2012-2013 School Photo

Olivia brought home her school photo today and I am loving how they turned out.  Last years ones were a bit of a miss, so I had her practice this year on how to smile for the camera.  I know I'm a dork!  I'm so glad that she actually smiled this year though, she looks so cute and so grown up.  The best part about her school photos is instead of buying  a bunch, I bought a cd with the images on them and then got the copyright to use them however I want.  That way I won't have a bunch that just sit in a drawer. 

First Day of School

Well I can't believe that Olivia is a first grader, and has been for 3 weeks now. Summer just flew by and I was not ready for it to end. I was a little apprehensive of Olivia being at school all day, but once I realized how much I could get done with one kid at home I was okay with it. Olivia is loving school and loves riding the bus everyday. In fact one day I drove her to show her how she could sleep in later if I took her, and she was so mad at me because she didn't get to play outside then before school started. The hardest adjustment has been that she is on A track, meaning she starts school at 8am, so I have to wake her up at 6:45. It is rough on both of us, but the upside is she is home by 2:30. Its hard to believe though that she is first grade. Here is to a great year for her!!

Summer Fun

Well I figured since summer is over for us here in Utah and I better blog about what we did these last couple of months. I feel like summer has flown by and that we did nothing, but I guess we did actually have quite a few visitors.
Two of Damon's brothers and their families came and visited us and different times, so that was fun, the girls always like playing with their cousins.
 What took up most of our time this summer was driving back and forth to swim lessons. Olivia did a total of 6 weeks of lessons, and seemed to have improved quite a bit by the end and was even diving. She is a little fish and loves to be in the water.
 I also signed Sophie up for the last swim session, she loved it and it was cute to watch her float around. We will definitely be doing swim lessons again next year. Other having some family visiting, I feel like we really didn't do that much, but we did have a fun summer and are sad to say goodbye to it.

The girls with cousin's Megan and Alyssa

Olivia getting ready to dive

and she's in!!

Olivia coming up to breathe.

Sophie blowing some bubbles.

Dancing on the side of the pool

Time to jump in, I just love her cute little bum in a swim suit.

Sophie jumping away at jump on it.

Jumping with cousin Miles

The girls with another set of cousins: Julia, Miles, and Noah.

All the kids showing of their balloon animals/mermaids that they got at City Creek Mall for free too. That place is awesome!

Visiting Temple Square.

Our Great Alaskan Adventure

This last week Damon and I were able to go up to Alaska for five days and visit my best friend from growing up. It has always been Damon's dream to go to Alaska so he was giddy with excitement, I on the other hand was excited to see Melissa. We drove down to Lakeview on Wednesday and dropped the girls off with my parents where they got to stay for the week. We then headed down to Reno, were we flew out the next morning. Thursday evening we went out to dinner at a really nice restaurant(like seriously the best calamari I have ever had, yumm!) and then we walked around downtown Anchorage. This is when I also got to experience how it never gets dark there. It is the craziest thing!

Friday Melissa had to work so Matt was our tour guide. He took us to this wildlife conservation center and we saw so many cute animals. This is also where I saw bears, the only bears I saw while in Alaska, phew!!

Full grown Mux Ox

Baby Mux Ox, don't they just look so soft, I really wanted to pet one!

Bear, luckily behind a fence!

This is my favorite photo I took this trip!! Love this little guy!

More baby moose, these guys were twins!!

Two days of our trip though we were going to go camping with Melissa and her husband Matt at a cabin outside of Fairbanks. They live in Anchorage and what we thought was going to be a 4 hour drive ended up being a 7, Melissa had been misinformed on just how long the drive was. Oh well we had great conversations on the way up and it was fun to just catch up. Camping was okay, I'm not a huge camper, this was my second time actually going camping, so it was a bit outside my comfort zone. I just wish the cabin we stayed in had running water or a toilet, but I guess that isn't really camping then. I was pretty terrified of seeing a bear, so much that I made Damon walk me to the outhouse every time I needed to use it. It didn't help that Matt kept on freaking me out acting like there was a bear behind me all the time. I survived though, which was my number one goal. We saw quite a few moose, which was cool. One we saw was about 25 yards away from us, drinking some water out of a pond. Melissa and Matt took us to this amazing hot springs, the coolest one I have ever been too, it was so big. Damon also got to do some fishing while we were camping which he enjoyed, but unfortunately he did not catch anything.

Our cabin

Action shot of Damon splitting some wood

This moose was about 25 yards away from us!

Damon having fun fishing

The view from our cabin

A moose we saw in the wild, with antlers!

Me enjoying my camping experience!

 Okay this last picture I took just to show how light it was at 11pm.  No joke this is the darkest it got! I couldn't believe it!!

After we got back from camping we had one more evening in Anchorage before we left the next morning. So we went back to that yummy restaurant and ordered the same thing. I had the halibut, SO delicious and Damon had the fresh catch of the day which was salmon, the best salmon he has ever had he said. We also ordered the calamari again, because it was so yummy. It was such a wonderful vacation!!! Damon and I are so glad that we got to do this, it was the first vacation we have taken just the two of us since we had Olivia, so six years. It was much needed!! Can't wait till we can do it again!

Kindergarten Graduation

On May 22, Olivia graduated from Kindergarten. It was such a cute program, they sang songs and said there ABC's and counted. My parents came to town just for it, and my mom said it was better than high school graduations. All the kids were so fun to watch, some of them really got into the singing. Olivia was a little more reserved than others. I can't believe that she is already done with her first year of school!

Waiting for the program to start.

Getting her certificate of achievement.

Holding it up to show us.

 

Olivia with her teacher Mrs. Crockett.  We loved her, she was such a great teacher!!