Pioneer Day

Having grown up outside of Utah, I've never truly "celebrated" July 24th, Pioneer Day, before. But, as it is a state holiday, these Utahns sure know how to party it up. Since this was our last Pioneer Day to enjoy while living in Utah, we decided to celebrate like the natives do!

The Days of '47 parade in downtown Salt Lake is a huge deal. People start camping out on the street the night before just to get good seats. And now we know why.

The parade started at 9, and Megan, Matt, and I got there around 8:30, but by that time every inch of shade was taken, forcing us to stand in the hot sun. If it hadn't been so early in the morning, we would have gotten some nice sunburns.

Because it was so hot, we only ended up staying for about half of the parade, but we had fun anyway. These photos are courtesy of Megan...she apparently really liked the Pioneer Day royalty because she got a lot of pictures of them. I only included 2 :)

Murray City royalty

Some other royalty...

Dieter F. Uchtdorf, First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Utah Pipe Band (who doesn't love kilts and bagpipes?)

Some police officers on motorcycles doing tricks for the crowd

us enjoying our wait before the parade started

After the parade we walked over to the Downtown Farmers Market and at breakfast at Bruges Waffles & Frites. If you are ever in downtown Salt Lake, I highly recommend you pay them a visit. Best. Waffles. Ever.

Another fun Saturday down. What will we do this weekend? Stay tuned to find out!

Our Latest Vacation

We traveled to West Yellowstone last weekend to spend some time at my family cabin. We got there late Saturday night and left Sunday afternoon, so we weren't there very long, but it was fun to be able to go. I even got to enjoy the things we always did when I was a kid, like a pancake breakfast (courtesy of Uncle Ron), and rice and raisins for breakfast before church on Sunday!

My extended family has been using these cabins since my grandparents decided to lease them with 3 other families from the forest service probably sometime in the 1950s (any relative please correct me if I'm wrong), and the attic of one has not been cleaned out in probably that long.

No, the attic is not full of old furniture, or junk of any kind. Up until a few weeks ago, it was full of BATS. There had been some electrical problems, but before an electrician dared enter the attic, he demanded it be cleaned out first, and rightfully so considering there were 300-400 bats that were living up there. So in came "the bat man" to clean up all the nastiness and install a one-way door so the bats couldn't get back in.

Sounds like my kind of profession. Not.

Well, apparently this one-way door was successful in 2 things: keeping the bats from getting back in and infuriating them. I'm not sure how smart bats are (remind me to research that later), but they were smart enough to figure out that if they can't get into the attic the way they used to, they should try getting into the cabin instead.

Pretty much everyone had gone to bed shortly after we got there on Friday night, but Megan, Matt, my cousin Lisa, and I were still up when we noticed a bat start flying around the living room. We all ran out of the room, and then Matt came to the rescue!


I didn't get any actual action shots, so I made him pose for this one. He had opened the wood door and was using the broom to swat the bat outside. You might also notice one of his flip flops is missing. That's because he used it to prop the screen door open.

Later that night after we had all gone to bed, my cousin Catherine was sitting in the living room trying to get her month old baby back to sleep when another bat came in. This time her husband saved the day! Or night...

And just because I'm sure you're really enjoying this bat story, I'll update you further. According to Facebook my aunts, uncle, and cousins that are still up there encountered about 30 more bats last night. The "bat man" came back to fill in some more holes...causing more bats to find refuge inside. Boy, am I glad we came back on Sunday.

This is the part of the cabin that I love...

It is beautiful up there. The bats, moose, bears, mosquitoes, and various other wilderness-y things--not so much.

4th of July

I figured I better post this before it gets any later in July. For our independence celebration we went down to Phoenix (because who doesn't love Phoenix in the middle of the summer...).




We enjoyed spending time with some of our cute nieces and nephew





Megan and I forced people to pose for pictures



(This shot, however, was not posed...but isn't it hilarious?)





And we went to Mesa to track down the Dairy Queen Blizzard Mobile. Free ice cream? Yes PLEASE! As you can see, Charlotte loves ice cream too.



Oh, and of course we went swimming! This was Matt using the wading pool as a boat. He stayed afloat for a few minutes before he started to sink...


And although I don't have any pictures of this, we went to the Queen Creek Olive Mill and took a tour to learn how the make Extra Virgin Olive Oil. They make a million different flavors of olive oil, including vanilla and chocolate. Crazy!

It was a fun weekend with fun people. Thanks, sisters, for letting us come visit!

7 Months

I have now been pregnant for approximately 202 days. Does that sound like a long time? Well, it feels like a long time too! On the other hand, I keep wondering where the first half of 2010 went--it's practically the middle of July!

Last Saturday was my official 28-week mark, and here I am a few days prior.



I go in for my next doctor's appointment on Monday, and this one is full of lots of fun things...like my glucose test and a rhogam shot (which Jill told me hurts--good thing I'm tough!).

Oh, and I'm officially back at my pre-pregnancy weight! It only took me 5.5 months to gain it back...but I'm sure I'll be gaining plenty more in the weeks to come.

7 months down, only a few more to go!

Are You Prepared?

The Tiner family is all about emergency preparedness. So much so, that every time Matt's parents come to visit, his dad makes sure to visit Emergency Essentials to stock up on random supplies. Matt definitely learned this from his father.

Meet Matt's creation, the Altoid tin survival kit:



The picture doesn't do it justice, but there are 44 individual pieces in this kit--all in the space of an Altoid tin! This kit contains:

5 waterproof/windproof matches
3 safety pins
2 small fishing hooks
2 larger fishing hooks
20lb fishing line
3 small sinkers
2 sandwich bags for water storage/purification
1 antibiotic ointment
1 bandaid
2 sewing needles
1 white thread
1 xacto knife blade
20 gauge steel wire
1 twist tie for water bag
1 square foot of tin foil
1 survival card
1 can opener
1 whistle with lanyard
1 led light
1 rubber band
1 alcohol wipe
1 paper clip
6 water purification tablets (add 2 per 1 qt water, let sit for 30 min)
lint for fires
65 cents

How cool is that? We have one in our car, and although I hope we don't ever have to use it in a real emergency, some of that stuff might come in handy.

Isn't Matt the greatest? I just love him!

Catch-up (Belly Picture)

This post is two weeks late, but I had to post my baby bump at 24 weeks (6 months!). That was two weeks ago, so obviously it's even bigger now, but I'll wait and post another one at 7 months.

That thing just popped up over night! This picture was taken one

week after the belly picture I included in the last post...

This was the same weekend that Kevin and Annie got married, so we spent all day Saturday up in Bountiful. We had a few hours to kill between the luncheon and the reception, so obviously we used that time to take a few ridiculous pictures.

This is Brittany. Although she doesn't have a human baby in her stomach, she claims to have a "food baby." This is her showing off it off. I'm pretty sure she doesn't check my blog very often, otherwise I might in trouble for posting this :)

There really is no explanation for this one, other than we're just showing off how cool we are.

I can't believe these are the only pictures I took of that whole day. I really need to get a camera besides the one on my iphone.

The wedding was a lot of fun, and I can't believe I'm 6 months pregnant! So close, yet so far...

Catch-up (Memorial Day)

I realize this was weeks ago, but I've been a bit lazy about blogging. Memorial Day weekend my family had a family reunion in Las Vegas! We rented an 8,800 square foot house which was originally a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom house, but the renters added 4 additional bedrooms in some interesting places (like the over-sized pantry, the huge master room closet, and the one-car garage) to create an 8 bedroom house that can accommodate more people. The inside, despite its oddities, was pretty nice, but the backyard was the best part of the whole vacation.

The view of the patio (complete with ping pong and foosball tables).
There were 5 sets of french doors that went from the house to the backyard.

A view of the pool, gazebo, and rock landscaping.
That's Jill and me danglingour feet into the hot tub (which was only lukewarm on a good day)

The front of the house

We spent a lot of time lounging around the house, and just enjoying being together. There were several optional activities, with the only mandatory activities being old family photo distribution, and the professional family pictures we had taken on Tuesday morning.

Hanging out at the dining room table going through all the family photos from the MT house

A few snapshots from picture day. There was a variety of colors we told everyone they could wear,
and we were the three wearing red. So cute!

This was also the day Matt had the stomach flu. He's such a trooper!

A preview from our photographer. I just think this picture is adorable!

A preview of the big group shot

The other pictures I'm posting are just a random sampling of the vacation. Thank you Megan, Mark, and Amy for letting me steal your pictures off of Facebook. I really need to get a camera!

Sunday morning waffle breakfast, compliments of Amy. I can say, however, that I single-handedly
worked 3 waffle irons at once in order to cook waffles for 20 people. Now that's talent.

Four brothers-in-law going head-to-head in a foosball championship

Matt and Rob trying to recreate an act we saw in Cirque du Soleil Mystere.

Modeling my baby bump

Two thumbs up and one high-five for family reunions in Las Vegas!