House Update: Backyard

I realized I haven't even written about our "new" house. 

I'll do more posts about the inside another time when the house isn't a mess (:

In April, we got the keys to our house but for the first two weeks we spent time removing wallpaper, repairing walls, painting and getting new carpet before we fully moved in.

It's a wonderful house but there were definitely some projects we wanted to get done 

while we are here (which better be a looong time).

There are a few things inside like fixing the ceiling in the basement (we had a water leak when we moved in), finishing our family room entertainment center, paint the remainder of the house (I hate colored walls..), and other small details eventually. 

As well as the inside, there are a few things outside that we would like to change to make the backyard more enjoyable for our family.

There is a huge garden area at the back of our yard that has 

(since we moved in) overgrown with weeds like crazy. 

We have an apple tree, pear tree, and a cherry tree in our yard that just this year we didn't harvest the cherries before the birds got them and the pears were gross by the time we took them off. 

So we decided that as well as, the peach tree stump they left, some pokey bushes, and another tall tree that is most likely dead, coming out that we would just take out all the trees in the yard out except for the cherry (I have hope for that one!)

The plan was also to level out the back part of the grass next to the garden.

Day 1:

This last saturday we spent the day with a backhoe starting our vision for our backyard!

It looks sort of like a disaster now, but when it's all done it will be amazing!

Looking from the west end of our yard.

Boys and their toys!

Pulling out the Peach Tree Stump

A video view of the rest of the yard.

We only had one mishap which is lucky and honestly it isn't a bad mishap because they needed to be fixed anyway, but my dad accidentally tore up our sprinkler section near the garden. 

End of Day 1:

West side of the Yard

West/North Side of Yard

North/East Side of Yard

Hazel's 9 Month Pictures

Lizzy outdid herself again!

She is so amazing behind the camera...like no joke she had 2 kids crawling on her while taking these pictures!

I'm so happy with the way these all turned out, she even snapped a few of our little family impromptu!

I'm heart broken that in 3 short months this Watch Me Grow session will be over...and that my baby will be ONE YEAR OLD!! 

Ugh...anyway, I don't want to think about that, so here are all the gorgeous pictures to look at!

Copyright: Lizzy Jean Photography

Morgan Family Camping Trip

This last weekend, we went camping with my side of the family (minus Vince & Katie).

It was decided that we'd go camping in Bryce Canyon.

So Thursday late morning, early afternoon, Phill/Leslie & Kids, and Hazel and I headed down to get a camping site.

We lucked out so much in the site we got, the lady said she would allow 4 tents on this one site because it is larger but hopefully it would be available.

Luckily it was, and it was the ONLY site available! Phew!

It ended up being one of the best camp sites we could have chosen.

At some point on this trip, Hazel fell head first out of this wagon she was standing in...

She got a big bump/cut on her head.

Thursday night, Chase & Lucy and Andy all got down there, set up there tent and we all went to sleep.

The next morning was when my parents finally arrived. 

We decided after setting everything all up, that we'd go down to the visitor center and learn about Bryce Canyon a little bit.

We then went back to camp and ate lunch before going to Sunset Point.

I love Bryce Canyon so much because you drive through trees and it's not until you get out of the car and walk to the edge that you see all the Hoodoos!

  

We all decided that we'd walk down the path a little ways to look at a different view. It was so gorgeous.

After looking at the view it was decided that we should hike down in and back around the loop.

We didn't think it'd be too bad, so we did it.

It was so unbelievable the whole hike.

I was constantly in awe at how amazing this world is!

This was taken at the bottom, not quite to where you start looping around though.

The kids did pretty well considering the hike ended up being a lot tougher than we all anticipated.

At the end of the hike, Ryan kept saying "if I walk 40 more steps...I'm going to DIE!", and he would tell anyone who would listen. Including people who we are pretty sure didn't even speak english! Haha!

You could tell we are a Norwex family by just looking around our camp!

I LOVED having Norwex on this camping trip.

Making pancakes for breakfast

Nap time for Grandpa and Brock

Saturday, we all woke up and after eating loaded up in the truck and drove to the top of Bryce Canyon and stopped at all the lookouts on the way back down.

I love seeing Bryce from all the different points of view.

We had lots of tears from this one...not very good sleep is hard!

Hazel was such a good girl during the days!

It was a blast with her!

After dinner, it was decided on us doing the Mossy Cave hike to the waterfall.

BEST HIKE EVER.

It was so soo easy, and so beautiful. I recommend if we did it again that we all wear water shoes.

I figured it was the last day and I had other shoes to wear around camp that night so I went into the water in my regular shoes.

It felt so good to cool down!

My mom had fallen on a hike a few months back and her ankle was bothering her after the hike we did the day before so she opted to stay back at the campsite to get dinner ready for us all when we got back.

Ryan accidentally let his neck cooler go but luckily Chase chased it (no pun intended) down the river and caught it!

 Sunday we decided to pay an extra $10 for another night just so that we wouldn't feel stressed to pack up camp and leave. So we had the whole day essentially to get ready to head home.

On our way out of the park we stopped at the Bryce Canyon sign and took a picture of everyone.

We sure did miss Vince/Katie and the boys!

On the drive home we stopped in Panguitch to eat something before heading out.

Since we stopped in Panguitch, we HAD to eat at the Ice Cream place on the main street.

It was such a fun weekend with my family.

We all look forward to many more camping trips as a family!

(This was a first for my family)