Camping, POH, Rocks, Tubs, Splash Pads and more!

I Don't know why everyone has been telling me 

"medical school is hard for the students but it's even harder for their wives!"!?

 I've been having a BLAST SO FAR!! 

There are so many fun and free things to do all over Colorado and I have made so many amazing friends already! 

i'm thinking these next fews years may be easier than I was dreading!

When I first moved here I got called by another first year wife asking if I wanted to bring Evie and go to the beach with her and some other first year wives, I went and it's been a party ever since! We have girls nights, play dates, book club, morning walks, and more on a weekly basis! I've been more social in the last 2 months than I have in the last 3 years! and Evie and I are LOVING it!! So, because we are doing SO much here this post is a MASS overload of pictures from our first few weeks in Denver! 

I'm sorry to say though, since I have SO MUCH in this post already I'm going to put off Athens for another couple days. Sorry those who were waiting to hear about Greece!

So one of my FAVORITE things about Denver are their FREE splash pads!! They have one thats right by our house and it's the most legit splash pad i've ever seen and Evie is FEARLESS when it comes to these things!! In the pic below, this is her first 10 seconds at her first splash pad EVER! I didn't even have her sunscreen on her yet and she took off head on into this spiral water shooter!! 

.the 2 pictures below that one are 10 seconds after the first picture was taken ha ha ha. 

wild woman! I love it!

This is Ambry and Kori with their babies! They are champion mamma's and i love them!

This is the public splash pad

We went with Evies friends Halie and Cameron

 Cameron kept drinking the fountain ha ha ha ha He is too funny!

Evie and him have this hilarious love hate relationship going on.

They are the closest in age and Cameron is quiet the ladies man ;) 

and Evie isn't quiet sure how to deal with him

(heres an example of that..) 

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Since Brandon and I were in Egypt on our anniversary we didn't REALLY get to celebrate it "just the two of us" so we decided to have a "Fake-Aversary" one month later on August 18th!

Since it was B's year to plan the event he surprised me and took me to the parade of homes!!

. I love this man.

(p.s Parade of Homes is FREE in Colorado!... yes FREE!!!)

My favorite house had this AMAZING 3 story court yard in the middle of the floor plan! Every patio had an amazing dining room or a beautiful hammock and the BEST part... there was an art studio attached to the house with a private balcony out into to court yard above a lions head fountain...

. I was in love. 

It reminded me of this place we stayed at in Rome, I took a million pictures of it and I took even more at this house! I came home and drew out the floor pan as best I could remember because I WILL build this house for B and I someday, and I can no longer accept anything less than a private balcony into Rome off my art studio ha ha ha ha 

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Now for the best part!

The Doctors had their first final and it was on a friday!

Which means NO BOOKS, NO ASSIGNMENTS, NO TESTS, NO NOTHING ALL WEEKEND!!

So, we wives took that opportunity for a much needed camping trip!

We decided since none of our babies had been camping yet it would be good to take them all together so we can all help each other out (much better than going with a bunch of "single couples" and trying to manage a baby)

Well.... our trip was... an experience ha ha ha

We got to our camp ground and about 3 minutes into setting up our tents it started to DOWNPOUR!! 

and I mean DOWNPOUR! We're talking, hail, wind, the whole thing!

All the girls grabbed the babies and headed for the cars while the boys faced the storm and finished up the tents

Me and E hung out for a while in the car

took pics

ate Pringles

try to lick the rain off the window...

Once the rain stopped we came back to the camp site to 3 soaking wet men

After that, camping and babies was CRAZY!

The entire site was flooded and we have water babies!

We had to follow babies around all afternoon and give them the 

"nooooo... we don't play in puddles.." talk

and then face the "BAAAHHH NO PUDDLES" melt downs afterwards

.so fun. 

we had babies sitting in puddles, falling in the mud, picking up mud balls and of course...

playing in puddles

so after  cleaning off outfits with wet whipes and water and making a few "drying trips" to the bathroom hand dryers

we decided to just hang out in tents for the next little bit...

 

After the ground dried up and we decided to be brave and let the babies out Evie went into outdoor adventure mode! 

She kept wandering off into the woods on random trails!

Sometimes she wouldn't even find a trail! She'd just start trekking through the woods!!

She even convinced Cameron to come on a few off road adventures

Once it was dry enough we tried to start a fire...

that was a joke..

Firewood up here cost us an arm and a leg so we only bought enough to make dinner and squeeze in a smore or two!

I'm obsessed with Halies little reindeer outfit! ha ha ha

Since we had no fire to sit around we all hung out in our tent and played games till late which was a blast! It was so nice to see our husbands so relaxed and worry free for a few hours.

That night it blew like hurricane Katrina

and of course E slept like a rock through the entire night!

In the morning we had a nice.... smokey.... breakfast and sat around the last bit of our sad fire until it died out. Then we decided to pack up and head on home

It was a little chaotic but it was SO fun to get out into the woods for a night!

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So here is an update on our stinker Evie

She's 14 months now and in FULL SWING toddler mode!

She was a handful when she learned to walk but now it's almost impossible!

She is so independent and smart she just makes me crazy

when she's walking away from me and I say "Evie... you come back here please..."

she won't turn and look at me she'll just freeze in her steps for a few minutes until I forget to look at her again and then she takes off again!

She thinks when I say "NO!" it's funny...

I have no disciplinary handle at all on her because she thinks i'm just playing with her!

I have a lamp on the arm of the sofa and she'll go smack it! So i'll pull her down and give her a big, firm, "EVIE NO NO! We DON'T smack moms lamp!" and she'll just give me her big cheese burger smile and climb back up and smack it again!!! 

She just knows how to push my buttons and will do anything to do so!

I think my only option at this point is boot camp ... or boarding school...

The other thing we're doing now is REFUSING to get out of the tub!

She will freeze to death for 10 minutes in an empty tub rather than get out when I ask her to!

... freakin' stinker...

There are rock pits surrounding our apartments and EVERY time we go in or out of the house we MUST stop and pick up 2 rocks and take them with us...

So I have a PILE of rocks in my car and in my house...

. yup.

So instead of making her put them back right then and having an ear splitting scream come my way I just let her bring them along and throw them out every 3 or 4 days.

.sigh. 

well congratulations! you've finally made it to the end of this never ending post :) 

glad you came, glad you stayed!

Next blog will be Greece I promise!!

LONDON CALLING!

LONDON

So today is one of my favorite days! We have been to London 4 times now so it's kind of become a home away from home for my family. Natalie did study abroad here when she attended BYU so we were both very excited to take our husbands around London and show them all of our favorite sites. We got into London around 6 pm so we were going to go to Piccadilly Circus and get some dinner and do a walk about at night

but of course we missed our stop on the express train and ended up having to ride it all the way into London and back. So we ended up just ordering Chinese to our hotel and going to bed (which I think we were all secretly grateful for, me especially judging by my exhaustion in this picture lol)

The next morning we got up and went straight to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards!

  

This is one of my favorite things to do in London, 

thousands of people gather at the gates and they have this huge parade to bring in the new guards, they go through the front gates and do this line up/ gun salute thing and then switch the guards who are on stand. It's a big deal for such a small event really? But it's fun to see the parade.

 After the parade was over we walked through St. James park. I LOVE THIS PARK! They have all these cute chairs set up and people are scattered everywhere, reading, sleeping, practicing juggling, making out (lol), having field trips from school, and walking dogs.

When you come out of St. James park you can see your first view of Big Ben!

That clock never disappoints every time I see it 

We stopped at Big Ben just outside the Abbey and got breakfast then headed off a crossed the river to the London Eye and the London Tower. 

The London Tower is another really cool site to see in London. It was a high security prison back in it's hay day, today if you go through it you can see all the cells and the tools they used to torture prisoners with ha ha ha kind of awful but really interesting. 

.One cool fact.

I have a relative that carved his name into one of the walls in the Tower during his stay :)

We went and found it last time we were here!

I guess theres one in every family lol

THE LONDON BRIDGE!!
This was one of my top things I wanted to show Brandon, I couldn't WAIT for him to see it!

This bridge is incredible! The only way you can appreciate the detail is to see it in person.
They had just freshly painted the bridge for the Olympics so it was even more breath taking than usual!

 It's amazing how many people come to see this bridge every year and for good reason too.

One thing Evie does right now that I love and hate,

when you take her picture if you don't IMMEDIATELY show her the picture on the back of the camera she tenses her ENTIRE body and growls at you! 

Like she's going to explode!

It is hilarious but she only does it for a second so I can never get a picture of it! 

Well, today I FINALLY got my picture!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA this kid kills me!!!

After the bridge we walked down the river to St. Pauls Cathedral.

We walked passed all the statue actors and street musicians and I just took some photography along the way. 

 At St. Pauls we all sat on the steps and took a well needed break before we went into the Cathedral...

...Evie, of course, traumatized pidgins and did the stairs 10,000 times....

While we were at the Cathedral it started pouring rain so we ducked into the Tube and rode over to Notting Hill Gate where Natalies old flat was when she studied here.

We visited the BYU center and then Natalie requested that we take a walk through Hyde Park.

She used to run here every morning while she was living in London.

 The park of course was lush and green with locals scattered all throughout. 

We were all ready to pass out by the time we need to jump back on the Express Train and catch our flight to Athens

but just before we left the pond in Hyde park I snapped this shot

.great way to end our London day.

Next week is ATHENS!

See you all soon!!

ICELAND

Hey everyone! So long time no blog! I have so much to catch up on it's not even funny. This summer has been crazy! I'd like to give a shout out to all of my friends, family and ESPECIALLY my clients who have been so patient with my hectic schedule lately! Anyway, as promised, i'm going to start blogging about my trip to Europe! As I sat down at my desk the other day I tried to get started on blogging my epic 3 week long trip and I started getting REALLY overwhelmed... I had a billion pictures I wanted to post and a million things to say and it would have been a long and then forgotten post. SO! I've decided to post about 1 country at a time! I'll leave it up for a week or so and then move on to the next. Sound good to everyone? I feel like doing it this way will actually do justice to this trip and also work as a journal entry for myself as well :)

so day one!

DENVER TO 

ICELAND

So today we flew out of Denver at about 6 pm which was perfect because Evie slept almost the entire 11 hour flight and then we landed in Kelfick Iceland around 6 am (Iceland Time) so that cut out a HUGE chunk of our jet lag 

.thank goodness.

Flying into Iceland was awesome! You got to see the entire island from one end to the other and it was NOTHING like I expected!

It looked just like St. George but COVERED in moss!?!

Really the entire island looks like lava rock covered in lush green!

It was beautiful

We landed and rented a car for the day and drove all over to different sites.

My favorite site was the Gollfoss Waterfalls

I've never even HEARD of these falls and they kick Niagra Falls butt!

They were truly amazing.

.awe inspiring.

It was WAY too cold to take Evangeline all the way down to the look out point by the falls and we didn't want her to get wet so we hung out at the top while the rest of the family went down.

Of course she got wet anyway cause she had a crazy diaper blow out shortly after the family started the hike...

(please note Evies proximity to me while riding in the sling...)

so the 2 of us had to walk around for a few minutes and air dry anyway...

.Thanks E.

After the falls we went to a geyser

It was FREEZING!

When the geyser is about to go off all the water starts to get sucked down into the hole so we were standing there freezing to death and every time the water started to go down we'd whip our cameras out  and pull our gloves off.....

and it still wouldn't go....

luckily I finally got the shot before my fingers froze off

All around the geyser were these hot pot pools. They were beautiful! 

Just full of steaming water

It looked amazing with how cold we all were at that moment ha ha ha

We also went to this GIANT crater!

I don't really remember how it was formed but it kind of looked like 10,000 flushes (for those of you from Cedar City :) 

.my dad is so handsome I think.

After all that we sadly had to drive back to the Airport and catch our flight to London

not that I was too sad though, I LOVE London!

I wish I could have spent 4 more days in Iceland but it was just a long layover for us. 

I'd like to go back and photograph more than just out a car window!

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In back in Denver news!

Brandon is OFFICIALLY a

Student Doctor!

I am so overwhelmed with pride in him I could barely hold the tears back at his white coat ceremony!

He's doing well so far, the hardest thing about it is learning how to be a med school student.

How to balance study time, what to take really serious and what to just pass.

He's getting it though, and Evie and I are having a blast. 

We've already made a ton of new friends and have been going on bike rides, reading books, scrapbooking, and just enjoying life before my work starts up again.

Next weeks blog: LONDON!

Ciao!