80º weather means its Pool time

For the past two weeks, Rob has been working on a pool at a local spa, so what better way to spend some quality family time then go and join him. Well now don't get the wrong idea, no Karlee was not wearing a yellow hard hat, or a dust mask, pushing a broom. She was sporting a swimming suit and loving every minute. My neighbor and her 3 girls joined us. The spa has the best kiddie pool, it is heated to 85-90º water, seriously it was wonderful. We pretty much had the pool to ourselves. Karlee didn't quite know what to think when I was putting her swimming suit on, and putting all the sunblock on, but once she was in the pool, she was in heaven. Rob loved it too, as he was able to walk over and see his little Karlee during a well needed break. Karlee was having so much fun that when it came time to go home, she wasn't overly excited about leaving the pool. We have gone a couple of times so here are some pictures. Also I will take some pictures of Rob's pool job when he is finished and post them later.

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(I forgot my camera the first time,

my neighbor took some pictures of Karlee, so I will

put them on when I get them from her).

Here are some pictures of our little water bug:

SpongeBob SquarePants

For as long as I have known Rob, I have known SpongeBob SquarePants. Seriously ya just gotta know and love Rob, he is such a kid, and a really great dad. He has shared his love of SpongeBob with our little Karlee. When Karlee was just a couple months old we were driving north to visit family and we were about 20 minutes to our arrival, when Karlee started crying. Nothing we tried seemed to calm her down, until Rob started to sing the theme song from SpongeBob SquarePants. Yep, that's right Karlee stopped crying and calmed down. We heard Rob sing over and over and over again the theme song for the next 20 minutes, but Karlee did not make a sound. We have often laughed about this particular car ride. I am posting about this, because Karlee still has an apparent love for the SpongeBob theme song. Whenever she hears the song, she will stop whatever she is doing, starts waving her arms in the air and dances to the music. Silly girl, she makes her daddy so happy.

Spring Break fun

Karlee loves her papa!

Karlee and I had a lot of fun this past week. My parents came over and camped for a couple nights nearby as it was my dad's spring break. So Karlee and I went out to visit them, conveniently around dinner time. Now is there anything better than dinner while you are camping? Exactly my point. The weather was beautiful, as was their view. (should have taken a picture of it, darn!) Their campsite over looked a lake, and the lights of a newly opened Wal-Mart. (you actually had to look pretty hard to see the Wal-Mart light though) Karlee had a good time, she and papa went on a few walks, and with grandma, they played with water bottles - wish I had a picture of that. Karlee loves to drink from water bottles, but just hasn't figured out quite yet how to keep all the water in her mouth. She is pretty much drenched when she is around a water bottle. Here are some of the cute pictures my mom was able to get with her camera, I brought my camera, just didn't take any pictures, smart huh. Thanks mom.

Just chillen in the trailer.

Papa & Karlee hanging out on the steps.

Karlee and Papa looking outside/bouncing on the bed.

Just in time for dinner: Taco Salad - Yummy!

Karlee caught pulling out almost every utensil on the table.

Happy 'early' Birthday to Me!

My mom surprised me with an early birthday gift, and one that I will cherrish. A few years ago my parents planned a summer trip to visit church history/US history sites. I was extremely lucky to have been able to go with them. What an amazing trip, I was able to go to Kirtland, Amish country, Gettysburg, Valley Forge, Washington D.C., Arlington National Cemetery, Fayette NY, Palmyra, Niagra Falls, Canada with them. We had the best tour guide around: My mom! Early this year my mom compiled a book full of pictures of this trip. What a keepsake, Thank you so much mom and dad for such a wonderful gift.

I am a Contest Winner!

When it comes to contests, I usually have the attitude of "Why even bother, I never ever win anything". Well just last week, I was watching Good Things Utah trying to catch up and clean off our DV-R (really what a time saver the DV-R is, but that's another post - probably not). Anywho... on GTU they had on a local Utah business, Deals to Meals, their premise is to "Find out the best deals of the week, then using their weekly meal planner and shopping list, turn the deals into meals." They had a contest and 5 Lucky people would be drawn to win a FREE year membership to use their service. Not really sure what got into me, but later that night I got online and entered their contest. A few days later I remembered about the contest and went to check out their blog, and there it was - my name - I was listed among the 5 Lucky Winners. WOW!!!! I am pretty excited to actually win something, so I got on and checked it out. They do offer some good information for shopping and finding the best price, building your food storage, meal planning ideas, etc. They are located in Utah and so they only filter the stores here in Utah, but still their information I think can be very useful. They have both a website and a blog. Check them out!

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http://www.dealstomeals.com/

http://www.dealstomeals.blogspot.com/

My little visitor in the shower

Is nothing sacred anymore? The last couple of time when Rob has been in the shower getting ready for work/the day, Karlee has crawled over to the shower. Not really bothering the shower curtain or anything, just sits there as Rob talks to her through the curtain. Pretty harmless. Just last night as Rob was once again in the shower getting ready for work, Karlee once again crawled over to the shower curtain. This time she decided she wanted to get a better look, and started to crawl through the shower curtain. Rob called me and we saved her from getting completely soaked. Here are some pictures of a couple of her in action.

Karlee getting past the curtain

Rob promised me that I wouldn't get him in the picture, Oops I guess I did get his feet, atleast thats all.

This morning... I had gotten Karlee side-tracked playing with her toys, and thought I would jump quickly into the shower. I hadn't been in long when I heard Karlee in my bathroom. As I was hurring to finish, Karlee joined me. I had soap all in my hair and eyes, and thought well she already has half her body in, so I just let her crawl all the way in. She was soaked!! After I got out of the shower, I went back and took some pictures of her playing in the shower. What a funny kid.

Karlee is just soaked!

Happy as can be!

External Hard Drive Nightmare/Miracle

Over the summer last year our computer was acting like it was on its last leg, so we purchased an External Hard Drive so we could back up and store all our photos and documents from our computer. I transferred everything over onto the external hard drive and basically worked off that instead of taking my chances with saving items to my computer and then having it crash, thus losing it all. I was loving my external hard drive, my computer felt as though it was faster and still hanging onto life. A couple weeks ago our external hard drive wouldn't turn on. I was just sick to think that I had not backed up anything. I just thought of all the photos, documents, etc. that I had on it. I took the drive to the store that I had purchased to see if there was anything they could do, No Luck. I was just sick, too me this was a slight equivalent to a major accident, such as a home fire, flood, where personal possessions are lost. This may seem drastic, but to me this was, we had every picture ever taken: weddings, Karlee's birth and most of 1st year, friends, etc. I have one Amazing sister, Monica, who makes miracles happen. While we were up north last week, I took our external drive up to her, and she worked her magic. She took the drive to a local computer guy, and had him check it out. She, like me, was fairly doubtful, but wanted to exhaust all options. Best News!!! was that YES he was able to retrieve all the data from the hard drive. I have learned a very valuable lesson from this experience . . . that is that an External Hard Drive is meant to be a back up (a 2nd copy, if you will).

**Monica - Thank you so much for all your work, I will be ever so grateful.

Weekend with Grandma, Papa, and Cousins

Grandma & Papa with all the kiddos

We had a fun weekend, it went by so fast. My parents came over to spend sometime with my brother and sister-in-laws kids, while they spent a fun weekend down in Vegas. We had a full house for a couple of days, but it was so much fun. Started the weekend watching Ratatouille (which I think is so cute), good thing I have already seen the movie as I, yes, fell asleep only after 5 minutes into the movie. Ya I know I am such a great host. Saturday was spent going on Geo-caches, playing at the park, making cupcakes, and enjoying the great weather. Karlee had so much fun. She loves to play with all her cousins, she just looks at them with such excitement in her eyes. Her cousins (Abbey, Austin, and Taylor) all had fun carrying her up and down the hallway. Karlee thought this was just great - she seemed to have a smile on her face the whole day.

One thing about my mom is that she loves books, she bought a fun book a couple of weeks ago called. Hello, Cupcake! - What a fun book to look through. This weekend we decided to make cupcakes and decorate them like in the book. We did pretty darn good, if you ask me. We made 2 different kinds - Owls and Penguins. I took pictures of the penguin, but apparently didn't take one of the owls, so I found a replica. Now aren't these just the cutest. So so fun.

Taylor, Abbey, and Austin showing off their cupcakes.

Here are some close ups of these cute cupcakes.

Owl Cupcakes:

(cupcake, chocolate frosting, Oreo cookies, Junior mints, runts (banana))

Penguin Cupcakes:

(cupcake, yellow starbursts, large marshmallow, doughnut hole, chocolate frosting tinted black, mini chocolate chips, white frosting, thin chocolate cookies or molding chocolate)