Days of '47 Parade

We wanted to go watch the Days of '47 Parade but you have to sleep out to get a good spot. So Ben casually suggested that Laney and he could sleep out on the road....I don't think he thought it through or maybe he was half joking....i don't know, but Laney heard him say it and was all for it. And since he had said it, he could take it back.
So Ben and Laney ended up out on the sidewalk on 9th south and 4th east.
Ben said they didn't get to sleep very much since there were a million cars driving by all night long. And the people in a tent next to them played loud music and had a visit from the police (I don't remember why...). But they had a fun daddy/daugther experience.
Laney playing games on Ben's Palm (little e-mail as Laney and Ty call it)
Ben bought a cool light sword for Laney that she loves and holds every night before she falls afsleep.

Then in the morning, Tiff picked Ty and me up and we brought some donuts, chocolate milk, water, grapes and other yummy stuff that we ate for breakfast.
Laney eating her donut.

Here's President Thomas S. Monson. He was turning his head the other the whole time he drove past us, so Laney didn't see him. Ben took Laney and the ran up ahead so that she could see him.
Governor Huntsman and his scary looking wife.

My favorite float - Noah's Ark. It was so cute, with water coming out of the elephant's trunks.
Ty wanted to be wrapped in a blanket for some strange reason....the rest of us were sweating bullets.
Tiff being stabbed by Laney. Braiden watching as this horrific event is taking place...
Laney and Ty playing on the blanket.
Laney and Braiden chillin' while the rest of us were packing our things up.

Catching Up With Friends at Gardner Village

A couple of weeks ago Laney, Ty and I meet up with some old friends that we knew from the first apartment we lived in. All of us have kids the same age. So there were three 4-year olds, three 2-year olds, and 3 mother, two of them being pregnant. (No, I'm not one of the pregnant ones....I can read all of your minds...) Anyway, it was a lot of fun catching up, playing, and eating.

First we went to the petting zoo with goats, llamas, ponies, ducks, a HUGE pig, and probably other animals I don't remember.
We were waiting for the petting zoo to open and I saw this huge thing out of the corner of my eye, a little bit away, and i thought to myself, that it must be a calf or something because of the size. (Please bear in mind, that there were several fences, animals in between and I was NOT right next to it.) Anyway, when we got in there I saw that it was the biggest pig I have seen in my whole life. Believe me, the picture does not do it justice. I'm still in chock.There was also pony riding there, and Ty really wanted to ride but Laney didn't. So Laney was watching the gigantic pig while Ty was riding the pony.
I don't know if I wrote this before, but Ty is a little cowboy. When Laney is riding I have to keep pushing her little bum back onto the center of the saddle, but Ty sits like he was born on a horse (which I assure you, he was not). Anyway, when I'm walking around in meaningless circles with him, I always wonder to myself why I doing it. He could do it by himself.

After riding, petting the animals, and wandering around for a while, we decided that we had completely lost our minds and took all 6 kids to Archibald's Restaurant for lunch. I had to chuckle when we walked in and asked for a table for 3 adults and 6 kids!! But it actually went very well and it was great to catch up with old pals. Thanks ladies.

Family Reunion

Well, we went to our annual Campbell Kids Family Reunion. This year it was up by Burley, Idaho, in a little town called Albion. We had so much fun and Laney had been missing all her cousins since then. There was so much stuff to do up there and of course a million people to play and chat with. It was a blast. Thanks for a great reunion.

Church Carnival and Heritage Park

On Saturday July 12th, we went to our old ward's carnival and had a lot of fun. The kids played a ton of games and even had their face painted. Ty chose a cat and Laney had a rose painted on her cheek. After that we went up to Heritage Park because they had a free day. On the walk up to the park from the parking lot we were directed off the path because there was a rattle snake chilling right by the path. YIKES!! I haven't been up there in a very long time and Ben has never been there, but we had so much fun. They had put up big jumping castle things for the kids to play with. In the park itself we went on the train ride a couple of times, rode horses, rode in a horse carriage, painted, drew, had free pizza and ice cream, and even saw some old friends that we hadn't seen in years. All in all it was a great day.

Swimming Lessons

One hot summer day about a month ago, I threw caution to the wind and decided that I didn't care if half of Taylorsville saw me in a bathing suit and suggested to Ben that we should go to the pool. I fully anticipated to be sitting in the sun, working on my tan since Laney would barely get in the water last year. Imagine my surprise when we get there and Laney has the time of her life in the water and has no fear in the world. She jumped around and tried to swim. Ty would not let us hold him, and he was quite the sight walking around on his tippy toes, keeping his chin above the water, just tip toeing around the whole pool. Well, we did get a lot of sun even if I didn't get to sit on the grass soaking up the dangerous rays. We also decided that maybe Laney should take swimming lessons, since we had a newfound love for swimming. So we signed her up with her little friend Emmy.


She loved swimming lesson and even put her head in the water more than a couple of times. She was not a big fan of floating and tried to hold on to the teacher's hands and they had quite a funny "fight" over where the teacher was supposed to put her hands.


But she passed her pre-level 1 and wants to keep taking swimming lessons.
Here's my brave girl being lowered into the water from the spring board. Only 3 out of the 5 kids in the class did it and Laney was one of them. What a girl!!!


When I signed her up and only had one worry....TY!!! I had to bring him every time and he was not supposed to go in the water. We brought books and cars and all kinds of toys for him to keep himself entertained. But the boy loves the water and couldn't resist going over to the edge and sticking his little toes or hands in there. Of course, I knew that he was going to fall in, when he was so recklessly putting limps in there. But I thought we had made it when we reached the last day and nothing had happened.....


Needless to say, we were not that lucky!!! The boy fell in the water (luckily in the shallow end) and fought a good fight to get his head above water again. I reached in and pulled the boy out and he was soaked from head to toe. Poor Laney had to share her towel and the boy had to go home in only a diaper.

Ty's New Way of Riding

To explain this story, I first have to tell you why we decided to put a box in the seat of the stroller instead of Ty. When we lived in West Valley the city decided that we dinally should start recycling a bit. So they gave everybody another garbage can for paper and plastic. But when we moved to Taylorsville (2 blocks away) we don't have to recycle. Ben, having been influenced by being in Germany so many times, wanted to keep recycling. So almost every Sunday we gather up all our recycling things and load them up in Ty's stroller and head over to my aunt and uncle's house and dump all our recycling stuff.

I guess Ty figured that instead of walking, he might as well try to catch a ride.


He rode like this the whole way over there and the only problem was trying to keep his exploring hands out of the front wheel....

The GREAT Salt Lake....

We decided to take some family pictures and I had the "brilliant" idea to go out to the Great Salt Lake to do it. We got out there and stopped at the big rock in that one spot. The kids fell afsleep going out there and were not very happy when we woke them up and they had to step out into this stinky smell. I was holding Ty, so he could wake up, and we started walking down towards the water. Every step I took a million little flies flew up and surrounded us. When we got down to the sandy part, parts of the sand was all black and as soon as I set my foot on the sand, this wave of flies arose from the sand. It was amazing and amazingly gross at the same time. Ty and I walked around a big rock and meet up with Ben and Laney. Laney was not happy. She had a nice nap, woke up to a stench and flies swarming everywhere. She kept saying "I don't like this place. I want to go home." We hurried and got out of there just like the 5 other cars who got there at the same time as us. When we were drving back to the main road we thought about warning the people who were going towards the nightmare of flies....but decided against it...!!

We drove over to Saltair and started walking out towards the lake. Laney still didn't like this nightmare of a place we decided to drag her to but kept walking nontheless. The fly situation was not as bad here as the other place. At this spot they had a seagull situation going on.....every 5 steps we took (sometimes less than that) there were dead seagulls on both sides of us. Well, we thought they were seagulls, at least. Ben thought maybe since the water is so low, that it was dinosaurs bones that he was discovering all around him. Whatever it was, it was a little disgusting. But we did get some family pictures taken. They are not the best, but I think they turned out pretty good considering flies, dead dinosaurs, Ben having to carry a little step stool to put the camera on, and being taken with the timer thing on the camera.....

Summer Biking Fun

Laney is practicing riding her bike without her training wheels. Ben is going to need a back implant when she finally learns...
Laney wanted to help Ben take off the training wheels. She called herself "handy-girl".
Laney and her little friend Emmy who lives in our little neighborhood. Right now they are taking swimming lessons together.
Ty trying to learn to ride his trike. He just can't quite get the pedaling thing...especially when he has to steer the bike at the same time.....men and multi-tasking.....!!!

About Me...

1. Nadja, 2. we fell in chocolate over love, 3. FIS Ski Freestyle World Cup, 4. Magenta Phalaenopsis, 5. Ryan Reynolds, 6. Ben and Jerry's Milkshakes, 7. Bora Bora, 8. Peanut Butter Cup Brownie Bottom Cheesecake, 9. Yaletown Apartment, 10. Snowmen family in TX, 11. crafty mini folder, 12. Elephant

Here is how you can play too

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite dessert?

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name. (kid version: favorite animal?)

Sugarhouse Park

Last week when Brenda and 4 of her kids were driving from St. George to Boise, they stopped in SLC and stayed at Tiff's house. Tiff called and asked if we wanted to come with them to Sugarhouse Park and play. We jumped at the chance of playing with family and getting out of the house.
The kids played on the playground for a while and when they were good and sweaty we went down to the little stream that runs through the park and let them wade through the water. Everybody had so much fun and even Laney got in the water after a while...
Hav and I were standing by the slide, chatting and suddenly we hear little footstep on the slide and around the corner comes Ty walking down the slide.

Look at that perfect hair flowing in the wind. Beautiful Alissa.

Cute girls chatting in the tunnel.

Cute Kyla.

Handsome Braiden.
Gorgeous Abbey being a little model. I took some more pictures of her posing but my stupid camera ruined them. Anyway, every time i took a picture of her she would say "Did you get it? Was it a good one?" She's so cute.

Laney hanging out on the grass 'cause she didn't want to get in the water.
Cute sisters playing so well.

Handsome Zack.
My handsome boy.
Abbey is always so good at playing with Ty and he loves it.
Beautiful Laney
Gorgeous Zoe

Laney finally got in the water and loved it.
Mishy being pulled all through the water and playing with the girls showing them all the cool spots.
Ty and Braiden checking out the little stream.
Ty didn't even make it home before he collapsed and slept for a while.