a weekend in Eden.

You can always count on Utah for having cities and towns named after people and places in the scriptures. Nephi, Lehi, Manti, Bountiful, Hyrum, all of the Jordans, and Eden. What's that you say? You've never heard of Eden, Utah? Neither had I until my mom called up and said she had booked a condo for a few days for some r&r before school starts up again. I'll admit... I was nervous. Especially after an incoming MBA family said there was nothing to do there. Turns out there's totally stuff to do! You just have to be there at the right time...

This last weekend was the right time.

It was the Ogden Valley Balloon Festival! 

p.s. sorry for the fuzzy photos... not sure what the deal is but whatev.

I haven't been to a mass hot air balloon launch since I was little... so little that I have vague memories of the experience. It was way fun seeing all of the balloons go up and watching them dip in and out of the trees around the valley.

We visited the festival a few different times including at night when they do the "balloon glow" where they fire up the balloons with music and it looks pretty cool.

We also hit up a BBQ place that was... so good. Like soooo good guys.

Huntsville Barbecue Co.

If you're ever up Ogden Canyon you definitely need to check this place out and eat outside in their yard/farm-esque area. Way fun. Way yummy... that's all you need, right?

Other activities included swimming...

creature adventuring aka hiking...

and probably the craziest... razoring (?) I think it was called a razor. Oh wait it's right there in the picture... RZR.

It was nuts. Like Brennan would see a hill perpendicular to the one we were currently on and say, "Let's go!" And we'd drive up the hill. Hill isn't a scary enough word. How about cliff. No... death wish. Yes. We were driving up our death wish.

This hill does not do this hill justice.

In the end it was way fun and we got nice and dirty and worn out. 

After a few days of fun we were tired and ready to head home. And so we did.

Thank you mommas for planning such a fun weekend! You truly spoiled us and we loved it!

turning three shenanigans and the likes.

Guess who turned three today! Well it wasn't Calvin... 

Peter turned three! It still hasn't totally hit me... that I have a three year-old. Three already! Three years ago I was made a momma. And in the last three years things have been nothing less than exciting, busy, crazy, and tons of fun!

Peter's day reflected pretty accurately the last three years.

Oh and fair warning... this post has about a million pictures of Peter and every moment of his day.

It all started bright and early this morning (per usual) with pancakes and cartoons. Then his mom stayed way too busy getting things ready for his birthday party. (Note to self... next year get everything ready the night before so you can actually play with your son on his birthday instead of run around like a psycho.)

No seriously guys. A psycho. An hour before the party started I tried to start the frosting only to find about a 1/3 cup of powdered sugar in the whole place. I needed 7 cups. At least. This would be a good time to thank my wonderful husband for taking care of me and my silly self all day. From running to the store last second for powered sugar to doing dishes for hours to cleaning up the bomb that went off in our apartment. Thank you Todd, you are the best. And I love you.

So yeah... once the party got going Peter had a bit of a hard time adjusting to all of his buddies playing with his toys. Once we all settled down and cheered up we had a great time hanging out with friends, eating snacks, and of course enjoying some birthday cake!        

Peter had been saying that he wanted a train cake for a month or so... and last night when I asked him what flavor he said, "big" haha. We went with "brown" cake. And I guess it was big-ish. Either way he was satisfied. (: Especially since it was a big brown Thomas train cake.

This is Peter post-birthday song pretending to blow out the candles because it was too windy. And yeah we're going to have to get good at this whole "birthday party in August" thing. That butter-cream frosting didn't stand a chance.

And Peter can't have a birthday without getting a good shove-my-face-with-cake picture.

Peter also showed his buddies his favorite game... speed down the hill as fast as you can without running over anyone. Which he usually can pull off. Except today he ran into three people. Sorry about that, guys.

Can't forget about Lisi and Penny, the two most adorable girlies in the world!

After the party we cleaned up and took naps before moving the party inside for some family time. Peter was pretty excited to wake up to even more balloons!

Peter asked for pizza and mashed potatoes for his birthday dinner. I nixed the combo and we went for just pizza. But not just any pizza... 

..."barbie" sauce chicken pizza!

And because the wind stole the show with blowing out the candles earlier today we went for round two... which was also how many Peter blew out on the first try. I was actually pretty impressed. (:

Bunny and puppy even got in on the fun!

After a quick hose down Peter finally got to open his presents. Next year I am hiding them until he gets to open them so he doesn't ask me about them all day haha.

He got some fun train toys, soccer gear, farm stickers, a train puzzle, swim goggles, and sun glasses! Lucky kid!

Well there you have it... Peter's crazy third birthday. He's a fun kid... full of creativity and curiosity! He's an awesome big brother and is very patient with his momma. He says the funniest things and catches onto stuff so quickly.

Happy birthday Mr. Peter, we love you and can't wait to see what year four brings!

Jerome time with the Canadians.

Our Canadian kin came down to Idaho for a visit this week so we made the drive up to good ol' Jerome to hang out and have some much needed cousin time.

And let me tell you... those kiddos stayed busy!

Here's a brief run down of the festivities...

movies...

cookies...

wiffle ball...

grandpa cuddles...

and the Jerome fair kick off parade!

As you can tell Peter was a little nervous. It was his first parade and didn't totally get what was going on.

He did appreciate the candy though. And oh my heck guys... this parade was nuts! We weren't even sitting at the beginning and we came home with ten pounds of candy. Naturally we dumped it out on the table and sorted it all.

Seriously. Chaos.

The next day we visited the Jerome Fair and saw all sorts of animals and ate some de-licious elephant ears. An absolute must if you're at a fair in Idaho.

These chickens reminded me of my mom... because she likes pretty chickens.

We also snagged a few balloons (aka puppies... I know, don't ask me, ask Peter).

The rugrats themselves... and one more little girl will be here in November! Peter and Calvin will have three whole cousins! (:

The ride home was mostly uneventful...

until we hit hour three... then Peter woke up and had had enough. Poor kid. He played so hard! Things get pretty emotional when you're exhausted, strapped to your booster seat, and you miss your cousins.

And that's a wrap. It was a quick 36 hours but we had loads of fun and we're so glad so got to see Keith'n'Courtney and their girls. Good luck getting home and good luck with girly #3! Luvskies.

Hobble Creek Canyon camping.

This weekend we got to go on a little overnight camping trip with our boys. We try to go camping at least once a summer and in the past it hasn't really phased Peter. He always has fun but he didn't really know what "camping" was. This summer, after sleeping in a tent at a family reunion, Peter caught on and he was pumped to go camping this weekend. On the daily he was reminding us that we were going camping and that there would be "off-em-ohs." Also more widely known as "marshmallows."

And so camping we went. We found a little first-come-first-serve place up Hobble Creek Canyon and got "the best spot they had" right next to a cute little foot bridge over the creek.

Anyhow. Back to Peter's love for camping. He really loves everything about it. Except maybe hiking that might be included in the trip. We're working on that. He loves it so much he wanted to do everything right when we got there.

Like playing in the tent in the dead heat of the day.

And building the fire and roasting marshmallows in broad daylight.

He just wanted to do all of the things! He's a cute kid.

As soon as he got bored of helping daddy with the tent he went and found this stick and asked for a marshmallow to put on it. He also kept asking if he could eat the cotton balls that we got to start the fire (thank you Nathan Day) because he thought they were off-em-ohs.

This is his blurry marshmallow roasting dance.

I denied his requests so he sat and waited. It was 2:00:00pm so he ran out of patience pretty quickly. Like at 2:00:23pm.

Once the tent was up he was ready to run around and jump on the mattress. He even found his own little entrance...

Needless to say, these toys were neglected the entire trip.

His dump truck, on the other hand, got lots of love and attention dirt and rocks.

Meanwhile, Calvin slept through the entire set up. He was pretty shocked once he woke up. ;)

Isn't he a pretty cute little camper??

Peter had a hard time grasping the idea of "relaxing" so Todd busted out his story telling skills and told Peter all about the adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and that one time when Anna, Elsa, Christophe, and Olaf went camping.

Calvin was the best relaxer of us all.

He also won the goofy face contest, yet again. Peter came in close second... see following photographic evidence.

After some foil dinners and a bad bad case of the meat bees we got our dutch oven cake going. This time we went with cherry pie filling, devil's food cake, and dr. pepper. Yum guys. Just... yum.

We were all excited.

Then the much anticipated moment finally came! Daddy built an awesome fire and Peter got to roast marshmallows!! Oh there was so much joy.

Do you think he likes them??

Also by the end of the day Peter was incredibly filthy. And apparently me saying, "Peter, come stand right here so I can document how dirty you are." translates to, "Peter, come break dance right here because I want 15 blurry photos of you."

Maybe the flash will help...

... or make things worse.

Finally he stood still. Such a charming child. (p.s. I am busting up looking at these pictures.)

And thus ended our first day of camping. After a freezing night we all got up, packed up, and adventured around some meadows and streams up the canyon. But that adventure gets it's own post. (: