Back Home, Celebrity Golf Tourney

Ellie's new favorite toy is the garden hose...okay so it's not her new favorite toy but we decided to just let her play with it and get soaked to learn a lesson, the only lesson she learned is that no matter how cold the water she'll still play in it...just because she can. I was watching ESPN the other day and stopped on an interview of John Elway, one of my favorite sports icons ever, and I told Joni I was pretty sure the interview looked like it was in Lake Tahoe less than 15 miles away from us. She didn't beleive me, so of course I set out to prove it, as all husbands and wives do for stupid arguments...sure enough...he was there. Turns out there is a HUGE celebrity golf tourney every year up here in July, when I saw the list of Celebs it was a MUST to be there. Joni decided we should get a hotel and spend the night up there then hit up the tourney the next day, so we packed our toothbrushes and drove up for a quick little adventure. It was weird to see so many celebs everywhere. When Ellie went to sleep I took a walk for 15 minutes and in that short of time I ran into Jerome Bettis, Joey Porter, Carson Palmer, and Ozzie Smith. There weren't big crowds at all. We walked around town Friday night and got some ice cream and cookies. On Saturday we got into Edgewood Golf Course for less than 20 bucks and within 5 minutes ran into Tim Tebow, Andy Petitte, and Jason Kidd. One of the guys missed a putt and Ellie said, "Ohh noooo" right on cue. From there we were on a mission, trying to see as many celebs as we could. It was so much fun to walk around the course and Ellie was so good in her little stroller. I couldn't believe how few people were there, I was literally 2 feet from all of my favorite sports stars ever. We ended up seeing over 60 celebs, here are a few noteworthy ones: Michael Jordan, John Elway, Tony Romo, Ray Romano, Charles Barkley, the Jimmer, Jerry Rice, Ray Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, Carlton from Fresh Prince, and a ton of others. I'm not the type to try to reach out and high five or talk to them, but a couple of them I talked to just because we were walking next to each other and there was nothing else to do. Turned out to be a pretty fun day. Here are a few not so great pics from our cell phones.Fredette putting, Barkley watching in the background. John ElwayRay Ramano was cracking jokes, he was fun to watch. Ray Allen teeing off, Jerry Rice watching. Tim Tebow And finally...Michael Jordan teeing off right in front of us, never thought I'd be saying that.

July trip part II

The second leg of our trip was spent up in Island Park, we rented a cabin near the resevoir and had a blast. We went golfing, boating, floated down the river, swam off the dock, and played plenty of fun games in the cabin. It was a pretty big crowd, luckily no one was sick this time. Thanks Mom for renting the cabin, and uncle Don for renting the boat.Sitting and waiting for the boat. No one wanted to jump in because the sun wasn't out and it was cold. We eventually got in but we were all wimpy at first. There was a huge hail storm in the afternoon, so by the time I went out on the boat it was filled with ice balls. We just scooped them all out, but the lifejackets were FAAAAREEEEEEEEZING to put on.


We found out Ellie loves marshmallows. She always tastes stuff first with just her tongue, then if she approves she goes all out and shoves the whole thing in her mouth.
I love campfires. Apparently our family doesn't mess around, the first night we had dutch oven dinners: Chicken Cordon Bleu with potatoes and peach cobbler.
There were plenty of kids around to entertain the little ones. Ellie is pretty independent and always busy, she doesn't like being messed with most of the time so this was a rare "still" moment with Becca. She actually played with Maggie in the bathtub, but the rest of the time poor Maggie was following her around without any love in return. I'm not sure how to socialize Ellie with other kids, she loves adults but doesn't like other kids. She is fine in nursery etc but only if she gets to play by herself.




I took this picture of Bess right before she fell all the way in the water, it was sad but also a little bit funny. When I saw these guys playing on the log I knew something was going to happen so I actually came over to take a picture of someone falling in, but I was admiring one of my cool pictures when it all went down. Oh well.
There's always time for a family picture. After it was all done I drove back by myself because we took our long lost lovesac home. We are back and feeling exhausted but it was all worth it. I think we are done with big trips for the rest of this year. I wish I had more pics but sometimes when you are having fun you just don't even think about it.

July trip part I

On the 4th of July weekend we started our little road trip. We ended up stopping on the freeway for 2.5 hours because of a huge accident, it was so bad we actually got out of the car and ran around the freeway to keep Ellie entertained. Ellie is a pretty good little traveler as long as we have a DVD player going when she gets upset. Our first stop was Pleasant Grove to see Joni's dad and fam. It had been a long time since we saw Brent and Karen, and we had a great time. We BBQ'd, hung out in the back yard, and went golfing Cool fact about Joni's dad...when she was little she still remembers asking him what his dream job would be, and he said to work for National Geographic. Brent is an amazing photographer and some of his photos got him noticed and Nat Geo recently paid him as a consultant and guide to film wild horses in Utah. He is now a paid employee of National Geographic, how cool is that? Not everyone can say they've had their dream job come true. My dream job involves not working a lot, laying around, and golfing but still making millions...I'll let you know how that goes.On the 4th we met up with Glen and Kendi at THE BEST burger joint in the world, 5 Guys, I'm sorry there's really no argument here. We have been craving it for months. After lunch we headed up to Logan to stay the night and just enjoy a few hours in a little town we've come to love..
I'm sad I missed the Cruise In, I love classic cars, but we did walk around campus and eat Aggie Ice Cream. We met Steve and Jen in Logan for lunch and ice cream, then headed up to Idaho. On Tuesday we met up with our good friends from Texas the Carroll's, we hadn't seen them in over 2 years and they just happened to be up in Rexburg. We played pool, cards, and caught up. Funny how a couple of years apart don't really seem to make anything awkward, when you match up with certain people you just mesh. We've been lucky to have a few friends like that.
Another one of those is Josh and Amanda, we saw them on Wednesday and had a BBQ at thier house. Hard to believe they have 4 kids now, we originally met them at Utah State and they also lived in Texas while we were there.

It was also great just to relax at my Mom and Jim's house for a couple of days. I love their house up in Ashton, I could lay around in that basement all day. Thursday we went up to meet all the fam in Island Park...but that's another blog for another day.