Seattle Vacation

We spent a week in Seattle with Doug's family and played, played, played. We packed a lot of stuff into that week, but it was lots of fun. Doug's brothers both came up and so his family was together for the first time in 5 years since his younger brothers missed each other on their respective missions.

Grandma bought a pool for the girls. It was really hot the first few days we were there (in the 90's and no AC...hot hot hot) so the pool was appreciated.

Evelynn preferred the hose, especially when she figured out she could spray us with it. :) I'm so glad I'm still faster than her.

This is the sunset view from their new deck. I didn't take a picture of it, unfortunately, but it is way nice. They built it themselves and Doug helped them finish up the last little bit when we got there. It was quite a project!

Eloise really liked being in the high chair because she could look around and see what was going on. We don't have a high chair at home, so I took advantage of it a lot.

This picture cracks me up. This was dinner one night, and Mom has a crown on her head (left over from cleaning up Evelynn's mess) and B.J. just looks awesome.

There's a lake right down the street from Doug's house and we went swimming. Evelynn put on that life jacket and she was off and swimming all by herself for over an hour! She kicked her little legs as hard as she could, bobbing along in the water (see video below).

Eloise liked the water for a little while, and then decided only Mommy would do.

Doug is trying to catch the little fish that swim in the shallow water.

Evelynn and Uncle Steven became quick buddies on this trip. She thought he was lots of fun, and I'm sure he thought the same of her.

This is one of Melinda's mom's dogs. Evelynn thought it was awesome that she could get the dog to go where she wanted....some of the time.

Steven and Eloise

At the park. It seems like no outing is a successful outing unless there is a park involved. I'm noticing more and more often my pictures include parks in them... I should start rating them based on how much fun Evelynn had.

Grandpa and Eloise in the swing.

We went to Seattle for an afternoon. We walked everywhere, and Evelynn was such a trooper for most of it. This is actually at the end of the day when we reached the dock. She was so tired she refused to smile, but that's ok.

This is at City Center park in Seattle.


This was a HUGE fountain that was set to all different kinds of music. Evelynn was very intimidated by it and so she refused to get very close to it, but I thought it was cool. Doug barely contained himself from running through the water, which was good since we didn't have any spare clothes.

I bought Evelynn one of those animal backpacks with the leash tail. she actually really liked it, and didn't even mind the tail being held by others very much. I got her a monkey... I thought it would be fitting.

Gross monk-fish at Pike Place. This thing had scary looking teeth. It reminded me of the scary fish on Finding Nemo...those of you who have seen it know what I mean. It's a good thing we didn't see any fish that looked like Nemo characters here or else Evelynn would have been traumatized. She loves that movie.

Evelynn on the pig at Pike Place Market.

We went to a town called Leavenworth one day. The whole town is themed after a Bavarian village and is so cute. It had lots of shops selling delicate figurines and pictures and other breakable items and I had a two year old who wanted to touch EVERYTHING.... it was stressful at times. But the town was really neat. This is the place we got Bratwursts at, and they were so yummy. I got a curry wurst which was surprisingly good. They didn't have ketchup for your wurst, just like 10 kinds of mustard and sour kraut.

Leavenworth street

In front of the ice cream shop.

This was the store that was made for Doug. It was a cheese store that had all sorts of specialty cheeses. We went in and had samples of a lot of them, exclaimed how wonderful they all were, and then left without buying anything. :) There were some excellent cheeses there though.

Kristen and Eloise

The last full day we were there we went to a water park. Evelynn tried to go off swimming like she did at the lake but without a life jacket and almost drown, but she figured it out pretty fast after that that she still sinks without help. I got to get this kid into swim lessons pronto.

Evelynn and Grandma played dress-up one afternoon. If you can't tell, she has on eye shadow, blush, lip gloss, grandma's necklace and clip on earrings. She thought she was so pretty.

I did something a tad bit rash on the vacation, which was to get my hair cut. Luckily I was sane enough to wait until after family pictures to do this, so those pictures are with my long hair. Those should be forthcoming soon, so stay tuned!

Wildwood Family Reunion 2008

Every year my mom's side of the family gets together for a small family reunion up in Provo Canyon. Usually its just lunch and socializing and playing tennis or if you're brave playing in the river, though it is VERY cold. Doug and I were late this year so we missed most of the festivities, but we did get some good pictures in.

Grandpa Holt with his second great-granddaughter. It's still so odd to see grandpa beardless!

Grandma and Grandpa bought a house in Draper right next to the new Draper temple. I asked him if he would ever consider moving to Utah County and he looked at me like I spoke blasphemy! Grandpa is a die hard Ute fan, and venturing into blue territory is taboo. He still hasn't come to terms with the fact that BYU is going to dominate again this season, but that's ok. We all know who the champions are. :)

This is Elise, my cousin Jeff's wife. She really really wants a baby, so I let her borrow mine whenever we're together.

Beau didn't think the water was too cold.

This is as far as Evelynn got before deciding it was better to stay dry.

Family picture. Evelynn is sort of smiling.

Grandpa, Uncle Ed and Aunt Sue.

Ward Camping Trip Evacuation

On Friday night our ward had a camping trip up in Payson Canyon. As we traveled to the camp site, Doug and I noticed that there was a fire on the side of the mountain. We wondered whether or not we would be able to get up to the camp out at all, but although there were firetrucks on the road, they let us pass by. Come to find out later that they had just opened the road back up and many of our ward members had been denied access to the canyon earlier that day. We got to the camp and set up our tiny tent. We fit two kids, an air mattress, two adults and all of our stuff into this tent (picture below. The picture here is from our back yard since we didn't take any at the actual camp ground).

The reason for the air mattress was because I told Doug the last time (and only other time) we went camping that I wouldn't go again unless we had an air mattress. It just is way too uncomfortable. I guess I'm just not the "roughing it" type of person. And yet even with this mentality I decided that we should bring our two little kids with us. Sometimes I wonder at my sanity or judgement skills. Anyway, everything was going fine and we were having fun, and then it was time for bed. For those of you who don't know I am 5'10" and our tent was 5' 8 1/2" long, so my toes were crunched, which made it hard for me to go to sleep. Evelynn did go to sleep with out too much of a fuss which was a miracle in itself, and then Doug was out maybe 10 minutes after her. Eloise sleeps anywhere, so she was the first one asleep without a hitch. So I'm lying in bed trying to find a place for my feet when I hear someone walk by and ask if anyone is awake. Even though I was awake I sure wasn't going to respond to him because I didn't want to wake up my girls. So I figured if I stayed quite and really still he would eventually go away, and he did. About 10 minutes later someone else came by and started stopping by tents to tell us we had to evacuate because of the fire. By this time it was 11:45 and the girls had been asleep for a half hour, but we crawled out and got the scoop. Apparently the strong winds had kicked up the fire quite a bit and the park rangers were telling everyone to pack up and leave the canyon. Another miracle happened when we managed to get our kids into the car without them waking up, and then pack up our tent in 20 minutes flat in the dark. How's that for efficient! Then we helped everyone else in the ward get packed up to leave and took off about 12:50. We followed a guy in our ward who knew the canyon pretty well and ended up cutting 45 minutes off of our drive time home by going down this winding dirt service road that spit us out in Santaquin. All I had to say about that ride was that I was sure glad Doug was driving cause I was freaking out. I have poor night vision, so add that to pitch black night, windy roads, low visibility due to trees and lots of dust from the road and I was just glad my hand didn't cramp from grabbing onto my chair. Needless to say we made it out fine, and got home around 1:30. After putting the girls to bed and showering, we got to bed about 2:00 and then we were up about 6:00 am because that's when the girls got up. It was a long night. We found out later that everyone that had to go the long way around on the Nebo Loop to Nephi got home around 2:30 or 3:00am because the Payson way out was closed due to the fire. So we got lucky that way. But I guess I can count our first family camping trip as a success because a majority of the family was actually asleep, in a tent, out in the mountains. Maybe I'll get to sleep next time.