Happy Birthday Mom!

I just want to say a few words on your special day; First of all~ WOW! I can't think of many more fitting words to describe what an amazing and beautiful woman you are.



My wish for you on this day and every day forward; I wish for my mother to look into the mirror every morning- and look past any gray hairs or impending wrinkles and see STRENGTH. See the woman that we see~ kind, generous, loving, patient, beautiful, sweet, strong and much much more. I wish for you to see this woman and realize- what a special person you are. I hope you see all of the amazing things you've done for people and our family in the flash of an eye and then.... I hope you realize you need a turn too!

As a mother of six, a nurse, and a pillar in your church you have given and given and given. I hope that you will take time to do something 100% self-indulgent. If it's a good book or a massage or a drive in the mountains~ I wish that you would treat yourself ~ daily!




Your generosity and strength have been a huge inspiration to many people and I hope you know how much you have inspired me. You are and always have been a magnificent woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, grandma and friend. Happy Birthday!!! I love you!



"Nobody knows of the work it makes to keep the home together. Nobody knows of the steps it takes nobody knows but mother.”

OH YEAH-

Three more exciting and news worthy things happened during the last days of
August / beginning of September.

#1~ Our bathroom flooded. Of course this happened one weekend when Andrew went out of town with his Step Dad and Iz and I stayed home. So the toilet over floweth- because the over-flow thingy broke. (Yep that's what I'm calling it) I woke up in the morning ~swearing I could hear water running and I stepped out of the bathroom and into......



Yeah. And that's not even the half of it- the water that had been running for......hours- dropped through the floor vent and ended up------



uh-hu. You guessed it. It soaked the ceiling in our garage which eventually broke and landed on my car. Oh that was an exciting morning; picture Isaiah sitting on top of the toilet lid holding the chain while I frantically run all over the house trying to find out where to turn our water off while calling every family member in the book who might know how to help me. LOL. Good thing my Dad and brother came to the rescue. I don't know what I would have done! And boy did I have a surpirse for Andrew when he got home- that'll teach him to leave us behind! ; )




And more importantly #2

ISAIAH STARTED 2ND GRADE~

Ohhhhh my heart still aches. He is getting big SO fast and eating like Jaba the Hut!

He was very excited to go back to school and see his friends. I also have to mention that he was excited to still be rocking his Fro-Hawk for the first day of school and he also somehow talked me into buying him 'skinny jeans'. I guess there are worse things (see me in 8th grade- ewwww).




And finally #3~ We managed to get ourselves invited to Lake Powell with G'ma and Papa Brick over Labor Day weekend. The only bad thing about this trip was that while we remembered the camera- we left our memory card back home in the computer! (internal memory couldn't be accessed) It figures that this would be the trip Isaiah got up on SKI's and a WAKEBOARD! He was awesome- and I finally got out and back in the wake wakeboarding! Andrew got brave and did pretty good on the air-chair for a first timer. Those things are tough- and kinda scary!

OKAY- now that's it! Those are most certainly all of our summer updates! And I know what your thinking- I am pretty lucky- and no, I don't take it for granted!!!

August 2009

August was just as eventful if not more so than July. Just in case anyone is wondering..... vacationing is my FAVORITE!

Let's start with Albion Basin.........





We drove up the canyon with Papa Dan and Paulette one sunny weekend day and walked amongst the marvelous scenery. To my knowledge- I've never been here, even though I've lived in UT my entire life. I know my mother is probably reading this right now saying 'yes you have' but again- not to my knowledge. : )

Yellowstone came next;







This trip was a blast. Andrew's beautiful sister; Nicole~ was driving down from N.D. with a friend of her's and we decided to meet in Yellowstone. On the way to Yellowstone we stayed in Idaho Falls with Grandma Weeze (none of these pictures turned out on my camera) for one night and then continued on the next day. We camped at a campground where Andrew's family went quite a bit when he was younger~ Baker's Hole. It was a beautiful place and right by the Madison River~ where I was somehow talked into bathing in the freezing cold water. The kids had a blast floating the river. In fact swimming and shopping was the kids favorite past times. Finally I can say the tables have turned and I was the one who wanted to take in more of the sites. For once I could have cared less about the t-shirts and keychains- I wanted to see the park. Guess I did grow up after all. : ( Go figure!

Once we all made it safely back into UT- we met up at the Loring Cabin for some family fun while the Muir's were still in town. Grandma and Grandpa Brick didn't leave anyone disappointed with their mega SURPRISE!





A RAZR! The kids had a blast- I almost had a heart attack- turns out that thing goes pretty fast!

Last- but certainly not least~ My lovely sister Maria came to town with her clan and we played at the new and improved West Jordan Park and had a picnic. It was great to get some of the Manzanares cousins together for some summer fun.






Whew! Well~ that pretty much sums up the way we had an amazing 2009 Summer! Needless to say our grass died since we weren't home to take care of it and we didn't have very many family and friend BBQ's like we have in past summers but hey....... we had a BLAST and made lots and lots of memories!!!

July 2009

OK- So it has been brought to my attention (by a few of you) that I have NOT been updating my blog so here it comes. I have to say we did not spend very many weekends at home and we have been very blessed to have SO many cool opportunities. Let's start with Moab~








We spent the 4th of July in Moab where we went on one of our favorite hikes behind the Potato Salad Jeep Hill~ where you have to cross the river a few times at least- in order to get to the awesome natural swimming pool. They also had a little fair in town after the parade so Isaiah rode a horse and played some games. Papa Dan & Paulette just finished a rafting trip and got off the river in Moab so they were right in time to join us for the 4th of July festivities! And ofcourse LOTS of time was spent at the condo's swimming pool too!


The next weekend we took a weekend to go camping in our pop up trailer. This time we stayed close to home and just went up Provo Canyon. It was beautiful. We spent time relaxing, hiking around and roasting marshmellows. Our friends - The Read family - were able to join us for a few hours one night. Isaiah was thrilled to have some kids to get dirty and climb trees with.






Over the 24th we went boating with the Reads and then went up to Heber to watch the Demolition Derby- I wish I had good pictures of that- it was a good show this year! Now that I look into it- I only have a couple of pictures of that weekend. Guess I was having too much fun! Hmmmmmmm.




Well- There's to an amazing, exhausting and exciting July!