The big 34...

Happy Birthday to me yesterday!

And of course my little brother Jordan who is 4 years younger than me. I wish you could have been here to celebrate with us!

I had the best day!

Here are some of the highlights...

First of all I was woken up at about 6:45 by Gunnar yelling for me, but then I heard these 3 beautiful words from Lars "I'll get him." So I actually got to sleep in. Only until about 7:15 when something upset Gunnar and he came running in and jumped in bed with me. But that was still okay because the first words out of his mouth were..."I love you so much Mommy."

Then he eventually went back out with Lars and a little while later, they all came in and brought me breakfast in bed and a cute Chipmunks card.

Lars had to work, so then it was life as usual until after lunch. Then I put Gunnar down for a nap and Aunt Kelli and Ashton got to work on my cake and said I had to leave the house for a few hours. So I went shopping kid free for about 4 hours. Heaven!

Kelli even texted me a couple times and told me I had to stay away a little longer. It was hard, but somehow I managed.

Then when I finally came home, my house was oddly quiet so Kelli and Lars told me to go downstairs and look around and I opened the door to the little room under the stairs and was surprised by my Mom, Stepdad, and my Aunt Kathleen all stuffed in there with Ashton and Gunnar yelling Surprise!

Then we all went to dinner at Olive Garden...their Five Cheese Ziti is one of my favorite things to eat (in case you haven't heard)! Then we came home and I finally got to see my cake. Isn't it great??

I loved it! And I loved how much thought and time Kelli put into it to make something she knew I would like. (You know how I love pink!!)

Thank you Kelli!

And Ashton for being such a great helper :)

(Gunnar helped for a minute before his nap) Anyway it was De-Lish!

Oh and today all of my neighbor friends took me to lunch at Bajio!

Thanks girls :)

I have the best friends and family in the world...

Thanks for a great birthday!

Bigger Boy Bike...

Lately Ashton has been riding his bike with Kelli and I while we go for our walks in the morning. Some days I still have him ride in the stroller so we can go walk some good hills, but lots of days he loves riding his bike.

Well he's still had his first little bike that he learned on and he looked like a giant on it, so we decided it was time to upgrade.

So here's his new bigger boy bike ......and of course that means that Gunnar inherited his old bike.

Lars put the training wheels back on it and it fits him perfectly.
Think he likes it???

Are my boys really this big already???

Bear Lake...

Last Sunday we decided to head over to Bear Lake late in the afternoon with our friends, the Villas. We didn't even get over there till about 5:30, but it was a great time to go. Everyone else was pretty much leaving, so we had the beach to ourselves and it was cooling down a little. We took dinner over and hung out till about 9:00. The kids all had a great time playing and playing in the sand and water...Dante even caught about 6 fish! Gunnar and Amalia were so cute together as always...

Such a fun night!

Found again...

So one week later, in the exact same spot Lars left him last Sunday...guess who showed up today?

Yes, Speedy! So funny! This time we immediately took him back to his owners before we went to church. Turns out they've had him for 4 years!

And it turns out he's a skilled escape artist, because guess what...he escaped yet again this afternoon! We all looked all over for him again, but no luck.

The turtle drama continues...

Turtle Update...

Well I have lots of other posts to catch up on, but my internet isn't working on our computer, so I just got on my sister's for a minute to give a quick update on Yoshi.

Let's just say we are not meant to be pet owners! So it was Saturday night that we found him & he did stay one night in our garage, but then Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church Lars was outside with the boys and I hear him yell "We lost the turtle!" So I pretty much ignored him because I thought he was kidding. Honestly how do you lose the turtle? Well HE DID! He said they were cleaning out his temporary home and getting him some new food, so they just set him in the shade and went out back to try to find some worms and when they came back he was gone. Nowhere to be found. Hello!!! I said he was a fast turtle! So Ashton was devastated that his days of having a turtle had been cut short. He pretty much cried the whole way to church.

So then after church we get home and find out that little Yoshi was actually a neighbor's pet and guess what his real name is?

SPEEDY!

Sorry Hines family that we lost your lost turtle!

I think he's gone for good!

Our new PET...

Yes you really are on the Larsens blog, and yes you read the title of this post correctly. You all know about my love of animals and today my dream of owning one came true. As I was standing at my sink tonight cutting up strawberries, I glanced out my window and saw this little face staring up at me! So naturally I screamed "Oh my gosh, there's a turtle in our yard!" So I dropped what I was doing and of course grabbed my camera and told the boys to run outside to see the turtle. Now when you think of turtles, don't you think of slow little animals? Well not this little guy...he was pretty speedy and seemed to want to quickly escape the hands of two little boys. So they of course found a way to trap him... It was just so random for a turtle to be wandering through our yard, and Lars was gone fishing all day, so I told Ashton to go tell Kent and Debbie (our neighbors) that we had a turtle in our yard. We had just been talking to them and they let us borrow their slip n' slide......so anyway they came out to see the turtle and I was hoping they could help us decide what to do with him. First they suggested we just keep him (ha!), then we all wondered if it was someone's pet that had escaped, so we asked around a little then we decided to go release him into the creek that runs behind the houses across the street from us. Well when we got over there, we decided against that figuring that he may not survive and decided that Kent (who happens to be the bishop in our neighborhood) would just announce it at church tomorrow in case the turtle is anyone's pet, or in case anyone wants him, then if not we'll go see if the little Willow Park Zoo wants to adopt him on Monday.

Needless to say Ashton and Gunnar were in heaven playing with their new little friend for about 2 hours! Ashton was so cute saying..."okay, so he's mine until Monday right?", then

excitedly telling a couple of his little friends that he has a pet turtle.

haha! They named him Yoshi and we've got him in a big rubbermaid bin in the garage for now. Hopefully he'll survive a couple days in our care. Kent went home and looked him up on the internet to try to see what type of turtle he is (look at me assuming he's a boy)...and he came back and said that he thinks he's a chicken turtle and the reason they're called that is because people used to eat them and they tasted like chicken!

hmmm...I guess if Willow Park doesn't want him...

Just Kidding!

Gross.

Aunt Kelli had a turtle when we were growing up, so she told us to feed him lettuce and corn...

So here is our (temporary) pet for 2 days.

The best kind in my book :)

CaMp OuT

We took off and went camping on Saturday for the first time in about 3 years! So it was obviously Gunnar's first time camping and Ashton hasn't been since he was about the age Gunnar is now.
It was so fun!

The boys loved every minute of it and Lars and I realized how much we've missed it. We camped at the Cloverleaf Campground over by the Minnetonka cave (on the Northwest side of Bear Lake). It was a really nice campground and we loved our lucky # 11 campspot :)

About a month ago we got this new family tent, so we were excited to try it out. It worked out great...super easy set up and take down...

(okay at least that's what Lars told me). And we found out that it's definitely waterproof! It rained a little off and on and it never leaked on us.

We left here Saturday about noon and made it over to Bear Lake by 1:00 to eat lunch. We tried out Merlin's Drive-in and it was really good. We usually hit the LaBeau's over there, but now I'm way more of a Merlin's fan!Then we headed up to find our campspot and got there about 2:00. The boys immediately got out of the truck and started getting dirty. This was Gunnar in a matter of minutes. They loved helping Lars collect wood for the fire and there was tons of it all around us. Then Ashton got to help cut it up...oh how he loves stuff like that!

After we got our camp all set up we drove the 2 miles up the road to check out the Minnetonka cave. We'd heard that it's really cold, so we grabbed jackets and got tickets for the 4:30 tour. We had to wait about 20 minutes, so the boys had a blast chasing and feeding tons of little "chipmunts" as Gunnar called them. We had left over tater-tots and the little guys loved them! Ashton thought it was so cool that they would eat out of his hand.

Then we started our tour. 444 steps in and 444 steps back out! And it stays at 40 degrees year round. Chilly! It was pretty neat to see all of the formations and learn the history of the cave. Ashton of course was scared to death that it was going to collapse on us and trap us forever and kept asking if there was a door on the other end, then was panicked to learn that there was only one way in and out. It didn't help when our little tour guide started talking about an earthquake that had happened there about 100 years ago. Poor Ashton...our little worrier. Then they started talking about bats! Let's just say it was a long walk out...

At least for once in his life Gunnar let Lars carry him then entire time! I don't know that I could have done it! So I just held on tight to Ashton going up and down the slippery stairs.

Ashton was so excited to see daylight again when we were heading out...and it was nice to feel warm air again!

We got out about 6:00, so we headed back to camp and got our easy dinner of hotdogs ready. It's crazy to think back about all of the elaborate dutch oven dinners we used to do (pre-kids!)...it's all about simple now.

And what is a camping trip without roasting marshmallows...And having S'mores? Yum!

Gunnar took one bite and realized he'd rather just have the chocolate.

After dinner we walked around our campground for awhile and collected some more wood. Then we sat by our nice fire. Just kidding...no we didn't because we forgot our CAMP CHAIRS! About halfway up Logan Canyon we were kind of going over if we had everything and I asked Lars if he'd thrown our chairs in...well no he didn't! I was a little irritated, but oh well. At least it was only for one night and there was this log in our camp, so I used that. Lars was calling it my

Queen Bee chair...Kind of fitting! ha!

Before long it was almost dark and time for bed. We got all cozy in our beds (Ashton and Lars on one and Gunnar and me on the other), and Gunnar thought it was time to play of course. So he spent the next half our or so bouncing on the air mattress, jumping on me, laughing, singing, you name it...all the while Ashton was trying his hardest not to laugh at him. It was just way too much fun to be in a tent at bedtime!

Finally I grabbed Gunnar and put him back in our bed and held him tight (so he couldn't escape), and he eventually fell asleep. They both slept surprisingly well and I did too. Poor Lars...not so much. We all slept in till after 8:00, then got up and made pancakes in the rain! Ashton was excited he got to flip them...

The rain didn't last long....just a few minutes a few different times, then it would clear out. So we got our fire going again and hung out at camp till about noon, then packed up and headed out.

I love camping!

And I love seeing our boys having SO much fun enjoying the outdoors too!

(oh and I love Ashton's cute litte legs in this picture :)...

We're trying to find another free weekend to go again before summer is over. Ashton and Gunnar would have stayed for a week!