The Hand Park & Date Night!!!

Another cool Colorado park...This is the reason why this park is called "The Hand Park"

This slide is the entrance into the park

They had some fun fountains to play in

They also had a lot of fun grass to play in

While in Colorado (with lots of fun babysitters around) Jake planned an awesome surprise date night for us! It had been a LONG time since we've been on a real date so it was wonderful!

First Jake took me to the movie theater to see Harry Potter 7 part 2 (which we hadn't seen yet and I have read all of the books and was really excited to see this last movie!)

After the movie Jake took me to a beautiful park and we had a picnic with some delicious authentic Italian food from a nice restaurant. The weather was perfect and there were some cool clouds in the sky.

After our picnic we went on a walk around a lake and ate some Heath ice cream bars while we walked, talked and laughed. It was so much fun. It was reminiscent of our BYU dating years. We decided that need way more date nights :)

More Family Fun In Colorado

Look at all of these cute cousins. One reason why it is so fun to go to Colorado to visit - they all live there within a few minutes of each other (all but our cute kids of course)

Skating with my Harris nieces & nephew
Roasting marshmallows in Grandma & Grandpa's backyard
(Dal & B have the same roasting marshmallow concentration face :)

We checked out the Lego Outlet store while we were there- Dal had some fun building some Lego people

My sister-in-law Cat planned all sorts of fun little activities throughout the week (she always helps make our visits to Colorado a party week) Here are Braelyn & Emily during the Living Room Stuffed Animal Picnic

Braelyn & cousin Mason spent some quality time at the piano together

Braelyn was so excited to meet her baby cousin Mckay (She absolutely loves babies.) She wanted to spend every moment she could with Mckay and hold her every chance she got. She was a very good baby holder and took it very seriously :)

We did get some smiles out of her too though

Dal & his Aunt Sara showing off their Star Wars shirts (that Jake made)

A Colorado tradition is for Cat and I to have craft time at her house to make girly hair things (or cute home decorations that she has designed.) She is so crafty and I am not so much so she helps give me some ideas, resources and motivation to make some fun stuff. Thanks to her Braelyn has a great assortment of hair things :)

My New Favorite Park

I had one week off of school and clinicals for the summer (not nearly enough of a summer break) so we headed up to Colorado. We had a blast playing with family and we did a lot of fun things. My next few posts will probably be about the trip because we did so much and I have so many pictures.

I will start with our outing to Red Stone Park. One thing that I love about Colorado is how much they value their parks. They have so many awesome parks there. I absolutely loved this park-my new favorite. I'm sure part of the reason I loved it so much was because we had just come from a place that was hot, dry, dusty, brown & hardly any trees. It was so refreshing to see so much beautiful green grass, trees, water and life :)

This is how excited I was to be there at this beautiful park and breathe in the oxygenated air from the vegetation

They had a great playground and stepping stone creek

They had an awesome sand and water play area-the kids loved it!

Some great tennis courts is always a plus

I Have a Kindergartener!

Dal has almost finished his first week of Kindergarten! It is so crazy to think that he is already that old. School years here we come! His teacher seems really sweet and he likes her a lot. She seems to have a lot of fun and creative ideas and ways about doing things
He has had a lot of fun thus far and we are excited to see what the rest of the year brings.

Teddy & Pink Baby's Birthday & Milestones

Dal got out of bed one night and came to Jake and I and told us that we needed to have a talk. He told us that the next day was Teddy's birthday so we needed to plan a party for him. We tossed around a lot of ideas and made a plan. The next morning Dal made sure we showered Teddy with birthday wishes. Then we played toys with Teddy, made cookies for his birthday dessert, sang Happy Birthday and Jake and Dal even made him a special birthday chair out of blocks. Teddy got to sit in it while we ate his birthday dinner and dessert.

Dal & Teddy

With all the excitement going on for Teddy, Braelyn decided that it was also Pink Baby's birthday, so she got a chance to sit in the special birthday chair too :)

Other excitement that we've had lately is that Braelyn has hit a couple of milestones. She is out of her crib (sleeping on her crib mattress on the floor) and is wearing big girl underwear!
Potty training her has been about as fun as you can expect potty training to be. She has done pretty well though. It took us about a week to get her to go poop in the potty and now we are still working on convincing her that it is a lifetime thing, not a one time successful accomplishment :)

This was the first day of our potty training adventure complete with snacks, drinks, Dora underwear and her baby for her to teach how to go on the potty.

Here is B-Rae showing off her big girl bed and her purple underwear

A guy at the kids museum painted Dal's face to kind of look like a clone trooper

Braelyn got my boots out of the closet and was having fun wearing them around so I just had to get a picture

I just love that little face

Little Cow Family & Free Food

Friday was Chick-Fil -a's Cow Day (where you get free food if you dress like a cow) so we decided to dress us all to sort of look like cows so we could get free food, because free food is always a good thing :) I cut out some black spots to tape on us and I made some ears for Braelyn and I, Jake made Dal a headband that said "Eat More Chickin", and Jake put some spots on his shirt too. The few minutes of prep time was all worth it when the kids got free kids meals and Jake and I got free meals (chicken sandwiches, waffle cut fries and a cool glass of fresh lemonade...yummy :) The kids also had a ton of fun playing in the kid play land and they even put a picture of our fam on the city's 'Night Out' website.

Good times!

Family Camping Trip

This summer has been really busy with a lot of school and clinical time but I had a Thursday off a couple of weeks ago so we decided to go on a mid-week family camping trip. We went to a lake about an hour north of us. It was our first camping trip with the four of us and we had a great time!

We first went exploring for a little while and then the kids were very excited to set up the tent and put everything in it

We played a family game of horse shoes

Team Black

Team Red

We also played UNO (we recently discovered that the kids love that game)And ate cookies :)

The sunset was really pretty and then once it was dark we got settled in our tent for the night. It was funny though because Braelyn got a sudden burst of energy for a while-I think it was when she realized that we really were sleeping outside in a tent, the four of us all together. She started running around jumping on all of us with squeals of delight :) I'm not sure what time it was when she finally ran out of gas and crashed.

So I would say that our first family camping trip was a success!