summer days

 while in utah we have tried to fill each day with fun!!

between rugby games,

 the play ground and splash pads we are having fun!!

 my sister amanda is in town from south carolina with her twins, its a lot of little people running around!

 we went to visit grandma great, and the girls had a great time gathering sticks!

 we have a lot of memories at grandma great's house, 

i remember taking countless pictures as kids on those cement steps.

 we have also found a second home at the salem pond.

the kids love wading in the water and build sand castles!

art city parade

 the girls went to their first parade this year!  it was a huge success!  the girls loved every minute of it and i think they really thought that everyone waving was waving to them specifically.

 i enjoyed the parade too, i even shed a few tears because of all the great memories i have as a kid going to parades with my family and grandparent. and it makes me sad because we live so faraway that the girls will miss out great memories with their cousins too.   i'm so glad the girls are enjoying all this time with family. 

 this parade was amazing because everyone would throw out candy and the girls would run up and grab it all.

we left with a huge grocery sack full of candy!

 of course waving to the 'pretty girls' 

my grandma arla perfected the wave and it was so cute to see the girls do it!

i thought spence might like this, there is a group of lawn mow racers!

pretty intense.

we're hoping to make art city days an annual visit!

balloons, hike, and pic nic

the first week we were in utah the girls took swim lessons.

they both did awesome and loved it!!

pappy came with us and so they enjoyed showing off!

springville was celebrating art city days, so we hit up the balloon festival,

of course we loved the pink pig!

jo and i took the cousins to the carnival, it sounded like a good idea, but with this many kids and only 2 adults it got crazy fast.

face painting!

for fathers day we did a little hike up payson canyon, the girls hiked the whole way!

and finished the hike with a pic nic at the park.

it was really nice to be with Pappy on father's day this year, since earlier this year he gave us a big scare with his health.

we did miss spence, but somebody has to stay home and make the money to pay the bills.

next year we'll all be together for sure!!

Sand Dunes

 while in Alamosa we hit up the Sand Dune national park, its huge and amazing!!

 the girls had a blast building sand castles and splashing in the freezing water!

super cute kids!

who had a great time?  I did!!

and of course Q ate her body weight in watermelon.

st george

earlier this year we were planning a Brown Family Reunion in St. George for the end of May.

so since i'm such a planner I had bought a plane ticket for spencer to get back to texas to do his ER rotation.  this all happened before we realized that my dad was going to have surgery, and be recovering for several weeks.  so the family reunion was put on hold while my dad recovered.

we couldn't get the ticket refunded so we took a mini trip to St. George anyways.

a munch of girls out to lunch!!
this already seems ages ago...probably because it was 6wks ago.

leaving the hotel to explore.
this was only our 2nd hotel experience with the girls, the 1st time was when they were only 6mo old so it was a fun adventure as a family!!

a little hike up snow canyon

Tenley Magnolia with a flower!

the girls had so much fun exploring!!

a stop at the temple, we weren't the quietest group but we stayed long enough to take a few pictures.

 

my mom took the girls to target for a little shopping, and Quincy wouldn't let her leave without these dresses.  they have pretty much worn these dresses every day since!

 



 we had a tea party for breakfast to celebrate Taylor's 5th birthday!
they all felt really cool!