weekend retreat

my little sister went through a phase where she watched anne of green gables almost every day for a long time. while it may have driven me slightly crazy, i love how anne talks about "kindred spirits." and because of danny's masters program at BYU we have been fortunate enough to find some! (too bad they both live in lehi!!)

a few weekends ago we got together to celebrate the end of the school year at zach's grandparent's cabin 

(have you ever heard of francis or oakley, utah?? we hadn't either. but we drove through both to get to our destination!)

it was absolutely breathtaking up there, and the fresh mountain air was just what we needed! friday night included lots of hot dogs, smores, starbursts, laughter, and children on complete sugar-highs (who wouldn't sleep!!!) once the kids were finally down, we finished off the night by watching an edited version of "argo." it was a little more intense than i was expecting, but so so good!

saturday was filled with dazed little children watching rio, more yummy food, lots of fun games (7 wonders is our new favorite game!), snowball-throwing competitions, walks along the river, a little bit of studying, and an overall wonderful day!!

can you guess which feet are max's?? someone inherited their father's toes :)

so studious.

and that is the end :) 

thanks again, zach & krista for inviting us to such a picturesque place! and thanks to garrett & karli for being so awesome! we love you both! 

spring break: part uno

since our summer vacation is pretty much non-existant (due to the masters), we decided to ditch all of our home renovations and other worries and head south to soak up some sun.

it was probably the best decision we could have made! :)

our first stop: sunny st. george, with some of the best friends we could ask for!! zach and garret are both going through the religious education program with danny...and lucky for me, their wives are awesome!! zach & krista (st. george natives) invited us all down for a little get-away, and amazingly we were able to pull it off (even with a huge paper due!) 

we left friday afternoon, and caravanned down with everybody. besides all of the crazy traffic (and almost getting run off the road by an old lady...) the drive was fantastic! the kids were glued to charlotte's web (they couldn't believe there was a movie in the car!! the borrowed dvd player was a life-saver, but i'm glad our car isn't that high-tech...max got a little too attached during our trip) and we started listening to code name: verity (a story about world war two). the drive went super quick!

after getting unpacked, we headed to zach's parent's house, where they had a cute little dinosaur egg hunt ready for them, complete with dino hats!! it was a great warm-up exercise for the real easter egg hunt we had later on in the weekend :)

and then it was swimming time!!! max & avery were so pumped (can't you tell from the pictures?? haha) they really were excited though. between the pool, trampoline, playground, good food + friends, we all had a grand time.

she's getting so grown up!!

next up: our jam-packed saturday-before-easter in st. george :)