Wow... we've done more than I thought!

Okay so I'm trying to do this quick or I will never get it done so in no particular order......

This past Friday Scott and I decided to have a date night with Charlotte. With our entertainment card we get buy one entree get one free at the Mayan so we ate there. For those who have never been I would compare it to a Rainforest Cafe.... at least as far as decoration stuff goes. But they do these shows every half hour where a guy does stuff with fire and people dive off this cliff thing into a pool. Its pretty cool. The food isn't amazing but its good and we thought it'd be fun to take Charlotte. She enjoyed the shows and would just stare. It was kind of uncomfortable when guys wearing butt flaps would be standing on the wall by our table... we were kinda disturbed by that but otherwise had fun. We got the molten lava cake thing that's similar to chili's but has a sparkler type thing stuck in it. My fav picture here is Charlotte's skinny little arm dipping her chip in the salsa... she's a dipper and loves to dip things so I had to get a pic of that... so cute.

 So after dinner we went to The Living Planet Aquarium. I had been wanting to take Charlotte for a while. It's not the best aquarium I've been to but its all we've got and I knew Charlotte would love it. You can pet the stingrays. They have a new penguin exhibit that opened up this year. They have an area of fish native to UT. They also have a South American exhibit and just lots of fish to see. Its amazing the size of some of them. At the penguin exhibit we measured up Charlotte to see what penguin she is the size of and she matches with the ones there, the Gentoo penguins. She is also the size of some of the fish there too as seen above. I think she really liked it and was so glad we got to take her there. When we were getting ready to leave we stopped at the gift shop. Everytime Scott and I have gone somewhere, whether its in UT or out of state, we buy a magnet to remember it. My grandma, who Charlotte is named after, had a collection on her fridge and I used to think it was so cool so I started our own and that will be our little family tradition. So anyway, we were getting a magnet and there are TONS of toys and stuffed animals at Charlotte's level. We didn't really plan to get her anything until she walked over to these penguins and picked up two.... well after looking at the price and realizing it was only $11 we decided to let her get one. She loves that thing and its just about the size of her. But we just couldn't say no... she looked so cute running up to it and grabbing it out of all the other stuffed animals there. So that's her special penguin in that last pic above. Below are some pics of a few of the critters we saw. I don't think you can tell from the pic but the lobster I took a pic of, is HUGE! I never knew they could grow to be so big. This thing is incredible!

Now the last part of date night ended up in a quick trip across the Salt Lake Valley from Sandy to South Jordan to see the fairly new Oquirrh Mtn temple. We have never seen it since Charlotte was a baby when they did the open house and didn't want to walk a crying baby through there. So we thought we'd take a quick drive over to check it out. We are so lucky to have so many beautiful temples in UT... especially in the Salt Lake valley. 4 is incredible! So I just wanted to share a couple pics I took.... I just love temples.

Next I have some pics from the Brigham city Peach festival. Scott was nice enough to take Charlotte for the day and I just went with my dad and sister. It was a nice break and I can't wait to take Charlotte next year. I just knew she wouldn't do well with the drive and just walking around. The festival itself isn't anything super great. It's like a little smaller scale State Fair minus the livestock. There are carnival rides and all sorts of booths and food. There is one place that has the most amazing peach cobbler. I wanna try their dutch oven meals next year too. We also got to see this old pioneer home. It was TINY! They said like 8 people would live in there and all the kids would sleep in this tiny loft at night. I couldn't even take pics inside it was so tiny. I just love the old architecture of Brigham City. It's such a neat little town and it will be really exciting when they get the temple built up there too. We stopped off the highway and picked up some peaches and let me tell you, they were the best peaches I'd ever had. I can never ever EVER find peaches that good at the grocery stores in Tooele. Brigham City peaches are amazing. It is so worth the drive to get peaches that incredible. My mouth is watering thinking about them but alas.... ours are gone. So anyway, here's some pics from that day:

Next would be the Utah State Fair. With our Entertainment book we get a buy one get one free pass for the fair which is good. The fair isn't amazing enough to pay full price for. It's definitely not as good as the LA county fair my family used to go to but it's not bad. We didn't stay very long. It was pretty warm when we went and we knew Charlotte wouldn't last long so we basically just ate there (had to get "the Pie" of course) then walked over to the livestock area. One of my fav's and Charlotte's. She loves animals. So she liked being able to see all these animals. I don't know if you can tell by my pics but those black and white milk cows were HUGE! I don't remember seeing them so big but they are. I was amazed. Plus they're so cute. So after walking around and seeing all the animals (including the KKK sheep as Scott called them) we decided to leave. Charlotte got a sticker from a highway patrol which I put on her hand. It confuses her or something and she just stares at it... kinda funny. Then we left and stopped at A&W for dessert.

My next pics are kinda random. One is this ginormous wolf spider I found in the garage. If you notice its body looks all funny like kinda fuzzy in a way... yeah.... those are TONS of little babies on its body. So gross! We've found so many of these in our garage and yard this summer... thank goodness not the house though! So Scott got rid of it for me... I feel too guilty killing it... especially all the babies. Another pic was from a storm we had. The sun just kept finding ways to peek through and we got some hail. It wasn't big but the most I had seen all summer. Then there is the pic of my one lone sunflower. I think the seeds are mixing and creating new breeds or something because the ones I had before are supposed to be solid yellow but they were getting some reddish tint coming from the center. Then the one I took the pic of here was this lighter yellow color I've never seen and its supposed to be this maroonish color. So weird! I've got crazy sunflower hybrids growing in my yard.

Then I have some pics of my Charlotte... lots of random stuff. I like the ones where she's playing in her laundry basket. I had left it out while I did her wash and she decided to climb in it. I'm surprised she's not crying in the one of her watching the washer because her blankey is in there. She was good about it but it had been a week and it needed a good wash. I tried to sneak it in without her seeing but than darn see through glass..... oh and then there is a eating the corn cob. She loves corn on the cob and ate both of these pieces. She's so cute to watch eat.... love my girl!

These next 3 are of my baby boy Toby. Sometimes he drives us nuts... and neighbors too I'm sure but they're all so nice about it.....but we love him. He doesn't like to be picked up but Scott does anyway. I looked out the window the other day and saw him just sleeping in the grass (or whats left of our grass). Next year we hope to do more with our yard and get it to live longer... eventually its all gonna be torn up and redone... its so uneven. Then the other pic is Toby on the porch during a storm. He refuses to go out in the rain but loves baths... go figure.

Then this last pic I just had to add. I got this in the mail one day. It's this zoobies book thing for Charlotte. Guess I'll toss this in the trash....

I mean... do they really care? I don't think so... they're not the ones that had to pay for that. This thing was so trashed. I just wonder what in the world happened to it for it to be torn like this... the joys of the postal service....










Well I think that's about it. We're planning on going to the cabin this weekend for conference as long as nobody else requests it. I hope they don't cuz we really wanna go. Oh and we're gonna do the Alpine Loop and go to Cascade Springs. I'm really excited. Should be fun. Other than that we're all good and all in good health... minus my right ovary that still bugging me.... oh well... we should have some answers on the 7th or later. Oh yes... and we're getting close to part 2 of mine and Scott's story.... look forward to that on Oct 16th!