Avery Lyn as of late

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Avery over the last couple of months. I cannot express how much I love this little girl!! She has so much personality and zest! She brings so much joy into our lives!

Popcorn lover like her Momma!

She just looks so contemplative! 

4th of July beauty!

Avery also loves to eat dry stuffing. One day I was making dinner and she found it in the lazy suzan. I wanted to get dinner ready before Josh got home from work, so I just let her eat it. I figured there was no harm in that....I mean it is food.... So now every time she see it (we now hide it away), she has to have it! She will just eat it by the handful. 

Avery loves to eat by herself! She is becoming so independent! She's getting better and better at using the utensils, but she has a terrible habit of putting them in her hair. We're working on not needing a bath after every meal :)

You guys...she loves corn. How adorable is this...

Cowgirl at heart. Just like Momma. 

As you can tell, I just can't get enough of this sweet little girl

Avery and Ella

Cara and Steve got a new camera and were taking pictures of the girls at Sunday dinner. There were SO many cute ones! Here are some of my favorites.

"Come on Ella, the tramp is fun!"

These pictures of Josh and Avery melt my heart. I love them both so much and I love seeing them have so much fun together! World's BEST Dad!!

 Besties!

Anniversary Backpacking Trip - 4 years!

This year for our anniversary, we decided to go on a backpacking trip. We went up American Fork Canyon, past Tibble Fork Reservoir to the trailhead at Silver Lake Flat. This is where we started our journey.

All ready to go! The trail head was a gorgeous view of Mt. Timpanogos across the reservoir! From here, we hiked up to another lake, called Silver Lake.

Josh on the way up.

Silver Lake. We made it!

We decided that since we were celebrating our anniversary, we might as well go all out for dinner. So we packed in steaks, mashed potatoes, and green beans. We washed it down with Gatorade, and it was DELICIOUS! YUM. 

This is what our feet looked like after the hike in. Eww. 

At least we had sweet chaco tans...er um, I mean dirt lines...

The follow three pictures are a couple of shots of the lake. It was a beautiful place to be! It is amazing that we can drive like 45 min from our house and be in such an incredible place and have it practically to ourselves! We are blessed to live in Utah county. We love our mountains! The reflection makes the water really hard to see, but I promise it's there...

Off to start our hike on day 2. You'll have to excuse my asian eyes. It was little bright...

On day 2, we hiked up to a third lake called Glance Lake. It was pretty....but the name was accurate. You don't need more than a glance to take it all in. But...the views from up there were incredible! So worth the hike. 

 This is a waterfall that cascades off from Silver Lake where we camped. The picture below shows the stream before it falls off the cliff. So pretty!

It was our first night away from Avery, and we were both a little bit apprehensive about leaving her, but she did GREAT! She had a fun night with Grandpa Rex, and then got to go to Seven Peaks with Kiley the next day.  We are blessed with wonderful family who loves Avery very much. 

We are so grateful for our marriage and our time together. It was really nice to have 24 hours completely to ourselves. Who knows, maybe this will be the start to a great new tradition!

Yellowstone National Park

In June, we got the opportunity to go to Yellowstone with some of Josh's mission buddies. We stayed at a cabin in Island Park, and crammed as much as we could into our one day visit in to the national park. It was such a beautiful place, full of so many different things to see!

Besides bison, we probably saw more elk than anything else. We thought a lot about my Dad, wishing he was there to enjoy it with us.

About 5 min into our journey in the park, cars started lining up on the side of the road, so we decided to pull over and see what all the fuss was about. Sure enough, there was a black bear making his way along the river. You can tell from the pictures that he was pretty far away (and they are taken with a nice camera with a pretty good zoom), but it was still very cool to be able to see a bear!

The geological features of the park really are pretty incredible. The only thing that I really remembered about them from when I was a kid was that I thought they smelt terrible. While that is still true, I appreciated their beauty a lot more this time around. 

 Check out that color!

 Old Faithful!

There are two sets of falls in the park along the Yellowstone River. This is the first one (Upper Falls I think it is called). We parked our car close to this point and started hiking down to the lower falls from there. Seeing waterfalls this big makes me think about the power of our Heavenly Father. He has blessed us with such a beautiful world to live in!

This is a view of the lower falls. Avery loved looking at this waterfall!! She just kept saying "Ooooo" over and over again. It was pretty breathtaking. 

This is one of our favorite pictures of this sweet little girl!

This is our whole group for the trip. The Tolleys and the Starlings. 

 The hike back up.

 This was one of my favorite views of the day. It is looking down what they call the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I loved the sky that day too!

Yellowstone Lake. I have great memories fishing out there with my Dad and Grandpas! I also remember being on the boat, trying to get back to shore with whitecaps all around us. I'm not sure if it was really as dramatic as I remember it, but I sure thought it was an adventure!

This is an amazing rainbow that was created above the lower falls as we hiked down to the view point. So pretty!!