we could find!! We actually started about a week before the 4th lighting some each night in hopes of getting Eleanor used to them.....but no such luck. She was not liking them! I think she liked the light and colors...just not the sound. She did MUCH better with the Thanksgiving Point ones. She even fell sleep. I'm sure because we couldn't hear them too much. But we had a great time with Jay & Scott, and Tiffany, Paul and his family.

Again, I LOVE the 4th of July and I was a little sad to see it end. One nice thing about living in Utah (ok, so maybe there is more then just ONE nice thing) is we kind of get to celebrate all of July. I'm hoping this year we get to go to the SLC parade. I love it!

I didn't want to have an overload of photos...but you can always check the rest out on our smugmug page.

cowboy wanna be...

no, we aren't cowboys by ANY means....but we do enjoy our local rodeo each year. This was our third year going and I actually really enjoy it. This year we went with my mom, Tiffany and Paul, Jay and Scott, Troy & his girlfriend and our nephew Mike. Next year I'm going to have to get John and I some cowboy attire so we fit in with the rest of Lehi. Eleanor had the approciate clothing excpet for the boots. It was impossible to find baby cowboy boots. Maybe next year....

les miserables

Six months ago John had bought us tickets to go see les miserables for our anniversary. He didn't know at the time... but our good friend, Kim Stinger, her daughter got the roll as Cosette. When we found out Kenzie would be Cosette we bought two extra tickets for my parents. Unfortunately my dad wasn't able to make it, but my mom invited Jaime. It was Jaime's first time seeing Les Mis and she LOVED it! The performance was great!!! I'd seen it a few times before and thought this production was comparable to Broadway. Kenzie did such an amazing job as Cosette! She was so cute! We got to go down and see her afterwards. It was fun seeing her interacting with all the performers. You could tell they all loved her! It was such a fun night!