Summer Fun with the Horne Cousins

The girls and I got to go to Utah at the end of July/beginning of August for a little fun with my family.  There had been some plans (at least in my head) to make a Yellowstone trip out of it, but that got put on the backburner until next year.  Instead, we just hung out at my parents' house and Jennie's house, bouncing between the two and just generally working around the girls' schedules and interests since the primary purpose of the trip was to spend time together.

We spent long afternoons (like 3-4 hour stretches) at the pool and doing bbq's/picnics at the park, which was wonderful.  The girls had so much fun swimming and splashing together.  There was lots of imaginative playtime in grandpa & grandma's basement.  The girls ran up and down the hill in the backyard and helped my dad pick produce from the garden.  Jennie & I cooked up a special Brazilian meal to celebrate the start of the Olympics.  Jessica met my mom and me and the girls in SLC for lunch one day at J Dawgs and brought her not-quite-a-puppy-anymore Juniper to the house, which the girls loved.  Rose kept calling Juniper "my dog!" and would wake up every morning asking, "where's my dog?!" over and over and over.  We also got to see the really great house that Jessica bought earlier this year and she and the cousins watched Pocahontas one afternoon while my mom, Jennie, Renita & I ran to the mall to do a little shopping.

Jennie asked me if I would mind taking some photos of her family while I was there, which I was happy to do.  Gosh I love my nieces so much!  They all have such fun and different personalities and are such good girls.  I couldn't get over how well everybody got along (for the most part).  Emma is getting so grown up and was such a big helper and can actually hold real conversations.  Lily is still such a fun-loving girl with such a fun laugh.  Adelaide is a little spitfire and I am obsessed with her - I have always felt like Adelaide and I have a strong bond and she gives the best snuggles.  And her little voice and laugh are maniacal and beyond endearing.  And Kaitlyn and Brigitte are just such cuties who still aren't sure what to think of me but were so fun to scoop up and play with.

Here is a little video of some of the highlights of the trip that I put together for a videography class that I just finished up.  

Cousin Fun - Final Assignment from Amy Nash on Vimeo.

Jennie & Ryan and I took all the girls on a really fun and easy "hike" (it's hardly a hike as it's a flat, paved trail that takes about 5 minutes) to a spot at pretty much the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon called "Dripping Rocks".  The water was cold but it was almost 100 degrees or more every day we were there so it felt wonderful.  The girls were hesitant at first, but eventually got really into wading in the water and splashing around.  Toward the end, Clara kept adamantly insisting that she saw a snake but I kept thinking she was talking about either an abandoned black headband that was floating in a little pool of water, or a crooked piece of discarded rebar (which makes this area sound all junky but it really wasn't).  She got more and more frustrated that I didn't believe her, until Jennie spotted the snake Clara had noticed and exclaimed that Clara was right and pointed out to the rest of us where it was.  That was it for me as I absolutely hate snakes.  I have no problem really with spiders or worms, but snakes scare the bejeezus out of me.    

Unfortunately, the day of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, my 90-year old grandma Johnson fell around 10:00 p.m.  She broke her hip and ended up in the hospital for much too long waiting for a hip replacement, and then once it was finally done something went wrong a day or so later and she had to have a second surgery.  Everyone was pretty worried and she has bad Alzheimer's and probably dementia and we just didn't know whether she was going to make it through the surgeries.  I ended up staying a couple of extra days just to see if there was anything I could do to help, but eventually I had to leave to get the girls home in time to get Clara ready for her first week of school.  Fortunately, grandma made it through both surgeries and is now at a facility recovering and seems to be doing well.  It was a bummer way to end our trip, but all in all, we had a great couple of weeks in Utah.  Can't wait to see all those cute nieces again!

4th of July and the rest of the holiday

I'm going to jump around a little bit but I wanted to start this post catching up on the rest of our 4th of July holiday in Utah by sharing these pictures we took of the seven Casebolt Granddaughters (all girls!) a few days after Independence Day when we were at my parents' house.  It was tricky getting a good picture of all the girls together but they looked so darling in their patriotic attire and were all such good sports, even the 3-month old twins Kaitlyn and Brigitte (I can't tell which is which from these photos - Jennie will have to comment and let me know so I can update the post).  From left to right (Lily - 3, Rose - 17 months, Brigitte? - 3 months, Emma - 5 1/2, Adelaide - 2, Kaitlyn? - 3 months, and Clara - 4).  Also photobombing in the back right corner of the photo is Grandpa Russ who I cropped out as best I could, lol.

 

Best I could get of Clara and Rose together.  This was toward the end of the photoshoot and they were both ready to be done I think.  But these are my favorite 4th of July outfits ever.

Grandpa & Grandma's garden was the perfect setting for our little Rose who is growing so fast.

Clara really hammed it up and gave me pose after pose after pose when I was taking her pictures.

We also took a family picture at Paul's parents' house on their lawn on the actual 4th of July.  Everybody was there except Paul's older brother Bobby.

 

On the morning of the 4th we drove to Midway to go swimming at the Zermatt resort.  The girls absolutely LOVE swimming and had such a great time.  The girls loved jumping into the pool and being thrown back and forth between me and Paul.

 

Clara has the most epic jumping technique.  Dave's wife, Deborah, took all of these photos and sent them to me afterwards and I love having them.

 

 

 

I brought a plastic container filled with plastic balls from a ball pit at Bob & Donna's house to play a game we do at Rose's swimming lessons each week where you invert the container over the water and push it down, trapping the air and balls inside, then quickly flip it over underwater so the balls burble up and pop out every which way.  Then we "swim" the girls around to collect the balls and put them back in the container.  It was a huge hit, not just with our girls but all the other kids at the pool who ended up asking to play with a few balls and sharing with us.

 

At one point we attempted to toss the girls at the same time.  Our aim and timing were a little off but the girls both came up laughing despite Clara's crashdown in the pictures below.

At my parents' house, my mom took the girls downstairs and pulled out some of her teaching materials to entertain the girls with songs about the letters of the alphabet.

Rose and Adelaide became best frenemies.  They would chase each other around and around laughing and squealing and having the best time all morning and then in the afternoon they would be fighting over something or another.  But mostly it was love between them.

Clara adored the twins and liked to get down close to them and sing them songs.

We went to the Ogden Treehouse Museum with the girls and had a great time.  There were so many fun and interesting exhibits to explore and we didn't even see all of it.  We easily could have spent a lot more time there except for the little gals needing naps.

I took this picture of Clara pretending to sleep under an animal skin in a yurt in the Mongolia section.

The kids could actually "milk" this cow.  It had water that came out of the udders into a bucket below.

Rose had a meeting with President Lily in the Oval Office.

And Clara spent the afternoon signing executive orders.

But what the girls really and truly loved was working in the nursery taking care of the newborns.

Clara helped Grandpa Russ shell peas from the pods.  She ate at least as many as she put in the bowl.

One afternoon my mom and Jennie went shopping and took the twins so I just had the five older girls.  I pulled out the plastic swimming pool and the girls had fun playing in the water.

And sunning themselves on the patio until it got really overcast and started to sprinkle.

It was Farmington Days the weekend after the 4th of July so we went to the parade   It was fun and the girls had some true Utah experiences.

Like seeing missionaries riding a tandem bicycle in the parade.

And watching a handcart and pioneers.

And eating Fat Boys that were tossed out to the crowd (so much better than the saltwater taffy which was 90% of the candy that was thrown).

And watching a high school marching band perform.

Uncle Ryan helped Clara collect candy.  She made a huge haul.

Unfortunately our visit ended with a trip to Urgent Care for Rose when she woke up from her Sunday nap with a terrible fever that reached 104.5.  She had to have a catheter to check for a UTI but ultimately the results were negative so it must have just been some weird viral thing.  She was pretty miserable for a day but did much better the next morning on our drive home.