We love a parade!

So, every year Heber has their annual Fair and parade. Nights before the big event, you can drive down mainstreet and see the chairs that people have put out to save their spot. I must say it's the BEST parade around. I mean, where else can you go and see over 100 entries and only TWO of them are actual floats? In all reality, it's sheer torture. I can't believe that the whole entire town shows up and that main street is actually closed down for an entire hour. But, of course, I am trying to be a hip mom and so I endure.





There always has to be one unhappy one in the bunch, doesn't there?

There's a new kid in town...

Kade's original baseball team, the Bees, took a break this fall so Kade played up and became an official member of the Heber Creepers. Yes, what a name. They actually call them the "Creeps". This team is playing in the 11 and under age division so they are up against older and taller boys. They did pretty well on Saturday. Their first game was officially called a tie after two extra innings and about 3 hours of play in the heat. Poor, Kade was sweating in his catchers gear. He sure is growing up.

On the road again...

We had such a fabulous time in Zion's, that we decided to pack up the H2 and head on over to the Grand Canyon. We made a stop at Jacob's Lake to eat lunch.

On the way to the Grand Canyon, we had to stop and visit this bridge. Not sure what bridge it was, what it was called or why it was there. But, if you know my husband, it's a bridge and therefore, we stopped, looked, took pictures and left.......

The Grand Canyon is pretty grand. My heart however, was racing the entire time as my boys would keep getting closer and closer to the edge. I can't believe that people get that close to the edge just to get a picture. There were numerous places where you could just walk out and topple to your death.

We finished our vacation with a stop in Scottsdale, AZ. The weather was a sweltering 115 degrees! Needless to say, we were out in the pool the entire time. The boys went to a Diamondbacks game and Jared and I went to dinner with some good friends. We were so anxious to get back to cooler weather, that Jared drove straight through the night to get home.
Gotta love vacation time!!!

Zions or Bust

Heavens, this has been a busy month! I know these are a little late, but I wanted to post some pictures of our Baxter family reunion.

Tag and McKay, need I say more? We all went on a hike through the Narrows, I think I saw these two all of five minutes the whole time we were there. Partners in crime are what these two are....

Crew, Bryson and Kade getting ready for the big hike. I didn't realize until I looked at these pictures, how much Crew and Bryson look alike. They could totally be brothers.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Before anyone could reach the river, you had to follow this path. In this picture are Kade, Hayden, Tag and McKay. If you look between Kade's legs, you can see Garrett. This was the last time I saw them. They took off on the adventure by themselves, into the unknown, with only a water bottle and a sandwich. No fear.

Garrett the explorer, his favorite thing on the whole hike was finding all the squirrels. These squirrels were so tame that they would come up and chew on his shoes. Even though the signs specifically said "Do NOT feed the squirrels", Garrett managed to feed them an entire bag of Cheetos! Thanks, Josie and DJ for the wonderful reunion.

Joyeux Anniversaire!

Happy Birthday Grandpa John! We sure do miss you. Thank you for being in our lives. For all the traveling you've done to be at our boys activities, for sitting in the heat during baseball season, for braving the cold during football, for prayers said before wrestling matches. We will miss your spot on the bleachers this year....

My husband the groupie!!

We had a crazy week this 4th of July with both boys playing in the Firecracker Tournament. We had games on Thursday and Friday and if we advanced we would play on Saturday. Needless to say, that doesn't leave much room for planning an extravagant holiday. However, neither of the boys advanced to the championship and we were actually looking forward to a quiet Saturday at home. Well, my friend Elysa, scored us some awesome tickets to the Stadium of Fire. Now, my husband doesn't like anything that involves crazy kids, traffic, long lines or crowds, but we talked him into going......

We had AWESOME seats! On the lawn about 5 rows back from the stage. We watched She Daisy put on a great show but that was nothing compared to what happened when the lights went down, and out came Jared's most FAVORITE band in the whole world......
the JONAS BROTHERS!

I am serious when I say we were that close to them. I took that picture. I was surprised at how good of a performance they put on. I actually knew the words to a couple of songs. Because we had such great seats, we were allowed to actually go up to the stage which Kade and his friend Brody were quick to do. I didn't however, see Garrett follow them until it was too late and all I could see was his little baseball cap disappearing into a sea of hormone crazed teenagers. I went in after him but he had vanished. I stood there for two songs telling myself that he was in there somewhere and would eventually come out to get a snack or maybe to breathe? Finally, I see Kade coming out with a grip on Garretts T-shirt. He stopped long enough to drop him off and then ran back in! Sure enough, he wanted to know where his Airhead Extremes were...
Crew loved the fireworks, and other than debris falling on top of us, a good time was had by all. We even caught Jared shaking his bootie a couple of times. He even took the two hour drive home in stride. Now, maybe next year they will have Depeche Mode or Nine Inch Nails perform? Just a suggestion.

Swing batter, batter........PLEASE!

Seriously, have you ever seen such a cute baseball player? This was GG first year of coach pitch baseball. There are kids on this team from 1st to 3rd grade.In this agonizing sport of coach pitch, there are no strikes, no outs, and everyone bats exactly three times. Garrett happened to be the shortest on the team. He was the one that everyone was cheering for. The one who would hit a foul ball and the crowd would yell "RUN" because yes it's OK to run on a foul ball in coach pitch. The one who's batting helmet came down to his nose. Who's cleats were two sizes to big for his feet so that he had to shuffle around the bases with one hand holding up his helmet so that he could see.
The one that the base players had to tap on the shoulder and tell to run. And yes, that's my son out there on short, instigating a game of tag with all the other outfielders. Love him, love the game. Thanks for reminding me that we all started out this way. Even if his older brothers tell him otherwise..