Lily loves to splash!

Lily, my little prankster, takes after her dad, Uncle Blake, and Grandma R. She is not content to merely go swimming, oh no. She must plan and calculate against all innocent bystanders. She concentrated really hard on kicking the water really hard and sending great splashes of water on the other baby. (Luckily, the other baby didn't fuss about being pummelted with waves.) She wasn't done with her mischief when I took her out of the pool, but it isn't as much fun to splash in a pool when there aren't victims to splash (the other baby needed to go done for his nap).

Scott was very proud of Lily, when I told him what she had done. We'll have to take her swimming again, if the weather permits it.

Camping with the princess

Once again, we have proven that Lily is the center of our universe. I wish I had taken a picture of our sleeping arrangements. Picture a three man tent, with a cot in the center that runs from the back of the tent to the door, and two sleeping bags scrunched on each side of the cot. (The cot was for Lily.) It was difficult to get in and out of the tent, but Lily slept well. I had to wake her up the first night to eat. (She would have slept for 8 hours without interruptions if I had let her.)

Aunt Ashley & Uncle Chris

We spent a day with Ashley & Chris. Chris loves holding babies. (If you want to win brownie points with me, shower my daughter with attention. Chris earned lots of brownie points!)

It was a fun day. We went to a Brazilian restaurant that Scott had been telling me about for over a year now. The food was so good. I ate so much! I even tried chicken heart. (It tastes like squid, not chicken. I wouldn't recommend it.)

West Yellowstone National Park

We went to Yellowstone for the day, while we were in Idaho. I haven't been since I was 5 years old. I was excited to see bears, bison, wolves, and deer. It was so hot that only the deer were out. I got tired of seeing mule deer, after awhile.

Our Sun Diva

Lily is sporting her pink glasses, courtesy of Aunt Erin.

We printed off a day tour guide. We were able to see some spectacular sites we would have missed otherwise, like these falls. (I love how Lily looks like she wants to escape from the Bjorn.)

It was windy, but a hot wind. The breeze over the thermal activity stunk of sulfer, and was a blast of hot air.

We just missed Old Faithful going off -- thanks to a dirty diaper. (We saw a swarm of people walking towards the parking lot as we got out of our car. That's a bad sign.) We waited 90 minutes for it to go off again. Lily wasn't that impressed, but enjoyed getting a nap. We watched a video of Yellowstone, looked around the gift shop, and ate ice cream as we passed the time.

Lily didn't like the idea of this family picture. She was ready to go back to the air conditioned car.

Lily's Great Great Grandpa Elkington

The main purpose of our pilgrimage to Idaho was for lily to meet her great grandparents, and great-great grandparents.

Grandpa Elkington was thrilled to meet her. We stayed and visited with him for a few hours. He loved the company.

Lily's Great Great Grandma Sparks & Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Sparks

Great Great Grandma Sparks loves holding babies. She was so thrilled to see Lily. (This is the first time Grandma couldn't place who I was. It took awhile for her to remember.) She was so excited to show me pictures she had of her holding her great-great grandchildren. She informed me that Lily is her newest great-great grandchild.

Great-Grandma Sparks was so sweet. She was having a good day when we came to see her. She expressed several times how much she loved us and appreciated seeing us. She couldn't remember who we were, but she knew we were family and that she loved us. She told me how much she loved seeing Lily. She stayed on the sofa and talked to me for a few minutes after this picture was taken.

Bath Time! Lily loves the water.

We went geocaching today. This one was really tough. First we had to walk through about a half-mile of mud. Then we had to walk through the mosquito and spider infested woods to find this hard-to-find cache. Above is a picture of Candice after we finally found it after about an hour of searching. She is very thrilled, you can tell . . . Her hand is pointing to where the cache is found.

The tree stump in the background was one of the clues used to find the cache. As you can tell by the dirty jar, this wasn't one of the tidiest caches to find.

Look! It's E.T.!
Ell...i...ot! Phone Home.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I was trying clothe her, but the darn thing just wasn't going over her head. It was so adorable.

Lily loves her daddy!

Look how cute she is in her "got milk?" outfit.

This is what happens when you hand your camera to someone . . . I believe Ari is the person I should thank for these:

A view of Blake I've never had before.

It's Super Blake!

Lily is quite popular . . .

Aunt Ann flew in from Berkley to meet her . . .

Aunt LaDawn, Uncle Brent, and Brooklynn flew in from Salt Lake to meet her, too. (Brooklynn did a great job holding Lily, even when Lily would squirm.)

Princess Tiger-Lily

Isn't she beautiful in her blessing dress?

It was a long day for Lily. She was getting tuckered out during her photo shoot.

The Family

Aren't we adorable? It was so nice to have everyone together again. (Keith, we missed you, but understand you have to be a responsible adult now. You don't always get to come up to play.)

Are family has sure changed over the years. I remember when we all had big bangs!

I love the pictures with the grandkids . . . even though Will is trying to escape, Brooklynn is plotting something, and Lily is terribly confused.

Lily's first trip to the Zoo . . .

She didn't care too much for the elephants.

She loved the monkey house, though. (It's my favorite too.) This orangutan came to the very front of their exhibit, and climbed a tree. At times he was only 10 feet from us.

This is the whole gang: Maddy, Alexis (infront), Dacian, Michael, Noel, Logan (infront), Scott, Candice & Lily (in the harness). We were posing around a gorilla statue, but there are so many of us, you can't see the gorilla.

Scott decided to take a moment and meditate. All the real hippos were hiding. I had been looking forward to seeing them. This is as close as we got to them.

Geocaching in Bellevue

This is the geocache we found. It was a really cute cache. Apparently, the "treeman" scared Lily, though.

Scott couldn't get all the vacation time off he asked for, so we went to Walla Walla & Othello, instead of Idaho.

Lily's cousins, Logan & Alexis, wore her out! We had a lot of fun geocaching, playing frisbee golf, and playing at the park.

This is Lily with Aunt Noel & Uncle Michael.

Grandma R loved Lily!
She sang her lullabys that she used to sing to her boys. It was very sweet.