Brackenbury-Durfee Reunion 2009

Once again it was time for all of us to gather in the hills for our annual family reunion. We go all out and spend an entire weekend camping and mingling with all the relatives. It's a good thing it's always far away up the mountain because we usually cause quite the ruckus when our whole family gets together. I think they counted almost 100 people there this year and I think Ella was the youngest in attendance. We had a great time seeing all the new babies and getting to see some family that this is the only time we get to see them! We were going to brave it in a tent but luckily I ran into my Aunt Jan at Wal-Mart the day before we were leaving and she graciously offered us her tent trailer to use. It was a lifesaver. Even with that we still froze and Jack didn't sleep very well but without it would have been a disaster. Ella was a trooper and slept clear through the night. We had her wrapped snug as a bug and she must have been super comfy to sleep that long. Jack of course loved roasting marshmallows and playing in the dirt. Hopefully next year the reunion will be a tad bit easier since the kids will be a little older. The best part of it all though was when about 5 of us girls ventured off onto a walk into the trees and bush to find a "restroom" and of course Jack had to follow. We all spread out behind a tree and started doing our business when I looked up and Jack was standing there taking notice of everyone and started trying to pull down his pants and then he would squat down. He had no idea what we were doing but he couldn't resist joining in on the fun! Wish I could have gotten a picture of it! It may be a crazy family but I'm sure glad I'm a part of it!

Emma, Okie, Hunter, Hannah and Jack - Sporting their reunion shirts and dirty faces!

The Roses: Rosalie, Ainslee Rose, Katie Rose and Ella Rose

Uncle Tony, Ryan and Jack

She was so warm in her cute little pink bear suit!

Ella taking a nap in style in the tent trailer.

More fun at Grammys

More pictures of all the fun things we did at Grandma Rosie's. Jack did some lawn mowing, plenty of bubble blowing, a trip to the park, playing with cousins and some swimming. He was one busy little boy and loves his trips to Idaho! Ella is always a little trooper as long as you always have plenty of milk and a binki she just enjoys being dragged along watching all the fun!

Thomas the Train Disaster

He only looks nice and friendly.
See the hole in the back of the train. Ya, that's the one!
One night Jack insisted that Thomas had to go to bed with him and I was exhausted so I thought "whatever" and let him take it to bed. Taylor, Lee and I stayed up awhile longer watching TV and trying to get Ella to sleep. About 30 minutes later I hear some whining and ruckus but just ignored him because that's what we always do when he doesn't want to go to sleep. It went on for two or three minutes and then silence so I knew he had gone to sleep. I went in to check on him before I went to bed to cover him up and take thomas out of the playpen. Well I got him all covered but I couldn't quite get thomas out of his hand. I tried to open his fingers thinking he just had a tight grip on him but then I noticed that he had stuck his finger through the hole on the back of the train and it was STUCK TIGHT. I pulled him out of bed and ran into Lee asking for help. He gave it a few tugs and then we realized this wasn't going to come loose without some assistance. First thing I thought of was butter so Lee grabbed the butter and we lubed the finger and Thomas and with a few more hard pulls it finally came loose. Jack was pretty upset by the time we got it unstuck and I worried how I was going to get him back to sleep. I put him in the playpen and told him I would get him a sippy but he looked at me rolled over and started snoring. I'm not sure he ever even fully wokeup throughout the whole ordeal! But never fear. The finger is still fully functioning. We were driving home and Jack kept yelling "Dad, Dad, Dad" so Ry finally turned around to look and he had both fingers shoved up his nostrils and thought it was such a great trick! I have a funny feeling that this won't be the only time we witness this situation!

(just ignore random letters below!)


Seriously do they come any cooler than this?

Happy Fathers Day

Sunday we got to spend the day just relaxing and enjoying the kids. We had wanted to try and have a BBQ but unfortunately the rain had other plans. I am so thankful for how great of a father Ryan is to our kids. I love that he loves to play with Jack and doesn't mind how crazy he looks or how dirty he gets. He also kinda likes his little girl who has him wrapped around her finger. I laugh at him because he is so protective of his kids and always asks about 50 times if i'm watching him before he will leave the room! We love you Ry and Daddy and are so proud of you for making the "cha-ching" and also having the time and energy to be such a great dad and a pretty swell husband too.




(Emma thinks he's a pretty great uncle too!)
We also wanted to say Happy Father's Day to all the other great dads in our life, we are so lucky to be surrounded by such great men.

My dad and I at my wedding.

Grandpa Lee and Ella

Grandpa Keldon and Jack (tiny picture I know.... but I love this one!)

Home Sweet Home

It's good to be home after our week long action packed stay in Idaho at Grandma Rosie's. Friday June 19th we packed up and treked to grandma's house because my friend Lisa was getting married the next day and I wanted to be there to see her. Because we had to be back for the family reunion in a mere 5 days, instead of making the kids endure 2 rides back and forth from Salt Lake we stayed with Grammy. Saturday was also my birthday so it was fun to get to spend it with my family. We enjoyed a tasty lunch at Taco Bandido and despite the morning rain it was a great day. Ainslee and Sue surprised me with a delicious cake and Ryan treated me to a date out after the reception. When we got home we were surprised to see that Jack had a surprise to show us. While we were gone his lovely babysitters had given him a "buttonman" which entertained him for hours. Of course as soon as we got home he insisted that his dad get a buttonman too. Before the end of the night Grandpa Lee, Taylor, Ryan and Jack were all sporting their own buttonmans! It was a great day despite getting another year older.

Our attempt at getting a cute family picture. Unfortunately someone never wants to cooperate!


The famous buttonmans courtesy of Taylor!

Love

So these are a couple of weeks old but when I found them on my memory stick I just had to post them. Every since Ella and I were gone for a week on vacation when we got back Jack has decided that he loves his little sister. I guess the old saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" worked for Jack. Several times a day we will catch him just kissing her on the head and Sunday when we were sitting around the table someone mentioned Ella and out the the blue Jack just said "cute"! I'm loving that he kind of likes her and she is starting to become fond of her big brother too. She will smile at him when he gets close and give him a little coo. Don't get me wrong, we still have to protect her from the occasional outburst from her brother but for the most part they are becoming good little buddies!

Mosquito

Do you think perhaps our neighborhood is infested with one too many mosquitos. All we have to say is "oh no there's a mosquito" and he starts slapping his body everywhere. What a little nerd!

Oh Happy Day

It was a great night which makes for a great day! Ella slept from 10pm to 7am, ate and then slept until nearly 10am. Jack also slept in until after ten! I am feeling more refreshed today than I have in a long time- it's amazing what a little extra sleep can do for your attitude! I know this was probably just a coincidence but i'm hoping for more great nights like this!

The Grand Finale

So our trip was almost over and we were sorta of sad to have to be flying home already. But what we didn't know was that our trip was about to be extended. We boarded the plane in DC and promptly pulled out to the tarmac. That's about all the further we got for about 4 hours! We sat in the plane and waited and waited and waited as the worst thunder and lightning storm I have ever seen commenced outside! After about 45 minutes of waiting I knew we were going to miss our connection in Chicago and after having my sister check online I knew we would be spending the night in Chicago. We finally made it to Chicago at around 11:30pm and I quickly hopped off the plane to get in line first to make arrangements to get home. Luckily since I was first in line we were able to hop on a flight leaving for vegas. I figured we might as well get as close to home as we could instead of just sitting in the airport and then having to take the flight in the morning. We arrived in Vegas a little before 2 am and we had a choice to make. Our flight the next morning was leaving at 6:40 and us being the cheapskates we are we decided a hotel wasn't worth it for a mere 3-4 hours. So camping out it was. A nice guy who was cleaning the airplane brought us out a case of Diet Coke and a whole bunch of airline snacks which we were thankful for because NOTHING was open in the airport! We, along with a few other women who had also missed their flights settled in to wait for the next flight out. We sat for a few minutes and quickly got bored and these started calling our names...
Like I said, i'm cheap so I don't usually like this kind of thing because I think it's a waste of money but let me tell you... you can play a long time on the nickel machines before you have spent much money! That entertained us for a good 45 minutes and then we spent the rest of the night watching movies, laughing, drinking gallons of diet coke and trying to catch even a wink of shut eye on the hard as rocks airport floor! Needless to say we didn't get much sleep but we had a great time and we made it home the next day without a hitch!

Dang benches at the airport had armrests all along them. Guess they didn't want to make it too comfortable to just hang out at the airport!

Ainslee, slurping up some caffeine since we all knew we wouldn't be getting any rest!

This was Taylor representing us being homeless.

Ella and I.... she didn't mind sleeping at the airport.

We all needed a little cup of Joe (okay some hot cocoa) to get us going the next morning at 6am!

Philadelphia

Three words:
NEVER GOING BACK.

We decided that on our way back from NY to DC we would stop in Philly and see the sights there. We got a hotel and it turned out to be the nicest one we had stayed at on our entire trip although I can't speak too highly of the rest of the city.
Crazy people everywhere. I think Ainslee and Taylor had to pick up their jaws from the sidewalk as we walked past the lady on the street with lipstick from ear to ear and her eyebrows drawn on with a black marker. Seriously it was very sad. Oh and we can't forget about the parking fee of $5.75 per HALF HOUR! I swear we almost got mugged- I didn't like the feeling of walking down a long empty hallway and having two rather large sketchy looking men walking towards us in the other direction with no one else around! To top it all off Rosie almost choked on her Philly Cheesesteak. Needless to say our parking bill wasn't very much because we quickly got out of that town!

The Big Apple

So on our trip back east after spending several days in DC we loaded up in our minivan and headed to NYC. Sidenote (just so I won't forget)... We had actually only rented a compact car for the week and when we arrived at the car rental in DC we quickly realized that all of us and our luggage were not "compact" size. It took a little flirting with "ROBERTO" at the car rental counter but we came out with a Dodge Caravan for the same price as a compact for the entire week. SWEET! It was so nice and comfy it almost had me convinced that I could drive a minivan and not be embarrassed!
Okay so anyway... we drove to NYC and thanks to our gps we didn't get too lost. We were staying with one of my great friends from high schools house probably much to her husbands dismay! But thanks Matt for putting up with us... we had a great time and I really enjoyed getting to spend all the quality time with Amelia and beating her at her own game which she only gave me half the rules to and I still beat her! She took us to Staten Island and we rode the ferry past the Statue of Liberty which was great and the best part was that it was free! The next day she took us into the city with a promise of being our tour guide. Really though she just wanted to get back to Chinatown to get her a new purse. She did though take us to see some of the sights in the city but we did have to walk probably a good couple of miles in the wrong direction because apparently map reading isn't one of her great skills! (love you Amelia and we loved the tour - Especially the part when you tried to sneak us on the subway and almost got us all arrested! Big misunderstanding by the way...but the subway attendant didn't quite believe that we weren't trying to sneak onto the Subway!!) We did eventually make it into Chinatown and came back with quite the pile of loot. Apparently they don't like babies in Chinatown so Rosie and Ella had to wait on the side of the street while we did our "shopping"! Overall it was a great time in NYC and we loved getting to see Amelia and are so thankful for the hospitality! (by the way I need that chicken recipe!)

Our loot from Chinatown. Rosie traveled all the way to New York and she came home with a sippy cup for Jack as a souvenier. The funny thing is that they sell the exact same thing at the Toys R Us right here in Orem!

All of us girls at M&M world in NYC. Too bad it's so dark because it would have been a great picture!

Ainslee and Taylor on the ferry to Staten Island.

Ella cruising the streets in Chinatown.

Us trying to be "cool." Ya it didn't work out so well.

Amelia, Ella and I on the ferry.

Shopping at FAO Schwartz.

Standing on Times Square. Note to self: Never stand by a skinny chic for a picture!

Aquarium

Monday we decided to take probably one of the last adventures with Mistie and Avery before their new baby gets here. We visited the aquarium in Sandy and the kids had tons of fun. It actually held their attention much longer than I anticipated so it was great! Jack had a great time splashing in the "wash" blissfully unaware of what was swimming in the water. Once he realized that there were very FRIENDLY fish and stingrays in there he had no more desire to put his hands back into the "wash." See in the picture below that sneaky little stingray coming right over to Jack.