National Ice Cream Day

Never heard of it?

Well now you have!

Every 3rd Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day.

Technically July is National Ice Cream Month.

I mean come on, who doesn't love a reason to eat ice cream with people you love??

I love it! 

My mom decided that we are going to make this a tradition, so this is now the
First Annual National Ice Cream Day Celebration! 

Wahoo, how fun is that?

I made an "e-vite", that I sent to everyone's email to have RSVP to.

It was super cute and fun to design.

We asked everyone that we invited to bring a 

homemade ice cream to share with everyone, and some cookies as well!

Everyone brought an ice cream, but not very many people brought cookies, which was totally fine!!

I opted out of making an ice cream, and volunteered to decorate, 

since I didn't get the chance to for the 4th of July.

We had Heath, Cookies and Cream, Raspberry, Chocolate, Mexican Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Burnt Almond Fudge (non homemade, but still delish!)

Stupid me, didn't get a picture of all the ice creams on the table..NEXT YEAR!

So now you know, now you all have no reason to not celebrate

National Ice Cream Day!

 We even had a few bocce ball sets, 

so people could go out and play!

 Happy National Ice Cream Day!

Love, 

The McDonalds

Fourth of July

Seriously, my favorite holiday!

I don't know what it is about it, but I really do love it!

I dont do much on the holiday but I still find something about walking around and seeing everyone dressed in Red, White, Blue, or a combo of all three.

It's so fun!

Every year, we wake up early and head down to see the balloons.

This year was nice because we live just down the street, so we got to walk there!

It's so crazy to stand right in the middle of all the balloons while they are filling up,

you feel like you are just being engulfed in balloon!



This is called a "kiss" when two balloons go in the air and touch each other for a while.





This balloon is HUGE. It's so big that they can't fly it in Utah County
because there is no where big enough for them to land again.



 After the balloons we went and ate breakfast at my parents ward breakfest.

Andy and I headed down to pick up Belle and walk to the parade.

We were running a little late so we drove and parked by my Aunt Lana's house and walked to the parade.

It was Belle's first time going to a parade.

She did really well,

except for the loud sirens and guns scared her.

We love to head up to my Grandparents house to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks.

So we went up there and sat on their balcony with a perfect view of the fireworks!

5:30pm

9:00pm

9:30pm



During the fireworks around 10:00pm

I have a few videos to post, but it won't let me at the moment, so check back later for those videos!

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Love,

The McDonalds

Families are Forever

Andy and I got ready for our family trip down to St. George on Thursday morning

so that we could drive down with Vince and Katie that same afternoon.

Both of us were on either side of Parker so we got to entertain him the whole way down!

(if we weren't sleeping, or he wasn't sleeping)

Thursday:

So Thursday was mostly a driving day to get down to St. George.

This is his "trance" phase of sleep.

He literally will just stare at you for like 10 minutes and fall asleep right after.

On the way down, we had to travel through the smoke from the central utah fire.

As we were going, we had to take a bunch of pictures of the smoke tunnel we drove out of!

Kind of spooky.



by: Vince

 

by: Chase



The whole sky on our right side looked like it was in flames. It was way crazy!

  Friday:

 Friday morning, the boys went out and went golfing really early.

So us girls and 2 of the little boys went up to the swimming pool.

The water was pretty cold, but it felt really nice since it was about 95 degrees at 10:00am.

After swimming, the kids of the family decided to head down to the temple and go through a session.

It was so amazing to be able to go with all of my brothers, and especially my husband.

Such a pretty temple that of course will always hold a special place in my heart!

Friday night, we made dinner then got all ready to go see Aladdin at Tuacahn.

This was our Christmas present from our parents.

Andy's parents actually gave us tickets to Aladdin, and my parents gave us a voucher for tickets to Aladdin.

So we used the McDonald's Christmas present for Aladdin,

and my parents gave Andy and I "Hairspray" tickets for the following night.

I LOVE Tuacahn.

Such a fun atmosphere, and most of the plays are super funny and good!

We loved both of the plays we went to.

They were both very different, but both really good stories!

I definitely recommend going..but hurry cause tickets might sell out!

Aladdin, Jasmine, Chase, Genie

Aladdin, Bailey, Jasmine, Andy, Genie

 Saturday:

Before coming down to St. George,

we arranged to rent a boat for Saturday so we could spend the day on the lake.

The boat we got was a pretty nice boat, so it was a ton of fun!



Parker was not a huge fan of the lifevest!

Vince, Phill, Chase Tubing!

Our driver!

Due to his baseball to the face accident, we weren't letting him get in the water,

so he had fun driving us all around.

We got Kendrick and Ryan to sit on the tube since they were really scared,

then once they warmed up to the idea, we went for a little spin on the tube.

Kendrick did not want to get off!

(we went very very slow)

Ryan helping Grandpa drive the boat.

Andy and the boys while we waiting for the boat to go on a run, started digging a hole.

Andy was in heaven playing in that nice cold soft sand!

 

    

The beach we played on at Sand Hollow.

After boating, Andy and I were in charge of a quick dinner,

so we made that and again we got ready to head up to Tuacahn.

This time to see "Hairspray"!

For Aladdin, we were sitting on the front row, right in the center.

It was really cool!

The characters were really close, which was a little uncomfortable at some times!

Hairspray we sat further back and more to the right, but still way good seats!

The characters in Hairspray spent a few scenes down right in front of the front row seats,

so we were pretty happy we weren't down there again!

Sunday:

 Sunday we had planned to go visit Toquerville Falls again.

See Oct. 2011 of Toquerville Falls here!
Vince, Katie, Phill and Leslie hadn't been to see it yet, so we were pretty excited to show them
Again, you have to have a 4 wheel drive car to get up there.
But NO hike required!
Super nice.

The water this time was a lot lower than when we went in Oct. but it was still really pretty and lots of fun.

All over in the water, were tons of tadpoles.

So we spent some of our time catching them and releasing them.

But while we were climbing the falls, we found this cute little froggy!

Monday we spent the day golfing, and swimming.

But I didn't get any pictures of it...

The trip was such a blast!

I loved every second of it.

Can't wait to go back!

Love,

B