Flashback Friday to Last Weekend's Camp Trip

Because I'm SO slow posting this, I'm using it as my Flashback Friday.
Last weekend we went camping with some friends, the Nash's, at Ponderosa Ranch Resort just east of Zions. We kind of jumped the gun because it was still a little chilly to be sleeping in a tent and one of the mornings it even snowed a little. However, cold weather aside, it was super fun! Thanks Jason and Melody for an awesome weekend!!!

I love this picture of Connor in Whitney's hat


Our friends, Jason and Melody with their youngest of four, Charity (The same friends with the Rhino) Ok, so we were going to rent either a Rhino or some quads but ultimately we wanted to eventually buy a Rhino and so Josh decided to not waste money renting and just buy it now. So this is our new Rhino. It gets my adrenaline going faster than anything I've done in awhile! Oh wait, maybe it's just Melody's driving J/K:):)
My cute boys!
Jason's family was also up at Zions staying in a cabin and we rode ATVs together one of the days.
Overlooking Zions
Jason's black mouth
Whitney on Parker's quad

Cute little Hope. She was my little buddy and I loved the way she called me "Waychel"
Parker with his throne.:) This toilet seat of Melody's was played with more than it ever got used.
What a good looking family!!!!
Whitney in the Rhino
My happy little man

The flowers were beautiful! We go to Zions every fall with Josh's family but I had never been there in the spring when all the flowers were blooming, it looks completely different.
Whitney decided while on the hike that she liked taking pictures of nature. She took all these flower pictures and I had to post them because 1- I LOVE wild mountain flowers (hence my nickname flower nipper from when I was a little girl when I would bite them off with my teeth) and 2-the pictures looked amazing to me.

Flashback Friday - Foot In My Mouth

This is a picture of me on Santa's lap. I had just turned two the year was 1977.

Hitting the pinata, my brother, Jesse is on my right.

My grandma Peterson (the person sitting in the background with a child on her lap) always had awesome Christmas parties. Santa was always there, we would eat a big feast in her basement, break a pinata, and exchange Christmas gifts. Oh, I miss those days!!

This is where the embarrassment comes in... It was years after these photos were taken (I was a teenager) and I was at my grandma's looking through some old photos she had in a photo book next to her couch. I came across pictures of this night and started to tell my grandma about how I remembered that night. I specifically remembered the outfit I was wearing because I remembered telling my mom I DID NOT want to wear it. I thought it was so itchy and ugly and I really didn't want to wear it. I kept going on about the outfit and my grandma's jaw dropped. She was a little sad when she said, "Rachel, I made that outfit for you." Had I stopped for two seconds to think, why do you think you're mom was so adamant that you wore it that night, I would have figured it out.

Random Pictures From My Camera

Whitney had her final choir performance on Tuesday. She belongs to the school choir that practices every Wednesday after school. They perform three times a year, a Christmas program at the school, Opportunity Village and their Final Performance. Orf (all instrument club), and the jump rope club also performed on Tuesday.

My armoire I finally stripped, sanded and repainted. Whitney's the one on the middle balance beam.
Whitney just started gymnastics at a different gym called Vitaly Scherbo and she LOVES it! She just switched gyms because Josh met one of the owners of this gym and told us about it. She's in the beginner class and is so excited because she says they move so much faster here. Sorry the pictures are hard to see, I had to take them through the glass.
Last Saturday the Nash's invited us to go riding in their Rhino and Oh My Gosh!, it was SOOOO FUN!!!
This is Melody and she's CRAZY!! I screamed so many times when she took me out on their Rhino, I seriously thought we were going to crash so many times!
Parker's in the back, then Whitney, Hope, and Faith
Connor even had fun!

Mother's Day

I realize these are out of order, but I'm just now downloading my pictures from my camera and I wanted to post these.:) This is the necklace Whitney made me for Mother's Day and I LOVE it!!! She did such a great job!!!
She's such a little entrepreneur, always thinking of ways to make more money. I think it has something to do with the stories she hears from other kids at school but for whatever reason, she's always coming up with crafty ideas to make a buck. First it was a lemonade stand (she's been wanting to do this for years but we havn't done it yet, although she keeps asking to do it), then she sold random pictures she drew to anyone and everyone who would buy them, and now she wants to make jewelry to sell at the office. She asked me if I thought a quarter was too expensive for this necklace if she was to sell it. I told her I would pay her a lot more than a quarter for something that cute!Whitney made me the card on the left and the card on the right. You can't see the card on the right very well but it's a tea pot. She made it in school and it came with a herbal tea bad inside.
This is what Josh got me and I'm LOVING it!!! (So much better than the one from the grocery store!!)
Whitney and I made for Josh's mom.
I love mother's day! I feel so lucky and blessed to have the family I have! Being a mom, is the BEST thing that could have happened to me.

Josh's B-Day

Whitney gave him this Super Man hat and wrote him a note about him being her Super Dad.

Because Josh had to work until after 11:00 PM on his birthday, we woke him up to open his presents that and I was sooo excited to give him these glasses. he always goes to Sunglasses Hut, tries these glasses on but then never buys them. He was surprised!!!

Flashback Friday - Happy Birthday Josh!!!

Because it's Josh's birthday, I decided to make my Flashback Friday all about him. Although, he may be embarrassed about some of these pictures, chances are he probably won't see them:) But just incase he does, Happy Birthday Josh I love you!!!!!!!!!
Oh the muscles! This is the youngest picture I have of Josh, so this is where we'll start.

Not sure where or when this was taken
Dancing with his family (he's the one with the red bandana)

Leaving for his mission to Germany. (Left to right: Josh's mom, his dad, his sister, Season, Josh and his sister, Tacie)
at the MTC (some of you might recognize Marty Mickelson on the left)
sporting the "real" German getup
At Bear Lake the summer before we met (we may actually have been there at the same time but didn't know each other yet)
Josh with his grandpa Purcell

The night we met. The one in the middle is one of Josh's roomates (the cowboy my roomates set up with my cowgirl roomate), the girl on the right is Gicela, my roomate from Canada (she would make me laugh all the time - I don't know what happened to her but she was awesome!)
Outside my apartment on homecoming night. Just a side note: His eyebrows were really bleached out from the sun so I colored them in with a black pen years ago and now I wished I hadn't.

Man, he's goodlookin'
This is from our honeymoon. He was SOOO sick in this picture. Many people got food poisoning from the restaurant we had our wedding lunch at, including Josh:(
Proud new dad (loving the goatee!!)

Flashback Friday - MOM HELP!!!

This is a picture of Whitney in a pumpkin patch in St. Louis. Fall was an awesome time to be in St. Louis and the pumpkins there were HUGE! I'm using this picture of Whitney because I couldn't find any of the real event and she wasn't much older than this picture when THIS happened...
We had just moved to Las Vegas and my aunt came to visit. Her son and his family had a layover in Las Vegas. They were currently living in Hawaii and his mom hadn't been able to see them for years so she drove to Las Vegas to visit them during their layover. I drove my aunt to the airport and was taking pictures of them next to the baggage carousel. Whitney was skipping next to the carousel and placing her hand on the suit cases as they went by. I didn't think anything of it but while I was taking their picture I heard "MOM HELP!" I turned to see Whitney being dragged by her thumb on the luggage carousel into the next room where the suit cases go. By the time I ran to her only her legs were sticking through the flaps and her head and arms were already through the flaps going into the next room. I grabbed her and pulled her out but her thumb had been stuck between the two rotating disks (like the picture above) and when I pulled her out it ripped her thumb nail off.

We were right next to a bathroom so I took her into the bathroom to clean her up while my aunt went searching for a first aid kit. A lady traveling came in the bathroom, assessed the situation and said, "mom, step aside I'm a nurse" and she grabbed Whitney. My aunt came back and said there weren't any first aid kits but she found some hydrogen peroxide (ouch!) and a couple bandages. So we wrapped her up and went home.

What a CRAZY NIGHT!
Her nail has since grown back and you would never even know anything had happened.