City Creek

Opening weekend of City Creek, Luke and I decided not to go and to wait for a few weeks before checking it out. I really wanted to see it being that this area was where I spent a lot of time back in the day from not only working at Crossroads Mall but also from going to ZCMI as a child every weekend with my mom. So we decided to go Monday night.

 I loved it. The layout was beautiful and we enjoyed as much as we could. I'll have to go on a shopping trip with some girls though. These boys (mainly Oliver) made it a little difficult to actually go into the stores.

And this is why...

Oliver was playing in the streams and fountains the entire time. We gave him all the change we could find for him to throw in, he loved finding the fish, and he tried to climb on all the rocks along the stream...even though he wasn't suppose to.

To finish off the night, we went to The Cheesecake Factory. After waiting for an hour we finally got it. Again, beautiful and the food was really good.

Over all I was pretty impressed with the transformation of downtown.

We hope to visit again soon.  

saw this...

loved it. 

loved going with these people.

Luke did too even though you couldn't tell by the look on his beautiful face...

Happy Birthday, Dad

Today we celebrated what would have been my dad's 67th Birthday.

 We met up at his grave sight to visit, lay flowers and balloons and the boys even played catch. Before leaving we sung a very reverent "Happy Birthday", which is unusual for us Baker's.

Before leaving, we snapper a picture together of the whole family...minus Luke and Kat.

We finished the night with dinner at Chuck-A-Rama, a family favorite and a place that Dad always loved to visit with everyone. 

We are so blessed to have celebrated the birth of my Dad, for the life he lead and the example he was to each of us.

After all of us sang to Dad, my nephew Spencer said " He's probably blowing out his candles in heaven".

I'm sure that there was some sort of celebration going on for such a great man. 

Lucky Us!

This year for St. Patricks day, we were going to be spending the weekend up at the Jensen's house with all the kids while their parents were away. Oliver was very excited because he was going to get extra help getting ready for St. Patricks Day. After dinner we gathered as many supplies as we could to start making our Leprechaun trap. All the kids were so excited. We all took turns telling each other our ideas on how we could trap this little guy.

The kids did an awesome job putting their trap together. They decorated the box with green and gold paper because that's the colors that the Leprechaun's wear. Then they gathered anything that was gold in the house to use as bait for the Leprechaun. We tied some sparkly gold string to the stick that was propping the box up. The plan was to lure the Leprechaun in with the gold and so when he goes to grab it, the box would fall on top of him. This was going to work!

Before going to bed we got to have a special treat. Play dough ice cream because it had most of the colors of the rainbow. Every single kid loved it!

 We all went to bed that night hoping that when we awoke, there would be a cute green little  Leprechaun trapped under the box and we would have all the gold in the world.

We woke up in the morning to find this...

A rainbow doorway and a trail of gold from every room leading to our treasures.

We got to the end of the trail and on the counter where we left the box was a trail of tiny green footprints. The box was on it's side so we didn't catch the Leprechaun, but he did leave some of his gold behind and a note for all the kids that told them to go find more treasures in Trent and Amy's room.

We also found out that the Leprechaun's name was Lenny

.

We decided to have some Lucky Charms for breakfast to celebrate. When we went to get the milk, It was GREEN! We think Lenny the Leprechaun may have gotten thirsty and had a drink of milk which made all the milk turn green.

Luckily, it still tasted the same, but Morgan didn't want anything to do with it so she had the regular untouched milk.

We also found out that he must have had to go to the bathroom because the water in the toilet was green...we think it was his pee and maybe he forgot to flush. For the rest of the day, the kids were checking the color of their pee to see if the milk may have made them pee green too.  

The rest of the day was spent going to the park, watching Zoo Keeper, Playing find the trail with all the gold coins, having lunch, playing St. Patricks Day bingo and making sure none of us got pinched, but of course looking for others to pinch.

We really are lucky to have spent St. P day with all these kids. We have never had a St. Patricks day quite like this with all these activities. I'm thinking this could be one to look forward too every single year.

Next year, we're going to catch that man with all the gold...

Let The Sun Shine

We love that it's getting warmer around here and that the sun is coming out more and more every day.

And Oliver loves that he is finally able to play with the scooter Santa brought him for Christmas.



Wont You Be My Neighbor

We love our neighborhood

Mainly because of the people who we have become great friends with. So we attempted to make a dinner party of 12 work at The Cheesecake Factory, but they didn't take reservations and we couldn't wait 3 hours to be seated. Bummer. So after checking a few places to see if 12 could be seated without a ridiculous wait, we settled on Red Rock. The company was great as expected, but the food was a little overpriced and not The Cheesecake Factory which is what we really wanted.

And here is the group.

Again, I am surprised that people have such a hard time taking a picture with everyone in it. Above, we are missing Jamie and below we only have about one fourth of Bob's face. Sheesh.

From back to front:

Melissa & Mark

Kim & Luke

Julie & Spencer

Lisa & Corey

Camila & Bob

Jamie & Craig

Thanks for such a fun night...Oh and on our way back, we had to stop for a piece of cheesecake.

Our choice: Chocolate Tuxedo, of course.

Sleep Over

This is Oliver with one of his cousins, Jack. Jack and Oliver get to see each other every Monday, Tuesday and Friday. They get a long pretty well. Oliver loves sleeping over at Jack's house, but we've never had Jack sleep over here with Oliver. We decided to give it a try. You see, Jack is a little shy, so this was a big step for him.

I picked up the boys and got some dinner. Their request was cheese pizza.

We set up the tent where the boys would be sleeping complete with weapons.



 We also brought in the spare TV to make it extra fun

But not even that could get Jack to stay. Oliver didn't really mind though, because he had this whole tent to himself...

...where he ended up sleeping and I'm sure will for the next couple of nights.

Better luck next time I guess. 

Pick Me Up

Do you ever need a pick me up? I do.

Yesterday I got a text from Amy asking me if we needed to go to the usual spot...she knew I was in a funk and I needed some serious de-funking. Since we were both free for the night, we took off.

The place: Jason's Deli in Salt Lake.

We love this place because of the Turkey Wraps, Fruit Dip, Free {unlimited} Ice Cream Cones, and last night I tried the Chicken Club Salad and that's also a new fave.

Thank you Amy, for suggesting that we go out. The pick me up was much appreciated.

Bless Those Tiny Babies

Yesterday we got to be a part of my cousins baby's blessing. It was beautiful and so was her little baby dressed in her bright white dress. The weather was perfect, my Aunt and Uncle made some amazing food and we got to spend some good quality time together.

My cousin and I virtually grew up together. Ever since we were babies, our parents paired us together. She is the oldest of her family and I, the youngest and somehow, this friendship just worked. We always looked forward to the holidays where we would be able to play and be together. In the summer we would take turns sleeping over at each others houses for weeks at a time playing with Barbies and Polly Pockets. We spent countless hours playing hide and seek at the church while our moms were busy with their callings. We would have singing competitions where neither of us really were able to sing well...my aunt Dora said we were both terrible. We would jump on our parents beds with underwear on our head and say that we were Mickey Mouse. We could play house all day long, make up games for my younger cousins and tell each other our secrets. We were best friends. And look at us now. We are both Mothers and still remain close. Although we don't play children's games anymore and no longer have sleepovers, one thing that will never change is looking forward to seeing her at family functions. She is amazing and has always been and will continue to be an example to me. Congratulations my dear, sweet cousin. We love you guys and are so happy for you and your sweet little family.

And just look at that baby and those adorable cheeks. Perfection.

Movie Night

Sometimes, you just need to have all 5 Baker boys over to watch a movie...

...as well as create some chaos that only these boys can do so well.

Oh

And some wrestling.

Oliver wasn't too sure about 4 older boys rough-housing. He wiggled his way out of there ASAP.

The movie {Puss in Boots}, the popcorn, the ice cream and the company was very much welcomed.



Just some pipes

Luke happened to stumble across this pretty awesome shelf on Etsy. Only downside was that it was $100 plus to buy. When he showed me, I instantly loved it and had to have it. So industrial, so unique and just what I needed in my living room. Of course we would never buy it because of the ridiculous price, but what to you know, coincidentally, Luke had a couple of boxes of random pipes that we could use to make this shelf ourselves for practically no cost. 

And so he did.

This is the original we saw...

 And this is what he made...

A smaller shelf, but just perfect for this space.



Now I just need some more fun books to fill my new shelf with.