Why I love Utah

Here's my long story: Chris and I moved to Maryland for a couple of years, back in 1999. Maryland is gorgeous, huge tall trees everywhere, and during the fall, dang man, the trees were absolutely incredible. However, being a desert girl who loves the wide open spaces, and the never-ending blue skies, I felt a bit claustrophobic. While on the long road back home to Utah in 2001, when we came up to the Rockies on I-70, I lost it. I never realized how much I need and am completely and utterly attached to the safety of my mountains. I love the security that being surrounded by huge towering mountains on all sides of the valley provides.

So I started a tradition this last spring, every Sunday morning-as long as weather permits, I either roller-blade up the canyon, or find a new place to hike and discover. Well, Carson is going through a really difficult time right now. He's extremely angry at the smallest things, and can't quite figure out all of his emotions that are going on inside him. We tried to get to the heart of the problem, and he just broke down. He really misses Grandma and Grandpa, specifically Grandma's laugh. I think the fact that they couldn't attend his baptism hit him quite hard. Since the older Carson becomes, the more I realize he is so much like me, I felt like he was due for some one-on-one therapy time. We took this wonderful hike just honestly minutes above my house to Battle Creek Falls. My neighbor's been trying to get me up there for months, but it didn't seem to ever have water when I tried. We were absolutely amazed, around every corner there was so much to discover-absolutely and completely gorgeous! I think the therapy worked (for at least a day-because Carson was so happy all Sunday).

I think the most ironic thing about the whole hike, is that we just went to Steamboat Springs Colorado, and they bragged about this gorgeous hike up to these falls. They were beautiful alright, but these falls at Battle Creek were just as beautiful and literally took just 60 minutes to drive there, make the hike, and return back home.

My sad attempt at some fall foliage pictures down at the base of the falls in Kiwanis Park. It's been so great discovering all the great things Pleasant Grove has to offer. I remember always making fun of people who attended PGHS and what hicks they were. I've decided they just knew how to keep a great secret. Once again, I love where I live.

Trick-or-Treating in High Style

We were lucky enough to be invited to Olivia's 8th birthday party on Halloween this year. It was so much fun-we went trick-or-treating in this huge limo. Carson was so impressed that it was the same limo that Hannah Montanna rode in a couple of years ago. It was a fabulous party, trick or treating was definitely second to the party inside the limo. Chris put on his Micheal Meyers and in typical Chris fashion had all of the kids eating out of his hands. He is so fabulous with kids. I loved listening to all of the trick-or-treaters around us when they saw the limo-it's really fun pretending like limos are just part of your everyday.

Ashley's family had the cutest costumes, she found this darling Captain Hook costume (that's her with the crocodile hat), Shane was Smee, Olivia was a pirate, Kale was Peter Pan, and Ryder was the crocodile with a clock around his neck. They are so much fun and we are incredibly lucky to be their friends. We are so excited for our new calling and that we get to work together so closely, we are all on the Activities Committee.
A quick little note about Carson-he really thought the vampire girl was cute.

Carson's Baptism

This weekend we baptized Carson. We appreciate all the close family and friends who attended. It was a glorious day that Carson will remember. How cool that he was baptized on Halloween! Both sets of grandparents were definitely missed, but we felt their presence despite their absence. (In case you are seeing this for the first time-yes, I cut my hair and colored it, definitely to the dismay of my husband-but it is nice to have a change for a bit. I'll be going back to blonde and growing it out once again in no time:)

Some quick highlights of the baptism-the water was freezing, and Carson definitely let everybody know it. When we got there, the bishopric hadn't filled the baptismal font and unless we wanted to wait for 3 hours for warm water, we were stuck with the cold. What am I saying? Like I was in the water at all.

Hunter said the closing prayer, and Connor gave a darling spot light on Carson. He was quick and witty and did an excellent job. We tried to keep things informal but I don't think the Bishop had the same idea. I tried to talk Chris into wearing his dark underwear but he didn't take the bait.

He was baptized with our closest neighbor's daughter-Olivia Richins. Check out facebook and you'll see some great pictures of The Richin's family and ours.

A Fabulous Halloween Season

If you know me at all you know that my favorite holiday is Halloween. I love Halloween because I'm selfish and I like the fact that I can do whatever I want to do. Decorations are optional, celebrating it in general is optional-that's what I love about it. I must admit that the season started out slower than most years for me. I started the month off with a case of the swine -flu. I was out of it for a week, but due to the fact that I have an over eager 5 year old-I was a bit forced into decorating and getting into the spirit of things. After a day and a half of decorating-I have way too much Halloween stuff-we were ready to start the festivities. Here's a quick peek into some of the festivities.
I call our family costume theme this year the Walmart Family. If the costume wasn't at Walmart than we weren't it. I was a gothic fairy, Connor was an evil guitar player, Carson was Snake Eyes from GI Joe, Clayton was Optimus Prime, and Chris was Micheal Meyer from Halloween-he had the boys pick it out for him.
You can attribute it to our great parenting skills. We took the kids to what is now the Scariest Haunted House in the country-Nightmare on 13th street. It was great, over an hour and a half long! Can you believe that? This is a picture of Clayton after he "Made It" and "Survived the Terror". He hid behind his Optimus Prime mask during most of it. Before we began I told him that I would be with him through the whole thing and I wouldn't let anything happen to him. He said, "I'm going to stay with Daddy, he's the toughest!" Chris loved the feeling of having his son have complete faith and trust in him-that as long as he was with Clayton nothing would happen to him. Needless to say Clayton slept with us that night.

Of course we had to hit our favorite Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. It's a great way to get you in the spirit of Halloween. Thanks to Shayne and his all seeing eye for great coupons, we were able to take the kids to CLAS Ropes for their Halloween Boat Tour for $12.50! Citydeals.com is a great place to find spectacular deals in the area.

Sorry it's been so long...A quick catch-up

So here's the story-Basically something happened to my memory card that had all my best photos of the summer on it. I've tried to download the pics onto every computer I have (which is a lot considering I have 19 student laptops and my own, not to mention Chris's) I can see the pictures but I can't download them. So here's a quick run down of the Ecalono events from Brother's Day to Halloween.Carson and Connor were both on the Pleasant Grove Swim Team this summer. This is their last meet. We saw some serious progress in their swimming-not to mention they both got ripped-this summer. Carson won 1st place in a couple of races and Connor won third place. I can't remember which events they were.

Chris took Connor to Maryland with him for a week. (Unfortunately the Maryland pics were on the memory card.) I took Carson, and Clayton to visit my Grandma Hunter. It was honestly, one of the best weeks of my life. She is an amazing women, who makes me look like I have absolutely no energy in comparison. It's crazy the amount of work she can complete in one day.

Once again, we enjoyed Mom and Dad's Worldmark Timeshare and took the kids for a week to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Tons of fun, we went hiking, biking, and basically had to figure out how to vacation with just our family. It was definitely strange not having any extended family with us.
Sparta Cup-Connor's awesome X-league team took 1st place in their division. They are so much fun to watch.


Our first Pine-wood Derby. Chris and I are Webelos Den leaders (one of our 3 callings). We participated in our first derby this year. Quite the undertaking for parents that are tool-challenged. With the help of Oak Canyon's shop teacher, we were able to make two great cars for the boys. Carson's took 2nd place. By the way, Connor's car is the little red one, second in line on the track.


Carson turned 8. We took all of his friends to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Lots of fun!

Brother's Day

My boys were quite jealous of the fact that Mom's have a mother's day and Dad's get a father's day. What about brothers? What kind of day do we get? So they decided that the 2nd Saturday of every July would be Brother's Day. Hopefully when they are older with their own families, they will make a point to get together and keep the tradition for years to come.

We decided to celebrate Brother's Day with a wet mini-golf game at Cascade Golf Course. This is a great course for the kids because if you've every mini-golfed with kids before you know that they can polish off 18 holes in less than 15 minutes. This course actually has two sets of 18, so rather than 15 minutes, we were done in 20. They had a great time, after mini-golfing we went down to BYU and bowled and then took a trip to the Bean Museum and were pleasured with their live Reptile show. I don't know how long the boys will remember it, but hopefully they will remember it at least until the end of the week.

Clayton accidentally slipped in the water, and I had to take a picture of this face. He was great though and toughed it out the rest of the day's activities with wet clothes and wet shoes.

Here's a little video clip of Carson's supposed "Hole in One" dance. Kids can be very inventive and a bit delusional in their abilities in making holes in one. Isn't it quite amazing that Connor and Carson each made 4 different holes in one, and I could barely make par? Huh? what do you think?

She's skiing on ONE ski!

For those of you who are Better off Dead fans, hopefully you picked up the reference. Chanin and Steve were nice enough to take us waterskiing at Bear Lake for the fourth of July. It's sad that now that Mom and Dad are on their mission I don't make any plans for the 4th. I have come to realize that I've always left it up to them to plan the day. So thanks Chanin for planning ahead and figuring it out.

Anyway, I was way stoked because being of age, I'm totally old now, I thought for sure their was no way that I could get up on slolam? I don't know how to spell that. But I got up and it's only the third time in my life I actually was able to do it. I'm a bit excited, can you tell? Here's a clip.

I've also included a fun little video of the kids on the tube, please hold out for the big finish at the end. It's cute.

Disneyland with the Pierce's
June 7th-June 15th, 2009

This summer is all about the kids. Last summer Chris and I toured Costa Rica, and went on a cruise together, but unfortunately the kids were left at home. It gets expensive traveling overseas with 3 kids. Anyway, this summer we intended to make up for it with many trips planned, all of which include the kids.

Our first trip was a wonderful trip to Disneyland. Thanks to Tiff for reserving our wonderful accomodations right across the street from the park, and for booking the reservations for Goofy's kitchen. The weather was a bit chilly, but we were still able to have a great day at the beach our first day there. Jase figured out how to get to Newport Beach, and the rest is history. Here is a little video clip of my favorite quote of the week, "I thought they had larger shovels!"

Jase-you always make me laugh hysterically. I am soooo glad to have friends that make me so happy all the time.

I didn't include a picture, but one of my favorite things that we did on the beach was take a bike ride down along the coast down to Balboa Island. Let me just say that the ride was great-on the way there. Clayton decided that since he is a big boy, he wanted to ride his own bike. What he didn't realize was that he didn't have a one-way ticket, we were going round trip. What he rode one way, he would also have to ride all the way back. So needless to say, the 1 1/2 mile ride back to our car was absolutely miserable. He just couldn't believe that Mommy wouldn't stop and pick him up the rest of the way when he was tired. He had a rented bike, I couldn't leave it there to be stolen, he had to pedal all the way back home. Well an hour later, we finally made it back, we were pedaling so slow that people walked past us, my knees were killing me. Needless to say I was a bit peeved.

We bought 3 day hopper passes, and spend three long and wonderful days in the park. You can tell that my kids have gotten older, because this year it was all about the signatures. We were determined to get as many character signatures as possible. My favorite character was definitely Cruela Devil-she was awesome! I felt so lucky to have seen her, I've never seen her at any of the parks before. Check out her sheer disgust!

Isn't Tiff beautiful? My best friend in the whole world. I love you Tiff. Thanks for all you've done for me all these years. I hope we have many many more vacations to look forward to in the near future. Unfortunately, this is one of my only pictures of the Pierce's. Our kids are at different ages and we just were rarely in the same place at the same time.

We had a ton of fun! But our feet were a bit tired after closing the park three days in a row. There's a sign right in front of this stone that says Picture Spot. I originally read it as diaper spot-I asked the kids "why would they have a diaper spot?" The kids loved that! This gives you a small taste of how silly we were the whole time.

Our longest line was 45 minutes for the new Toy Story ride at California Adventure. It's a great ride, similar to Buzz Lightyear, but better in my opinion. The ride stops in front of the targets while you shoot it, and if you are a terrible shot like I am, it's nice to shoot at a non-moving target. I love this video clip of Clayton singing Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky as we tried to kill the time in line. You can get a small glimpse of Carson in his finest form.

The boys have been saving their allowance for Disneyland. Carson bought an Indiana Jones hat that looks very authentic, and after wanting just about everything else in the park, decided that Donald (which he saw at Downtown Disney on our first night there) was really what he wanted most. Clayton-always decisive-knew before we even left for Disneyland, that he wanted a goofy hat and goofy hands. He saw the goofy hat at his friend Kale's house before we left and never wavered a minute from what he really wanted. Connor on the other hand, is much more careful and reserved with his money, he had to look both parks over for the entire three days before deciding. I really enjoyed helping him decide what to get. He's a bit older now, and kind of getting over stuffed animals. I happily persuaded him to collect the trader pins. He absolutely loves them and can't wait to return to Disneyworld to add to his collection. He has carefully stored them away for later use. I'm proud of my boys. They make every vacation amazing-because they are so easily impressed and never complain! Looking forward to the rest of the summer!

3 vs. 3 Tournament

We kicked our summer off with what else? A soccer tournament. This tournament was a little bit different than we were used to, the kids played in teams of 3 for 12 minute half games. This was definitely Carson's game. It's a game of skill rather than speed, and with 12 minute halves, Carson doesn't lose steam by the end of the game. Carson plays a bit differently than Connor. I've noticed that Connor plays best at the end of the game, especially if their team is down, he gets mad and there is no stopping him. However, Carson plays best at the beginning of the game, and then (like his mother) quite frankly, gets tired of running and just loses speed. It was fun to watch and as you can see, his little team won 1st place! Way to go Carson!

Here's a little taste of Carson's great skill!

Clayton's 5th Birthday

It's bittersweet to watch my children get older, but unfortunately life does that. Clayton turned 5 this month and we had a great celebration at Classic Skating in Sandy. He invited two of his closest friend Logan Harris (who lives just down the street) and his all time best friend for the past four years, Jaxson Lindsay. Of course, we couldn't have a party without his two favorite cousins , Hunter and Cole. He's still talking about it three days later, so he must have had a great time!