Chicken Update Photos!

Remember how cute and LITTLE the chicks were in the previous photos?! Well they're nearly full grown now!! We've had them for about 9 weeks and they've grown exponentially since the day we brought them home. They're definitely a part of the family now :)

Benny has learned to pretty much leave them alone now, since the rooster has become more defensive of the hens. They've had some epic face offs from between the fence!

This little lady is one of my favorites! She looked almost identical to a little duckling when we first bought her. Sweet little personality and very curious.



This one has some beautiful markings and colors, but is kind of a naughty!! She is lightning fast and doesn't enjoy being held. When we first moved them into their coop, she jumped out of the indoor enclosure when the lid was opened and I had to chase her around the basement!

Here's Mr. Jaime Lannister, the man of the house. Like I mentioned before he's definitely more aggressive than the others. He doesn't hesitate to puff up his chest, swing his head down and charge Benny at the edge of the coop. Pretty funny! Of course we can't forget Brienne of Tarth (or Phyllis, or little Kramer, she doesn't respond to any of it so it doesn't matter, right?!). I can't imagine she can see really well with all those foofy feathers on her head, so she hangs low for the most part. Pretty kicked back and chill. I wanted to get little self portraits of all of them but this is the best I could do. Excited to start having them lay eggs in the next coming months!

We're Chicken People Now!

A few months back (that's how behind I am on updating this thing!) we bought 8 little chicks from CAL Ranch! We didn't have an outdoor coop or anything built for them at that point, that will come in another post, but we DID have a little enclosure set up for them to live in the basement. Riley had helped his dad build it when he had chickens a few years back, so it worked perfectly that we could just move in on over to our house!

All eight of them are HUGE now (nearly full grown) so I wanted to make sure I had pictures of them from when they were itty bitty. It's hard to remember them being this small but they sure were cute!!

We thought we were buying 7 different kinds, two of them being the same breed. But it turns out that one of those "sisters" is a rooster! We're going to try living with him for awhile and see how it goes. He's very defensive of the brood and will puff himself up at Benny when he tries to harass them through the fence :)

This is Brienne of Tarth, aka Phyllis Diller, aka Cosmo Kramer, aka Crazy Hair. She's got such a funny little personality and adorable head feathers! Cracks me up!!





This one kills me with her fluffy feet! They have just gotten more pronounced as she has aged. Super cute!! I never thought we'd be "THOSE" people with the chicken coop in their backyard, but we've really grown to love them! Riley has spent many, many hours on the construction of their coop and they're now living outside in it full time! It's still interesting to watch them figure out the ramp that he built, and despite the enormous size of the coop all 8 of them insist on sleeping on top of each other in ONE roosting box. When we told our next door neighbors about getting them, they were beyond excited! We promised them fresh eggs once they start laying because I'm sure we'll be getting tons! A few days ago they brought us over a whole huge Ziploc bag full of wheat granules that they grew in their backyard for the chickens to eat! We have some great neighbors!!

Smith & Moorehouse Camping with Jordan, Alyssa, and Jax!!

A few weekends ago we were able to go and use the kayaks for the first time up at Smith & Moorehouse! It's one of our favorite camping spots, and the lake was nearly FULL to capacity making it perfect for kayaking! We drove up on Friday afternoon and got there in time to find a camp spot, make a fire, eat dinner, and head to bed. It was little Jax's first campout and he actually did pretty great! We're all pretty sure he slept better than the rest of us in his little pack and play.

We had this stump on the edge of our campground and he loved standing on it and leaping into Riley's arms!
We woke up bright and early and ate breakfast. The boys spent a few hours chopping wood for our fire and carving wood into "spoons"...



The view from our site!





We spent all afternoon out on the water on the kayaks. My parents came up for a few hours to hang out with us, as well! My dad and I took a turn out on the water and admired all the beautiful surroundings. We really do live in such a beautiful place!!



We packed up later that night and made the drive home. But not before stopping at High Mountain Drug for some delicious food and milkshakes! Jordan ordered a Grasshopper, Alyssa got a caramel shake, my parents got a Raspberry Jello with Pretzel shake, and OURS was the biggest hit! A coconut cream pie shake of pure deliciousness. Here is a picture to prove it!!

Cornwell Convention-March 2014

We had the opportunity to go down to Las Vegas for a tool convention for Riley's company. They usually hold them twice a year and I didn't have a chance to go to the last one. To be honest, I wasn't really planning on attending this rally either but Riley's manager hinted that I needed to be there because Riley wasn't receiving an award! So I made the arrangements and I'm glad I did!!

Wes, Sharon, and Carolyn also came down with us so we made a bit of a trip out of it! We stayed the first night in St. George at my parent's house and then drove the rest of the way down to Vegas the next day. We got in plenty of pool time and of course went to breakfast at the Bear Paw Café!






We stayed at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas since that's where the convention was being held. Each day Riley and his dad would go to the rally to check out all the vendors and listen to the seminars that were presented. That left Sharon, Carolyn, and I with lots of time to explore the strip! We went to the M&M and Coke shops, rode the New York, NY rollercoaster and laid out at the pool. Sharon and Carolyn tried the different sodas from around the world at the Coke store and I wish I would've gotten pictures of their faces as they tried them all! Some weren't so good, apparently! We also walked through lots of the casinos and showed Carolyn around since she had never been to Vegas as an adult.

At the M&M store, of course!

While we were wandering through the casinos the first night, all five of us were starved! We considered eating at Caesar's Palace buffet but then reconsidered after hearing the price! We meandered our way through and ended up outside a Carmine's!! Riley and I had eaten there in New York with my dad while we were engaged and remembered it being FANTASTIC! Is it weird that the best thing I ate there that night was the Caesar salad? Nope. Delish.
We ate at the crepery at the Paris and it didn't disappoint!! Mmm...I've been dreaming of these since we left! Riley's district manager arranged for Hummer limousines to pick everyone in his district up for dinner one night, and drove us to Texas de Brazil! YUM!! The food was delicious and the experience was tons of fun! We felt super important being carted around in the limo :)



Of course we can't leave out the obligatory "pool pic". Sharon and Carolyn were brave enough to actually swim, but I laid out. It was a bit chilly and the pool wasn't heated!



On the last night there was a huge company-wide banquet held at the Paris, and that's when they presented all the big awards! Riley won #18 in the Top Iron Man competition! Out of 600+ dealers throughout the nation he was #18 so it's a pretty big deal!! They gave him a really nice plaque and gave me an engraved vase. Very cool!!

One of the pretty desserts they served at the banquet:

We had a great trip! It was nice to spend some time in the warm weather and get away from work for a bit. We were happy that his parents and Carolyn were able to come, otherwise it would have been a lonely week for me wandering Vegas all by myself while Riley was in meetings! I'm super proud of my handsome husband, and very happy that he continues to love his job!

Disneyland 2014!

I wish that I wouldn't have procrastinated so long in writing this post, because I'm sure by now there are a few details of this trip that I missed. But that's ok, because hopefully it'll get in a blog book eventually and I'll mainly just care about the pictures... :)

By the way, prepare for a picture overload! We had three girls to document the trip VERY well. Can't say I'm complaining. I love pictures.

Back in January over Martin Luther King Day weekend, we went to Disneyland (yes, again) with Mike & Alicia Sly and McKenna & Justin.

We left on Friday after work from picking up McKenna and Justin in Farmington, made our way down to Lehi for Mike & Alicia and then hit the road! We stayed in St. George at my parents vacation house that night and planned to make the rest of the journey the nex day.







We woke up bright and early and made our way to Las Vegas. Of course we had to make the obligatory stop at Swig for drinks before embarking on part two of the journey.













We stopped there for lunch at a place called Hash House A Go-Go that Alicia had heard about. It definitely lived up to the hype! I ordered a breakfast omelet, Riley had a Caesar Salad (weird?), Mike & Alicia shared chicken and waffles, and McKenna & Justin both got a burger. Each ONE POUND burgers! Talk about leftovers!







After stuffing ourselves beyond reason we all hopped back in the van to continue to trek to California. We watched several movies along the way and played a lot of games on Alicia's iPhone.

We FINALLY made it to our hotel after lots of time in the car. We unpacked super quick so we could make it to Newport Beach before the sun went down. Luckily we made it just in time for the sunset! The sand was a bit chilly but the air temperature was so so perfect. Gah, I just want to pick up and move to California. We played around in the sand for a bit and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to perfect some jumping pictures with the ocean in the background.













We walked around the beach for a bit and then checked out the pier. There were lots of people fishing, but with nothing too exciting going on we decided to stop for dinner at a little pizza joint. We made our way back to the hotel and slept (kinda) in preparation for the next day!

We did the two day, one park per day passes. Not sure I'd do it this way again, only because there's so much more stuff to do in Disneyland than there is to do at California Adventure.

We knew that we'd have to either A. Get a FastPass for Cars, or B. Get in line FIRST THING to avoid all the huge crowds that were sure to follow later that day. We saw how long the line was for the Fast Passes and decided we'd just try our luck at getting on first thing. We ended up RUNNING to the ride when the workers gave us the OK. Somehow Alicia and Riley ended up waaay further ahead than the rest of the group. Mike and I both decided it wasn't worth pushing through people and being obnoxious so we waited and got a bit further behind in line. By the time we caught up, Riley & Alicia were annoyed that they had to wait for us, and claimed they could've walked onto the ride. Oh well! We still got on in a relatively short amount of time, and it was totally worth it. That ride is awesome!











We finished all the big rides pretty early on in the day, so we ended up doing a lot of them a few times (IE: Tower of Terror, Cars, etc). We also had sundaes at the Ghirardelli shop. Mmm...







The longest line we waited in was for the Toy Story shooting ride. It was about 45 minutes or so, but the ride is a lot of fun so we ended up doing it twice! We had to give ourselves a chance to beat the boys' high score from the first run...







The next day at Disneyland was my favorite! We got to ride everything we wanted several times! It really wasn't near as busy as we thought it'd be (since that was Monday, MLK Day). We literally walked onto Space Mountain twice first thing in the morning. We used the Disneyland Wait Times app to our advantage and really didn't wait in any big lines. Of course we rode the BIG rides lots of times (IE: Space Mountain, Matterhorn, Indiana Jones, Pirates, etc).

On the Matterhorn!























If you made it to the bottom of this post, CONGRATULATIONS! As a reward here is a picture of lots of treats at Disneyland. *drool*

All in all we had a wonderful time at good old Disney and can't WAIT to go back! I check the wait times app frequently during the week and get depressed about being in my office. I should really delete it... Until next time!