Good Morning!

Hi Dad!

I didn't update the blog last night like I said I would. I know. We ended up staying at mom's for dinner after the birthday party and didn't get home as early as I thought we would. I will post the trip update soon.

Have a good day! Love ya!

Amber

Weekend Trip to Jackson

We spent the weekend in Jackson with Dad, Lu, Grandma and Grandpa Wells. We left Friday morning, visited Grandma at the campsite and the headed to the Bar J.

For anyone who has never been, it has become a family tradition for the Wells clan. There is a chuckwagon dinner served and then the Bar J Wranglers do a concert full of old cowboy songs. We always have someone stand in line a few hours before the show (this time it was Lu, thank you!) so that we can get good seats, which we did. Front row! There is always some pretty good humor during the show. I can't remember the last time Grandma and I laughed so hard.

We got up the next morning to find that it was cold enough to see our breath and the ice on the car!

I know it is Jackson, but it is September for goodness sakes! We came out of the hotel and found 2 women taking pictures of the ice on the car. I bet you can't guess what Dad decided to do? He used the keyless remote to honk the horn at them. They kinda jumped back and looked around. It was kinda funny. We tried to talk to them and tell them they were ok, to take their time, but they couldn't speak a word of english so that didn't get very far.

I can't think of anything my Dad would rather do for his birthday than go for a hike in the Tetons. Grandpa, Dad and us spent the whole day in the mountains. We rode the boat across Jenny Lake, hiked up to Inspiration Point and the followed the trail for a few hours and had lunch next to the river. Even though it was chilly that morning, the sun came out and warmed it right up. The weather was perfect, actually. We couldn't have asked for a better day.

Inspiration Point

There were raspberry bushes all along the trail. Even though they had been picked over or froze the night before, Grandpa and I were able to find a couple good ones.

Some of the best men I know!

I am so glad Grandma and Grandpa were able to join us for the weekend. Kristi and I were lucky enough to do a lot much traveling with them growing up and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed spending time with them hiking and camping and playing and... It brought back a lot of memories for me of Yellowstone, Jackson, Moab.... I needed that.

Thank you Dad and Lu for inviting us on this trip. I wish we saw more of eachother and this was a good chance for us to spend quality time together doing something that we all could enjoy. We had a really good time and hope to do it again.

Coleman Nattress

He's here! Baby Cole was born on August 30 at 6:00 pm. Meagan did an awesome job too! Delivered the baby without pretty much any pain medicine. That wasn't by choice, but is the way that it worked out. Look at him... Pretty stinkin' cute, huh!?

Coleman getting to know his DADDY!

Grandma Cindy and Grandpa Troy

In Heaven!

Have you ever wondered what heaven will be like? I like to think that when I get to heaven, my house will clean itself, ice cream and brownies will be calorie-free, and it will be 78 degrees and sunny everyday. For Lexi, I think that heaven will look something like this...

and she will be able to do this all day every day...

Troy, my father-in-law, his godfather owns about 10 acres in West Bountiful and they have about 9 or 10 horses on the property. The lady that Lexi is riding with in that picture is usually, other than some weekends, the only one that rides them. She has more fun when she has someone to ride with and has befriended Lexi. She will call her a couple nights a week and ask her to go riding. As you can imagine, she doesn't have to do much convincing. Lexi lights up as soon as she see's the name on the caller ID.

She knows all of the horses by name. A couple weekends ago, they let her come over and watch them get shoed. Thanks to these horses, Grandma and Grandpa now have a great tool to use as motivation to get her homework done!

If we could only find a way to fit a killer whale in that barn, she would be set!

Bear Lake

We spent Labor Day weekend with mom and Nick at Bear Lake. We went down to the beach, flew a kite, got a shake, and did some relaxing. Other than some nasty wind that we could have gone without, we had a pretty good time.

 

Lexi and Kamora playing in the sand.

The water was pretty cold. After going in for a little bit, Jared put his wet suit on.

What is it about kids that makes it so they could care less what the water temperature is? I couldn't do it. I made it to about knee-level and had enough. They could have played till dark if we would have let them.

When it was Jared's turn on the wave runner, Kennadi (9 years old, daughter of family friends) didn't want to get off. Jared told her he was going to go fast, but she didn't care. He meant it too. He didn't go easy on her at all. He got that thing up to 50 mph! He loved it, I'm not so sure she did though.

The wind blew so hard on Sunday. It pretty much ruined most of the day for us. When it started pulling the stakes out of the ground, we tried to hold it down with chairs. It wouldn't let up though. It blew HARD all day! We eventually pulled the poles out and laid it down on itself so that the poles wouldn't break.

 The last night we were there it got really cold. The overnight temps were in the high 30's. Jared and I toughed it out in the tent, and suprisingly, didn't freeze. I think that mom worried about us all night, but we handled it. Although, I don't know how many more times I want to do it again!

Thanks for a good weekend everyone. Let's do it again next year!

Strawberry

We spent last weekend at Strawberry. The weather was pretty nice, but was just a little too windy to play cards or badmitton like we had hoped to do. Lexi and her friend spent the whole day down at the lake catching crawdads.

The hooked a piece of ham to some fishing line and used a 2x4 as a pole. They did pretty good with it.

Gage wanted to play in the water so bad, but Grandma Cindy put the kibosh on that idea.

Jared had as much, if not more, fun than the kids!

They had that whole bucket full! Gage got mad when they dumped all of them out and back into the water. He got over it quick when they started filling it up again.

Even though I was recording Jared in this video, I like watching Laura. She is so determined to catch one but keeps scaring herself. Jared always makes things look easy Laura. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.

Flowers

I had this idea of hanging pictures of flowers in my bathroom and I thought that it would be really fun to take the pictures myself. When we went to the Spruces with Dad a couple weeks ago, I took pictures of all the flowers we saw while on our hike. I have narrowed it down to these. Let me know what you think.

I really like this one too, but it is very different from the others.

So I am thinking either 3 or 4 depending on how they are hung. Which ones are your favorite? I have all of these plus few more hanging on the wall in the bathroom now if you need to come see!

Spruces

Dad and Lu spent last weekend camping at the Spruces in Big Cottonwood Canyon. The rest of the family went up and spent the day with them on Saturday. We went hiking up to Lake Mary and Katherine Lake. When we were done hiking, we went back to the campground and had dinner.

Someone snuck in our picture!

It was beautiful at the lake and the weather couldn't have been better!

Maren was such a trooper! She didn't want to be carried as much as we all thought she would (Lucky Ryan!)

Wesley tried to play in the creek at the campsite, but the water was too cold for him. It was so funny to watch him. He would stick his feet in for about 2 seconds then pull them out. He repeated this a couple times before he decided he didn't like it.

We all had a really good time. Let's do it again next year!

Let's See If This Works

I have wanted to blog for a long time and have actually created a couple but never really got started. I am going to give a go this time. If anyone can help me figure out what I am doing wrong with the template so that I can make the blog look cute, I would greatly appreciate it!