5 Years!

On May 15 Monty and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary.  It just so happened that my mom was in town the weekend before for a baby shower so she was more than happy to volunteer to watch Mia for the night so we could get away.
I met Monty in Salt Lake after work.  I had it all planned out and it was a total surprise to him. We started by dropping his stuff off at the Raddison Hotel in downtown Salt Lake.  Then we walked over to the new City Creek shopping center in downtown.  It was an amazing place to go shopping.  Most of the mall is indoors but it has a huge retractable roof.  Inside it is beautifully landscaped and has great shopping.  There were all kinds of rocks, rivers, waterfalls, and plants.

In one of the outdoor areas they have this massive fireplace.  Monty is not a little guy but he looks little next to it.  Seeing as the weather was perfect outside, the fireplace wasn't on.  I'm sure if it was there's no way Monty could have sat so close.

 After a little shopping and exploration we went to dinner at Shogun Restaurant.  It's a traditional Japanese restaurant where you leave your shoes at the entry and sit on mats on the floor.  Monty cheated and put his feet in the hole (I guess when you have legs that long with bad knees it's OK to cheat).

 They didn't have any utensils on the table and didn't even offer them so we had to practice using our chopsticks.

 I'm guessing if we had asked for forks they would have had them but we did OK.

 The following morning we got up and headed down to the point of the mountain (about halfway between Salt Lake and Provo) for another surprise.

 We went paragliding.  We took Trina's camera so we could both take pictures but unfortunately I can't get the pictures off of Trina's camera right now so we just have some from our camera.  My glide was about 20 min because we were floating nicely and kept getting updrafts.  Monty took pictures of me from the top of the mountain while we waited for his pilot.
Me on a fly by with my pilot behind me.

 Me soaring away

 Monty's first flight was much shorter which meant that her got to go again.  This worked out well because then I could take pictures of him from the top of the mountain.
All ready to go.

 I even got a video of Monty's second take off.  He did really good.

Monty soaring to the ground below.

It was a really nice weekend getaway and we had tons of fun.

Thanks for a great 5 years Babe!

Idaho and cousin Khloe

After celebrating Easter at home, Sunday night Mia and I went to Idaho because my brother, his wife, and their daughter Khloe were there from Wyoming.  We stayed until Sunday afternoon and had a great time.  Mia and Khloe are 10 months apart.  They did pretty well together for the most part.  Khloe is so quiet and well mannered that she really made Mia look like a wild and crazy girl.

This picture was actually from the weekend before when we were up there.  Mia got to sit in the hot tub for the first time.  She enjoyed it and grandma let her take the rubber ducks in which made it even more fun.

 Grandma and her grand babies.  My mom was so excited to have her grand kids there.

 We took the girls to see the horses by my parents house.  They thought they were pretty neat.  Mia kept saying "arf arf."  Guess we need to work on what the horse says.

 Mia even was brave enough to pet one of them.

 While we were in Idaho Grandpa sold his lawn mower but not before Mia got to try it out.

 The girls loved bouncing on the tramp.  I think they wore Uncle Steve out.

 Whenever they'd stop bouncing Mia would start bobbing up and down trying to bounce herself.

 Khloe absolutely loved the tramp.

 We went to play on the neighbors swing set and since Mia is the big cousin, she got to use the big girl swing.  She did pretty good holding on but we didn't let her go too high.

 We tried to get some pictures of the girls together.  That was a joke.  A 9 month and 19 month old are not up for picture time.
We tried getting them laying down...

 Mia's face says it all...she was not a fan.

About the best we could get and it turned out a bit blurry. :-(

We had a great time in Idaho and can't wait until we get to play with cousin Khloe again.  Hopefully someday they'll live closer.

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter with Mia this year.  Coloring eggs proved to be a bad idea but she somewhat got into the idea of hunting Easter eggs.  Once she realized there was something in them she just wanted to open the ones she'd found and needed a lot of encouragement to keep hunting but eventually she got them all.Coloring eggs started out OK.  But then all she wanted to do was stick her hands in the dye cups.

 We had to put some distance between her and the colors.

 This year instead of a basket the Easter Bunny brought Mia a bucket.  Now she has her own bucket and shovel to play in the dirt and gravel at the neighbors. (She definitely doesn't mind getting dirty).

She also got a color book, a new bunny (the old one met a sad fate that is a poopy story...literally), sidewalk chalk, and bubbles.

 Hunting eggs.

 The Easter Bunny did a good job hiding them.

 The girls all ready for church.

So Easter night Mia and I went up to Idaho because my brother from Wyoming and his family were there.  Monty couldn't go because of work.  We had a great time (I'll post that in a bit).  My little brother Shawn has a wonderful talent as a photographer.  I wanted to get some pictures of Mia in her Easter dress while we were there but he was really busy with school and work.  Our last night there right at bed time he said, "OK, lets go do pictures."  I stripped Mia's PJ's off and threw her dress on.  We were out taking pictures for all of about 4 minutes but Shawn worked his magic and we got some beautiful shots.

 Great work Shawn!  Thanks again!

A day at the park

On Monday I had a conference so Aunt Trina came to spend the day playing with Mia.  They went to the park and had a blast!  Apparently Mia screamed the whole way home in protest.  Trina sent me some fun pics and videos of their adventures so I figured I'd post a few.

 Gotta love that smile

 The swing wasn't her favorite now that she's a girl on the go.

We took her to the park a couple times last summer and even once this spring, but this was the first time she got to just cruise and play on her own.  (Last time there were too many big kids everywhere that were trying to run her over).  We'll have to go play again in the middle of the day when everyone else is at school. 
She loved being able to play on the slide all by herself.

It's crazy how fast she's grown.  She is no longer a baby but my little girl on the run.

Thanks Aunt Trina for a great day!

West Yellowstone

Last weekend Monty and I decided to take a little get away.  We took Mia to Grandma's for her first official sleepover without mom and dad (Grandma was SOOO excited) and headed up to West Yellowstone for the weekend.  We have had it planned for a couple months and figured we'd go up and spend the day snowmobiling and just enjoy the outdoors, but unfortunately no one told the weather.  We stayed at a great resort in a nice little condo.  It was only a studio so I wouldn't have wanted to stay there for a week but it was great for the weekend.  It had a nice rustic feel and fit in great with the area. 

The drive up on Friday was great, but Saturday morning the snow started.  When we left to go snowmobiling it wasn't too bad yet.

 We just rented clothes and gear there.  We got all bundled up and ready to go.



 Monty looks excited don't ya think?

Well, after we were out about 2 hours, we ended up in a total white out with wind whipping everywhere so we had to head back in.
We got a couple pictures before we headed back in.  Seeing as we were by ourselves, we had to take turns taking pictures.

 You can kind of see the snow storm whirling behind us.

When we pulled into town, we couldn't even figure out where we were in order to make our way back to the condo.  It took a long time to navigate the 7 whole streets they even have in West Yellowstone.  We took very few pictures because it was just too cold and windy to take gloves off to take the camera out of a pocket to take pictures.
This is the snow built up along the river.

Once we finally made it back to the condo we had lunch and hung out for about two hours before we ventured back out.  It was still snowing a little bit and the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard.  Our afternoon ride we were able to see better but was more adventurous.  We rolled the snowmobile once when we ended up in some unpacked powder.  Luckily right as we rolled it a group showed up and helped us get it upright (snowmobiles are heavier than I thought).  A short time after that we tried turning around on a trail and ended up off the groomed trail and buried the front end of the snowmobile in the snow.  The snow we were in was up to my thighs and it was only by divine intervention that we managed to get the snowmobile back out.

Just before we turned the snowmobile back in we got someone to take a picture of us together.

Monty did most the driving, I drove a little bit out on the trails and then as we came back into town the second time I drove it.  I preferred driving on the flat non-winding areas.

They ended up getting about a foot and a half of snow while we were there.  We were just amazed by just how much snow there was everywhere.  On Sunday we went to church.  The church did not have a very big parking lot but this was just one of about 4 massive mounds of snow that had been plowed from the little lot.

On Sunday when we left, this was the view from our 2nd floor balcony.  Some places looked like you could step right off into the snow.

It was a fun little get away and Mia had a blast at Grandma's.  My brother took some pictures while Mia was there so if I can get some from him I'll post them.