Back in the Groove and UEA Weekend

Wow!! Let's see if I still remember how to do this! It has been a LONG time and A LOT has happened! After spending a couple of hours the other night looking through this blog and reading through it, I was motivated to start blogging again. I am not great at journal writing (something I am going to work on) and so I realized how precious this blog was when I could go back years ago and see what our family was doing. I cried through it and laughed through it. It really touched my heart and was fun to see how we have grown!

We have had a pretty busy year with having a baby, dealing with breast cancer and then remodeling our home. My plate was FULL, but now I think I am at a place where I can do this, and I am excited about it! I just want my family to know how much I love them and I want to record our special memories. As I went through breast cancer, I thought a lot about all that our family has been through and I really want them to remember the fun times as well as those tough times that help us to be better people.

Anyway... it is 10:00 pm at night and as much as I want to blog about the 1000's of pictures I have of the last year, I am going to start with our most recent weekend. We spent most of this last week up at Snowbird with some dear friends of ours. It was gorgeous! Talmage and Braden trailed behind a couple of days due to school, but still got some fun in when they arrived. We played outside, swam, spent lots of time in the hot-tubs, talked, enjoyed the beautiful surroundings and renewed friendships! It was wonderful... until the flu hit! Thursday night, Caleb woke up in the middle of the night with the stomach flu. We got him settled and about 20 minutes later, Lila woke up with the stomach flu. We got her settled - actually Talmage was a champion through this all because while I was helping the kids over the toilet, he was cleaning up all the barf that didn't make it in. And there was A LOT! I think I had the better job FOR SURE! Anyway, after we got Lila settled, Emma woke up with the stomach flu. It was a LONG night. We just went from child to child to laundry and back to child to child ALL NIGHT LONG! In the morning, it hit me! I tried to talk myself out of it, but it didn't work. UGH! There is nothing worse. Luckily, it was only a 12 hr bug. Thankfully, Braden and Collin escaped it, but It caught up with Talmage when we got home :( poor guy.

The day before, my friend Michelle and I had an amazing day. It started with some Tai Chi and meditation (that was great!), up to the spa for some herbal tea with the most beautiful view of the mountain and chit chatted, off to a pedicure, then down to the poolside to do some reading and later that night out to dinner with our husbands! It was just about as perfect of a day that you can get. It made getting the flu bearable.

Me and Tal





Collin, Lila and Emma... Wait! Where's Caleb?

Oh, here he is! Looking at pine cones float down the creek.

Emma's first time on the slide. She LOVED it! Just look at that grin!

Caleb spent HOURS and HOURS in this hot tub.

The older boys playing Lacrosse in the pool. Seriously, look at that view!