Harmonica!

Her style may be a little different than Wilco's, but we're huge fans of this little girl . . .

WILCO!

Way back in May, Josh saw that one of his favorite bands, Wilco, was coming to Salt Lake in August. It didn't take much for Janae to realize that this concert was a big deal, so we snatched up two tickets just before they sold out. Since then we've been counting down the days to the big show (August 18 was a long time coming). But, it was all absolutely worth it - the show was incredible. We showed up a few minutes before the gates opened and ended up pretty far back in a line that had obviously started with people camping out a long time before we even left Provo. Once we got inside we staked out a great spot towards the back. We were pretty surprised at how full the place was - the people just kept coming and coming. Apparently Wilco has a pretty good following around here. We watched a little TV on Josh's iPod while we waited for the show to get started until The Fleet Foxes came out to open things up. They sounded pretty good, but it was no secret that everyone was there to see Jeff Tweedy and Co. Wilco took the stage right around 8 o'clock and played for over two hours. Josh was happy as could be snapping pictures through the whole show. As the sun was setting some turned out better than others, but we walked away with a few pretty good ones.

When he wasn't taking pictures or singing along, Josh was keeping track of what songs they played. By the end of the night the list had 24 songs on it! They played a great show and then came back for two encores. It was awesome.
When things wrapped up we decided to hang out for a few minutes and let the crowd clear out before we headed back to the car.
While we were waiting, we took advantage of some cowboy's forgotten hat for a perfect souvenir shot to remember how perfect the show was. But, that wasn't the only souvenir. Josh has been longing for some nice office art, and when he saw this art deco concert poster, he decided that it would be the perfect addition to any office. It's hard to imagine that Josh could be any more of a Wilco fan, but this concert just might have done it. And after a show like this Janae can definitely understand why.

What Does a Cow Say?

This weekend we headed out to check out a few of the animal attractions here in Utah county. Ainslie's getting pretty good at her animal sounds these days, but she's been working mostly with the magnet farm on the fridge. We thought it might be fun to check out some real farm animals. Sippy cup? Check. Pig tails? Check. Here we go . . . We know that fish don't really make a sound, but ever since she saw the fish in Uncle Steve's office, Ainslie loves fish. Cabela's has a great aquarium with trout and other fun fish. Ainslie was really excited when she realized that we were surrounded by fish. Big fish. Swimming fish. It was awesome. After that we headed over to Thanksgiving Point to see the farm animals. Ainslie had fun with the animals, but we found out that Janae has Dr. Doolittle-like abilities to get the animals to come say "hi."

Goats, sheep, cows, everybody was drawn to Janae. The turkeys freaked her out, just a little, but Ainslie thought the they were pretty funny.

These chickens were a little less threatening. Even Ainslie could tell that they were just babies.

Why do these pigs look so content?They apparently just had their fill of bagels. Our favorite friend was probably this little calf.

These guys added a certain degree of personality to the farm. The donkey was really ornery, but his alpaca pal was totally chill.
But, our favorite character was this guy. With a face like that, how could you not put a picture of this guy on your blog?Lots of friends, lots of fun.

Mommy's Little Helper

While Josh is gone at work, Janae and Ainslie have been working on lots of fun projects around the house. It doesn't matter what Mommy is doing, Ainslie loves to help.

The Staycation. . .

When our car broke down earlier this summer we decided that our dreams of visiting some tropical paradise over the 24th of July would have to wait. But, since Josh's Mom and Dave had volunteered to watch Ainslie while we were gone, we decided that we still needed a vacation. We just stayed a little closer to home . . .

We took one afternoon and went hiking around Sundance. We're pretty out of shape these days, so we thought it would be best if we took the easy way up to the top of the mountain.
After cutting out the difficult part of the hike, we had lots of fun walking around and taking in the beautiful scenery.
We did feel a little guilty riding to the top, so we decided we needed to do some hiking. We followed one trail out to some great views of Stewart Falls.
For some reason, while Ainslie was playing with Grandma, Grandpa, Michael and Heather, we ended up spending a lot of time eating at all the restaurants we could (Ainslie has made the last few restaurant trips a little too crazy). The first night we went to the Cheesecake Factory, and really enjoyed the food. Unfortunately, we didn't take camera. The food was beautiful.

The next morning we headed out to our favorite place for breakfast, the Blue Boar Inn.

The breakfast there is always amazing, and we had a great time remembering Switzerland while we chatted with the Innkeeper.

Could the food really be that good? We'll let these satisfied smiles speak for themselves.That afternoon we played around in Park City for a while and then headed in to Salt Lake. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has a fantastic exhibit right now called Monet to Picasso. We highly recommend it if you can go. Looking at these amazing paintings reminded us of how much we enjoyed our time admiring the works of the Impressionists while we were in Paris last summer.

Although we had originally planned to have Ainslie spend two nights with the Reids, we gave in and went to pick her up that evening. We just missed her too much to be gone for two nights. But, we decided to squeeze one more meal in before we went to pick her up. We grabbed some sandwiches at Caputo's. Delicious.

If you're looking for colorful imported foods, try Caputo's. We had lots of fun vacationing close to home, and Ainslie had lots of fun playing with everyone in Payson. It was quite the weekend.