Finally

You know how sometimes you have this thing to do and you can't wait to be able to do it?  But then something comes up and you don't get to it.  And then something else comes up.  Eventually this thing that you really looked forward to doing has become this thing that you have to do.  It looms.  It stalks your dreams.  It rides on your shoulder telling you constantly that you should be taking care of business.  It never sleeps.  It never leaves your side.  

So here I am.  Blogging about the incredibly fun summer we had in a rather mundane way because our summer is over and the idea of blogging about all our fun has become a chore.  I am hoping this will help me exorcise my blogging demons.  Sorry it wont be as much fun for you to read as it was for us to experience.

As soon as school was out - yea I know, back in MAY! - we headed up to Utah and had one of the best vacations ever.  Teresa also blogged about it many moons ago and did a far better job than I am going to do.  Plus, my camera ran out of batteries so I only have pictures from the first half of the vacation which, after seeing how many I have included here, is probably a good thing.

First things first.  My baby turned 2!  While this is a great achievement for him (that is, being alive for around 730 days give or take any leap year that might have occurred and Ashton being born in the afternoon of the first day and the party occurring on or near the exact date of his birth ... well, you get my meaning.) it is harder for me.  2 is such a large number after all.

Thanks grandma Kathy for the cool dinosaur cake.

We (and by "we" I mean mostly me) decided to head up the mountain for a fun BBQ.  The girls were hoping for snow but all we got is some rain.  Still, we don't see rain that often either so everyone (and by "everyone" I do mean everyone) still had a really good time.  Being with family is fun even if you are wet and cold. To fight the cold we had to pull out our really big guns.

Teresa has much better pictures on her blog - Rainy Days and Mondays 

We also decided to head up to the children's science museum in Salt Lake.  If you ever get the chance this is by far one of the best children's museums.

The first thing you encounter is this 2 story wonderland of balls and tubes and cranks and air. What else could you ask for in life really? Here is Livvy planning out her ball strategy. I love this kid.

Next we bring you world renown xylophone experts Ellie and Cooper in their duet debut. We laughed, we cried, we were ............ moved.

There was also a construction zone...
a farm...

a real helicopter ...

and a multi-level, almost too large to be real, water play zone with - wait for it - real ping pong balls.  

The kids were in heaven.  We had to physically remove them from the premises.  The tears only stopped with promises of Old McDonalds (as my kids refer to it).