Our trip

We recently went to Utah for a family reunion. We had so much fun we went camping for about a week and just had a great time. Here are some of our pictures to enjoy. We got to go swimming a few times and here are some of the best pictures we got. This is Claire with her cousin's CJ and Cortney. They are putting mud on CJ's back to help him exfoliate. He said it hurt. Claire thought it was hilarious.
Then Claire would try and put the mud on Cort's leg to exfoliate it and her cousin Janey would go and get water in her bucket and dump it on Cort's leg to wash off the mud. Claire was frustrated Janey was washing off the mud and Janey was frustrated that Claire kept putting mud on Cort's leg.
Then Claire got to play on her cousin's little water skateboard...Claire kept calling it her surf board. She had a great time. Thanks CJ and Cort- Claire loved swimming with you guys.
While we were camping Claire loved dressing up in the Milli Vanillie costumes that her Aunts had brought up from running the Wasatch Back. Here she is in one of the costumes.
All of the little girl cousins loved following Cortney (the oldest of all the grandkids) around. She was so good with each of them too. Here they are all cuddled around her taking turns listening to her ipod.
Claire finally got to meet her new cousin Rowdey. He is just six months old. She loved to help do things for him; like get toys, sing to him and hug him.
When we got back from camping the majority of our family went to a local rodeo. Claire loved being there and being with her cousins.
The next day two of Claire's cousins got baptized. So we took cousin pictures. This is majority of Claire's cousins. The only one not in the pictures is Rowdey.
Then we decided since all of my siblings were together we should get a picture of all of us together as well. Here we all are.
On our drive home we stopped in Oregon for dinner. Where we ate there was a little choo choo train that went all around the restaurant. Claire loved every minute of it. Here she is staring at the train as it past our booth.
Overall we had a great trip to Utah to see family and to spend time together!!

Cakes, Strawberries and More

This last week we went to Columbia Park to feed the ducks and geese. Claire loved it...until one of the geese decided Claire wasn't throwing the bread fast enough and bit it right out of her hand. That startled her, but she recovered and we've been back since. She asks to feed the ducks almost every day.
This past weekend we attended a birthday party for Claire's cousin Katelynn. Bryan, Lois and I made her birthday cake. It is only our third cake we've made out of fondant. We are excited how it turned out. Here is a picture looking down from the top of the cake.
Here is a picture of the cake with the Hello Kitty and #2 topper on the cake. I think it turned out good. Thanks Wendi for teaching me how to make the fondant!
Claire loved watching us make the cake for Katelynn so much so that she wanted to make her own cake. We saved her some of trimmings off the cake and let her frost and cover it with fondant.
Then she got to put fondant polka-dot on it. She loved it.
Then she wanted to put the sugar pearls on the cake. Just like Lois and I put on Katelynn's.
Here she is with her finished product.
This year we decided to plant a garden. So a few weeks ago we ripped out some grass and planted some onions, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash and strawberries.
Claire has been really excited to check the garden each day to see if anything is growing. It is exciting to see things start to grow. The carrots have popped up out of the ground and the are flowers on the strawberries. We got reap the benefits of our labors this week. We let Claire do the honors of picking the first treasures of our garden.
There hasn't been many warm days lately, but the other day it was just nice enough to pull out Claire's swimming pool. Here is the first pictures of the Summer Pool pictures. Claire loves to swim so I am sure we'll have a few of these this year.

The belly and funny story

There are days I feel really pregnant and days I feel like I barely show. Recently Bryan's sister Janelle got married and at her reception we took this picture. It was really just to test out the camera for her guest book, but we ended up taking a pregnant belly picture. This pictures was taken at 24 weeks. So it is a couple of weeks old.
At the last doctors appointment I had when we found out that this little one is a girl, a funny thing happened. As we were checking out, Claire told the office lady that she was going to have a baby sister. The office lady asked her what she was going to name her baby sister. Claire's answer Banana. Then when I was telling her Grandma Lois the story Claire then started saying the baby's name is Baby Beluga Banana. I guess since Claire was our little peanut this baby can be a banana...or a baby beluga banana.