Smoot Family Reunion

My immediate family was in charge of this year's Smoot family reunion - which really means that my mom was in charge of it.  It was so much fun though!  We went up to the Heber Valley Girl's Camp from Friday to Saturday, the 10th and 11th.  There were so many fun activities to do we hardly had time to fit them all in.  Here are some of the highlights:

Challenge Courses:

This one you had to climb this rope ladder

Walk across these boards with only your rope to hold on to

And then you jump off this platform

And sail away down the zip line... That was the fun part.

Sydnee, Sadie, Maggie and Lindsey Essig - Waiting for their turn

Aimee doing the zip line

Me climbing the ladder - I am SO scared of heights!

Me on the zip line

The next course was a giant swing.  

Here's Josh.  

Korbin

Brianna Smoot and Maggie

This one didn't really take guts to do.  The only person that was scared was my mom, but she did it anyway.

Even Uncle Steve got up there and took a ride

Oaklee didn't quite understand the concept of holding onto the rope until you were high enough before letting go - so she just got pushed for her ride.

Here's Maggie with her Ema

She didn't care that she didn't get a ride - she was happy anyway

The last challenge course we went on was the scariest and most challenging for me.

First, you had to climb this log with isn't attached to the ground, so it winds around and moves while you're trying to climb up it

Then you have to walk across this little wire while holding onto the wire up above before you can get to the zip line.  It was killer!

Here's me going for it.  I seriously thought I was going to pee my pants.  

I think my mom is more scared of heights than I am - but she did it too.  Yay!

The next best thing of the reunion was the food.  This dinner was amazing!  It was a cajun boil of some sort.  Basically you boil sausage, hot dogs, all sorts of different potatoes, corn and carrots and then you dump it all out onto the table and people just go for it.

It was one of the most creative and fun meals I've ever been a part of and you better believe that I'm gonna find an opportunity to do one of these sometime in the future.  It'll be great!

The other big activity we had there was time on the lake.  Spencer and I didn't want to make someone look after Maggie for us while we went out, so we found the smallest life jacket possible and took her with us.

She was the biggest fan of the life jacket, and I think she was a little hot with her sleeping bag pajamas still on, but it was fun to have her out on the paddle boat with us.

I love having family reunions and getting everyone together!  It's so fun to see everybody and catch up with life.  I seriously had the greatest time at the reunion, and I think my mom did an amazing job planning it.  She put so much hard work into everything and it all turned out amazing.  Thank you!  We love you mom!

Second Dam Tin Foil Dinners

June 3rd, 2011

This year has been extremely rainy and abnormally cold - so in anticipation of warmer days I decided to plan a little getaway evening to 2nd Dam.  We went with 3 other couples who are good friends of ours and had a great time cooking up tin foil dinners and making ourselves some s'mores.  

It was Maggie's first time in the mountains and I thought it was fun to show her what fire is and all that stuff.

She was so good up there and sat in her little bumbo and just enjoyed the fresh air.

Emily and little Gwen

Spencer and Maggie

We really had so much fun.  I was just so grateful for a beautiful, rainless evening and for good friends who were so willing to go up there with us and have a good time.

Whitney took some other fun pictures of the night so hopefully I'll be able to get those from her and post them later.

A Baby's Laughter

As Maggie has gotten older and learned more and more how to interact with us, it's been especially fun to hear her laugh and show her joy in this way.  Seriously, when she laughs, the whole room joins in.  Here are just a few of the moments of her laughter that we have caught on tape.  I've put it in chronological order so that we can kind of see the evolution of her laughter.  I love watching these videos.  You can't help but laugh too. 

May 6th

May 8th

May 13th

June 7th

June 11th

June 12th

4 Month Antics

In doing some catch-up on the blog, I have just put together many of the pictures that we took of Maggie just before and after she turned 4 months old.  Hopefully you all enjoy them as much as we do.

May 22nd

I don't know if you can tell - but Maggie's got a killer mo hawk going on here

May 25th

It's my happy baby!

May 30th

I caught Spencer and Maggie chillin out in front of the TV.  Can you believe these two?

I couldn't stop laughing at the sight of the two of them just staring forward like that.  It was really cute!

June 4th

I needed to put Maggie down to do a couple things this day, and I thought it would be fun to lean her on Spencer's head while he was laying down.  This is how she started.

It didn't take her love to make use of her literal head rest though

MMM... Yummy ear!  Spencer was about to cry he was laughing so hard.  It was just one of those funny moments.

Later that day was went for a family walk.  We had lunch at the park, went shopping at Smith's and then stopped at the Sno Shak for some summer slushies!  I love warm weather!!!

I think Maggie agrees that it was a good day!

We certainly tired her out.  

I love it when she sleeps like this.  She just looks so cute all sprawled out.

And Finally - the biggest accomplishment of being 4 months old... she gets to start eating rice cereal!

Her first time eating the stuff was June 5th.  She honestly had no idea what to do with the stuff

It went into her mouth and came right back out here.  It was hilarious.

Here are some fun videos showing her trying her luck at it just a couple days later on June 7th.

Yay for the mess of eating rice cereal!  She had so much cereal on her face and in her neck crevis, I couldn't even wipe it all off.  We HAD to give her a bath to get her clean.  It was just that bad :) 

Hogle Zoo

May 21, 2011

This particular weekend Spencer and I had made plans to go visit my family in Centerville because my mom had planned for us to get family pictures taken.  Well, last minute we had to cancel the pictures because my brother, Josh, got a job for the weekend in St. George.  Lovely... but because we already had it all planned, and because it was one of the last weekends we would have with both Aimee and Porter, we decided to go down anyway.

It ended up being a total blast!  We ended up going to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie on Friday, and after a great girls outing to the mall on Saturday, we met up with our husbands at Hogle Zoo!

Trying to fit both Smoot and Maggie in the backseat.  They looked so cute!

We had such a great time.  It was Maggie's first visit to the zoo, so I had a great time taking pictures of all the animals that Maggie had never before seen.  

Oaklee loved her ride on this horse.  She was so cute!

Monkeys

A vulture.  Apparently vultures are closely related to dinosaurs.  Weird.

I think the elephants were my favorite

I especially loved this mom and her baby.  I thought it was really cute.

More monkeys

One of the big cats... I can't remember if it is a cougar or tiger or what...

Maggie and the big cat :)

This was the tiger!

Little girls picture!  Sadie, Oaklee, Maggie and Sydnee

I love Maggie's expressions when she's put next to the windows with these huge animals on the other side.  

What do you think's more exciting to Maggie?  The giraffe or Daddy's hair?

It's a sloth!

Cute Oaklee and some sort of mini kangaroo things :)

Spencer and Maggie

Porcupines 

I think this was an alligator... it may have been a crocodile though...

The zoo's thing this summer is Zoorassic Park - so there is dinosaur stuff everywhere.  Oaklee kept walking around saying, "Oh no, It's Sharp Tooth!"  So we decided to get a picture with him.

The animal adventures didn't end when we left the zoo though - Look what we found on the window sill at my parents' home.

They're newly hatched baby birdies.  They had literally hatched while we were at the zoo.  I couldn't believe it!  They were adorable!

After a long day of play and in preparation for church the next morning, both Maggie and Smootie were in need of a bath.  They were so cute in my parents' bathtub.  We laughed at them almost the whole time.  Smootie kept wanting to roll over onto his stomach, but would then get mad because he couldn't put his face down without getting it in the water.  And Maggie realized the joys of splashing in the water.  She would throw her feet and hands down just to hear and feel the splashing water.  It was a lot of fun.  

Gotta love these cute babies!