Finally, a visit from the Cripps...

Finally, a visit from my sister Jayme and her adorable family!!!! It has seriously been forever since they have come to visit us here in Utah and I am so glad they did! We had a lot of fun with them staying at our house goofing off with us :) We had a few adventures together and miss them already!! Please guys, come back again soon!!

Lee (pulling faces of course), Jayme, Brayden, Carson (crying), Savanah, Brielle (not looking), me, and Madelyn. This was the best shot we could get :)

Madelyn and Savanah are my sister's oldest kids and Brielle adores them!! She loves to hang out with them and they are so sweet to her. In this picture they just finished doing a little skit. It was so cute and so creative!

..And this is Carson, my sister's youngest.. We left him alone for awhile with the dress ups and this is how we found him. He wouldn't even let us change his clothes without a fight! It was hilarious!

One of our adventures was to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. Brielle loves this place cause right now dinosaurs are her very favorite.
All I can say is "Land Before Time" is always playing in my head! WILL SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE A NEW DINOSAUR MOVIE!?! :)

Cute silly girls!!

I love this picture of the boys -Brayden and Carson- cause one looks a little scary and one looks a little SCARED!!

Bryce enjoying the view from his stroller...

The girls huddled up in the cave...

The sand and water "hands on" thing - anyone know what this part of the museum is called?? The kids absolutely love this part of the museum.

Oh and another favorite part is the "fossils in the sand" at the very end.... not sure what this one is called either :) ..What a fun day!! Besides the Dino Museum, delicious gluten-free meals my sister made for us, visiting till wee hours of the night, and the family marathon (I'll explain in the next post ;0 ), we really did have a good time with the CRIPPS. We loved having you all and can't wait to see you guys again!!

CALIFORNIA..in random order...

Back in MAY -I love how prompt I am- our little family took a glorious trip to CALIFORNIA to visit my family. We had a blast and did SO MUCH stuff while we were there. Newport beach condo (the main event), family parties, grandma's luxury swimming pool (gal I wish I lived closer to that thing), shopping, and more shopping :)... the beach, daily ice cream runs, oh and DISNEYLAND!!! That was our highlight cause it was Brielle and Scotty's first time (well I guess Bryce's too)!! Such a cute, fun place. And well with all this FUN, of course comes a ton of pictures!! The sad sad part about it is.... I LOST ALMOST ALL OF THEM!!! The ones I have posted here are the only ones that saved :( So that's why there's only a random few and I am so sad about it :( They are lost in this computer somewhere so I haven't given up hope!! I will keep looking!!! I am sure all of you know how it feels to loose pictures!!!!!! So here's the ones that I do have and I am actually really grateful for at least these ones :) :)

Bryce taking a bath in grandma's kitchen sink. This is something all the grandkids do at my moms. It's so silly!! I love it!

Me and Scotty at the end of our Disneyland trip. At least this one saved cause I really like it :)

Our family at Laguna Beach. Those kids love the beach and love it so much they can't even look into the camera :)

Oh Bryce Man!! He is such a dollface!! Seriously that kid would be lost somewhere in the ocean right now if we let him keep charging towards that water!!! He would just laugh and wiggle when those waves crashed and head straight for them!!

At the Marriott Beach Resort where we stayed. The pool was definitely a favorite place to be each day!! Oh and the gym too... just kidding! We hardly worked out while we were there!!! Yeah right.. ice cream or work out...??? Hmmmm, I think ICE CREAM and playtime!!! :)

Oh, I am getting more sad as I write this blog post cause I am thinking of all the pictures I am missing!!!! AHHH, oh well right!?! :) Anyways, this is us at Disneyland on the jungle cruise ride. Bryce was so exhausted and passed out for this one..

..But when Bryce wasn't sleeping, this was his face on most of the rides!! Lol!! He just couldn't get enough!! So hilarious!! :)

At the beach again, I believe this was Bryce's first day out.. Before he knew how FUN and EXCITING the ocean was!! That's probably why he's looking at the camera.

Back at grandma and grandpa's house. Brielle's favorite thing to do at grandma's is wake up early and go JUMP!!

..and of course Bryce Man comes to JUMP with us..

What would I do without this little guy!! I love that face to pieces!!!!

I kept telling Brielle to "jump soft cause Bryce is still so so little" ...Yeah she kinda did... and then of course she tackles him cause that's her favorite thing to do with her dad!!

Silly kids!!

In the kid pool at the resort. I am so glad this picture saved cause he actually smiled a "for real" smile. I love it!! :)

And of course a trip with dad wouldn't be the same without some gymnastics!!! Bryce Man stunting with Scott at the beach..

One more shot with dad.. Bryce is getting pretty good at balancing!!
We absolutely loved visiting good ol' CALIFORNIA and are so grateful to have been able to spend time with family there. We will definitely be back... and hopefully this next time I will be better with saving my PICTURES!!! ;)

Family pictures...

Gal, I felt like it was never going to happen!! Finally, we got our family pictures and I am so glad that we did!! We had them taken at Pretty Pictures in American Fork. Bryce is currently 10 1/2 months old, but in these pic's he was 9 months. Brielle is 3 years old, almost 4 (she is getting so big). Soooo, yes, it took me that long to get us all together to take a dang picture!!! :) ..So here are just a few of my favorites!!

Swimming with the kiddos...

So in all these pictures I just couldn't get these two children of mine to smile at the camera at the same time!! Or even look at the camera for that matter!!! We are big time swimmers over here, well, actually just Brielle really... she's a little fish.. and these pictures are of one of our first times taking Bryce swimming as a family. He's been a handful of times now and absolutely loves the water!!! His favorite trick so far is when daddy balances him in the air like a cute baby cheerleader. He lights up and laughs! We love it! He is signed up to start swimming lessons in about 2 weeks, so hopefully he likes it and will eventually be as good a swimmer as his big sis Brielle!!! Cause she's amazing ;)

Updated pic's of the kids!!

My absolute favorite time of the day is when these two cuddle up with me in bed in the mornings. It kinda starts like this (most days): Bryce starts making noises about 7ish.. I quickly make him a bottle and put him in bed with me... we both fall back asleep till about 8 or 8:30, right about when Brielle comes in and wakes us both up and joins us in bed. We then goof off and cuddle in bed for about 20 minutes.. then we are out of bed and start the day!!

On extra good mornings, when Brielle comes in to wake us, sometimes I can get her to go back to sleep with us for like an hour!!! So I basically get to sleep in a lot. Yeah, I love it!!! ;) ..gotta soak it all up before they don't let me do this anymore!!

Brielle put on her own make-up the other day and kept saying, "Mommy, I'm beautiful now" ..I kept telling her she's already beautiful and that she did a great job putting on make-up :) -kinda hard to see her rosy red cheeks and dark eyes in this pic (above)-

The two gremlins being silly like always. They are so cute... these two love to play together already!! It's my favorite!

This is called "The Fish Hook" ..yeah, don't ask, Scott made it up and Brielle loves doing it to me and it drives me nuts! :) She sneakily says, "Mom, come here... FISH HOOK!" as she hooks her finger on the inside of my cheek, always laughing hysterically.


THE MANY POSES OF BRYCE MAN!!

So here's Bryce posing by the fireplace. He stands up on everything now and sadly, he falls all over the place now too :(

Bryce is what you would call an "Outside baby" ..the kid loves to be outside and can't get enough of it. He will be sad, fussy, crying, I mean anything bad you can think of, then take him outside and he immediately smiles and giggles and is soooo HAPPY!! It's so cute to watch cause it's honestly like clockwork every time. He's such a stinker!

So I thought these 3 pictures were so funny. Bryce, of course STANDING and of course standing by the WINDOW looking OUTSIDE!! If you look closely, you can see his face in his reflection of the window. In this one (above), he looks sad.....

this one he looks happy....

and this one he FINALLY notices me taking pictures of him. He's like, "Oh hey momma! Just lookin outside cause that's were I want to be.." Love this little guy!

Scott's Birthday!!!

Awe, Scotty turned 29!! Happy Birthday Scott!! This is the yummy ice cream cake Brielle and I made for him. It was quite scrumptious!!! We had a lot of fun making it too!! We are crazy for ice cream over here, so this cake was a MUST!

Scott and Brielle anxious to blow out those candles!!! Brielle just loves birthdays (what 3 year old doesn't!!) and talked about "dad's b-day cake" all day long!!

So finally, after we made the cake, froze the cake, surprised dad at work with b-day balloons and came home from dinner, it was time to sing Happy Birthday and blow out those candles!!

Quick pic of me and the kids after Scott's special day. We had a wonderful Birthday evening as a family and Scott is now one year older!! We are so grateful for such a special dad and are so glad we got to spend his birthday together!!