Dylan is Three!

Oh, blog slackerdom. It's overtaken me and this blog. Many apologies. That being said, let's discuss one of the recent events in the Harris home: Dylan's 3rd birthday . 

As you may remember, I may have gone big for Dylan's first and second birthday parties. This year, I decided to go waaaay low-key, since we returned from Lake Powell just two days before Dylan's birthday, and I knew we'd still be a little exhausted from vacation. I know that it's not necessary for Dylan to have a big party every year (or ever, for that matter), but I still feel bad that I didn't do more. Dylan didn't seem to notice not having a huge party, and he was thrilled with everything we did that day.

The day started with a balloon drop, an idea that came from Pinterest .

As expected, Dylan loved the balloons. When he first opened his door he just said, "Woooooooooow!" We spent the morning playing with the balloons in every capacity- soccer, volleyball, etc. 

Later that day, we headed to Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country, since Dylan loves to see all the animals. 

After Dylan's nap we had a few friends over for cake and ice cream. Again, super low-key, but Dylan had a blast.

Happy birthday to my sweet Dylan!

Lake Powell {part 2}

Alright friends, here are some more of my pictures from Lake Powell. It really was such a fun week, and I now understand why people make such a fuss about this place. It's fabulous.

Did I mention that this vacation had a name? Yep, it was Chranksgiving. Thanksgiving+Christmas, of course. Carl knew that the whole family may not get all together for the holidays this year, so we had a week together pre-holiday craziness. Pretty genius if you ask me. 

Here you have the most amazing slip-n-slide fail ever. My father in law Carl brought along a 100 ft. plastic roll and a special hose all for the purpose of the coolest slip-n-slide ever. Unfortunately, things just didn't work out. No one really figured out why, but you could not move on this thing. Even with the slide being soaped down and taking off with a running start, you had to scoot all the way down. Bummer, because it was such a fun idea. 

Here we are! It was a week of no makeup or blowdryers, as you can tell. 

We had a birthday night on Wednesday, since there are seriously 6 family birthdays within 2 weeks of each other. 

Cool picture, right? This was on the way to Rainbow Bridge.

The whole family got mooned by Benjamin about 2 seconds after taking this picture. The husband has no shame. When we said, "Look at that view!" we weren't telling Ben that we wanted to see some skin!

Rainbow Bridge was gorgeous, but stressful- kind of like the Grand Canyon a bit, as there were no railings and about a million ways for kids to fall to their death. 

Aaaaaaand onto the hilariousness...

One night the adults participated in a While Elephant gift exchange. I lucked out with a box of Aveda hair product (SIL Ashley works for the salon- score!), and Ben ended up with Brokeback Mountain. The movie remains in its plastic case.

Senior citizen substance abuse. Not sure if I'll get in trouble for putting this on the blog, but a certain over-70 member of the family smokes a lot of pot. Rumor has it, this has been the case for decades. Nothing was ever smoked in front of anyone, but phew! we sure could smell it a lot. 

The family vacation was, without a doubt, absolutely amazing. We can't wait to get together for Chranksgiving 2013! 

Lake Powell {part 1}

Last week we headed down to Lake Powell for a vacation with Ben's family. I had never been to Lake Powell, so I had no idea what to expect. I had heard enough about the lake over the past 9 years that I knew it would be fabulous. And fabulous it was. 

Ben's dad rented a house boat for all of us- there were between 14 and 17 people there at a time, so it was a full house. Each family was responsible to do the cooking on their assigned day- we had Wednesday, so we made french toast for breakfast, sandwiches and chips for lunch, and pork burritos for dinner. Honestly, all of the food during the week was divine and I was seriously bummed to leave all the yummy meals. 

We left our house at 4 am on Monday morning, and got to Bullfrog by 9. After a few hours of chaos and unloading the ridiculous amount of stuff that we brought, we were out on the water. Prepare for a photo overload... Mind you, this is just post one of 2 or 3, so brace yourselves. 

My mother in law is amazing and had a daily craft to do with the grandkids. 

Joel brought his dog Atticus, and he was amazingly well behaved. 

There are no words for this one. I hope you all are sensing my eye roll. 

After playing outside all morning, the kids usually came in for a lunchtime/pre-nap movie. Dylan really wanted to watch from the floor, as you can tell.

More pictures coming soon! Also, here are way too many funny things to discuss- Brokeback Mountain, senior citizen drug use, slip and slide fails.... get ready!

A word from The Boss.

Sorry that my mom has been such a junky blogger lately... vacation and back-to-back birthdays have made life pretty busy. She promises to catch up soon!