My 30th Birthday Feat

To prove to myself that 30 is not so bad, I decided to hike Timp for my B-day. I have seriously never been so terrified in my life, but the funny thing is that all I can think about is doing it again!

Here I am clinging for dear life to the white shed thingy at the summit.



And this is my hero that helped me the entire way.



The reason I was scared.....See that guys stick? About 3 feet below it was The Snowy Waterfall of Death. At least that's what I christened it after I had crossed it and got my legs working again. I can honestly say I know what it feels like to "shake from fear!"



Tony took a picture of me while I was trying to regroup after my near death experience. Oh, by the way, can you see how this is an ice bridge, not a glacier? The stinkin' thing was hollow. And, oh yeah, it had COLLAPSED by the time we got back, and we had to cross at an even more precarious place!



I can honestly say that if I hadn't been so freaked out by the ice bridge crossing, I would've enjoyed it a lot more. I felt like at every turn I was facing my death! Even if I was only on a path with a tiny 10 foot drop. I'd gotten so worked up that it was all terrifying, but thankfully I have Indiana Jones mixed with Bear Grylls for a husband, and he got me to the top!

Next time Tony....I won't be such a ninny........as long as the ice bridges are gone!

The scenery was so beautiful that we had a blast taking pictures of each other. Incoming pictures!!













In hindsight, it wasn't as scary as I felt it was at the time. I'm actually a little ashamed of my fear. The entire way I told Tony that "I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever even dream of doing this again." And I said it repeatedly. But after about two days, I wanted to do it again. Something weird about having the bajeebees scared out of you. I don't think I'm an adrenaline junky, AT ALL, but I do like to conquer things, and I'm pretty sure with how scared I was, it didn't count as conquering. More like enduring. The thing that frustrates me the most is that I was in good shape. I didn't feel like the hike was very taxing physically and I would've loved to be able to tell people it was "no big deal", but with being so scared, I actually choose not to mention anything about how it went. I just say I did it. The fact that I made it though is still good. I was proud of myself....once I got back down!So maybe I'll redeem myself next year??!!

Thanks for an incredibly memorable birthday Tony! Love you!

Summer Fun With Cousins

Trudy found us a new summer hangout! A great pond in P.G. I went twice this summer with my kids and had so much fun with them.

Erica and the girls.



Fishin' Buddies! (Jace and Brycen) I don't thing Tony needs to worry anymore if Jace is going to love fishing as much as his daddy!



I COULD NOT get Ryan to look up at the camera and break his focus on the sand. It was almost painful for him to even consider stopping playing with the sand. We're so excited to have Cindy and Dan closer now. Ryan an Owen are only 2 months apart and have SOOOO much fun together!



My new little water bug. Kent has spent the last 5 years of his life a "Stair Sitter" at pools. He was terrified to get out into the water, even if I was holding him. But this year he learned that he could swim with his life jacket on, and now all he talks about is going swimming again.



He actually figured it out at the Provo pool, but I didn't take any pictures there so we'll just pretend. After Kent had figured out how to swim around, he taught Ryan not 15 minutes later. Now I have 2 little life jacket swimmers.

It would've been better if they'd learned to swim before the first of these two pond trips when Ryan tried to go sailing!! There was a terrifying moment when I couldn't find Ryan and finally found him floating away kneeling on top of a little raft. Hailee had to swim out and catch him. Thank goodness, because I wasn't in my swim suit and the nearest kid that I was begging to swim out and catch him was looking at me funny!!! he-he. When I finally got Ryan back and took him off the raft, he started throwing a huge fit begging to get back on his "boat"! I now feel much better knowing that if he's in a life jacket he could at least float around a little. Kids are scary!

More Camping!

I need to throw my camping pictures on here somehow, so here is a big blob of pictures all squished together and called a post. Here's to my creativity!!

We went camping a few times as a family and had so much fun this year. Here comes a big conglomerate mess of pictures not in any chronological order as to which trip the pictures are from!

The fun little waterfall by our campsite. (Notice how I'm never in any pictures....TONY!)



Kent learning from Dad that "fishing is the best thing ever!" Tony has big plans on making sure all of our boys are addicted to fishing so he can take them out all the time.



My mister Jace!! Love this boy to smithereens!



And the future "Best Mom in America." Erica is ALWAYS watching out for her little brothers. It almost makes me wish I had another baby so I could experience a little help.....nah!!



Yay for Chandler family campouts!

Next comes Ryan's B-day

We went camping for Ryan's B-day. That's the great thing about turning 3. You don't expect Seven Peaks!! For these Chandler boys, though, camping is as good as it gets. Dirt and more dirt!


We camped out by a river, which Ryan was NOT allowed to go anywhere near, but we did find a fun stream.



Ryan got EVERYTHING LIGHTNING MCQUEEN! Or as it would've been called one year ago...House:) Not quite sure why, but for about 6 months Ryan thought all cars were called houses and so his favorite movie was "House".



We had a blast! Obviously :)

4th of July

This year for the fourth we finally got to experience having both sides of the family living close by. We went to lunch at Tony's mom's (which I took no pictures of, but stole this off of Michael and Kayla's blog)



And then we went to dinner at my parent's. My kids have never seen so many cousins all in one day! Mark, the last two years, has brought these awesome parachute fireworks and has the kids chase after them. It's the hit of every Fourth!






This picture is probably a moment I shouldn't share, but it's too cute. Kenters was having a problem because he wanted ALL of the army parachute guys. Look at this face!



Travis also brought all of his "used to be illegal" fireworks. It was fun watching them with no guilt attached!



Afterwards were the fireworks on memorial hill, but it rained. It made things a little tricky, but it was FUN!





Happy Fourth of July!

Kent's B-day (way back in June)

Kenters is now the big 5! He was so excited to feel like he was catching up to his brother and sister. He also took every opportunity to tell Ryan how much older he was than him. Kent had the ultimate birthday party!

We had plans to go see Rio at the dollar theater, but then last minute were given some extra tickets to go to Seven Peaks. My kids had earned some from school, and then we were given more from my mom and Jace's summer reading teacher. Our whole family got to go for FREE! That's a family favorite word. So Kent thought that we were going for his birthday party. It worked out great because we met up with our neighbors there and Kent got to play with this best friend Sadie.

Note...these two are not very photogenic when they're together. This is the best of many, many, many blurry fast moving pictures!

Afterwards we had just enough time to eat doughnuts from "The Bakery" in Lehi. That's what Kent wanted instead of cake....but in the end he picked a cupcake! Then we rushed and made it to Rio and came back for Pizza. It was quite the crazy and spoiled b-day! But Kent ate it all up and appreciated every minute of being the Star of the day.

This is a picture of Kent's reaction to his new bike!! So cute!

Mr. Big Stuff about gave me a heart attack with how fast he had that thing going!

Happy Birthday Baby! Here's to hoping you never have any bad feelings about being the third child!

Getaway to D.C.

Tony had a business trip planned for the beginning of June. Suddenly, one week before he left, he spontaneously decided I should come with him. YAY! It was a little crazy trying to figure out what to do for our kids while we were gone, but our families are so awesome and all pitched in and helped...A LOT. Especially Michael and Kayla. Thank you so much!!
So the trip started out in Alexandria, Virginia where we stayed. Tony was there for a convention and had to be there for most of the day, but we did have the evenings and most of Saturday. So when we got there on Wednesday night we took a quick tour of Old Town. Really, it wasn't that amazing. They were neat buildings, but then it would be a law office or hair salon inside and kind of ruin the effect. I wish I had been able to see the museums or go on one of their famous "Ghost Tours", but our schedule was tricky, so we just looked around.

This is what a lot of the houses looked like.


















This is a back alleyway. Look at the roads! Cobblestone! This was more like it.
























I actually took these pictures the next day when I went out in the city with Tony's boss's wife and daughter. Then that evening, Tony and I went and saw the white house and all of the monuments in the National Mall. This night was by far my favorite!






The Washington Monument




This is a video of a guy singing out in front of the white house.



The Lincoln Memorial

The Korean Memorial. The Korean monument with all of the statues was my favorite. It was such a solemn place. The statues of soldiers walking through the foliage were so life like that you just felt quieted by the reality of the war. Everyone that came near it was instantly reverant.



This is the wall of names for the Vietnam Memorial



Later that night, Tony and I went back to Alexandria and discovered that DC is nothing like New York. NOTHING is open after 8. And restaraunts aren't much of an exception. It was tough to find a place to eat. I had been so excited to see the monuments that I made poor Tony starve to death while we looked at them. Stopping for dinner was not an option. So when we got back to Alexandria at midnight, there was nowhere to eat. Luckily we found this little dive on King St. I'm so glad we did. It was delicious!! I loved it so much that I took a picture.....of a restaurant. That means it's good!



The next day I went to Mt. Vernon while Tony was at the convention. I went with his boss's fam again. I think I could've stayed there for much longer than the 4 hours that I was there.



George and Martha Washington's tomb


On the way to Mt. Vernon while we were riding the water Taxi, three presidential helicopters flew overhead. The captian of the boat told us that when there were three of them, it meant that the President was on one of them. So my DC trip was officially complete. I even saw the President!




The next day was Saturday and we had a lot more time and we spent it at some museums. We went to the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and The Museum of Air and Space. I wish I could've seen them all. I think next time I'd like the see the Museum of American History.

A Prehistoric Giant Sloth. CRAZY!! I think this was Tony's favorite because it was so shockingly huge!



The Hope Diamond



Our last stop. The Capitol building. By this time I can honestly say that my feet HURT! I was officially done. It was such a great trip and very nice for Tony and I to get some much needed R&R together.




Thank you frequent flyer miles and NovaRad for an awesome trip!