Lost Pictures

These are pictures that I've never posted-which usually means that they don't make it in the scrapbook at the end of the year. To make sure that doesn't happen.... Here's some randomness.

For our 7-year anniversary, I told Josh that I wanted to go see Monster's University with Meili. (How romantic!) It was SO fun. It's the first time we've tried to take her to the movie since she was about 9 months old-which was a disaster. I got her all excited about it for days, we bought treats and popcorn-gasp! (I always think popcorn at the theater is way too expensive.) And Meili did really well! Plus, she thought it was awesome because she got to eat a ton of treats 5:00-meaning that she didn't eat dinner that night.

 To kick off summer we made snow cones

 Yum!

And, Meili trying on Josh's hat...

She's a daddy's girl if I've ever seen one.

Never-Ending Struggle

With a title like "Never-ending struggle" this post could be about any number of things where Meili is concerned, right? Potty training... TV... eating.... 

But no, none of those would be fun for me to write about at this point. This post is about praying, and just so that I will remember these funny stages in the future.

I've said before that Meili prays for the food regardless of the time of day or night, and I've said before that she uses her "prayer voice," and that she used to pray for things like Pooh, and Piglet, and Eeyore. 

Well, we've recently gotten into this rut where her prayer was the exact same every time: "Heavenly Father, bless the food when Daddy's at work," (She says that regardless of Josh sitting at the table with us or not. I believe it started because we blessed the food, and blessed Daddy while he was at work-so she just made it a little more efficient.) Then she says "Bless that we have a good day. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

That was her prayer every single time she prayed. So I started interrupting her in the middle so she would learn to say more. She did not like that one bit, and would hold her fingers to my mouth (in the middle of the prayer) and say "Shhh... don't talk." I started to explain to her that we need to say more things when we pray, and I gave some suggestions. 

Well, I don't know if I would say that we've made progress or not. She's listening... I guess...
"Heavenly Father, bless the food when Daddy's at work. Bless that we have a good day... Bless that we have a good day... Bless that we have a good day... Bless the food when Daddy's at work. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Yes, she is saying more things now.

Independence Day

Whenever people told me that the 4th of July was their favorite holiday, I didn't understand why. I always thought it was fun, but it was far from my favorite. But, now, I get it.

First of all, what we are celebrating means more to me the older I get, and second, we had so many fun things to cram into one day that, in the end, we didn't even do it all because we were so exhausted by that evening.

On the 3rd, we watched the fireworks at Romney Stadium from a church near the stadium with some of my family and some of Josh's family.

 Josh's brother, Jake, said that Meili was more entertained by the glow sticks than the fireworks. There were so many things she liked, it's hard to narrow it down, but, yes, thank goodness for 50 glow sticks shared between 2 little girls.

I was trying to get a good picture of Josh's homemade glasses...

But neither really did them justice.

His eyes look creepy though right?

On Thursday, we woke Meili up much earlier than she wanted to head over to the Honeyville festivities.

 Meili's favorite part of the parade: Treats? No. Fire trucks? No. Horses? Of course!

And, as it always goes with kids, the day that we know we are going to take lots of pictures of Meili and she is going to see both sides of her family in one day... She face planted it trying to jump off the swing with an uncle.

 Nothing a little face paint can't cover.

What would the 4th be without a few bounce houses?

And a little water...

 We didn't stay long enough the do the live fish pond-which may have been Meili's highlight of the entire day. But there were just so many things to do, and not enough time to do it.

After the Honeyville hoopla and a short nap, we headed to my Grandma's house for a barbecue and more playing in the water.

As I said, we were invited to another barbecue and fireworks that night, but I literally could not get myself off the couch.

Happy Independence Day!

Pictures

Since the last time we had actual pictures taken of Meili was over a year ago, I guess it was time. (We tried when she turned 2, but ran into problem after problem.) Luckily, I have a friend that wanted to try her hand at a little amateur photography.

Decide for yourself, but I think she has a promising future.

 It's even more impressive when you consider that we scheduled these for the day after Meili's first sleepover, and immediately after a pool party, on a day when Meili had a short nap.

She may be a miracle worker...

 Is this Meili saying "I'm done"?

Yes, I think so.

Can we just all agree that she's beautiful?

Miscellaneous

I finally downloaded the pictures off my phone, so these are just random.

In April (I believe) Josh's work hosted an event at the Fun Park. I had to work, but came for just an hour at the end. From the sound of it, Meili had a blast. She played in the Soft Play, went roller skating for her first time, and went bowling for the first time.

 In May, (I believe) a benefit was held for our bishop's granddaughter. Again, Meili was in heaven: a bounce house, play ground, face paint, and cupcakes! What more could you ask for? I just wanted to point out that I actually won a raffle and silent auction item, and I never win anything! Woo hoo!

 The first 2 weeks of June, Meili and I did Mom and Tot swimming lessons. Meili loves swimming, but she got pretty sick of me telling her what to do repeatedly. Oh well! She loved playing in the pool, and jumping in the water over and over, and I have to say that she actually improved quite a bit for two weeks of chaos.

 These pictures are from Summerfest. Meili wasn't so excited about this whole thing until she found out face painting was involved....

 ...and a butterfly balloon!

This last weekend, Josh's priests talked him into competing in a local "Heritage Man" competition. I figured the whole thing would actually be pretty embarrassing (like a beauty pageant for guys), but I was actually pretty impressed with my hubby. There were nine events that about 30 guys competed in (ages 18 and up), and Josh won three of them: a tractor tire roll thing, the 40 yard dash, and a sprint-ladder type exercise that I don't know how to describe.

The only bad news was that he pushed himself so hard on the first few events that by the end, he was SPENT! He critiqued himself all night about what he could have done better. Leave it to Josh to make even a friendly neighborhood game into something competitive. 

I, for one, was super impressed with what he was able to do!

 It got hard keeping Meili occupied the whole time.

 But she took this picture all by herself! (That's better than the millions she usually takes of our feet.)

Josh won the award for "Mr. Trash Talk." He said he didn't really understand why. Right.... Anyone who knows Josh knows exactly why.

Also, this weekend I ran the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay. A team from my ward was having a hard time finding someone a couple months ago, and I am not one to turn down the chance at another Relay.

 Here's our Van 1 at the start line (at 5:45 in the morning!)

And I didn't take my camera out once, so here we are at the finish line!

 This time I opted for a fairly easy leg, as Ragnar goes. So my first leg was 7.7 miles, but it actually wasn't too bad because it was very close to my neighborhood (so I could train for it), and in the morning. 

My second leg was only 3.3 miles, but it was at about 5:00 in the afternoon (which actually was one of the hottest times of the day), so that one was rougher for me than I expected.

My third leg was at about 4 or 5 in the morning, and was also only about 3 miles. It wasn't bad, but I was ready to be done. 

 I always love relays even though I figured that over 60 hours, I probably only slept about 6. Yes, by Saturday night at 10:00, I was pretty much sleeping sitting up.

That's it for us for now!