"Mama die"

 

Gabriella is talking more and more and putting words together.

She's been saying:

"mama come eat"
"dada come sit"

But she is having some trouble putting two consonant sounds together.  For example, she calls Grammy Mary "jammy"  and when we were on the plane she would say:

"mama bang (plane)"
"dada bang"
"gabiella bang"

Her newest saying is:

"mama die"
"dada die"

which I've interpreted as "mama try" and hoping that she soon gets the double consonant sound figured out because it's fun wandering around Target as she's loudly saying

"mama bang"
"mama die"

Moab adventures with friends...

It was awesome to see Mat's college friends which travelled from far away to meet up in Moab with the kiddos for some hiking, biking and camping and visiting!  Mat, Brie and I had so much fun and enjoyed getting to visit with them.  Hopefully it can turn into an annual event!

Autumn Colors

 

Holy cow, were we lucky or what?  We ended up visiting Utah at prime fall colors in the mountains.  We enjoyed looking at the mountain view from my mom's house in Midway and then enjoyed a beautiful drive up Pine Creek canyon.  So beautiful!  Our intent that evening was to go on a hike to some glacier boulders in the state park, but apparently I was unable to follow directions so we paid to go into the park and then promptly left it (on accident) and instead went for a drive up Pine Creek canyon when we realized we weren't going to be finding the trailhead on the road we were on.  :-)

Thanks to Spencer/Jonene and Phil/Mar's family for making the time to hang out.  We loved to seeing them and having Brie play with all her cousins.  Mat had a good time playing with the nieces and nephews too.  In fact, the next weekend when we had a family dinner and Mat had all ready gone down to SLC for his conference, Henry asked me very nicely "where is Mat?"  He wanted to play football some more with him.  We had a fun loop hike in the American Fork canyon with Spencer and his kids. 

Thanks, also, to Juliette for driving down from Logan to hang out in the park in Ogden.  As always, Brie has fun and it was good to catch up. 

We have lots of pictures up in flickr of our trip, if you want to see more.  Click here.

I still find it frustrating that blogger makes me upload pictures to Google Photos and that I can't just insert a picture from flickr like I used to. I hate loading pictures to all sorts of places and then it is even more likely that they might get used by someone else without permission.  :(   Interestingly enough, we found a picture of me relaxing by our tent on the Appalachian Trail on a real estate site selling some property in Nevada...

A bit of a lapse...

It's been awhile since I've blogged.  I am hoping to do some this week, but in looking at my last blog I realized I have a lot of catching up to do. 

I finished my summer season at the state park and in the last week had a fantastic allergic reaction to some poison ivy or oak or something.  My arms had a terrible rash and my eyes were so swollen that when I went to the first urgent care they told me that they wouldn't see me and that I needed to go to the emergency room.  Thankfully, the second urgent care saw me and gave me some stuff that helped me immensely.  (Eye drops and prescription for perdnisone.) 

Brie went to her 2 year appointment and her stats at that time were:
               Weight:  27 pounds
               Height:  33.5 inches

Went to Utah and had a fantastic time.  I'll blog and post pics about it later.

Came back home from Utah to rain and chilly weather.  Finally it's sunny today. 

Brie's 2nd birthday is this Saturday.  How did that happen?  Sheesh. 

The end of summer?

How did that happen?  Labor Day has all ready passed.  Kids up here started school today.  So I guess that means summer is officially over.

But I'm not ready to call it quits on summer... 

We are going to keep on pretending it's still summer until it's too cold to deny it! 



Gabriella taking her nap during her first sailing adventure.  Ella and Brie played while Mat, Leah and Dave and Leah's dad did the sailing.  Leah's mom was on hand to monitor the kiddos.  Mat said he loved it.  I'll take their word for it, I had to go into work!

Ella, Erin, Hope and Brie on the boat

Ella, Zachary, Erin and Hope

Leah

At the fire after eating s'mores...Brie is making sure Hope is taken care of.

We enjoyed a nice evening boat ride and then cooked up s'mores on a campfire to ring in Labor Day.  Here's to more beautiful days before winter hits us. 

A beachy kind of week

We've been out to Black Pond three days out of three this week!  It's conveniently close to us and there is a sandy beach that Brie loves to play on and if we walk far enough down on the beach I can let Maddy off her leash and she gets to run in the water and splash and have fun too.

Since Mat is off on a canoe adventure this week, I've been working early shifts and getting off around 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. and I go pick up Brie and gather our beach stuff and head out there.  Brie is quite the hiker.  She has no problem hiking the 0.25 mile boardwalk trail out to the beach and then for at least that distance down the beach.  Which is more than I can say about some people that we come across on the trail who are wondering how much further until they are there (and no, those are not little kids asking.)

I think tomorrow after doing laundry and grocery shopping, we are going to have a picnic at another beach.  We need to take advantage of these summer days, because it's starting to feel a little bit like fall here and who knows what kind of weather is around the corner!

afternoon at Black Pond

Yesterday, instead of putting our clean laundry away, Brie, Maddy and I spent the afternoon at Black Pond.  I realized that I hadn't been out there in ages, so away we went.  It was delightful.  Brie had a ball, even after she got knocked over into the water by a wave and was drenched.  We just took off all her clothes and she played in the sand and with the dog.