Monday Monday

I was cleaning the house this weekend and Alex was entertaining herself in her room. After a few minutes she came into my room to show me our outfit. It was hilarious. A puppy dog hat, 3D glasses, and a turtle necklace. What a cutie.

Tyler has an anatomy class this semester and it's a LOT of work. Fortunately Tyler loves it and can't get enough of studying, and trying to teach me. A few days ago I realized this might just be the best class ever. Last week Tyler was learning the bones, muscles etc of the face, and I got a pretty good face/ head massage while he was trying to explain them to me. This week it's the arms and I am very excited about all the wonderful arm massages I'm going to trick him into giving me. Now I just need to convince him to use me as a study buddy instead of the skeletons at school, and I win everything.

Dreams and Memories- inspired by a lot of great pictures

I had the greatest childhood ever.

I want desperately for my kids to have the same kids of experiences and fun as I did, I'm just not quite sure how to pull it off.

I have really great memories, of doing really fun things with my family.

I wouldn't change a thing (except maybe put my mom in a few of the pictures. I guess that's the curse of being the family photographer.)

I've always dreamed of living by the ocean and taking my kids on walks down the beach every morning to find shells and treasures.

I don't think I ever will because I'm secretly terrified of the ocean, big lakes and deep rivers and often have nightmares involving sharks.

I currently dream about painting our future home every color of the rainbow, each room being different from the next and the outside sporting some bright blue or hue of yellow.

At the same time think If I ever got the chance then I would hear Tyler's or my mothers voice in my head telling me all the reasons it would be impractical, and probably end up not doing it. I also am terrible at matching things.

I always thought I would have a family of little boys and we would grow up together having crazy adventures, and playing in the dirt. am very happily surprised with my family of little girls, hope for more, and know that we will grow up together having crazy adventures, and playing in the dirt.

Some of the best moments of my life were spent leaning over a pottery wheel on a bridge over a creek in the mountains.

Tyler bought me a pottery wheel for my birthday the first year we were married, and I am so embarrassed to say that I have still never used it.

The greatest summer of my life was the one just before I met Tyler. I spent the entire 3 months living at Aspen Grove, up in the Mountains and rarely heading down to civilization.

I lived in a tiny trailer with 4 other girls, dressed up like a cowboy on Monday's, an indian on Tuesdays, some kind of hippy on Wednesdays and a newsboy on Thursday. I taught pottery lessons every day and helped older women and young children with their arts and crafts.

I slept in tepee's and general store attics, ate snow cones, won rocking horse races and had clay fights. I hiked to stewart falls almost every week and Timpanogos once.

I rappelled down a waterfall, swam through an underwater tunnel in a cave, and gave the stomach flu to almost the entire staff.

I made paper rockets for a thousand kids and burnt myself with a glue gun making every single one. I made friends with some of the greatest people on earth, who I can happily say, 5 years later, I am still friends with. That was my Tom Sawyer summer. living the adventure, working hard, having fun. Young and free.

disclaimer

I know everyone always talks about their blogs being their journals, and that someday they will print them, but I REALLY am! I've downloaded the program, I'm editing pages and pictures and hopefully in the next few months I will have the first installment of the Brady family year book done!

I think it will be fun to look through in a few years and see what was happening and remember all the fun times. Since I am in no way a scrap-booker, this is perfect. So if I post boring or random things, it's because they are things I want to include in the book, want to let my kids know, or want to remember.

There, you've been warned.

4th of July Vacation

I love the 4th of July. I love America. I love our founding fathers and all they did to make our country great. I graduated with a degree in History. I'm pretty sure since then, the 4th of July has been one of my top 3 favorite holidays.

This year my wonderful husband decided to make me the happiest woman alive by getting up at 6 am on Friday and taking the whole family to the balloon festival!!!

Alex couldn't get enough of it. Her reaction made the whole thing.

She LOVED all the big balloons.

Unfortunately they didn't let the balloons fly because of the weather, but it was amazing to see them inflate, deflate and just sit there. Wow.

Saturday we left early and headed to Star Valley, making sure to stop along the way and have some fun. My Mother's Dad's family was having a reunion so we decided to head to the prettiest place on earth and meet up with Mom and David for a mini vacation.

I'm pretty Sure everything is better in Star Valley....

The play grounds, the pictures, the temperatures,

the colors, the hot tubs, the cabins,

the slides,

the food, the trees, the bugs,

the swings, the creeks, the grass, the ice cream.

Here David is modeling the hat I sewed up for Alex. I love it so much I'm thinking of making one for myself (more on that later)

Here Heidi is modeling one of the matching 4th of July shirts I made up. I hate sewing ruffles.

We had lots of fun.

The weather was PERFECT. You could play outside without sweating, and at night it was chilly enough for a light jacket. I'm pretty sure our house is hotter in the middle of the night, than that entire valley was in the middle of the day.

Heidi got some much needed attention from Grandma, and loved being outside.

We tried to take a family picture....

But someone was always looking away from the camera.

Or making silly faces.

I tried to get a picture of the girls in their matching outfits.

But eventually had to settle with individual shots.

The smiles you get in response to a bribe, just aren't quite like the real thing.

This little girl is a lot of fun to be with.

We stayed in the most fantastic cabins. It was one of the best "hotel's" ever.
We all took a swim in the pool, but it started to get a bit chilly for Heidi,

so we moved the party inside.

Alex got to stay awake until 10 pm!!! We watched the fireworks shoot off while sitting in the grass next to main street, with a pine tree and an electrical pole blocking the view.

But I wasn't watching the fireworks very much anyway.

How could I with these two being so cute!!!

Eventually Alex collapsed from exhaustion.

The next day we decided to go on a hike to the worlds largest Intermittent spring (like a cold water geyser, sort of).

Tyler looked pretty hot in the awesome Moby sling my sweet Aunt Kathy had made for me. Heidi loves to be tied up in it, and it gives you the freedom of your hands, while still keeping the baby close. A must-have for any mother.

It was a beautiful hike, even though we didn't see the water stop due to the huge amount of spring run off. There was also an avalanche blocking the very last bit of trail (and I of course was only wearing sandals), so the boys went ahead...

and the girls played with rocks.

Tyler said it was the best tasting water he'd ever had.

We stopped by to have our picture taken by the worlds largest Elkhorn Arch. It made me pretty happy that Tyler was willing (although it seems I was the only one actually interested in getting a picture).

We finally got a pretty good family picture. Unfortunately Heidi got left in the car.

Afterwards we went to visit my Grandpa Sanderson.

Alex was more interested in climbing the fence,

and playing in the dirt, than meeting her great grandpa for the first time.

But he showed that they had similar interests, and she soon warmed up.

Squished on that couch is our 4 generations. Father, daughter, daughter, and daughters.
We went and saw my great grandmother's house in Freedom, WY, located exactly on the Wyoming/ Idaho border. The city is so named because the polygamists would live on main street with two houses, one on each side of the street, and therefore be able to escape when the law came for them by moving across the street.

On the left you have Idaho, on the right you have Wyoming.

Sadly the weekend ended and we had to go home. So we went the long way and hit bear lake on the way back.

The water was beautiful and warm.

It was windy, but Alex has so much fun she didn't want to leave.

Heidi didn't enjoy it as much. Tyler took a ton of great pictures, but sadly I'm not one of those people who look good in the wind.

Fortunately for Alex, she is.

After Bear Lake we visited one of my oldest (not in age, in length of friendship) friends, Gwen, and her Husband Dan and puppy Mick. Alex loved Mick, I loved seeing Gwen, and Tyler and Heidi loved being out of the car. It was getting late and we had aways to go so we barley got to visit at all before hitting the road again. It seems Heidi hates the stretch of road from Bountiful to Provo and cried the entire stretch again. It didn't help that due to some sort of wreck on the freeway we only moved about half a mile in a 45 minute stretch near Sandy, but Tyler and I enjoyed the people and car watching, and it was almost as fun as a date.

Traveling with 2 kids isn't always fun or easy, but this was one of the best vacations ever thanks to Tyler, his bright smile, energy and optimistic attitude. All the little troubles were worth it, even when you wake up in the morning and realize in your exhausted euphoria the night before, you forgot to take the stinky, full of diapers, trash out to the curb.