Another one bites the dust.

It's been a distastrous week in the Chambers house. The disasters started when I walked into the living room with Chloe following closely behind and we heard a terrific crash and something shattering. As we turned, we found we had narrowly escaped being hit over the head by my favorite/sentimental tile art that my sister had made for me. Disaster #1. So, Brad and I looked at where the tile had been sitting and noticed we had a nice plate that we had with a picture of the temple on it and our wedding date. "maybe we should move that somewhere safe, Mel, the house seems to be tilting and we don't want that to fall". Brad says to me. To little to late. Just the other day, the plate fell and again, we narrowly escaped being concked on the head with it. Disaster #3. Disaster #2 actually happened a few days before when I was putting 3 of our 6 mismatched bowls away and all 3 slipped out of my hands and shattered on the floor. Thankfully, Chloe wasn't trying to help load the dishwasher like she normally does. She escaped being hit. Today, Disaster #4. I need to begin with a little back story. This summer, Brad and I went to this adorable town in Colorado and we did some shopping, not that we had money for the shopping. I wanted to buy a souvenier and I thought candles make great presents. So, this candle salesman (you didn't know candle salesmen existed?) truly saw me coming and sold the pants right off me. Man, he was good, and I walked out with an overly expensive, but terrific smelling candle. Well, what you see below is the remains. I can no longer "melt" the scent because the little glass plate is in pieces. So much for "melting" into the year 2020 like he told me we would!!
In conclusion: Atleast none of us found pieces of glass in our feet or got hit on the head, we did need some new cute, matching bowls, and I already bought a tile to make a new replacement. Brad reassured me that some day, somewhere, there would be a Relief Society Enrichment project that made those cute temple plates again. And as for the candle...I'll just leave it on the counter like that and smell away:)

Happy Birthday to the greatest guy I know.

B-rad celebrated a birthday a couple of days ago. Happy Birthday, Brad. We love you so much.

Enjoying summer

Brad bought her this doll and stroller. Her favorite thing is to ram it right into Starsky. She loves pushing everything around, including one single grape, her bead necklaces, her monkey, and this little baby. She is so sweet as she tends to this baby. She tries to feed it water and she pats its back. Look at her little belly, too.Fun at the water park. The med students and their families get to go for free. We've spent lots of time there this summer. Chloe is fearless in the water. We're going to get her into a swim class this winter.

Sometimes she just keeps walking into the water and thinks she can swim.

Fun with dad and the water park.

Most of Chloe's little friends are older and she loves being one of the "bigger kids". I've never seen her just sit still like this before. I think she was showing off for a her cute friend Jackson.

A midwest flood.

About a week ago we had a lot of rain. When it rains, it really rains...buckets or cats and dogs (you choose your metaphor) We went to bed to intense thunder, lighting, wind and rain, and woke to a street resembling a river. We heard of many people with flooded basements and we commiserated with them, but were glad we didn't join them until we turned the water on and realized there wasn't any hot water. Brad went down into the basement to check it out and he came right back and told me the news. We, too, were flood victims. The second picture below shows about 3 feet of water in our basement. 3 feet of rain you ask? Surely not. No, this 3 feet of water came because the city pipes under the road backed up and plurged into our basement. Thankfully we didn't have anything down there. Our nice landlord spent all day draining it. Other people had much more damage so we were very lucky. And the rain continued.
The manhole was bouncing on top of a mini-geyser. Brad pushed it off for a picture. Now we are feeling the humid effects of all of this rain.

Oh, what a summer it's been...

I have to start this post with pictures from the awesome cruise my parents took us on. We went for 7 nights to the Mexican Riviera. It was 7 nights of pure fun, food, sun, and quality togetherness.
These next few pictures are dedicated to my sweet parents, without which this cruise would not have been possible (and thanks to the babysitters on the other end, we couldn't have done it without you guys either:))
Look at how cute my parents are. FYI, that's my dad's tux from his high school days. Still fit as a fiddle after all these years. We went on the cruise to celebrate cute Ruthie's b-day.
Here we are looking all fine and classy. We all made it except for Jed, Mandy and Troy. We sure missed them, but we ate a late night hamburger, fries, and pizza in their honor.
If you've ever been on a cruise you know it's about sun and food. These food pics don't begin to touch the awesomeness they call "your dinner".

Me and the B-rad. It was great fun to have him all to myself. One of our favorite things we did was snorkel. I accidently just deleted to photo of me riding a horse on the beach. Many of you know I have a list of 101 (plus some) things to do before I die and riding a horse on the beach was in the top 10. It was pretty awesome.

Here we are rock climbing, well, about to rock climb on the boat.

After we arrived back in L.A., with sun tans, memories, photos, and a couple extra pounds, one could only ask say one thing: When do we get to go again??

p.s. we drove back to Salt Lake and had a brief respite at Buffalo Bills. Love that coaster.

The Chambers family has a tradition to go to BearLake for the fourth of July. We vistit Brad's grandparents, play horses, swim and have a grand, grand fireworks show. (click on the picture to make it larger)

We had to teach Chloe how to really experience summer. Some highlights include: eating corn on the cob, swinging, playing with the dogs, the zoo, pounding on grandma Ruthie's piano, kicking the ball, stacking blocks, just chillin' on the porch, letting the grass tickle your toes, snowies, and of course...the hose. (click on the picture to make it larger)

sixteen hundred fifty miles later...

We decided to drive to Utah via dinosaur national park in Vernal. First of all, you get really excited that you are approaching Utah and you see signs for Dinosaur and you get excited and then you learn that Dinosaur is just a random little town in Colorado and you still have 45 miles to dinosaur national monument in Vernal. Anyway, I told Brad that Dinosaur national park was really cool so we stopped to see it. Not cool. The quarry place where you used to be able to see the bones is gone and there really isn't much there. So we just jumped back in the car and arrived in Salt Lake .


This is me with my cute niece Ellsie.Chloe and the seagulls at Sugar House park.
We let Chloe loose at this fun water area in Liberty Park. She didn't hesitate long before she just went for it. Nice that we forgot a change of clothes.
Just after this picture she layed on her tummy in the water.
Pure fun!

We made it to Utah after 4 days of sight seeing. Proudly, I only drove 6 of the 1650 miles. And during those short 6 miles, Brad managed to take a nap and totally demolish his own sunglasses by slamming them in the door and I almost received a ticket in a national park. True story.

5 weeks here we come!

10 days ago we drove to Utah. We visited some friends in Kansas City, stopped at this amazing art museum and were tempted to stop at one of the "tourist" stops along I-70.

We kept driving and saw the mountains. And we love the mountains. We stayed a couple of nights in this charming town called Estes Park, Colorado. The town had cute shops, fun restaurants and amazing views of Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park.
We spent one afternoon hiking around Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park with my brother. Like most of the country, Colorado is still experiencing colder temps and that's why you can see the snow.

Here we are at the top of the world. We just kept driving up and up and up and arrived in the cold artic tundra. As we drove we eventually arrived on top of the mountain in the distance of the picture of Brad and me. It was taken at 12, 400 feet. and moments after the pic was taken we saw a huge herd of Elk cross the road.

Here we are hiking up to the falls.