Home from vacation and being silly:

Helping Daddy get ready for work:

We LOVE Daddy! :)

Best Friends! :)

And now, Rebekah and Cairn's Second Birthday Party! It was such a success for their first birthday that Carrie and I decided to have another joint birthday party. Carrie had this AWESOME cake idea, so we had a Barnyard Bash! :)

Other than playing at the water park, we had an activity for the kids - make your own barn, complete with animals. :)

Lunch! Yum!

Enjoying their birthday cake!

And this is when we were first moving in to our new apartment. It's on the end of a 4 plex. Next to us is our friend's brother's family, next to them are our friends, and next to them is another sister in our ward. We love our neighbors! (Well, to the south. Our northern neighbor, we don't know very well, but their dogs are super annoying.)

On Rebekah's actual brithday, we gave her Jesse. She LOVES Jesse! :) Jesse is her BEST friend. This was an easy decision, considering Rebekah is crazy about Toy Story. It all started when I was babysitting my sister's kids, and we watched the end of The Incredibles. Rebekah sat and watched with her cousins, so I decided she was ready to watch movies! :) Then we took her to see Toy Story 3 in the theatre, and she really enjoyed it, so we showed her the other two movies. Buzz Lightyear is by far her favorite, but he's much more expensive!

During our next trip to Phoenix, Daryn's family added Rex (a flashlight), Slinky Dog, and an LGM to her Toy Story collection, as well as a Toy Story blanket. Our friend Tiffany and her son Gage gave her a camping chair with Toy Story on it.

Our friend Carrie took Rebekah for a day while we moved into our new apartment - she took these pictures at the Library activity they went to! :)

Family Reunion at Bear Lake

I am SO sad! I didn't keep a journal of our vacation to Utah very well, and then neglected to write about for nearly a year. :( AND, there was only one day of the whole trip that I actually took pictures!

We ended up getting a rental car (insurance did not cover it - our bad for not having it on our plan) and driving up to my parents house. We stayed there several days and celebrated my dad's birthday (4th of July) with him and most of my family. Then when it was time, we went to Bear Lake in my parents van so we could keep the mileage down on the rental.

Even though Daryn had taken the week off from work, he ended up working a lot by phone. It wasn't too bad because with his bad knee (remember, the piano) he couldn't go water skiing the day we did that, and even the sea doo wasn't very kind to him.

The water at the lake was freezing! When I tried to water ski, it was so cold it made me cry and I chickened out and didn't go. Kati was super supportive and tried to help me not be scared in the first place, but after I climbed back in the boat, she admitted she kinda wanted to scream when she jumped in b/c it was so cold, but she didn't want to freak me out. :) Thanks, Kati. Maybe I won't be such a pansy next time!

On the up side, the water was super high at the lake, so there was a huge shallow area for kids to play, and then sun warmed that top layer of water pretty well. I'm more interested in sand castles and shallow water at a beach anyway. :)

Back at the campground, many of our nights were filled with games like Scum, and Spoons. :) Cousins are such fun! There were also activities - mainly for the great-grandkids. Painting snakes: (and arms, in Bekah's case)

making toy boats, and some of the family helped set up stations for the kids to learn about things from when Grandma Pike was a little girl. I saw my cousins' kids listening to Grandma Pike and had to get some pictures.

We also had a day where each family - broken into my dad's siblings families, so all the Doug Pike kids and grandkids were one group - made up a little skit to entertain the rest of the family. They were very cute!

I loved the time we were up there. It was interesting to me to note that I was the youngest of the married grandchildren, and the next oldest lives in Germany, so even being married and having a kid, I sometimes had this weird feeling like I was the young cousin trying to tag along with the older cousins. Thank goodness no one treated me that way! It was just an odd observation that I considered now and again. (BTW, I'm pretty sure I'm still the youngest grandchild who is married. 6/2011)

If I remember correctly, when the reunion was over and we went back to Mom and Dad's, Daryn and I left for home the next day, so Daryn wouldn't miss too much work. That, and we needed to return the rental and cut down on costs there. :/ I LOVED being up in Utah with my family, and missed it as soon as I was gone, but it sure was fun!

UG.

So we've been having some little issues with our truck - 3 times now (twice for me, once for Daryn) it has lost power to the wheels after idling for a long period of time. We took it to a mechanic, and basically it could be one of two things, and either flushing the transmission will fix it (for now, but we'll need a new transmission soon anyway) or flushing the transmission will make it stop working at all (and cost us a new transmission or other parts *now*). We decided we will let it be and sell it as is, or maybe trade it in depending on how good of a trade we can get. (We'd probably be downgrading, so it might be pretty good!)

I called Daryn this evening to see if he was on his way home from work, because we had an appointment to view a duplex. He reached to pick up the phone and as he answered I heard, "Hello?...... Oh crap I just got in an accident!" *click*

A little while later he called and let me know he was okay. The following are paragraphs I put up on Facebook to explain things, and I decided I don't want to type it all out again:


Daryn got in an accident on the way home today (b/c he looked down to find his phone when I called to see if he was on his way home). He's fine, but our car needs some work, and we were supposed to go to Utah tomorrow night. We'll see what kind of rental we can get and how far we're allowed to drive... ... See MoreAlso, the guy in front of us further damaged our car by jumping out of his truck, yelling and screaming and swearing, tried to open Daryn's door (broke the handle, I think?), pounded on the glass, and then (b/c Daryn didn't get out of the car) kicked a huge dent in our door. Overall, 4 cars involved and Daryn is the only one that walked away with a ticket. Yuck. Good thing we have really good insurance on that car! And it's been over 2 years since he's been to driving school.

We took the truck in b/c we suspected as much, but we were really hoping to use it and tow my in-laws tent trailer to Utah with us. So earlier today we found out we'll be in a tent instead of a trailer for camping, and now we're trying to figure out to get up there at all! This is a huge family reunion, too, and my Dad's birthday is Sunday!

They asked Daryn if he wanted to press assault charges, and Daryn kindly said, "No, just want it to be on the report so insurance can bill him for the dent he left in my door." Also, Daryn could tell the guy was gonna apologize when swapping insurance info, and the guy did. He explained that he's been restoring this classic truck and JUST did the back end, so he really lost his temper and felt bad about getting so angry.

They were so close together that when Daryn hit the truck in front of him, it hit an SUV, and a truck in front of that. The front truck needs a bumper, the second needs both bumpers, and the truck he hit will need more work. Our poor car's bumper was lower than the truck, so it smashed the hood up (but missed the trigger to set off the airbags). Car still drives, but needs some serious work.

Annnnd.... we still don't know where we're going to live.

Also, Daryn has TONS of work to do tomorrow before we go on vacation, so he can't afford to not go to work. We're going to get a ride and pick up the truck and use it for now. Bleh. Hopefully insurance will help cover a rental.