Scott's Birthday!

One of the things I love most about Scott is what a great Dad he is. When I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday he said this year he would really like to do something fun with the kids. So we went to Cornbelly's and had a blast.

This was our first time going and we all had a great time, and there was hardly anyone there (maybe thanks to the swine flu, or just the fact that it was a little chilly)

Some much needed catch up!

First day of School way back in August
This year Madelyne is in 2nd grade

and Isabelle is finally in Kindergarten.

We are very lucky, the girls both love and do very well in school; and I wasn't too sad sending Isabelle to Kindergarten mostly because she was so excited and Kindergarten doesn't seem that different than preschool to me. It is 1st grade that I hate because then they are gone all day.

On September 11th Madelyne Turned 8!
She is an actual September 11th baby, infact she was born at 5:55 am right between the two towers being hit.
For her Birthday Scott and I gave her a new bike

and Grandma and Grandpa spoiled her with a new Mia American Girl Doll that Madelyne was thrilled to discover looks almost exactly like her.

She wanted a pizza swim party. So we had a bunch of her friends over for lunch then we all went swimming. I was a little nervous about how many kids we were taking but everything went great and all the girls were perfect.

A special thanks to my cute sister Vicki and her finance Todd for coming and helping with all the kids!

These are the cupcakes I made for the party. They are supposed to be fish, but as Scott so kindly pointed out kind of look like scary clowns. What can I say?

Rome

The last part of our trip was in Rome. We loved all of the history, and I especially loved that it reminded me of my time in Jerusalem.
The Colosseum


The Pantheon - we loved eating at the restaurants around the Pantheon because we could enjoy the scenery and all of the street performers.

The Sistine Chapel

Pisa & Florence

We flew from Paris to Pisa to see its famous Tower, which is really leaning an amazing amount.
We got to climb to the top, which was really cool but a little unsettling especially close to the top when everything was very slanted.
That afternoon we took a train to Florence. We LOVED Florence, it is amazingly beautiful and the museums are incredible.

This is the spot were the original David Statue stood.

We loved all of the Tuscan courtyards and gardens.

We spent our actually Anniversary eating dinner at a little restaurant right on the Arno river. It was incredibly beautiful and romantic as we watched the sun set over the Tuscan hills. These are a few of the pictures of our incredible view at dinner that night. A lot of people have asked what was our favorite thing, well that is really hard to answer because we loved so much of it, but celebrating my actual anniversary here with a romantic dinner was definately my favorite moment...

Paris

Last month Scott had to go to Europe on business, we had enough air miles for a free ticket for me, and since it was right around our 10th anniversary we decided it was just to perfect to pass up. After nine days of business for Scott, I flew over and met him in Paris.

We loved everything about Paris. Since it was August and almost everyone in France was on vacation elsewhere, Paris was not too crowd. We loved all of the historical sites and monuments and were very surprised how easy to was to just walk to most of them.
This is me inside the treasury of Nortre Dame.

And I can't say enough about all the art. It was amazing to see so many masterpieces all together!

The only bad part was I had a bad case of poison ivy break out on my legs and right arm while we were there. I went camping with my family the week before while Scott was in England, and my dad took us on this hike were evidently a few of us meet up with poison ivy. This picture is not my leg, we took some pictures but they have mysteriously disappeared, but it is about what my leg looked like minus the man hair and add a little cankle action because all of our walking made my legs swell up pretty bad. We visited a pharmacy everyday trying to find something to stop the itch and hurt, and finally on the third day found the right pharmicist with the right drug concoction. Anyways, I had no idea poison ivy was so bad!

This is me soaking my poor infected cankles outside the Louvre. It felt so good we went back twice.

The best part of Paris was the late night boat cruise on the Seine our last night there. It was so beautiful and romantic. After Paris we flew to Pisa I will post more about that soon (hopefully:)

Third times the charm

Ok, I know that I have been a slacker, and I promise to post pictures from our trip to Europe soon. But since I haven't even had time to get them off my camera yet it might be a few more days. What can I say after getting back I have had to jump right in to school, PTA stuff, two large vinyl orders, youth conference, etc.

Any how, the Saturday before I left I ran the Provo 1/2 Marathon, and I have to admit I actually enjoyed it this time. I trained and ran it with my two good friends Nicole and Jen, and we all did great. In fact we beat our last year's time by about 20 minutes. There are still a lot of things I prefer to do for physical activity like soccer, skiing, and hiking, but I have to admit that now I look forward to my runs instead of viewing them as something I have to get through.

Boys vs Girls

A lot of people told me when I found out that I was having a boy, "Oh, boys are so much easier than girls." Well, I just want to go on the record saying so far I totally disagree. I love my little guy to death, but at least at our house so far boys are much more: messier, naughtier (he gets into everything)louder, dirtier, crazier, than girls . . .(and these are just a few of his exploits that I caught on film)

Maybe when they are teenagers I will change my mind, but so far I think girls have gotten a bad rap, and in a lot of ways are much easier than boys.