A Little About the Week

So Brighton was a total rockstar on our long road trip to Utah. She didn't complain once! It was amazing! She just watched Cinderella about 400 times. She is really into the princess thing right now so when we would try to get her to watch something else, she would say "no Mom, I wanna watch pincess." And so, like I said, it was Cinderella 400 times. Don and I now have it down, just about word for word.

The road trip to Utah was to attend my grandmother's funeral (see previous blog entry). Not a fun reason to take a trip to Utah, but we ended up getting to spend some good time with family and friends. We had a big barbecue at Bob and Linda's house and almost everyone from my Dad's side was there. It was so fun to see cousins, aunts, and uncles that we NEVER get to see. And same thing with my Mom's side of the family. We were all there for the funeral and it was so good to see everyone and their cute families and just catch up. We also had breakfast with Ang and Graham one day and dinner with Steph and Ben one night. So fun to see them too! We have seen my immediate family quite a bit recently which we have loved! I so wish we all lived close to each other! It was a week full of spending time with people we love and it really made me miss living in Utah!

Rockin' out, singing the ABC's at Steph's house. Brighton is a natural. :)

Bri seriously played in this suitcase for an hour and would have liked to play longer, but I finally had to kick her out so I could pack my stuff. You just never know what is going to be a hit with a two year old.

Um, yes, Brighton picked this out all by herself. Fairy skirt, blue polka dot shirt, pink boots, a purse, and a goat. And yes, the purse and the goat are part of the ensemble here. She carried them around with us everywhere we went for the entire day. Gotta love the fashion sense of the little ones. Definitely more creative than mine.

Grandma Pope

Leah May Carson Pope, my grandmother, passed away last week. She was one of the most genuine, kind, fun people I have ever known. She will be missed so much, but I smile every time I think about the reunion she must be having with my grandfather who passed away 13 years ago. She is tied to so many of my childhood memories and I feel so lucky to have been able to spend so much time with her growing up. Her funeral was wonderful. I thought that the culmination of all of the stories and memories shared captured her beautifully and it was great to be with so much family and celebrate such a wonderful human being. I love you Grandma.

Trying to Beat the Heat!

So, I have some terrible news. We do not have air conditioning! I repeat, we do not have air conditioning! We haven't had AC since we have been married and, for the most part, it has been ok. It was one thing to cool down a little apartment, but this place is another story. When we rented this brand new, three story home with high ceilings a few months ago, it didn't even occur to us that it might not have AC, but as it turns out, it doesn't! Seriously, who builds nice, new homes and leaves out AC?! We are totally melting here. We went out and bought the best portable AC unit we could find, plus we have a small one from our last apartment, but with these high ceilings, the portable AC units just aren't cutting it. And just for the record, I do not do well in hot. I'm all for 90 degrees as long as I can retreat to my cool, air conditioned home when I need a break from the heat, but to walk inside only to find it is the same temperature as outside just does not work for me. We have had weather in the 90's this week and I don't even know what we are going to do all summer. I think that maybe we'll just spend the whole summer in Brighton's little pool. That's where we spent most of our weekend. We bought Bri this pool and all she has wanted to do is swim, swim, swim. And really, that's all Don and I have wanted to do too. It is way too hot in our house to hang out there and if you are going to be outside in 96 degree weather, there has to be water involved. So we played around in the little pool all weekend long. Bri was in heaven. Two playmates and a swimming pool. Oh the fun. She was also so excited to wear her swimming suits! The only way we could get one off of her was to let her put another one on. So she pretty much had one on the whole weekend. Napping, going to the store, it really didn't matter what the activity was, she was adamant that she wear a swimming suit! Hopefully we can get her in a dress for church later today. ;)

Fun Basketball Weekend

This weekend Quincy brought his team here for a tournament. Deb and Maeve came too and we loved having them stay at our house! Maeve is such a sweet little thing. It was fun to get to watch Q's team play. They have some great players and when you combine that with Q's super duper coaching skills, they are tough to beat. Lone Peak killed everyone they played. Bri was a trooper through all of the games so we actually got to watch a lot and only chased her around a little. Last night we all went out for a nice dinner at Jake's. Yumm. It's not often we get to double with Quinc and Deb and it was great to spend some time with them.

We loved having you guys here! Come visit again soon!

Oh, and one other little tid bit (see pictures above). We all went to the mall and were in the shoe section at Nordstrom. Bri found some grown up pink shoes that she fell in love with. She took her shoes off and put the new, pink, pretty shoes on. She was in heaven and was so excited about those shoes...that is until we told her that the shoes had to stay at the store and she had to take them off. There's just nothing like a 2 year old tantrum in the middle of Nordstrom...and it was a good one! At least we know she has good taste. Love for Nordstrom's shoes must be genetic. :)

Quick Cali Trip

Last weekend we drove to California for Nate's baptism. About 30 minutes into the trip Bri was saying things like, "all done car, I wanna play, I wanna get out!" So you can imagine how great the 12 hour trip was. The whole way down I made sure Don knew that we were flying from now on. We'll just call that 12 hours less than pleasant and leave it at that.

We had a lot of fun once we actually got to California. On Friday night we stayed with Bren and Megh. Brighton Went wild for their little dog! She was ridiculously excited. She chased it around and around laughing her head off saying, "funny doggy" and "doggy's hiding." She thought the dog was playing a game with her, when in reality, I think the dog was hiding for its own protection.

Saturday was a fun day. We got to spend some time with Ralf and Nita, check out Ben and Nate's little league game, go to the baptism, and go to a birthday party for Ben and Nate. It was definitely a full day. It was great to see everybody, even though it was a super short visit!

After the party we decided we would drive as far as we could that night. We made it the two hours to Bren and Megh's and gave up. We slept there until Bri woke up screaming at 4am and then got back on the road. Bri was a total trooper on the way home. She watched her Choo-Choo Thomas movie about a hundred times and slept a whole bunch, which was great for all of us!