What I've been up to.

We've been on the most awesome vacation. This coming Thursday Eric will fly home but I'll be staying another 2 weeks. I'm in vacation mode and I'm loving it!

Our first stop was Vegas; we stayed at the Luxor a couple of days. We swam, shopped, saw a Vegas show, gambled and ate too much. Our next stop was St. George. That's where we are now. It is hotter here then I've ever experienced in my life. Everyday has been around 110. Eric’s parents rented a large beautiful home for all of us to stay in during the 2 weeks we are here. The cousins are enjoying the pool mostly and hanging out with each other all day.

There are some really fun things do to here. Snow Canyon was one that we hiked around for two days. The rocks are east enough for kids to climb and they feel invincible.

Zion’s was our next attraction. Eric and I took the kids and hiked the Narrows. I've never done that before and it was fun. You basically hike through a river for miles and miles. The scenery is stunning and the water is nice to be in because it's SO hot out!

As we were driving around Zion’s park, we saw a mountain named Angles Landing. It's a steep mountain (5700 feet up) with a gorgeous view at the top. The appeal of this particular climb is that it's so steep and you climb up the ledge of the mountain. The first half of the climb is all switchbacks. REALLY steep and REALLY narrow. The second half of the climb (the top half) is all rock climbing. There are chains provided so you don’t fall off the ledge. It took us several hours, but we made it to the top and took a billion pictures.

We've also seen a few plays. There's an incredible outdoor amphitheater right on the mountain side here where they have AMAZING plays. We saw Cats last week and several days later we saw Tarzan. Both were SO artistic and well done. My mother in law and sister in law and myself also took off one night and went to see Pride and Prejudice. That was super fun as well!

In two days the reunion will be over and everyone will all go their separate ways back home, Eric included. But the girls and I are heading up north for two more weeks to see my family. I love vacations and I'm bummed out that Eric won’t be with us anymore in a few days. We've never been away from each other for so long!

Now for some pictures!!!



SNOW CANYON:
Mountin hopping Elle:

Eric on the side of a mountain:

Family Pic:

Finding shade from the 112 degree heat that day:

HIKING THE NARROWS:

Wading through the shallow part:

Getting deeper:

Family picture on a rock:

Amazing scenery!!:

Pretty narrow:

Squeezing my fat butt through a small waterfall:

ANGELS LANDING!!!

Notice Eric teetering on the mountain ledge...

Here I am hiking up, notice the cliff next to me:

Climbing climbing...

Enjoying the view:

Sexy Eric checking out the view:

Here we are near the top:

On my way back down, carefully trying to not slip and fall down the cliffs on either side of me!:

KIDS:

Here are the kids at the ampitheater:

Ampitheater picture:

The kids with cousin Lucy taking a pic with one of the cast. Elle had a crush on this cat, he's a 10 year old boy... you can tell she's totally blushing in this picture

Here's me with one of the Cat casts:

The girls with cousin Rachel in a bedroom from St. George rental house:

One of the MANY times Pinky fell asleep at the oddest times. Vacations wear a kid out!

Happy Birthday!

Eric is 37 today! We're going to go out to dinner and also celebrating in Vegas this weekend possibly with a show or something as well!

The kids made him super cute gifts and I ordered a few things that were supposed to show up either yesterday or today... I'm getting a little nervous!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC!

I guess it's time...

I've been dying my hair platinum for 5 years now and I really love it because it's such an unnatural color, it really stands out which is one of the reasons I love it so much. For the past year or so I've been telling Eric that I'm only going to go platinum ONE more time, then I'll start doing a more natural color. But each time that point comes along... I just can't bring myself do actually follow through and I end up just continuing to go white.
The prospect of having a more natural hair color is a little scary for me because I feel like I'm surrendering to getting older... if that makes any sense at all. Having white hair is something I can do that makes me feel and look like I'm I'm still hip and young. I get compliments and questions about it almost daily from people because it's such a weird unnatural hair color. For me to have normal hair will make me feel like I'm blending in to society and will have nothing that stands out anymore. I'll look like any other mom out there. I'm just not ready!

But the decision has been made for me I suppose. I once again dyed my hair last night and my poor strands have had enough! Bleaching and toning hair is one of the worst things you can do as far as the integrity of your hair. It weakens it and LOTS of it falls out simply because it breaks off or is too damaged to stay connected. My hair looks awful when it's wet because it's so far gone. But with alot of tender love and care (and gobs of product) my hair looks super cute once it's dried, straitened and smoothed out. You'd never know after I fixed it up just damaged it really is.
But yesterday was the last straw. My hair gave me the ultimate sign of being finished with bleach... it melted together! At the nape of my neck was a chuck that fused itself together. I've bleached my hair into oblivion! Fortunately because my hair is in such bad shape, I was able to simply pull lightly on that chunk and the whole thing pulled right out without any problems (scary huh???) A smaller chunk also melted in the very front of my face and when it fell out, it gave me nice bangs...

Okay I get it! No more bleach! I'll succumb to normal hair, I really don't have a choice. One more time with bleach and I'm afraid I'll be bald! It's been a fun run but my youth is truly over! I'm going to go cry now over the loss of my funky youthful hair. Although I do look forward to having strong healthy hair again that I don't have to spend an hour on every morning.

Fun 4th

We had a fun evening with friends and family on the 4th. The fireworks were a hit with the adults and most of the kids... Pinky could have cared less about them and was more interested in finding out how the glowsticks glowed. We realized she was successful in her endeavour when she started crying in the pitch blackness, and all we could see when we looked at her was the inside of her entire mouth glowing green.

Everyone panicked for a bit and tried to make her swig and spit water to get all the glow out of her mouth. I was mostly panicked because she said it burned. Although, while we were busy scraping green stuff out of Naomi's mouth, Eric was busy testing it himself to see if it in fact burned. He only dabbed it on his tongue but he said it made his whole mouth go numb. So, I'm sure Pinky was very uncomfortable!

After the fiasco had settled down, we couldn't let the remaining perfectly good glowing goo go to waste! Eric and I dabbed it all over our arms like glowing tribal paint!

Someone in the group made the comment after watching us do this, that it's no wonder Pinky wanted to break it open and play with it... it must run in the family!