Utah Adventures

We decided to go to Utah for 4th of July for the last time before moving to Dallas. It was a packed weekend! Nate says that he didn't even have time to relax from the long hours of school work, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We got to Utah on Thursday evening, and immediately went to the mountains for the boys to go mountain biking. Mackay enjoyed cheering on the boys, eating dirt, picking flowers, and sitting on a big rock.
Mackay LOVES Chad. When I say love, I mean it. If Chad is in the room, she wants to be with him. When he walks out of the room, Mackay cries. They sure have fun together, and Mackay can really wear Chad out. You will see more pictures of them throughout the post.
I thought this was a cute smile of Mackay looking at Chad.
This is a picture of Nate and Chad after their first bike ride of the weekend (there were three). This picture was taken before the "incident".

The incident: Nate did really well mountain biking, and is really a natural dare devil--until he got to the parking lot. Chad jumped his bike over a ledge in the parking lot after the bike ride, and so Nate thought he would give it a try. My mom and I were attending to Mackay's photo shoot, but story goes that he didn't get up enough speed, his front wheel just went down, and his body went over the top. Even with these hands he went biking two more times and golfing.
This is after the second bike ride. For 4th of July, we went up to Park City to spend the day and the boys went to Deer Valley Resort to go biking down the ski trails.
Chad, Dad, Nate, and Matt after the ride.

While the boys had their adventure, Mackay, my mom and I had one of our own. We drove around for a really long time getting lost and trying to find a place to eat. Once we did, and realized it was a 45 minute wait and $15 for a hamburger, we drove all the way back down the mountain and found Quizznos. My mom asked for a warm cookie, and the picture below is what we got. They tried to just act all nonchalant, to see if they could get by with not doing more work than they had to, and my mom let them. It didn't taste too bad, but Mackay refused to eat it.

Mackay after meeting the boys.

Mackay and Chad.
Grandma Linda and Mackay
Mackay has recently learned how to walk on grass. (I had no idea how uneven the ground could be, and how difficult it would be to walk on). So she had a great time wandering around.
Chad and Mackay.
Chad was trying to get Mackay to come to him, but she had other plans.

Grandpa and Mackay.

Uncle Matt and Mackay.

I love this one because they have the same hair style.
This is at the restaurant in Park City. Mackay drank all of Chad's pop, and enjoyed eating the crayons. In Park City we also went on the Alpine slide (but not the slide one...) Anyway, it is pretty much like a personal roller coaster down the mountain and was really fun. It was pretty intense because Chad and Matt told me that I would be going on a loop upside down, and if I slowed down at all I would get stuck. There was no loop.

This is the third bike ride of the weekend, and my first. I pretty much forgot how to ride a bike in the beginning because I was so nervous. Chad was afraid that we wouldn't make it out before dark, but we survived. I still can't decide if I liked it or not. It supposedly was a very easy trail, but I cannot see myself doing anything more technical.

Thanks for a good time in Utah Fillmore family!

Whoops!

I'll post a picture (the only picture I have to show for this week) to appease those that are only reading this blog for the pictures. And then I have to tell you a story...

This picture is of Mackay wearing a scrap of fabric she found in her room behind her chair (aka my sewing 'room'). I can't get her to wear hats, but if something is tied around her head, she can keep it on forever.

So last night, (Sunday, June 29, 2008), at about 10:00pm, I was getting ready to go to bed so that I could wake up early Monday morning to get an early start on homework since Mackay is on a one nap a day schedule now. Right before I was about to go into my bedroom (Nate was watching a movie), I smelled an awful smell that resembled rotten eggs. Luckily, I had recently read a pamphlet that came with my gas bill, which said that natural gas does not have an odor, so they add one so that you can know if you are having a gas leak or not. The odor of natural gas is rotten eggs. It came on really suddenly and was extremely powerful, and when Nate checked in our closet that houses the water heater and heater and stuff, even more of an odor of rotten eggs came our way. Alarmed, we went and told the managers of our complex, who called the gas company, who told us to get Mackay out of the apartment. The manager went around knocking on doors waking everyone up to alarm them of a possible gas leak. Everyone else was smelling the rotten eggs it was so powerful, but it was mostly concentrated in our apartment. So at 10:00 last night, everyone with their children are hanging out on the front lawn waiting for the gas man to come. One couple hurried and packed their backpacks full of journals, pictures, and an extra change of clothes just in case. Poor Mackay just wanted to go to sleep, but she was a pretty good sport. Well, the gas man finally came (he had to drive from Rigby, 13 miles away), and he checked a couple of apartments and found nothing. By the time he got here, we also weren't smelling the rotten egg smell anymore, which was interesting. He had a scratch and sniff sticker for us to smell so we could tell if that was the odor that we were smelling. Half of the people said yes definitely, and the other half said no. He said he figured it was a sewer problem, and he left pretty grumpy. So at 11:00pm everyone could go back into their apartments and try to put their kids back to sleep. I was about to go to sleep just confused and embarrassed, when I realized what the smell was: a stink bomb. Of course, it's around 4th of July and fireworks are on sale. The smell came and went very quickly, and it was very potent. Our apartment smelled the worst because we had a fan in our window blowing it in. Needless to say, I felt really stupid, especially that everyone was evacuated from their apartments for an hour, and especially since it was something so silly. What a thrill, though!

Fun in the Sun

Mackay has been such a joy since she has been able to walk. She has been even more fun when we can go outside and play, as opposed to trying to create fun in our small 790 square foot apartment. Maybe I'm just not creative, but there seems to be a limit to what you can do inside, especially after so many long months of cold.

These pictures are of Mackay on the side of our apartments. We recently got new managers, and they don't realize that they are supposed to be mowing this small plot of grass. It makes for a very nice jungle scene.





I like this teeth shot.
This past weekend we went to the splash park in town. It was incredibly crowded with kids and adults, but Mackay managed to have a good time.

She's yelling at something or someone here, I can't remember, but I thought it was a pretty cute picture.
Whenever Mackay feels it is appropriate, she claps. Here, we were trying to get her to like the water, so we kept saying, "Yeah!" And "yeah" is a word that means, "clap".

Other clapping stories: We have only been to one full game of Matthew's ultimate frisbee, but the one we did go to, every time people cheered she would stop whatever she was doing and clap, too. It seems that she clapped mostly for the other team, always being to preoccupied when Matt's team did something good.

The other day Nate took me to the driving range to learn how to hit a golf ball. (I did much better than I thought I would.) Mackay went to Berkeley's house to play. Well, awkward story goes that Berkeley was in the bathroom about to get into the tub, completely in the nude and attempting to climb into the bathtub when Mackay walked in, saw Berkeley mooning her, and started clapping. We did not teach her that.

All these stories show how good of a clapper Mackay is.
In this picture the water sprays up in a circle, so you can stand in the middle. Last time we were at the splash park Mackay snuck in without touching any of the water and thought it was really fun. The only problem was she couldn't get out without being sprayed in the face. The next time we went Mackay wanted to go inside again, but she wanted me to come with her. We both got soaked, but she loved it.
Mackay and Dad are pretty good pals.

No Pics, just words

I am now officially making it public. This semester I have taken a photography class and have really caught the bug of taking pictures. I have recently started a blog to display these pictures (since I don't know what else to do with them--printing them all would be too much.) So the web-site is: photographyexplored.blogspot.com. Enjoy, comments would be great, but no critiquing please!

More of Mackay

I know it has been a long time since my last post, but life has been crazy! Only 36 days left until graduation, and I am feeling like I am running a marathon (or half-marathon, since I don't actually know what a full marathon feels like). But it can be compared to the last 0.1 miles, and I cannot for the life of me get myself to run. Everyone is standing on the sidelines cheering, and I still can barely put one foot in front of the other. That's what it's like. I know I'm almost done. I know that I should push as hard as I can, dedicate as many sleepless nights as I need to for studying, and finish off strong, but I just can't. It feels almost physically, intellectually, and emotionally impossible! But anyway, here is our cute baby. She keeps us laughing through the stress and exhaustion.

I set Mackay on the counter because she wanted to watch Nate cooking, and my arms were getting tired. She grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl. Nate for some reason knows that banana peels are probably the worst thing that you could possibly eat, so he was really excited to watch Mackay's face as she bit into it. She, of course, loved it, and ate one too many bites of banana peel.





This is Mackay waking up in Utah. Sometimes she is a morning person, sometimes she's not. This is one of those "not" times.
Mackay has FINALLY learned to walk on a regular basis. It is so fun not to have to carry her from room to room, our slump to one side while she holds on to my finger as we walk around. She also is turning into the biggest girl. She loves to carry a purse around, she loves necklaces, combing her hair, etc. In these pictures, she wanted this dish towel on her head, so Nate tied it on.


Here is Mackay and Berkeley out basking in the sun that came out a month ago or so. (We got a snow storm on June 11.)



On Sundays Nate takes me out with my new camera and we go on a walk and take pictures. Here, we were in the neighboring town of Sugar City, and there was this hair salon that had painted their building so it would "stand out" and "be noticed." (Sometimes that happens for the wrong reasons, but people don't get that.)

I will try to post more soon!

They grow up so fast...

I went to take a test this weekend, leaving Nate and Mackay alone together for a couple of hours. This is what I came home to:

They had been playing beauty parlor. Nate learned how to use a curling iron and curled Mackay's hair. Mackay also has on blush, mascara, and eyeshadow. I heard the lipstick was a bit more difficult. I have no idea how Mackay let dad do all of this to her, especially the mascara, but it was a pretty funny surprise to come home to.