Broken Bones & Birthdays!

Well we have had an eventful few days!  On Saturday morning Bryan went for a motorcycle ride with his friend Kyle.  They were pretty far into the ride when his front tire completely blew out.  He lost control and crashed, landing on his left hand.  He had a feeling that it was broken.  They were high up the mountain and had to ride back down to the truck.  He had to still pull the clutch with his sore hand, while trying to control his squirrely, flat-tire-bike.  Poor guy!  He got a little light-headed and had to stop and lie down for a bit.  That's when Kyle snapped this pic below...

On the x-ray it is, in fact, broken.  It's not a huge break, but you can see it below his pinky finger.  There are 2 cracks running vertically.  It's a "boxer's fracture."  Coincidentally Bryan has only ever had one other broken bone in his life, and it was a boxer's fracture on his right hand.  You'll have to ask him the story about that one!  (He'll have to wear a cast for 3 weeks.  Not tooooo bad, but typing at work won't be easy.)

He was a trooper and still took me out for a birthday date that night though!  How thoughtful of him!  I kept saying we could cancel, but we already had a babysitter lined up so we did end up going to dinner at least.  Then on Sunday he even made me a birthday cake, with some help from this gal:

 On my actual birthday, yesterday, I backed out of the garage in the morning to see this:  My awesome neighbor Renee had decorated her truck into a giant birthday card!

 Then I glanced to my left and saw this:  our awesome Young Women leader at church had put this on my yard!

 Like I said, I have the best neighborhood ever!  Thanks guys!  I guess 38 won't be so bad.  (Thirty-seven never bothered me, but for some reason thirty-eight sounds so old!)

Pioneer Day

Today is the 24th of July, Pioneer Day.  Bryan never gets this day off work and I usually do nothing special.  I decided that was lame so I took the kids to the Pioneer Day parade in Ogden.

 They had some BIG ol' tractors!

That afternoon was business as usual for Bree...playing dress-ups and doing a "show" for me with her sweet BFF Pressley.

Then this evening our neighbors the Ashbys invited us over for S'mores and sparklers.  The sparklers make war with my phone camera so they are all blurry, but it was a super nice night (that is until the mosquitoes decided to eat us alive!)

We are so grateful for our wonderful neighbors!  I feel very lucky to have this quiet cul-de-sac where the kids can just bike, rollerblade, drag each other around on scooters or whatever else they can find with wheels.  And the kids all get along and play together.  Our neighbors are the best!

Salina Trip

Our friends the Halligans invited us to go camping with them at a family cabin up above Salina.   We love camping so we said "you bet!"  It's a fun place to ride 4-wheelers/motorcycles and they have a big swing set there, along with a sand box and a tire swing and toys to play with and lots of board games and card games and I could go on and on!!  Plus Bryan set up the zipline so the 9 children there had a wonderful, busy, dirty time!

Here was the beautiful view from one of our rides.

Bree had a great time playing dress-ups with Lexi.  Here she is being Goldilocks.

And a punk-rocker!  I love this wig!

We all went fishing a few times.  Unfortunately we (the Terrys) didn't catch anything...

 ...but the Halligans did!

It was a really fun weekend.  We love camping and we love good friends!

This is the Place

The Activity Days girls in our ward had their day camp at This is the Place Heritage Park yesterday.  They needed more moms to help drive and I was so happy they asked me!  I love to go and get some one-on-one time with Tess.  It was a pretty fun place; I had never been there before.  There was lots to do and I'm sure we could've stayed longer because we did not see everything!  Here are a few highlights:

Here they are practicing walking on stilts.  (I remember my mom could walk really well on stilts.  It is not easy!)

 ...and plowing the fields....

 Man, I sure had an appreciation for the comforts of home after seeing many of the original cabins there.  The Gardiner Cabin was a little one-room cabin and the family had 10 children!  Mom and Dad in the little double bed, all the girls would roll out their bedrolls on the floor, and the boys slept in a loft above that was only accessible from a ladder outside.  My goodness I think I'd go crazy!  We are very spoiled today and I am grateful!

Here the girls got to make a simple beaded necklace...

 ...and here we are getting ready to ride the little train around the park...

(with wonderful friends Mari and Lauren)

 They have a little area when you can pan for gold.  The girls were so excited about all the flecks of Fools' Gold.  (I overheard a cute conversation between 2 girls where one asked the other if she thought the gold was real.  The other girl replied, "nah, my mom told me that it's just gold for a fool.")

 And last they got to ride on a pony.  That part was not very exciting since the horses were only able to walk in a small circle.  They went around 3 times.  Big whoop!  I was hoping they could at least ride around a corral a bit, even with someone leading the horse along.  Oh well, they still enjoyed it.

It was a great trip and I'm glad I was able to tag along!

Froggy!

Bryan finds frogs quite often when he mows the lawn.  When we first moved here he would find at least one every single time he mowed but they seem to be getting less frequent lately.  But on this day he found a whopper of a frog!  It was a big one.  Here is Tess and our next-door neighbor buddy Jaxsen holding the frog.  They were both nervous the whole time that the frog would pee on them (which of course it did...they always do!)

One of my very favorite pictures of Tess is similar to this one...  it was taken in the summer of 2009 right before Tess turned 4 years old.  Bryan was out mowing and Tess was already in bed.  He found a cute little frog and brought it in and we decided to go show Tess (she wasn't asleep yet, just in bed.)  She was so excited, I think mostly because we were getting her back up after bedtime!  But she loved that frog!  She played with it for a long time and watched it hop around her bed.  So sweet.  I still have this picture hanging in my kitchen... 

July 6th trip

For our annual July 6th ski trip we decided to go to Hyrum Dam.  The weather was great and it was so much fun to ski and play on the beach and in the lake with cousins!  I love this tradition...what could be a very sad day of thinking about my mom's death has turned into a vacation that we love and enjoy each year, doing exactly what my mom would have loved doing if she were here with us!

4th of July

We went up to Logan to celebrate the 4th of July on the 3rd!  (Logan always does their fireworks a day or two early.)  They have a super fireworks show (it's the same company who does Stadium of Fire, that's why they're early) and this year they also had a Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band concert.  I have loved that band since attending Summerfest each June in Logan during college.  And, coincidentally it was while talking & flirting with Bryan at a Ryan Shupe concert that I really started falling for him in the summer of 2002!  So Ryan Shupe holds a special place in our hearts! :)