Compare the Similarities

Nope... no baby yet (for those of you that got excited to see a post & hoped it was a birth story). But I do have a few things for you to look at and hopefully laugh at.
Below are 2 pictures taken the Sunday before my due dates... the first picture in Oct. 2009 & the second picture was this Sunday (July 2011). I wore the same dress to help with the comparison. Pretty similar. Right? My hair is even in my face in both (not on purpose).

Now for the funny part of this post. A week or 2 ago my sister, Becky & her family were watching Napolean Dynamite at my house while visiting. MaryKate walked into the room, took one look at Napolean on the screen and said with enthusiasm, "Daddy! Daddy! Look it's Daddy!" We all laughed and laughed. Have a look for yourself... I'm not exactly sure I can see any resemblance, but maybe you can.

Then today we were watching an Elmo DVD that is one of her favorites. In the movie there is this fantastic song that Ray Charles sings to Elmo. (have it memorized) When Ray Charles began to sing MaryKate ran up to me and said, "Mama. Ben! Ben! It's Ben!" It made me laugh out loud. Ben is my brother and I have never thought he looked much like a 70 year old black man, but when I put their pictures side by side just now I think that MK might just be right! They do look a bit alike. You be the judge...

Memories in Moab

The final count down is on... I am due to have Gardner Girl #2 in 2 weeks on July 28th. Yes. So soon! I decided I had better post a few pregnancy pics before this pregnancy is over. I am as big as a house! (literally I am a house for a little lady and growing bigger everyday) So it is with much humility that I post these pictures of our trip to Moab. We had a blast and I am so thankful we went. It was a great little adventure with our friends, the Johnson's, over the 4th of July weekend. I'll list the fun things we did & recommendations of things to do or eat just in case you and your family want to go too. (Side note: My friend Amy is also pregnant so everything we did is pregnant & kid friendly.)

Things we did:
Stayed at Lazy Lizard Hostel- only $30 a night. We liked it... but its cheap for a reason.
Hiked to Sandstone Arch- tiny walk & sooo fun for kids to play in the sand
Hiked to Landscape Arch- longer hike but very pretty & longest spanning arch in world
Woke up @ 4:30 & hiked to Mesa Arch for sunrise- GORGEOUS!... but swarms of mosquitoes. It is a dream for photographers but not really for kids that early.
Hiked to North & South Windows/Turret Arch- easy, kid friendly & pretty
Walked to Delicate Arch Overlook- easy 100 yd walk but the view wasn't great
Hiked & Swam at"Left Hand"(locally known swimming hole)-hot hike, but fun
Fed animals at Hole in the Rock Exotic Zoo- cool, strange animals...MK loved it!
Hiked to Corona Arch- super cool hike, a bit hard 8+ months prego & with toddler b/c its 3 miles and has scrambling using chains at the end & was HOT, but worth the hike to see it. (This hike is not in Arches National Park, has very few tourists,& is free... so I recommend it!)

Places we ate:
Moab Diner- overall it was good, great chicken burrito w/ green chile & ice cream
Love Muffin- crawling w/ hippies but best waffle & burrito of my life... must go again!
Milt's Stop & Eat- looks like a dive but their Albuquerque Turkey Sandwich & Burgers were so yummy... oh, and their shakes were very good too. I highly recommend it.

The kids having a blast on the rocks & sand

James on top of Sandstone Arch

The Johnson's & us at Mesa Arch at sunrise... so tired, but worth the next pic.

Mesa Arch... love it! The canyon view is breath taking & goes on forever.

Turret Arch

MaryKate's best friend & true love...

Feeding a camel at Hole in the Rock Exotic Zoo... (the ostrich made me scream!)

Meat Loaf...Cake?

So, after taking a cake decorating class this month, cake has been on the brain. This afternoon, we came up with this idea, silly I know, of making a meat loaf cake. So the "cake" part is meatloaf formed into patties and baked for 40 mins. The filling is mashed potatoes. The frosting is a homemade zesty bbq sauce. The flowers are mashed sweet potatoes and regular mashed potatoes. Peas and green beans were used for garnish. Tasted great, looks fun. I guess that is what you get for having a lot of time on your hands on a Sunday afternoon.

Father's Day Gift

Kathy made this beautiful video for me for Father's Day...just had to share it. ~ James

Salt Lake Vacation

From SLC vaca

So, with gas prices the way they are, we were a little bit limited on what we could do for our little break between semesters. So we decided that we would do some vacationing here in Salt Lake. We often don't spend money doing touristy stuff here in SLC because the activities can be a little bit spendy, but since we weren't driving anywhere we decided we could use some of that money we would have spent on gas driving to AZ of CA and use it on doing stuff here. So we each got to plan a day. Friday we started out taking a tour of the Capitol Building and took some family pictures while we were there.

From SLC vaca

From SLC vaca

From SLC vaca

Then we ate BIG - H hamburgers for lunch (a SLC specialty). Then we decided to discover some of the little boutiques in our neighborhood that we have never been to. We then went to FYE and picked up Three Amigos and brought it home and watched it... a Larson family classic!

Saturday we started off down in Sandy at the Living Planet Aquarium.

MK's loved to see all the fishes and especially the tank that looked like Finding Nemo, with all the bright colored fish. She didn't however completely love touching the sting ray...but she did it once, and that is more than her mom can say. :)

From SLC vaca

From SLC vaca

We then went and explored Gardner Village, a little vintage shopping neighborhood and ate a delicious lunch at Archibald's (we highly recommend it).We then had a treasure hunt at the local Savers, where we each had 3 dollars to find the best thing for each other, we found roller blades (blast from the past for us) and a TMX Ernie that MK just loved. After nap time we went to the highest rated low budget restaurant on YELP, which happened to be a food truck called CHOW.

It was really good (also highly recommend it). We went downtown to a friend's reception in the evening, and then had some friends over for games in the evening. All in all, it was a great little vacation...and the bed in our hotel, was just like home :)