Happy Fourth of July!

Rachel at our awesome Stake picnic a few weeks ago.  We let her go to town on a graham cracker....

...and watermelon.  This girl loves to eat.  She's moved right on from mush to regular food.  She loves everything we give her.  We even gave her bits of Talapia last night and she ate almost an entire fillet!

New chompers help.  She has two on the bottom, one on the top and another on the top coming in as I speak.

Anne was in fine form this evening and had a blast.  She ate a ton of yummy food, ran around, and even...

...let a lady paint her face!  She loved her "pitty fower" :)

This summer we have the "pass of all passes" which included season passes to a waterpark, free baseball  and basketball games, and free admission to Trafalga.  Very good deal.  So we've been busy! Our passes even got us into a free country concert at the baseball stadium which was awesome.  We sat out in the field so the girls could run (and crawl) around and dance.  

So kind of random but I thought I would include this incase anyone else was interested.  My friend Brittney had an awesome link on facebook about how to curl your hair with no heat.  Since I have no patience for actually spending time doing my hair I thought I would give it a try.  You just wrap your hair in a headband thing and leave it for a couple hours and voila...it turns out like this! I'm a huge fan.  Thanks Brittney!

Happy Father's Day!  Once again we celebrated having the coolest Dad ever.  This year he received the classic father's day gifts of ties.  Except he was actually in dire need of some new ties so he did appreciate them :) Anne also picked out a shirt for him but he found it a few weeks early.

The handsome man. I love you hun.

Trying to be like Mama.  (Except those shoes are only worn about twice a year.)

This is her mouth-full-of-cheerios face.

Zac thought the box in the background of this picture was perfect.  "America" sure is beautiful :)

At storytime Anne made a panda mask and had fun wearing it around the house till little sister ate it.

Summer girls.

Rachel loves playing with and chewing on our shoes.

All smiles.

Piano time.  They both love to play.  Especially when Mommy is trying to practice.

We had such a great visit from Grandma Russell last week.  The girls loved having Grandma here.  Anne even got to go on another train ride which I'm sure she will be talking about for several months.  We miss you Grandma!

The main reason for my Mom's visit was to go to a big family reunion.  It was wonderful! It was fun to see all the extended family and catch up.  They even had a big princess bounce house which was a hit.  (The hair band thing I'm wearing is how you roll your hair to get the no-heat curls.)

My Aunt Lorna.

And my Aunt Diana.

The girls loved the bubbles.

This game was a little above Anne (they are digging in the sawdust for goodies) but she liked her "treats".

My Mom was able to watch the girls while Zac and I attended Stadium of Fire.  It was great (though it seemed shorter and there was less military involvement which was a bummer).  Brad Paisley was awesome and is one heck of a guitar player! Zac had surgery on his foot two days before so he had the pleasure of crutching to the stadium and back which he did just fine.  (Zac broke ...I mean shattered a small bone in the ball of his foot several years ago but didn't know it until it became super aggravated and swelled up a couple months ago.  The "second" set of doctors we saw said it was broken and there was a large cist next to it and both needed to be removed.  It was a short outpatient procedure and Zac is healing up great! Though I have to say I am not a fan of seeing Zac in a hospital bed ..it doesn't suit him.)

Fourth of July Sunday.  (You can see Zac's cool boot he has to wear for a couple weeks.)

I just thought this one of Rachel was funny.

Fourth of July morning I ran in the Freedom Run which went great! I decided to push the girls in the stroller this time because that's how I have been training.  I finished in 761th place out of 2836 people and 43rd out of 229 for my age group.  I was just excited that I beat my time from my last race while pushing the stroller and this course was much harder, yay! I love running and I'm glad it's something that the girls enjoy doing with me.

After the run we got to watch the parade from our friend's balcony (which is definitely the way to go).  Thanks Calls! We also had yummy waffles which were amazing, I should've taken a picture.

Rachel and our buddy Alexis.  We are so blessed to have such awesome friends in our lives.  Thank you all friends! :)

After the parade we all came home and crashed.  The weekend festivities kind of wiped us out.  In the evening we had a bbq at our place which was a blast.  I tried a trifle again this year which turned out much better than last year's, thank goodness.

Yum.

How we entertain ourselves.

The country concert.

Fireworks.

Another dancing video of Anne EXCEPT she is in public with tons of people around!! On stage no less! This was the night of the stake picnic and as I said before, she was in a very good mood that night :) We love our little dancer.