happy birthday to me.

this year cory was so sweet and planned activities throughout the week of my birthdays. my pregnant body is somewhat limited these days, so we spread out our fun! these are some of the pics from my actual birthday {filled with swimming, naps, birthday visitors, a ceiling fan installation and a rodeo}.

i have other pics to come from our other adventures, most were taken with our phones and i don't have all of them loaded yet.  another post will be coming. i'm just about blogged out for the day. :)

checking out the bulls.

showing off their buffalo stamps.

this was a very yummy cake cory got for me. 

peanut butter cup dq blizzard cake. 

can you say delicious?

brigham city temple open house.

last week we went up to the brigham city temple open house. it was beautiful! inside and out. both of my parents sides are have a heritage in brigham. we've been especially excited for this temple to be done. a couple of years ago, cory, miss mabel and i went to the ground breaking.

it was special to be there with my parents and all but one sibling and his fam {we missed you nate&becky!}. 

our kids on the west side.

i loved these circular windows with the stained-glass peach blossom windows.

checking out the fountain on the east side.

she loves to pose for pics.

the kids were very patient to take lots of pics, i liked the tabernacle in the background.

peach blossoms everywhere.

cory carrying elsie to the car. 

the kids were so well-behaved through out the whole evening, but elsie was soooo done at this point.

"i'll go inside someday."

check out the stowaway bat up in the left corner.

after looking over our pics, i was disappointed i didn't get one of the whole temple. 

need to get one from mom or anna {hint, hint}

fish at heart.

this month we have done lots and lots of swimming! i know cause i've done loads and loads of beach towels and suits. we've found lots of different places to swim our little hearts out.

we've swam at our favorite pool {oakridge}.

we've swam at uncle dave & aunt sue's {home of the biggest slip 'n slide ever}.

we've swam with cousins {cherry hill}.

we've swam in buckets {gma packer's backyard}.

we've swam in a muddy "lake powell" {our house}.

we had mud everywhere. literally. we had to strip them down and hose them off before they were allowed in the house.

we've swam at one of our favorite spots all summer {farmington pond}.

even tried the rope swing.

his face shows it all.

we love ourselves some swim time.

24th of july.

we had a mellow 24th of july this year. kinda nice to hangout around the house. we bought a couple fireworks we were super excited about. one of them was a daytime one where you have like 60 parachutes that get launched in the air. ours must have been a dud because most of them just fell to the ground as parachute bombs. pretty disappointing. we also had our ward swim party at the city pool to celebrate the day.

releasing the parachutes...or bombs

mabel and elsie sat and opened each one.

elsie was unimpressed.

ski jumping in park city.

a few days after cory's birthday we headed up to park city to watch our cousin ben's soccer tourney. {way to go ben and forza!}. because it was the arts festival up there, all the hotel rooms were pretty much booked or crazy expensive. so we ended up driving up there 3 days in a row. it was super fun to see ben play and have some other adventures along the way!  

mini golfing @ the canyons.

mabel was super excited she got a hole-in-one!

elsie was our little ball getter.

at one of the games. elsie was taking pics of ben playing on punky's phone.

connor loved this barn. he had me take this pic while we were driving by so he could draw it later.

checking out one of the heated lift chairs.

on the gondola.

the view from the other side of the gondola. connor was pretty excited he and ben got to go on their own!

one of the highlights for cory and connor was the ski jump lessons! they had a 2-hour session where they geared up to go off one of the ski jumps into a pool of water. connor went down 3 times and then was done. he did awesome and said he liked it afterwards. cory had tons of fun! i have to admit, it was pretty fun to watch him enjoy it so much! even though he was the only one above the age of 10!

getting ready for connor's first jump.

cory getting his first instruction on the jump.

getting up the stairs was pretty tricky.

one of cory's jumps.

this series is connor's last jump.

not sure he wants to do it again. timing is everything and he hit his head on his first 2 jumps and even though he had a good 3rd jump, he wasn't so sure after one of the girls started crying and refusing to go. he realized at that point that he could refuse to do it and he was done after that.