July trips

At the end of July Alyssa and I flew out to Utah and had a great time visiting with family and friends.

My youngest brother returned from serving in the Oklahoma City Mission.

It was fun to be able to go up with the family and Welcome him home.


Alyssa loved having fun playing with her cousins.

Painting with her cousin Tessa. She picked out her apron and then had to accessorize by adding the orange scrunchie she found as a headband.

We also got to celebrate the 24th of July while we were there. We spent the day with the Gillan family. We had a BBQ and then did some fireworks.

Getting ready to do fireworks with Brett and Megan.

Alyssa Loved the sparklers. She thought she was a little cheerleader with her sparkler pom pom's.

More dancing around with Grandma Gillan.

The whole gang watching the fireworks!

Later that week we helped Megan celebrate her Birthday with a trip to the Hogle Zoo.

Alyssa and I at the Entrance.

I hadn't been to this zoo since I was in elementary school, So it was fun to get to go back and show it to Alyssa.

This lion drinking fountain is one of the only things I really remembered when I would think about this zoo, I was excited that they still had it there. Alyssa thought it was really funny to get a drink from the Lion's mouth.
Alyssa loves Hippo's and was so excited to come see one at the zoo. She was really upset that they didn't have one, so Grandma made it up to her with some Ice cream.

I think she got over the hippo pretty quick!

We were also able to spend time with friends!

Lunch with Holly, Tina and Julie and Cafe Rio. I love getting together with these girls. We always have the best time and they are some of the best friends you could ever ask for!

I also got to get together with my friend Kim and her little girl that is just a little bit younger than Alyssa. It was fun catching up and the girls had a great time together playing in the water.

Alyssa and Brooklyn

While we were enjoying our time in Utah, Ryan was having his own fun in Chicago. He signed up to go to a job conference out there and His friend Jason met him out there to hang out.

There wasn't any way they were going to go to Chicago without going to Wrigley field. They were able to get awesome seats several rows up behind Home plate.

These pictures are of Ryan and Jason at the top of the Hancock Bldg.
Ryan at one of the museums

They also got to go watch an And1 basketball tournament while they were there.

Ocean City

In July we took a trip to Ocean City, MD with Nate, Catharine and Claire. This was our first East coast Beach experience that didn't involve cold weather. Alyssa had so much fun and loved to dig for sand crabs and especially loved her dad to bury her in the sand.

All Ready to build our sand castle.

While digging to fill the buckets, they kept finding sand crabs up. Alyssa got so excited every time they found another one.

Looking for some shells to decorate the sand castle with.

Back to work...

Alyssa also loved getting buried. She would ask Ryan if he could get her stuck in the sand again.

The only time she stopped the whole day was for a quick lunch break.

Her and Claire enjoyed playing with all of the sand toys at the end of the day.

We ended the day with dinner and then drove home. It is so nice that we live close enough to take these day trips to the beach. The whole day we kept asking ourselves why it took us so long to get to the beach since we have lived out here. I am sure there are many more trips to come in the future!

In July we took a trip up Shenandoah mountains. to do some camping and hiking. It's not Quite the same as Utah but we will take what we can get.

Alyssa and Claire had a fun exploring the area while we set up camp.

Then they had fun playing in the tents after we got them set up.


I made my favorite dutch oven dinner, and then I made my favorite aloha cake afterwards.

Hanging out enjoying our dessert.

The next day we got up and went on a hike up to a waterfall.

When we got to the base of the water fall the kids had a great time playing in the water.

After a few minutes hanging out Ryan and Nate decided to take the girls up the the top of the waterfall.

Alyssa loved playing in the waterfall but had to strip down because she didn't like getting all wet.
When we got back to our campsite we found out there were bears roaming around so we got in our cars and drove around to find them and get a closer look.

On our way back home we stopped by Luray Caverns and took the tour through the cave.

It was such a huge cave and was really amazing to walk through. Alyssa loved when they played the organ during our tour.


It was a great weekend, but we are ready to head back home to a shower and our beds!