More Family Time and Enjoying the Outdoors

My pretty girl!
To start Sunday off, we slept in and then went to a late church with Grandma and The Cousins. We left early to attend the baby blessing of my cousin's baby.
Proud new parents, Andy and Danielle. This is their first child, Jaymee Lynn. Isn't she pretty?
We enjoyed some more time with my Aunt Rob and Cathy's family after the baby blessing. Then we headed out to visit my Grandma in Spanish Fork.
Stephen slept until five minutes before we had to leave. I was sad Grandma Hawks didn't get to see his cute little personality...just sleepy guy.
Natalie with her Great Grandma Hawks. My grandfather passed away right after she finished intensification in 2007.
I love my grandma!
Natalie playing Grandma's organ.
Growing up I had a huge, beautiful cherry tree. All summer long we would climb the tree and eat cherries. Cherries and summer are ingrained in my good memories and bring such sweet feelings. Watching Natalie pick cherries with her Daddy from Grandma's tree was very special for me. I didn't have much time to visit with Grandma so I sat on the porch to watch them, but I did sneak down there and pick a few with my girl.
I love this picture!!!!
Then we took our stash of cherries and went to the next family function. A pizza dinner at David and Tammy Patriezze (Tammy is david's cousin). Funny, because Tammy Patriezze's maiden name is Burraston and she also married a David.
Natalie and Stephen had SO much fun. They ran and ran and played like crazy. One really cute thing was a game of hide-and-seek (Nat's favorite game) with all the girls, the funny thing is that everyone counted and only one person would hide at a time. It was so cute seeing a group of 10 or more girls counting together. Natalie loved it.
They played a lot of chase too and princesses.
Debra caught a ton of pictures of Stephen smiling. These are the best. There were five or six more cute ones too. I couldn't believe she got so many shots of him smiling. I love these.


And here is what was making The Colonel smile so much...

This is a group of the 15 girl cousins, aren't they cute. There were only three boy cousins and two of them were teenagers so they stayed in the house away from the girls. But Stephen didn't mind the company of all girls one bit...

It was a late night, but Natalie was up the next morning to help Grandma water the flowers. This is Natalie's favorite job of all time.



Then we're off again...
My brother lives about an hour away,but he came down and met us (and The Cousins) for lunch at a great Thai place. Poor Melinda vomited in the car on the way to lunch and so we had to do some creative things to get her home and re-include Auntie Becky later in the day. Poor Melinda missed out on the fun at the Jumping Zoo after lunch.
My brother just got married a year and 1/2 ago and I haven't seen him since the wedding. It was nice to get to spend some time with his wife and her kids too.
Natalie wanted to go to the mountains, and even though she was a little nervous of bears and lions she was excited to go. We went to one of my favorite places where I have so many memories. David and I used to go there when we were dating and I went there a lot as a kid too. Isn't it gorgeous?

Our little picnic, Natalie loved it.

More playing, I love it.
They love to ride in the stroller together, aren't they sweet?


This water is sooooo cold...
Me and My Girl!



This is the falls. After we left the mountains we had a weenie roast complete with smoores in The Cousins back yard. Then we did our fireworks, which the kids loved. Natalie and Stephen really loved the sparklers and the poppers. They enjoyed watching the other ones too. Another late night. We had a great time just being together. We didn't get any pictures, but we did leave with a souveneir...mosquito bites (and we wore bug spray too)!

The next morning we only had a few hours before we had to leave for the airport, so we did the last thing on my list that I was dying to do with my kids. We went to the river walk just a ways behind Grandma's house. The kids loved it, especially throwing rocks into the water (they get that from Daddy, he loves to do that too).












Natalie declared that she never wanted to leave Utah, but she had fun flying again.

Back home, cleaned up and showing off her polish that matches her 'older' cousins. Notice, it is very blue and very sparkly.