"C" is for Cutie!

My little nephew is affectionately called the "C-Monster"-- C must be for cutie! I got to watch Cayden for a few days while my sister Suzanne went for a little R & R in Mexico. He is adorable and the kids just played and played and played! Everything evolved around doing it with Cayden. There will be some serious withdrawl when they head back to Memphis.

Throughout the last few days the kids have been spontaneously giving each other hugs. It was one of those hugs this afternoon that urged me to pull out my camera. Aren't they CUTE!!


Here is an attempt for a group shot. They are all such busy little ones that with the first sound of a click from the camera they were heading 3 different directions!
I think that Ashlee and Cayden are seriously 2 peas from the same pod! They are always on the go! It was nice to have a fenced off yard and a little cooperation from the weather to let them roam outside. Here's Cayden on the go (climbing up the "rock wall" of our new swing set)

Here's Ashlee at the edge of the yard searching for that darn gate-- she wanted out!
You might have noticed that my pictures look a little different then they normally do-- I found this great tutorial for any Photoshop program with a psd file to download that helps add a little punch to your photos. You can find it here Below is the "before" shot of the pic above. Nice huh! Part of me feels like too much "photoshopping" is cheating when it comes photography, but who am I kidding-- I'm not professional, so I 'll take what ever help I can get!
Suz, thanks for sharing your little c-monster with us. We love him!

Giving it a go!

We bought a tent trailer a couple of months back, but we just finally found a time to give it a try. We headed up to Crystal Hot Springs, near Brigham City over this last weekend. It was so much fun taking off with just our little family. The area near the campsite was beautiful and the temperature was just right. They have several hot pools to swim in. I'm not much of a cold water swimmer, so it was perfect. I would have to say that it's a little run down, but we all had lots of fun. Although everything went pretty smooth with the trailer, we did have one mis-hap-- our trailer tire blew out on the freeway. Luckily we had a spare. We were just nervous that it would blow too.

I can't wait for the snow to melt in the mountains so we can plan some trips up there too. It may never happen at this rate. I hear some ski resorts are projecting staying open until JULY!! That's craziness!

Here's Andrew being patient with me while I attempt to capture
the beautiful surroundings and my little sweetheart!

Here's a view of the pools from the campground

The weather couldn't have been better. Here's Justin enjoying
a little R&R at our campsite

One warning--f you're considering visiting Crystal Hotsprings, the campground is right next to the train track. We had several rude awakenings throughout the night as they blew their horns and they wizzed by. It was a long night!

Digi Scraping Weekend, a perfect mother's day treat!

Any reader of my blog knows that I am addicted to digital scrapbooking, so the perfect mother's day treat for me was a digital scrapbooking weekend. I LOVED it! I could have digi scrapped 3 more days straight, however. We stayed at a friend's family condo in Park City. The landscape was great and the condo was perfect! Thanks Heidi for setting things up. Hopefully there can be a 2nd retreat in the future. We missed all that couldn't make it.

Here's a shot of our "scrapbooking supplies" (aka laptops!) and some yummy munchies--there was A LOT of it.



Dinner on Main Street in Park City:
Digi-scrapping in progress! Don't we all look soooo happy!
Heidi even managed to digi srap on the couch with her nifty lap table that her handy husband made for her-- nice job Steve. How much do you charge. I need one too!
Another shot of the action:

FYI-- if anyone that went wants a copy of these pictures, just right click on the image and select "save as image" and it will let you download the pictures to your computer to have or use.

*Day 25*

I looked out my window and what did I see? (I guess Sarah Parkin saw it too!)

I took this picture a few days ago and couldn't help but sing that little song to myself. Apparently Sarah also had the same thought. LOL. It's May Day and SPRING SHOULD BE HERE! But, instead we got big white snow flakes! I think I'm officially depressed. It seems like talking about the weather is just a filler of conversation when you lack something better to say, but I truly need some rays of sun or I may go crazy!!

On another note (though it may be related to my onset of depression), I think 25 days of us seems like a nice round number to end on. So I hope that you have enjoyed (or endured) my "journey". It's been fun having an excuse to take some pictures and I highly recommend it (or at least a 10-15 day journey!) It seems like life zooms by way to fast if you don't stop and smell the flowers (or take a few pics of them). Thanks for looking and for your comments.