Coeur d' Alene

On July 22nd, we embarked on the last and longest road trip of our summer.  In some way or another, my dad made a business deal with some real estate that included a week in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho at a cabin on the river every summer until the deal was closed.  So for the last 2 years my family has had the opportunity to enjoy a little piece of paradise for a week.  Last year Spencer and I missed out on the vacation because we were in Ghana, but this year we had no intentions of being left out.  

Here are some of our favorite moments from the week:

July 23rd, we wanted to get Maggie out on the water and see how she would enjoy it.

Spencer let her down from the dock and then held onto her while she floated and played around.

She loved it until a boat drove by and really started rocking her little boat.  She was not a big fan of that...

So we took her inside to the large Jacuzzi and let her bathe for a while without any waves. 

The Jacuzzi was at the perfect height that she could barely touch bottom and bounce herself up and down.  She loved it!

Sunday, the 24th, we went on a nice long boat ride through the river and into and all around Coeur d'Alene Lake.  It was gorgeous, and especially fun to have Maggie along for the ride.

She's never been on a boat before and was super cute with all the wind blowing in her face.

I was a little worried that she wouldn't be very happy, but she never even complained.

She was even lulled to sleep by the boat.  

I love it when she cuddles with me!

On the boat ride we rode up to this amazing bridge.  I hate that pictures never really do them justice, but believe me, it was pretty cool.

Monday and Tuesday were play days on the boats and tubes

We even got to take a family ride

Mother duck with her ducklings.  CUTE!

Then Spencer got the ride of his life.

If anyone cares to watch some of his rides - they were pretty exciting.

Tuesday night the girls went into Coeur d'Alene to do a little window shopping.

We saw this moose and all the girls wanted a picture with it.

The last and final exciting adventure we went on before heading home Thursday afternoon, was on Wednesday.  Everyone packed up and drove to the border of Idaho and Montana, where there is a 15 mile bike trail.  It's called The Hiawatha.  It used to be a railroad line that was basically ripped up and made into a major tourist/biker attraction.  So yeah, we rented some bikes and little trailer for Maggie and headed on up.

Here's Maggie, all ready to go!

Starting out, Maggie was fine, but there are a few tunnels that are completely dark along the trail.  All you have to see with is a little lamp on the front of your bicycle.  Now the 15 mile trail actually starts out with the longest of the tunnels.  It's a mile and half long.  Well, about halfway through, Maggie got sick of the dark or got uncomfortable or something, but she screamed... the whole way through.  We even stopped in the middle of the pitch black cave to try and make her happy, but it did nothing - she continued to scream.  Luckily though, I was able to feed her when we got out, she fell asleep and kept quiet for the next hour or so of the ride.

The scenery of this ride was gorgeous, and I loved all the bridges that had been built from one ravine to another.  They definitely had the best views of the landscape.

When Maggie woke we tried about 5 different ways to keep her comfortable in the little trailer - but she really wasn't having it.

So we gave up with the trailer and resorted to plan B.  (We were happy we even had a plan B) 

Once we put her on Spencer's back, we didn't hear another complaint - EVER.  It was perfect.

Once we finished the bike ride we actually had to wait at the bottom for a shuttle to come pick us up and take us back to the top.

And once we were back at the top we had to ride back through the mile and a half tunnel that we started with.  Here we are, ready to get going again.

I was seriously worried that Maggie was going to make the tunnel another nightmare for us, but she liked her little backrest so much that the dark tunnel only put her to sleep.  It was absolutely perfect!

And that was essentially the end of our trip.  I will not go into the details of Spencer getting pulled over and ticketed for the first time in his life, because he would go on to tell you how much he hates Idaho cops and wishes we had only made it 10 more minutes so he could have at least gotten pulled over by a Montana cop.  That's a story that should probably be left in the dark and forgotten about... which is what we keep praying the insurance company will do :)  I guess we'll see.

I must say though, considering this was the last vacation of the summer, it was definitely a good one to end on.  I was really sad to have the week end so quickly.  Hopefully we'll get to go again next year!

A vacation from our vacations

After coming home from Vegas we had almost 2 weeks before our next vacation - so we took advantage of every second we had to relax and enjoy our home.  We also came up with some goals of a few things we wanted to get done while we had the chance.  

One of those things was to get Maggie used to eating solid foods.  From day one of eating solids she never really seemed to care for them.  What she cared for even less was the spoon.  I literally have had to feed her with my finger.  I start out feeding her with the spoon - but she usually only takes about 2 1/2 bites before she's done with that and won't let anything else in her mouth unless I shove it in with my finger.  

She also hates having food on the sides of her mouth, but instead of letting me wipe it off, she gets impatient and uses her own hands to "wipe" it off.  I say "wipe" because it doesn't actually do anything but spread the food to ever other part of her body.  Case and point right here.

July 11, 2011 - it's morning and I decide that I need to try and feed Maggie some food.  She ends up with it everywhere.

I text Spencer, who is at work, and tell him about how she really doesn't do so much eating as making a mess.  Pretty sure more food ends up on her than ends up in her stomach.

I thought it couldn't get any worse than that... until that night.  I'm trying to feed Maggie dinner, and not only does she end up with more than half on herself - she grabs the bowl out of my hand and dumps the other half completely out.

If she weren't so darn cute I probably would have screamed and sworn off feeding her solids for the rest of her life.  But really, how can you not laugh at that face?

Here are some other things that happened/pictures and videos that were taking during our time at home.

July 14, 2011 - Tickle Torture!

Also July 14 - Maggie's new favorite toys are pens.  I assume she loves pens so much because she doesn't has to work very hard to pick them up and keep them in her hand.

Her obsession with them is quite adorable if I do say so myself :)

July 16 - the ward elder's quorum sponsored a pinewood derby race!  Every person had the opportunity to buy a little pinewood block to make a car and there were essentially no rules.  No weight limit, no nothing.  The only thing that wasn't allowed was a combustible motor.  So with what little resources Spencer and I have, we went to work making a car to represent our family.

We ended up with the "Penny Pincher".  The idea was to drill a hole all the way through the block of wood and then fill it with pennies, making it much heavier than it would normally be.  Then we painted it copper and drew money signs all over it.  We thought we were pretty clever.

Unfortunately our car didn't do quite as well as we'd hoped.  The engineers of the ward masterminded other crazy ways to make a motor work without it being combustible - and those were the cars that schooled everyone else.  It was a super fun activity though.  I enjoyed seeing how everyone else got their creative juices flowing and really got down with making some really fun cars.

The last documented moment we have before getting back into our car for another road trip was on Sunday, July 17th.  We went to the Johnson's home for dinner that night and once again, Maggie was thriving on all the attention she was given.  The kids started taking turns jumping up and down for her and making her bust up laughing, and I had to make sure to get it on video.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  Colette, Logan and Jordan sure had fun with it. 

Cox Family Reunion in Las Vegas!

My mom's side of the family has a family reunion every 2 years and each time a different one of the the 10 kids in my mom's family is in charge of it.  This year my Uncle Stephen and Aunt Rebecca were in charge of it.  They were living in Las Vegas (they moved the week after we all left) and they wanted everyone to come to them for the reunion.  So that's exactly what we did!

Our first day of the reunion, July 8th, we had a day at Lake Mead.  Uncles Brian and Doug brought their boats, Uncle Dean brought a jet ski and we rented one other jet ski.  It was so much fun!

Sadie, Sydnee and Maggie

It was so hot outside, being in the water was the only way to keep cool.

Poor Maggie was sweating so bad she couldn't even get comfortable enough to take a good nap.

So she just chilled here for a while.  We called it her "rest" time because it didn't actually turn into nap time.

We got a bit of a bonus going to Vegas for the reunion, because not only did we get to be with my mom's whole side of the family, Spencer's brother, Dave, and his family live in Vegas.  So that night we met up with them and went out to ice cream together.  

Maggie was absolutely in love with Stephanie here.  They had so much fun together!

This video is classic Maggie.  She will laugh at any little kid who gives her the time of day.

Going back to the hotel and resting that night was so nice.  We were exhausted. 

Here's Maggie resting with Sydnee and Mary Jane

Our rest on Friday night was super important because we had a date with the Las Vegas Strip Saturday morning.  We had about 3 or 4 hours to see everything we wanted to see that day.  Neither Spencer nor I had ever been to the strip before, so we set out with Maggie's stroller and started walking.

This is the Bellagio conservatory gardens or something like that.  I don't remember exactly what they call it, but it was really cool.

The flowers and basically everything were gorgeous

I especially liked these parrots

As we walked out of the Bellagio to go to the front and watch the fountains, we had the perfect photo op to get a picture of the Eiffel Tower.  Never thought I'd get one of those in my lifetime :) 

Bellagio Fountains.  AWESOME!

After hitting all the Bellagio stuff we went walking down the strip to find ourselves the M&M store.  On our way we ran into this.  There is a full on motor cycle coming out of this sign.  I was pretty much in awe.

After a lot of stopping and sight seeing plus a little lunch at PF Chang's, we finally got to the only other place we knew we HAD to see.  The M&M store!

Can you believe all these M&M's!?  I thought I was in heaven!

We went and saw the 3D movie there.  These glasses were quite attractive.

After that, Sadie and Sydnee joined us and we went to town taking some fun pictures with all the M&M gear around us.

Here's my sweet family looking out on the strip.

We got a great picture with Yellow here.  Maggie was a little weirded to see a big yellow M&M walking around.

As we left M&M World there were a whole slew of characters out for people to take pictures with.  Sadie just HAD to get a picture of Bumblebee and Spider Man.

By this time we needed to get going, but in order for us to get back to the shuttle we still had a really long walk ahead of us.  We had a little over 30 minutes and we literally booked it the whole way.  Suddenly it started raining REALLY hard - all while we were still trying to book it to the shuttle.  We had not choice but to keep going and just let ourselves get soaked.  Maggie was in the stroller and we were trying really hard not to get her wet - but she was not a happy child.  She also hadn't really eaten since we'd gotten there, so it just wasn't a good situation to begin with.  But when we finally made it - just before our shuttle left - it felt good to sit down and relax a little.  I also got to feed Maggie - so she was happy too.

This is what we looked like after arriving at the hotel.

Yeah, we were pretty wet :)

That night was the last night of the reunion and we had so much fun with everyone there.  We played some great games and had some wonderful food.  It seemed really short when we got right down to it, but it felt like we accomplished/got to do a lot while we were there, so it was really nice to get to go home and relax for a little while after all this.

Daddy Loves You

July 6, 2011

Dear Maggie,

 Daddy loves you

 He loves your smile and those pretty little eyes

 He also loves it when you let him do funny things with your hair

 Just remember that when you get older

 Love, Mom

The 4th of July

Every day I'm getting closer and closer to actually catching up here - Gotta love it :)

So we left Pocatello in the early afternoon on the 4th and as we were driving back home to Logan we were invited to a little celebration with our friends Jessica and Marcus Bruce.  We were kinda bummed to have to leave the family on a holiday and not get to hang out that night with anyone, so we were super excited to make plans for the night!

The party was at Marcus's parent's home.  They had a little BBQ and treats and most especially they had this little pool set up.  Maggie LOVED it!

 Her favorite thing to do was lean to the side, like so, and play in the water.  It was adorable and I loved that she was so content and happy in there.

 We were so glad the Bruce's had this little bumble bee tube and that they let Maggie use it.  It was much more fun that way!

 After dinner and everything we got to sit in the cul-de-sac with all the neighbors and watch the awesome firework show.

 Seriously, the 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays because I LOVE fireworks.  There's something magical about the bursting lights and sounds.  It just makes me happy.

 Maggie slept right through these fireworks on Marcus's mom's lap.  It was really cute.

 Love Him!

The End