big news!

My little sister Abby is officially all grown up and is getting married! She got engaged about a week ago and we are super excited. She waited so patiently for Dallin to get back from his mission in Taiwan and now its time to get married :) Their date is August 22nd. Its coming up!!

Here is her ring- so pretty!

Saturday was a busy day, we went dress shopping (she hasn't picked a dress yet, but I took a picture of one anyway), and after we went to the La Caille bridal show where they got lots of good ideas, it was really fun!

Now for the sad news... Yesterday Kate had a little accident while I was at school. She fell out of her high chair and had to get stitches :( I was stuck at school and couldn't be there, it was such a sad sad day! She did great though, Chad took good care of her and she slept through the whole procedure! We let her pick Dora the Explorer bandaids, which she calls dodo. So things are pretty good now.

And now some more good news, Kate is officially grown up too. This week she moved over to her big girl bed! It is a trundle bed so she can have sleepovers (or so I can have a place to sleep when she climbs out of bed) But she actually has done great and sleeps the whole night in her own bed!

And last but not least, Chad has learned a new trick that he is quite proud of, this is another reason why Chad can't wait to have Dallin join the family.

4th of July!!!

I have made a goal to keep up on my blog posts (we will see how long it lasts). But we had such a fun weekend i'm sad that its over. The fourth of July is my favorite holiday second only to Christmas. Growing up in Provo is the best, I dont know any other city that has so many festivities for this holiday. We had our Markham family reunion on the third and enjoyed seeing long lost cousins, and eating way too much food! As a Provo tradition, everyone stays up all night long on the night of the third saving places for the parade the next morning. Conveniently my family lives two houses down from center street which is prime parade property. So we did not get much sleep, but it was worth it.

We always have so many of our friends and family join us for the parade, and Kate was lucky enough to have a whole litter of the cutest little puppies sit next to her. She was in heaven!

She was also joined by her cousins, and they all had a blast watching the parade! Afterwards we all went over to my parents house for a yummy lunch!

This is Kates mischevious face. She learned to get the lemonade out of the big drink cooler and so she proceeded to push her wagon under the drink cooler and fill it up, she also filled up her purse with lemonade and then sat in the sticky lemonade wagon and dumped her lemonade purse all down her dress. She was a very sticky mess, luckily this was at the end of lunch so she got a bath and then ran around naked for awhile.

Later that afternoon we met up with all of Chads family at his uncles cabin in Oakley. Grandpa took Kate for a walk, and then she took him to the toy room and they played house. She had alot of fun. We also celebrated with a baby shower for Chads cousin Trina. We are so excited for her (especially since we are neighbors, now I will have a cute little baby to play with!) But it was really fun to see all of the cousins again!

After the cabin we went to Chads parents house and Kate had her first experience with sparklers, and we also got to watch some cool fireworks. She was a little concerned at first and kept covering her eyes, but after a few minutes she began to like the idea of holding the sparklers and she tried to grab them, so that was the end of sparklers.

During church many of the speakers were reflecting on the holiday and how blessed we are to live in this marvelous country. I realized how blessed I am for my freedom, and for everything I have, especially my family! We are so lucky to live where we do and have the opportunity to get an education, and to worship how we choose, and to be able to express our opinions. This holiday is a great time to reflect on everything we have and remind us of how precious our freedom is. I hope everyone had as good of a holiday as we did!

not your average day

It is so sad that everytime I post it is a huge catch up, so prepare yourself for alot of pictures! (By the way I have officially run out of titles for my "catch up" posts so if you have any suggestions please tell me!).

These are a few of the things that we have enjoyed doing on our "not so average days" this summer...

Kate has enjoyed many warm days lounging around at seven peaks water park. every year we get season passes and she has a blast!

This picture met our "not so average day" criteria because its not every day that you can get Kate to pose so cute for a picture!

Every year the hogle zoo does a dream night for children with disabilities, and camille was nice enough to invite us along. They had a booth set up that does amazing face painting! They met princesses, had a fun dinner and got to see all of the animals. It was a fun night!

Kate did a little face painting of her own with the brownie!

Each Saturday Provo city does a farmers market in the park a block away from our house. Kate and I usually walk over every Saturday morning and enjoy the little shops and yummy food! Our favorite so far is the sandwiches from papas tapas!

Kate has developed a shoe fetish (I have no idea who she got that from) but every store we go into she instinctively finds the shoes and proceeds to switch her shoes for the new ones.

Ok, she also loves to shop for anything and everything. This is a picture of Kate begging Chad to buy her this dress (after mom said no). Dont worry he totally bought the dress for her! What a daddys girl!

Chad and his dad share a birthday, which conveniently fell on father's day this year. We had a fun weekend celebrating. Saturday I took Chad to Park City to ride the alpine slide and do some birthday shopping at the outlets. Too bad it rained the entire day. We had to shop all afternoon instead. Then sunday we celebrated with our fathers, and had a little birthday cake too. (If you see Chad remind him that he is now officially half way to fifty, that always makes him smile).

For his birthday my family suprised him with camping gear! With our busy schedules we rarely have time to camp out so this week Chad took advantage of our Tuesday night by setting up camp in our yard! It was definitely an adventure! Kate absolutely loved it (probably because its not her crib). But we had an eventful night which included witnessing a very loud argument from a random car across the street, to train horns all night long. Needless to say, next time we camp it will not be in our yard.

We celebrated my oldest sister Juliett's birthday this week (she would have been 25, which is just crazy). Tuesday night we went to her favorite restaurant Brick Oven, and then watched the good old family videos after. Wednesday morning we went to the Okirrh mountain temple open house. It was absolutely gorgeous, probably one of my favorites (but I think I say that every time). If you havent gone to this you need to, it was amazing.

After the open house we finally made it to the alpine slides at Park City. I was so excited to take Kate down the newer alpine coaster, and when we got to the front of the line the lady said she was too little :( I was so sad, luckily my mom was nice enough to stay with her so we could go. It was alot of fun.

To make up for Kates disappointment, she got to ride the awesome space train. She was totally content with that.

And last but certainly not least, the dreaded potty training! I was sure I could avoid this at least until after I finished school, but it looks like there is no way avoiding this. Last week Kate got the "potty idea". She demands that we take her potty like every five minutes (not that she does anything but just sit there). So this week I broke down and we got all the supplies. I have been reading the potty training book, and next wednesday is the day. Wish me luck!
So thats my catch up for now, hopefully I can stay on top of this blogging stuff. Happy Fourth of July and im sure we will have plenty of pictures to post (hopefully not in a month).