Father's Day and the Quilt Show

Addie being silly.

Cam looking cute.

Messy Emery. Grandma Beebe, Uncle Glen, & Cousin Noah.

Cute Noah.

Fruit Salad and Spinach Dip-Yum!

Grilled Pineapple.

Jaron enjoying his bacon minus the burger.

Chase's fabulous Guacamole Bacon Burger.

Chase enjoying his burger and pineapple.

Grandpa and Grandma Beebe, Addie, Chase, and Cam.

Maybe I could do this crazy quilt, at least you might not be able to see my mistakes.

Ceri, this one's for you!

This one is for all the firefighters in our family.

I know, this is the last one.

No, we didn't go to the quilt show for Father's Day, although I'm sure Chase would have been thrilled to do that : ). My mom and I went to Payson at the old Peteetneet school for their annual quilt show. It was small, but had a ton of awesome quilts. I live in an alternate reality where I somehow think I will make quilts of the kind of caliber we saw there. So, I always take my camera along and take pictures, so I can duplicate the ones I like, at least in my other world I live in. I have so many projects that I've started and never finished and many more I want to start. I don't even have the skills to create anything like we saw, but I still have hopes of one day being able to do so.

Well, imagine my extreme dissappointment when I asked the lady there in charge if I could take pictures. She said that I couldn't, but they were trying to actually veto that rule. So, I attempted to sketch one that I really liked, but failed to render any likeness at all. Fortunately, towards the end of our visit, the lady came back up to me and said that they decided I could take pictures after all-yeah! Side note, the lady's name was Bliss. I really thought that was a cool and unusual name. It was a fun time with my mom and we signed up to come back the following Sat. to take an applique class. I'm sure I spelled that completely wrong. Since this is a late post, I already attended the class with my mom. We got to make buttons! Buttons! I had no idea you could make buttons, it was awesome. I helped my mom cut out all her watermelon applique pieces for the dish towel we were making. I also made all the watermelon seed buttons and star buttons for her other towel. It was pretty cool, I felt so incredibly crafty! Thanks for a great time Mom.

Well, on to Father's Day. Since my dad was flying out to Georgia for a work conference and we were going to be driving to Mesquite on Sunday, we decided to throw a special early Father's Day dinner on Friday. I made guacamole bacon burgers, fruit salad, spinach dip, and grilled pineapple. It was spectacular! I feel a little bummed about it though, because as usual I took on a little too much and was running behind on schedule so Chase ended up pitching in and grilled all the burgers for me. I hope he wasn't too dissappointed he had to grill his own Father's Day burgers.

I took some pics of the food, but the pictures I took don't do the food justice. It's like those billboard pictures of food that you see on the drive from UT to CA. They are in the middle of the desert advertising food for casinos and other restaurants. Well, they've been there forever and all of the color is bleached out of the food making the food look completely unappetizing.

Well, we had a good time. My dad and mom were there and Glen and his two boys Jaron and Noah came over as well. Since I rarely am allowed to take pictures of my family, I had to do it while they were eating when they had nowhere to go. So, sorry to those who maybe these pictures are not very flattering. Next time, let me take your picture.

Happy Father's Day to all you great dads out there!

Mesquite

Daddy and Cameron playing an intense game of Go Fish.

Cam, the card shark.

Emery with Mommy's sunglasses.

Chase helping Cam show off his pool acrobatics.

Chase tossing Bailey around.

Emery playing the pool "tampon" and singing along.

An unsightly picture of me jumping in.

My manly man jumping in the pool with style.

Emery happily swimming with Daddy.

Cam jumping into the pool.

Happy Bailey proud that she jumped into the deep end of the pool.

Addie swimming all by herself.

Addie proudly showing how deep she swam by herself.

Emery in the jetted tub.

Bubble fun in the jetted tub.

We drove to Mesquite a week ago Sunday to pick up Bailey from her extended visit with Grandma and Grandpa Fox. Ceri and Mark were great and drove her down to Mesquite and met us, so we only had to drive half way. Thanks Mark and Ceri! My parents were able to get us a stay with their time share. We had a nice visit and had a lot of fun.

Chase and Mark went golfing and we went swimming a couple of times. Twice we had the pool all to ourselves. The kids had a lot of fun splashing around, and learning how to play Marco Polo, Sharks and Minnows, and Colors. Both the older girls discovered that they could swim the length of the pool by themselves. We ate at a yummy buffet at the Virgin River and played lots of card games and jenga. Despite the whole casino being completely shut down with all the amenities gone, except the one pool, we still had a good time. We pulled up to the Oasis casino and were welcomed by an empty parking lot. At first we wondered if we'd have to turn around and go home. It ended up that the resort part which was a small section of Oasis was still open. It was extremely hot, but swimming was nice once we got used to the water which was on the cold side.

Most of the pics I have are of the kids swimming. Emery, of course found something that resembled a piano and began playing the "tampon" and singing along. There were some tiny blue tiles on the steps of the pool, so she played the tiles like keys and sang along. Our suite also had some large jetted tubs so we let the kids all jump in and play around in the bubbles. It was a good time and we are very glad to have our Bailey back again with us.

Emery Being Cute & Silly

Emery has been really silly lately, so I have taken some videos of her. Yesterday, I was baking and she kept coming into the kitchen and acting like a goofball. So, of course I ran and grabbed the camera before she stopped performing.

She discovered a cupboard that had a griddle and a rack which she interpreted to be a piano and started to "play" it and sing along. She also decided she was going to be a doggy and crawled around the floor barking like a dog. Emery also found some of her old baby toys from the diaper bag and was being cute playing with them and giving them kisses. Still, another video I have of her is singing while taking a bath in Grandma Fox's kitchen sink. In case you haven't figured it out, Emery loves music, singing, dancing, and playing the piano. Who knows, maybe she'll end up being my little musical prodigy.

I will try to post the movies of her if it works. Sorry, if this is boring for some of you, but being Emery's mom, I think it's adorable. Enjoy!


My little "doggy" Emery.

My Most Favorite Restaurant

Ceri, Emery, & Me in front of the Chevo's sign.

Jen Casady & Me in front of Chevo's. This is not a flattering picture of me, but it shows that Chevo's got an "A" restaurant rating : ).

Chase took me to my favorite restaurant Chevo's before we left Apple Valley. We waited to go on Tues. so that Ceri and Mark could go with us, too. Our friends Mike and Jen Casady also were able to come. Brie (Chase's sister) was the first to tell us about Chevo's when we lived in Apple Valley. I love, love, love it! Their chips and salsa are great, however, this time we went and the salsa was a bit hot for me. Even the waiter commented on it being a little hotter than normal, but it was still good. I always get the chicken taco salad and a horchata... mmmmmm! This time I also ordered a cream churro which was really good, too. It was fun eating out at our old restaurant, visiting with Ceri and Mark, and catching up with Jen and Mike. I still can't believe Mike is a bishop. He seems too young, or maybe it's just we're all getting old.

I'll relate a funny story about myself, which Chase threatened to blog about. We waited to order until Jen and Mike got there, so the rest of us already knew what we wanted and had ordered drinks by the time they came. Well, the waiter came over and was asking us how we wanted the check. He tried to take mine and Chase's drinks for refills, but I was confused and thought he wanted the menus, so I handed him my menu as well as Chase's. The waiter seemed confused also, but took the menus and explained he was only trying to refill our drinks. I felt so stupid, we hadn't even ordered yet. I guess it's not as funny as it sounds. It's probably one of those, you had to be there stories.

Also, during mid conversation with Jen, I looked up to see a giant plumber's crack right behind Jen and Mike. We told Mike it was a good thing he didn't turn around, it would have been right in his face. It was pretty funny, at least I couldn't stop laughing. I can't understand how this guy didn't notice his pants were practically half way down his buttocks, or maybe it's just that he didn't care.

Since it's my favorite restaurant and I'm doing this blog now, I had to take some pictures of course. If you're ever in Apple Valley, you need to check out Chevo's!

Random CA Vacation Activities

Emery playing the piano(tampon).

Addie & Taylor in the bounce house.

Cam, Taylor, & Bailey bouncing.

Bailey & Cam with their monkey bread masterpiece.

Emery eating dough.

Bailey & Addie making Monkey Bread.

Grandpa, Grandma, Addie, & Cam taking the dogs for a walk.

Cam and Roxy

Addie and Arrow

Bath time in Grandma's Kitchen Sink.

Bailey showing us her dance moves.

Cam looking intense on the dance pad.

Addie's smooth moves.

I decided to wrap up the rest of the trip in one post, hopefully. Well, I might have one more after this one, but that should be it.

Mark and Ceri's niece Taylor was having her 4th birthday party the day after Ceri's pinning ceremony. Mark's brother and his wife were nice and invited us to the party as well. So, the next day we went over to Mark's parents' house for Taylor's birthday. It was really nice, especially for Cam. Taylor and all her cousins were very nice and they all got along with Cam and played really well together. The kids in my parents' neighborhood are not very nice and have been mean, especially to Cam. One example of this is when we opened the door one day to go out and play. There was a kid sitting on my parents' lawn under a tree. As soon as we opened the door and started down the stairs, he turns around and yells at us to go away and leave him alone. They run away from Cam and tell him he can't play and call him names. They've been mean to Addie as well, but it's mostly been Cam. It was great for him to have some nice kids to play with. Anyway, they had a bounce house and a BBQ. We had a lot of fun.

The kids watched a few movies and ate yummy popcorn that Grandma Fox made. She popped the popcorn in coconut oil and added salt, it was delicious. We could have eaten it all day. We also enjoyed Grandpa Fox's breakfast. He put in hemp, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut oil, and bananas (or any fruit). Even the kids liked to eat this for breakfast and even Addie kept asking for more. When we get a job and have money again, we'll have to make this.

One night we took leftover dough from our yummy, mummy hot dog dinner and made garilla/monkey bread. The kids rolled the dough into little balls and then rolled them in cinnamon and sugar. We put dough balls in a bundt pan and Barbara melted butter and brown sugar and poured it over the top and baked it. It's probably one of our most favorite treats. Emery was getting upset that she didn't get to help so I handed her some dough to roll. She handled this part ok, but got upset when I took it from her and added it to the pan. I ran and got the camera thinking she would do it again, only to have her eat the piece of dough that I handed her. Luckily, it wasn't as big as the first dough I gave her.

In the morning before we left, Grandma and Grandpa took Cam and Addie with them to walk the dogs. Addie got to walk Arrow and Cam got to walk Roxy. Even Maddy got to go on this walk since it was short. She's their oldest dog and can't handle long walks anymore. I'm sure the dogs are all very glad that we're gone. They had to stay outside for the most part, except sleeping at night in their crates. Roxy got to come in for a little since she has short hair and didn't seem to bother anyone's allergies. Addie and I are allergic to the dogs. So, as not to bother Addie's asthma, the dogs stayed out. Roxy is probably glad we're gone as well, especially since the kids made her very nervous. Emery appears to only like animals from a distance as she was scared to death anytime the dogs got near her, not to mention other animals as well. She started to warm up to Roxy though and ended up following her around the house yelling, "Hi!, Hi, Rock!, Hi, doggy!, Hi, Rocky!". She even got up the nerve to pat her on the head. Roxy, spent most of her time dodging Emery and hiding under the coffee table to get away from unwanted attention.

We went to the park a few times as well. One of the kids' favorite things to do was to throw the tennis balls for Arrow and Roxy to play catch. They would sometimes get to use the tennis racket to hit the balls, which we did for Arrow at the park one day.

We also played the Wii, and danced on the dance pads. Even Emery danced a little.

Emery discovered the piano while at Grandma and Grandpa's house. She loves to play the piano and we had Brie's old piano in Brig's room where we were staying. Emery would come running in and climb up on the bench and begin pounding the keys and singing along. After a couple of days of this I noticed Emery would say the word "tampon" every time she wanted to play the piano. I thought this was hilarious. I have no idea why she thinks piano is "tampon". I would correct her and say it's "piano". After hearing me, she'd say, "panno". But, if she ever said it on her own, it was always "tampon". So, we have some pics of Emery playing the "tampon".

Well, got to go to church soon, so I will be posting pics along with this later.