Western Adventure 2013: IDAHO

oh idaho, 

how we love you.

if only you weren't so cold.

(for this florida girl, anyways)

the weather was actually pretty mild, thank goodness.

although we still ended up with chapped lips, bloody noses, and cracked hands.

we had several big family dinners.

and to me, that was the best part of the trip!

we have 

THE BEST FAMILY EVER

ellie is sure missing her grandma.

they made waffles together.

and grandpa took jack golfing.

grandpa told jack at one hole that if he made his long put, he'd pay him 5 bucks.

whelp, jack had a crisp 5 dollar bill in his pocket after that hole :)

he also landed a drive on the green of a par 3 that chris, reed, and grandpa didn't land.

thats my boy!

all our time focused around cousins!!!

the older girls were nice enough to paint ellie's nails, curl her hair, and dress her up one evening after dinner. she was in heaven with all the attention!

i spent an awesome afternoon with cathy making three flavors of Jeni's Ice Cream.

i love cathy and want to be her neighbor, if it weren't for the frigid temps ;)

sweet butter mint, buckeye state peanut butter, and a maple nut.

they were heavenly!

we celebrated our 9th anniversary (yahoo!) by going to the temple for an 8 o'clock session. it felt so good to be there together. we even visited all of the sealing rooms to find "our sealing room". its been remodeled and doesn't look the same, but it was still fun to see.

after the temple we went to Snakebite for lunch, which had been recommended by alli and jacob. it did not disappoint. the best blue cheese and green chili burger, onion rings, and chipotle fry sauce on the planet!

 one afternoon we got to cheer on the girls at their high school cross country meet.

jack was determined to rake the leaves in grandma and grandpa's backyard at 8 in the morning. it was 34 degrees out.

look at those chapped lips and pink nose!

we also celebrated jack's 7th birthday!!!

grandma took all the young cousins to 

Leo's Place for arcade games, a HUGE playground and pizza.

it was awesome!

while in idaho we visited Island Park, Rexburg and Bone. they were definitely highlights and deserve a separate post. 

Western Adventure 2013: UTAH

we have so much catching up to do.

we've made it to fort smith!

but before we get into our new adventures, i need to document our last adventure. 

this was probably my favorite family vacation ever!!!

because i have so many pictures to post, I'm not going to write too many of the details.

we flew into salt lake on october 18th.

visited the conference center

and the tabernacle

we took this picture April 11, 2007

and had to recreate it :)

i think we'll take another when jack is 17 too!

the salt lake temple

then we met up with chris' sister jenny and her awesome man eric, along with my best friends carrie and kersey, and their little fams, for este pizza and a park.

elliott is such a ham!

he and ellie clicked

this boy LOVES his pizza

 and jackson is the sweetest little guy ever. seriously, ever.

after we said our goodbyes, and i had a little cry in the car, we buzzed up to idaho. 

but not without stopping at the best, most luscious, velvety frozen custard place in bountiful! nielsen's, i miss your caramel cashew concretes already.

we'll save idaho for another couple posts.

we drove back to utah the following friday for lunch at the spaghetti factory at trolley square (a childhood favorite of the brower clan- very tasty!) with jen, eric, grandma, grandpa, corey, and nathan.

jenny had a birthday approaching and jack had just celebrated his, so they got the birthday treatment.

then we drove down south to catch cousin mateen's last football game of the season and some fall fun!

how gorgeous are these kids?!

we couldn't head down south without stopping in at the holy grail of hot dogs,

the real happiest place on earth,

 jdawgs

 chris called up one of his boys who is attending BYU to meet up with us at jdawgs.

we love you hilo!

chris was hilo's YM president before he left for japan on his mission.

whew! 

and that was just our visit to utah-

idaho is coming right up!

family pictures

we wanted to get a couple pictures by the talented rikki before we leave this week for idaho. what will we do without a personal photographer once we get to arkansas?

keeping things "normal"

it's here!

october is here!

usually our home would have a few pumpkins on the table and the kids would each have one in their room that they picked out. charlie loves pumpkins right now. bats and creep crawly bugs would be hanging on the walls and our skeleton banner would be hung. but not this year. the kids keep forgetting that we wont be here for halloween and ask about their costumes. i've promised them a new costume when we get to arkansas. shhh... dont tell them thats when they will be on sale ;) it makes me sad to be skipping this time of year.

but even though we will be missing out on such a great holiday this year, we are so excited its october!

in two weeks we will be on our way to idaho to see grandma and grandpa, celebrate our 9th anniversary, and jack will be turning 7! how is he 7 already?!?

jack came in singing this song at 7 am on october 1st, while i was, ahem, in the loo. but it was so silly i had to record it. he's so good at making up songs. and of course he cant help but dance too.

 we are trying to keep things as normal as possible. and that means that between all of the paint cans, nailing guns, air compressors, and drop cloths, we still try to do some fun day-to-day type things. 

like having friends liam and louie over for a morning while their mama was at the dentist.

we are going to miss louies adorable smiles and boy does he smell so sweet! and liam's a-maz-ing sound affects when playing with cars and his infectious laugh, we'll miss those too.

we've also kept up with haircuts.

jack has been asking for a while if he could get the "MVP" haircut at sport clips. but because it costs a lot more money and really, what 6 year old needs a head massage and hot towel?? well, this lucky boy was sent a free MVP coupon for his birthday. 

he absolutely loved it!

with the hot towel:

 and after the hot towel, red-faced and smiling:

he kept telling me afterwards how much he enjoyed the "mint scalp treatment and the shoulder massage". so glad it was everything he had hoped for.

the big kids love to help in the kitchen. charlie has finally started to have that desire as well. im in such a hurry to get dinner on the table though, so his involvement usually only consists of getting ingredients out of the fridge and pantry. but the other day, after patiently sitting in front of "cars 2" for the hundredth time this week while mama painted trim, i set down the brush and we made banana bread. and charlie helped with every single step. he loved stirring, mashing, cracking, and mixing so much and kept saying "i coooookeen mommy, i cooookeen!!!"

and because we can't completely pass up halloween fun, charlie helped grandma linda decorate their home for halloween. this, of course, included grandmas creepy skeleton hands. jack used them for a while instead of his own hands and then ellie used them to scratch grandpas back and brush her hair. hopefully grandma washes them before serving spaghetti ;)