Heber Creeper FHE

Last Monday night we met Grandma and Grandpa in Heber for a fun FHE on the Heber Creeper.  We made a required stop at Granny's for a yummy burger and delicious shake first.  Yum!

Savy loves ranch dressing :)

 Our beautiful Aurora.  She's growing up way too fast!

My handsome man cleaning up dinner. Love this guy!

The choo-choo!  I really wish we got a picture of Savy's lips when she says "choo-choo!"  It's pretty awesome.  We got some video of it at least :)

The train was REALLY crowded by the time we got on and we were worried we wouldn't find seats for us all to sit together.  Luckily the last car on the train was mostly empty and we got seats together. I think we ended up being less crowded in our train car than everyone else on the rest of the train :)

The train ride didn't start until 7pm which is when we're usually getting the girls ready for bed so they were a little sleepy but they did awesome and loved being on the train!

Me and Miss Aurora, and Grandma and Grandpa

We couldn't get them away from the window for the first part of the ride, at least until it got dark.  They LOVED it!

Rori with Grandpa and Grandma

And Savy had to join them too, of course :)

Grandpa shared yummy, sticky candy canes!  Mmm!

When we got to the stopping point, the engine moved down to our car to pull us back to the station.  When the whistle would blow it was really loud!  Our girls were probably the only ones who hated the noise and covered their ears the whole way back.  All the other kids in the car would scream and giggle every time the train whistle blew.  I was surprised Savannah was able to fall asleep with the noise, but she did.

Aurora was pretty excited that she got to use the potty on a moving train.  We were proud of her for doing it too!  She was pretty tired by the end of the train ride too and fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for coming on this fun train ride for FHE with us!  We'll definitely be doing this again.

Sandy Beach

Our first attempt at Utah Lake this year wasn't very successful.  We went to Lincoln Beach which wasn't very people friendly for people who want to just go hang out at the lake.  Our friend, Tracee, reminded us of Sandy Beach and said she wanted to go check it out.  When we were all in the single's ward together 10 years ago we had an FHE bonfire at Sandy Beach but Dar missed out because he was working so he had never been there (he still actually hasn't been there because this day we went to Sandy Beach with our Aussies, Dar was still at work). Sandy Beach is WAY more people friendly and much, much closer to our house too!  I can't believe we haven't thought about going to Sandy beach before now.  I definitely think it'll become a more visited place by us next summer :)

How beautiful is that to be able to go to a beach and have those beautiful mountains in the background?!  Love it!!

Savy showing me where the airplane is

We really didn't spend much time in the water but Savy sure liked splashing in it :)

Rori helped make a sandcastle

Rori and Mr. P

 Savy's other favorite thing was throwing sand.  Little stinker.


Beautiful baby!

Throwing the sand into the water now :)

I love when they play together

Savy threw sand all over our car.  Funny girl.

And she ate it too.  Yuck!

Miss Aurora--isn't that a beautiful picture?

It was a fun couple of hours at Sandy Beach.  Now we just need to find one more warm, sunny day and take Daddy there with us!  Thanks for the invite, Aussies! We love you guys!

Annual Honey Harvest!

This was the first year Darwin rented a honey extractor and he extracted the honey at his parent's house.  We ended up with three hives this year (because his original hive swarmed twice in a week) so we were really hoping to get more honey than we have in the past.  We still only ended up with about 4 gallons.  That okay though.  Maybe next year...we have our fingers crossed that all three hives survive the winter.

Savy enjoyed the honey drips right off the bat :)

Cuties.  At first Darwin just let the extractor go on its own.  Then he realized if he used his body to cram it against the wall to keep it from shaking uncontrollably, he could put it on a higher speed and get the honey extracted faster.

 Filtering the honey

Savy kept trying to stick her finger in it to get a taste of the delicious golden honey so I ended up taking the girls out to the garden to help me pick veggies.  Plus, the bees started finding their way in to the garage and Rori was freaking out a little bit (she still clearly remembers getting stung by a "Princess Bee" on her thumb in the springtime and doesn't like being in close proximity to Daddy's bees).

Even though we didn't get as much as we were hoping for we're still really glad to have what we got!  We've had a waiting list of people who already wanted to buy honey from us as soon as we harvested.  We're not the only ones who love this stuff!!

The bees swarmed back in May and I'm pretty sure I didn't post about it because I was going to leave that up to Darwin.  He's really busy too though so he never got around to it. Dar's dad has a really nice camera (we want one like his!) so these pictures look awesome!

Luckily both swarms stayed in the backyard and Dar's dad was around to see them.  Dar had to rush over there after work both times in order to catch the swarms before they took off somewhere else.  The first swarm too shelter in the top of the pear tree.  Dar had to carefully climb up and gently saw off the branch they were on.  I was at home with the girls so I missed it both times, but I'm glad to have the pictures!

 Awesome pictures! I love it!!


My handsome beekeeper :)


Putting the bees in their new home

Dar invited our neighbor, Jeremy, to help him out.  Jeremy is the one who introduced Dar to beekeeping a few years ago.

I guess we didn't get pictures of the second swarm.  The original hive swarmed a second time later that same week and swarmed in the apple trees that time.  Darwin said they weren't quite as easy to capture the second time because they were more spread out, but he got them!  We really hope we get a better honey harvest next year.  I'm glad Darwin has this fun little hobby :)

August Randoms

I had just a couple more pictures from August I wanted to get posted before moving on to September.  I'm definitely getting behind with my blogging again.  Oh, well.  Such is my life right now :)

I love that Savannah will sit and smile for the camera sometimes now.  She's such a little sweetheart!

Daddy and Rori went outside to play with chalk together one day.  Rori loves when Daddy goes outside to do chalk with her :)

Grandma and Grandpa went out to the West Coast for a few days to visit Aunt Andrea and Uncle Sean (and the ocean, of course!).  They know how much we love the beach too and they brought back some fun books for the girls and some yummy jam for us.  I'm so glad we captured this moment of Grandma reading to the girls inside the tent from Aunt Georgiana :)

And I think that wraps up August!

Messy girls!

The girls are usually pretty well behaved while I shower, but sometimes I come out to surprises.  One day several weeks ago, I came out and Aurora showed me her "pretty colors".

This wasn't the first time this had happened, and luckily we have washable markers so it wasn't too big of a deal.  I was just glad it wasn't on the furniture this time.  Later, as I was helping Aurora get dressed for the day I busted up laughing when I took her jammy shirt off and saw this:

She had given herself armpit hair like Daddy :) Haha!  We waited to wash it off until Daddy got home from work so he could see her masterpiece. Awesome.

Aurora's "master of all messes" came on the afternoon of August 29th during quiet time.  We'll just say that's not chocolate on her carpet. :/  Yuck!  Nasty!  Eww!

We pretty much gave up on potty training her a while ago because she is so stubborn and we were getting so frustrated, but this was the final straw and I knew we needed to be done with pull-ups for good this time.  She's definitely big enough and smart enough to do it.  This resulted in her having to go commando for an entire week before she could earn her panties back and it honestly worked miracles!  (Don't worry, we stayed home and didn't take her out in public.)  She went from not going on the toilet at all to only having about 4 accidents in the last 3 weeks! And, she's finally telling us when she needs to go!  Hallelujah!

Savannah's messes usually revolve around food and her insistence on feeding herself.  I'm okay with that.
Ranch Dressing

She paints her food on her forehead frequently.  It's kind of funny.

Mmm!

 Chocolate Pudding - delish!


She can say "cheese" now.  Love it!

Despite the sometimes frustrating messes our girls make and feeling like I'm constantly cleaning up after them, I try to remind myself that they're only little once and to enjoy this time I have to be home with them while they're so little.  My time with them is so precious and I try to soak in the small moments when we get to be silly and thoroughly enjoy each other, messes and all!