The Baby Olympics, Salt Lake, 2010

Bethany is currently training for the Salt Lake Baby Olympics. She's been working on several events:

1. The high dive. Last week, Liz was changing Bethany's diaper on the changing table. She bent down to grab a clean diaper, and as she looked up, Bethany had just climbed off the end of the table. Liz caught her by her leg on the way down. Nailed that landing!

2. Karate. Bethany broke Liz's flash drive in half while it was plugged into the computer. Hi-yah!

3. Speed crawling. She is hard to catch. Her latest interests include an open fridge and a mousetrap that she tried to eat (which we have now relocated).

4. Speed rolling. She loves to unroll the toilet paper.

5. Swimming. Her mean parents make her do this in the bath tub rather than the toilet, which is where she would rather be.

6. Sharp shooting. How does she manage to find those tiny things on what we thought was a clean floor? We only see them as she tries to put them into her mouth.

7. She also wows us with her vocals and dancing. She likes to sing, and we love to listen. And when she's excited about something she kicks those little legs like crazy.

Here are some pictures of her in action:

She loves crinkly things
Our little bundle of energy

Bethany is easily distracted from her one true love (milk) these days

Enjoying her dinner in many ways

That's our girl! And we know where she gets it from. *cough* Hiram* cough

Camping in Zion

A couple of weeks ago, we went down to Zion's National Park, to spend a couple of nights camping. This was especially exciting with a baby. We took the long drive Sunday night, past a town called Enoch, UT and Kolob Canyon, down to Zion's. It was gorgeous, as the name would imply!

Hiram did most of the camping work- setting up the tent, building a fire, cooking, etc. Liz kept Bethany from eating all the dirt and plants. (By the way, this was more easily said than done during diaper changes on our hikes.)

Zion's has some great hikes for young families. We pushed Bethany in our jogging stroller, and she seemed to like the sights as much as we did. In fact, she probably enjoyed one hike MORE than we did; we accidentally took a wrong turn while heading up to the Emerald Pools, which took us up a big, steep hill with many stairs and big rocks. We actually had to lift/carry the stroller by the wheels in some parts. (And then, of course, back down!)

Hiram got his workout. See, Bethany was loving it! (But not loving the hat)

The view was spectacular! Look at that blue sky!

This one's for Dad... No, that was not us!

The trail actually took us behind some waterfalls that were GORGEOUS! We eventually ended up on the paved trail that we'd intended, and life was easy again. We loved this hike!

Had enough.

This was our second hike of the day. On this hike, we had some pretty close encounters with deer and squirrels who WERE NOT scared of people. No, Bethany, we don't pet the squirrels.