Happy Birthday Taylin!!

This year for Taylin's birthday she wanted to go swimming at a "big" swimming pool.  A couple of years ago we found the best pool in the world.  It is the Veteran's Pool in Provo.  Not only does this pool have a HUGE kids pool, but they also have a regular pool and two really big water slides.  That might not seem like a big deal, but at this pool they let you take your kids down these big water slides.  That is not very common anymore, so it is definitely a perk for us.  The best part about this pool is that it is only $3 per person to get in, and 3 year olds and younger are free!!  So anyways, this is where we decided to have Taylin's party.  

We started out at the park that is right next to it, and we were lucky enough to be able to use a pavillion.  We started out with pizza and soda, then we had cake and opened presents.  Then it was off to the pool.  Here are some of the pictures....

                    Here is McKinzley and Taylin enjoying their pizza, YUM!

                                  Chad, Brexlyn and McKinzley
Here are most of the cousins sitting on some cute little chairs that Grandma Beckie brought
Allyson, Brooke, Aunt Maria and Grandma and Grandpa Heal enjoying the food
Here is Taylin's cake.  She has been asking since McKinzley's birthday in March for an "orange truck cake".  We had a hard time finding one, so she settled for this cake.  She absolutely loved it!
                                   Taylin blowing out her candles
SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!  This is Taylin holding up a $20 bill!  Grandma Beverly gave her this precious gift.  She still hasn't decided what she wants to buy with it.
She got so many great gifts.  This is a box of all different sorts of toy animals, bugs and fish.  Taylin, Oaklee and McKinzley played with these animals for about three days straight, and they still carry them around anywhere they go.  Thank you Grandma Heal!
Next came the water.  Surprisingly, Brexlyn LOVED the water!  She played the entire time.
These are the two big slides.  This is Grandpa Hoyt and Oaklee after one of their many times down.
Here is Drew and Taylin getting out from going on the slide.  Thanks to Drew, Kirstin, Chad, and Grandpa Hoyt, we had enough adults to take the kids down the slides over and over again.  Thanks you guys!!!
Thanks to everyone who came!  I know that our girls had a blast, and so did we!

4th of July

The 4th of July was such a fun day for us!  We started out by having lunch at my family's cabin that is up Provo canyon.  It is so nice and beautiful up there.  We all had a really fun time!

                                                              Chad and Brexlyn

Here is me and the girls on the porch swing.  I got sick of standing behind them to push them, so I decided to join in on the swinging fun.

                                  McKinzley, Oaklee, and Taylin.  Aren't they so cute!!??

After we spent time at our cabin we headed down to Chad's moms house for a BBQ and some fireworks.  The first thing we did were snakes.  I don't know if you are familiar with this firework but I loved them when I was little and I thought for sure that my girls would love them.  Come to find out, in my old age, I find them rather weird and kindof disgusting.  The girls did enjoy them though.
During the traditional "snaps fight"  Aidan and Brexlyn hung out on the blanket chewing on all of the empty boxes from the kids (and adults).
The wind was blowing really hard so the fireworks, mainly the snakes, were hard to start.  That is when Drew decided to get some kind of accelerant and spray all of the snakes with a burst of flame.
                                              This was the result.  Kindof gross huh?
Here is a picture of all of the people who were at the BBQ and fireworks show.

So Long Old Friend

It all started on the morning of July 5th at 6:35am.  Chad was up with Brexlyn when he heard a really loud crash outside.  Now normally he wouldn't look out the window, but the last time that he didn't look out the window when he heard a crash we went out later to find that our mailbox had been smashed to pieces.  So he decided to look.  Which was a good thing since there was another truck along with ours that was basically in our driveway.  Chad went out to talk to the owner of the green chevy truck, and to see what damage had been done.  To his surprise there was no one in or around the vehicle.  Thats right.  They smashed our truck and then they left, but they forgot to take their truck with them, and they left it running!  This is when we knew that we were dealing with some really bright people.  So Chad called the police, then turned off the green truck because it was leaking gas.

So Chad starts to look at the damage caused by this accident, and is quite surprised.  Most of you know that we live in the first house when you turn onto our road, and that the turn to get onto our road is a pretty sharp one.  Well this fellow was going so fast that he hit our truck, lifted it up, and it landed about 6 feet over onto our fence.  Now that is pretty impressive.  Needless to say, the whole front driver's side door, wheel and front fender are pretty smashed.  Then the front of the truck got smashed into the fence which ruined both of the front tires, not to mention it bent our fence and gate in about 4 feet.  The hood of the truck is bent up about 3 inches, and something is wrong with the bed of the truck.  

Now all of that is exciting i'm sure, but I bet most of you are wondering, "Did you catch the guy?".  When looking in the green truck there just happened to be a wallet sitting on the front seat with a package of chicken.  Could we be any luckier?  So the police call the man whose wallet it is only to find out that he lives in Pleasant Grove and loaned his truck to one of his buddies.  Meanwhile my sweet little neighbor, Virginia, who is like 80 years old comes walking over and gives Chad a hug, and the police officer a hug and then tells them that she heard a loud bang and looked out her window to see 4 men running down our street.  Now once again, we are obviously not dealing with smart people.  Again, most of you know that we also live on a dead end street.  So these men had no where to go.  One of the police cars just parked in the middle of the road and waited while all the paperwork was being filled out.  Along comes a girl down our street in a really nice silver honda civic.  I don't think much of it until the girls comes back out of our street with a man in her car.  I was thinking, "They better pull her over!".  Sure enough as soon as they passed the cop that was parked in the middle of the road flipped around and pulled them over.  I bet you can't guess what comes next......thats right!  The man in the car was the one that was driving the green truck!  What an idiot!  Did he just think that he would be able to cruise by?  I don't know.  I don't think I ever will.  We haven't gotten the full police report back but I am thinking that maybe alcohol had something to do with the accident.  I mean, who hits a car and runs, but leaves the evidence behind??!!!   I am very grateful that it did happen that way so that we could get things taken care of.  And I am extremely glad that Chad was not in the truck when it happened.

Needless to say, the truck is totaled.  We have to say goodbye to it tomorrow when they come to take it for scraps.  It was a good little truck for us, and worked really well for Chad to use for work.  So.  Now we are in the market of buying a new vehicle.  Hopefully we can find something nice, and affordable.  I will keep you posted.   As for the truck, we say, "goodbye old friend".

Summer Fun

Since the weather has been so hot, my girls have been swimming out in our swimming pool or my moms swimming pool almost every day.  Here are some pictures that I took (the water is freezing cold!!)