Catsup

We just wrapped up a delightfully exhausting weekend in which we celebrated the marriage of Joel's youngest brother, Jake, and his new wife, Erica.

I will write more about it later, mainly because I am super behind on posts, and because I took exactly zero pictures during the festivities. I totally forgot to even bring my camera. So I hope some of my in-laws will humor me by sending me a few pictures.

In other news, I realized that I haven't even blogged about my trip to Oklahoma yet. I am a terrible daughter. Or I've been super busy with wedding stuff. I volunteered to do too many things. I regret nothing, but I am very tired.

Anyway, here are some pictures that have been waiting to be viewed by you:

Last Monday, Stephen successfully pulled off a surprise party for his wife, Meghan:

Despite some accidental leaks of information, Meghan was completely surprised, and we all had a grand old time.

Dane loved playing with all these little girls (plus some random boy I don't know).

I admired the cuteness of my niece Molly and her cousin Abby walking hand in hand until I realized they were wandering out into the street. But I saved them.

The party was at a water park in Kaysville called Cherry Hill. Grandma Frost was nice enough to pay for a couple of carousel rides.




Also, here are some random Dane happenings:
Santa put two sheets of Pixar stickers in Dane's stocking, and I was worried that he would just peel them all off and be done with them in a matter of seconds. Well, then it was July, and he had barely expressed any interest in them at all. Then the other day, he discovered that he possessed the power to peel the stickers off the sheet himself. This was the result:


Another day, he found my rolling pin and decided to bench press it for a while. I'm pretty sure he picked it up from Mr. Incredible:

And the other day while I was at work, Joel handed Dane a banana to accompany his dinner. Apparently, Dane then said, "Look! I made a monster banana!"

His fingers had pressed a little face into the banana. He admired his work and then ate the monster banana

Clever, no?

Finally, here is a little mention of our Fourth of July (really the Third of July) celebrations:
We met up with George and Melanee, et al, at Thanksgiving Point to have a picnic and watch the fireworks. By the time we were done with dinner, it was freezing, windy, and still two hours until the fireworks would start. So we abandoned ship and went back to their house for more hangout time and food. George and Melanee never fail to provide us with a great time and delicious food. We're happy to live near them.



Okay, so my plan is to blog about Oklahoma next and then hopefully I'll have some pictures from the wedding weekend. Stay tuned. Hopefully I can stay on the ball better now that our travels and wedding busyness is over.

Phone Photos

I started this post forever ago, and I'm way behind on blogging. But I wanted to get this done.
Behold the gallery of pictures from my phone.

There was some construction going on right by our house. Even though they were building a fence that would prevent us from throwing rocks in the "river" ever again, Dane enjoyed watching the heavy machinery work.

You might think that seeing snow on the ground would mean this picture was taken several months ago. But you'd be wrong. We had snow in May.

Here are a few pictures from when my parents were here in April:


Dane loves riding the "big train" at the mall. It's funny to me that it's called the Mini Express, but to Dane it is the big train because he can ride in it.

Uncle Kenji taking Dane for a little bike ride.

I put myself in charge of our mother's group solely to relieve someone else of the burden, and mother's group suddenly experienced a precipitous drop in attendance. There were several times in which Dane and I were the only ones there. On one of those days, Dane found a pair of sweet sunglasses in the nursery:


We had our ward campout in late June:
Joel ended up not being able to join us until 2:00 a.m., which resulted in him missing out on a few interesting things:
1. I set up the tent and hauled all our gear with only the help of Dane and a kind 5-year-old.
2. My marshmallow caught on fire, so I blew it out and was about to eat it when my bishop swooped in, chastised me, forbade me from eating it, and made me start again with a new marshmallow. He hovered over me and watched to make sure I roasted it appropriately this time. Apparently, he was concerned about my carbon intake. Now that's a bishop who cares.
3. The kind 5-year-old who helped me with my tent fell and hit his head on a rock, resulting in tears and lots of blood. His parents took him to the ER to get stitches, and he returned a couple of hours later. What a trooper. But I think the gushing blood was a little traumatic for Dane, because he kept asking me if the boy was okay. At one point, his nursery leader told him the boy is okay, and Dane said "He's NOT okay!" Even the next morning, Dane ran up to the boy and made sure he was okay.

Anyway, after things wrapped up the next morning (and I got over being freaked out when my tent unzipped and a man entered my tent in the middle of the night), Joel, Dane, and I went with our friend Doug and his daughter, Lilly, to Donut Falls.




Joel's sister came into town, and we went to Temple Square with her:




Finally, this is Dane's favorite place to hang out whenever we go to Lowe's:

Cha-Ching

LJ told me she'd pay me $10 if I'd post this picture:

I call it "Nerd Family, 1999."
Notice how everyone but Kenta has their head cocked strangely in order to prevent glasses glare. Kenta remains the only glasses-free Hood. But he has the biggest eyebrows, so it all evens out.

Also, unfortunately, there are no winners for my lookalike giveaway from the previous post. The answer was Ami and George. No one guessed it correctly. Rika technically posted the right answer, but she had already pried it out of me before commenting, so it doesn't count, and she is a cheater.

Bear Lake

We spent an utterly delightful week at Bear Lake with our good friends, George & Melanee.

Me, Joel, George, and Melanee
While we were at the hot springs (details below), an older couple asked us if two of us were siblings because "there was such a strong family resemblance."
So here's a little contest for you:
To which two were they referring?
I'll think of a prize to send to whoever gets the right answer.


At the risk of sounding super lame (which is always a major risk around here), Joel and felt like this trip was a sort of rite of passage into adulthood for us: we went on a vacation with friends. And it was a grand old time.
George and Melanee met us at our house before we were off on our adventure. We were so excited to get there that we stopped at the Bear Lake visitor's center, which gave us our first glimpse of the beautiful, turquoise lake.

Dane is showing Kevin where the lake is.

Yes, Kevin wore that cowboy hat and clutched Woody and Buzz almost the entire trip. Even during bathtime.
You might notice that the sky is ominously gray. Normally, such clouds portend ruined plans and sad faces staring out the window, but not for us! We knew what the weather would be, and we all looked forward to simply lounging around, eating, talking, and relaxing. My only regret is that my camera could never quite capture the turquoise beauty of the water since the clouds messed with the lighting. Otherwise, no regrets.

We rented a two-bedroom condo, and the accommodations were perfect for us. The two bedrooms even had their own attached bathrooms, and there was a great living room and kitchen. I didn't get any great pictures of the interior, but this will give you the basic idea:

Honestly, we spent a great deal of our time just reading and talking. It was great to have the kind of vacation that you come back from without feeling utterly exhausted. But we definitely had a few picture-worthy adventures.
We took a little hike down to the marina. It was too cold and choppy to take out a boat, but I enjoyed just being near the water and sailboats.





We also drove up to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. It was so much more wonderful than we even imagined. It was about 50 degrees that day, so it was cold enough for the hot springs to feel great but not so cold that you'd get hypothermia if you were out of the water. The hot springs were made up of five or six pools, ranging from 120 degrees to 102 degrees. It was landscaped beautifully, had great facilities, wasn't crowded at all, and even had swimsuit rentals for only $1.50 since we somehow made it there with Dane's swim shirt but not his shorts. We were there for almost four hours, and the kids even enjoyed every minute of it.
I'm saying that if you're ever within a reasonable driving distance from it, go, by all means, go!


The coolest pool was most comfortable for the kids, but they had no problem sticking their feet into the warmer pools, too.

I love the look of utter mirth on Kevin's face:



A couple of the pools had jets, so Joel and Dane tried their best to catch the bubbles:


And, as if it weren't perfect enough already, the train tracks were in perfect view for the kids to enjoy. I think two or three trains passed while we were there, and Dane and Kevin especially watched with rapt attention.

I made Dane pose in some of the pretty flowers. He humored me, with some help from his entertaining Daddy:

He even tried to smile through the shivers:

Joel then wanted in on the action.

I'm not sure what he was going for. Maybe creepy.

Ah...it was such a great experience. Here, Dane and Joel show you how much fun we had:

We had dinner at The Chuckwagon right there in Lava Hot Springs, and the food was surprisingly good. Think: deep fried potato skins.


On Friday, we celebrated my 27th birthday by finding a beach and wading in the freezing water.




Then, Joel surprised us all by making good on the promise he'd made earlier to swim in the lake, no matter how cold:



Showing off his self-deprecating gut:


This is how deep my feet would sink in at some places. I liked it.

I thought it was funny, seeing Joel drive home in his swimsuit, despite the freezing rain outside:

And George was kind enough to make me a delicious Tunnel-of-Fudge birthday cake.

Alas, it did not turn out quite as beautiful as he had hoped, but it was so tasty nonetheless. Thanks, George.

I can't get over what a great week it was. As I've gone back through these pictures, I've wished more than once that we could be there still. And it wouldn't have been nearly so great without George and Melanee. We had so many great laughs and conversations. In fact, they were so integral a part of the vacation that I'm considering just moving in with them. Then we'd party every day.
I can't think of a single reason why that wouldn't work.