Cooking with the Kids

Baking with two little "helpers" = NOT EASY

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Things can get a little out of control

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But we have a darn'd good time!

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Didn't know Cohen liked peanut butter that much! And that Ava could be such a stinker!!

Isn't her giggle awesome though?

Morning at the Park

One Year Old!

Cohen turned 1 a few weeks ago! We had a little party in Utah with my fam, and another little party out here when we got back to Indiana. He loved digging in to his birthday cake, and has so much fun with all his new cars and ball he got as gifts. I can't believe my little baby is already one year old!

I don't have most of the pictures from his birthday because I am bad at keeping track of my camera, so his birthday pictures are on other people's cameras and I don't have them yet.

But i do have a picture of him eating his birthday cake...

(Tara, you'll notice your bro-in-law's voice narrating in this video! He was our photographer for the evening :)

Lake Powell = Heaven on Earth

Ava and I spent a week in July at Lake Powell with my family. It was heaven. I have to say, Lake Powell is always one of my favorite vacations and I'm never ready to go home when it's over. This year, only Ava and I got to go. Cody stayed in Chicago to sell, sell, sell :( and I left Cohen with a babysitter, as I didn't dare take two kids without Cody. We missed having our boys there, but, it was really fun for me and Ava to hang out and have mommy-daughter time. She loved every second of the trip and everything about it. She had been taking swim lessons this summer before the trip, and she was a little fish down in Powell. She was super comfortable swimming around and playing in the water.

We swam a lot.

And wakeboarded a lot.

(beware of my little bro's blinding thighs!! Ya, he's cool ;)

My siblings -excluding me- are avid lizard catchers at Powell.
Here's Tawny, majestically posing on the rocks with two lizzards crawling on her!
Ava was quite the little lizard-lover herself.



Ava was the Tubing Queen. Always up for a party, she would've tubed all day if we let her! And she wasn't afraid. She liked to go fast and crazy!

Can't wait to go again next year!

The 4th

The 4th of July this years was a busy fun-filled day. It began with me and Julie running the LaPorte 5k. We had only began running in the mornings five days earlier, but figured we could make it 3.1 miles, even if we had to walk parts of it. We showed up to the run that morning expecting to find a huge group of runners of all ages and levels... Basically the local track team, the firefighters, the local hard-core runners, and a few kids were there. So we were kind of nervous. It ended up being fun though, in a torture-yourself-for-no-real-reason kind of fun. I HATED the last half mile of the race, but we were able to run the whole thing, no walking, in under 30 min. And it was a good rewarding feeling once it was all over. We even beat most of the firefighters :) I did, however, throw up in a garbage can at the end of the race, right in front of all the super-runners who finished in like 15 min. It was pretty humiliating, but oh well. We've kept up our little running group this summer - so maybe someday we'll try another 5k. New goal: finish without puking ;)

Don't mind the cheesy grin on my face here.. I was waving to Ava :)

After the 5k we watched the LaPorte parade. It consisted of police cars & firetrucks (probably every one in the county!), horses... more horses, and tractors. Oh and 2 floats. Quite the country parade. The kids loved it though and we did have a really good time. Cohen was fascinated by all the sirens.

Later that day, we went up to Chicago and me up with our hubbies to spend the evening there. We walked the pretty streets of the city for a while.

After seeing the sights, our whole office went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, yummm!