utah trip

last weekend we went to salt lake. we had so much fun. our uncle curt got married, so we made a fun trip out of it. justin and kate handy came with us. our plans were to go to the wedding saturday morning at 11, then head to the salt lake temple and do a session. we arrived at the church at 10.30 and called mom and dad knapp to see where they were. they were not anywhere near the church, because apparently the wedding time had been changed to 1.30 without us ever being told. so, we decided to go to the draper temple open house. we followed numerous signs, and took a few wrong turns (thanks to my superb map-reading skills and womanly sense of direction), but finally found the parking lot for the citizens that did not have tickets. when we arrived, we asked one of the volunteers how long it would take to get into the temple and get a tour. it turned out that it would take about 2 hours, which would not be enough time since we had to make it back for the wedding. we decided just to drive up to the temple (past all of the signs that said we could not drive there) and take some pictures. the temple was beautiful!











so, after those few disappointments, we decided to continue on with our fun plans of going to temple square and doing a session in the salt lake temple. our friend kate had never been to temple square or through the salt lake temple, so we were so excited to show it to her. sadly enough, disappointment struck again. the temple was closed for cleaning. sad day. we decided to instead get a tour of the conference center, which was so amazing. even though we have been in the conference center many times, and had recieved tours before, new things stuck out to us. it was so neat. cameron and i loved all of the paintings (which we found out were all original!)

jackson

it seems like life is always busy. lately cameron has been volunteering at the hospital with every spare hour he has, so most of our time spent together has been doing homework. a few weeks ago, we thought cameron had to work all day. apparently we mixed the schedule up, so we had the day off. we decided to drive to jackson and take pictures with our new camera. we had so much fun. i spent most of the drive hanging out the window taking pictures. we did stop a lot for me to take pictures at different times of the day.





the snow looked so beautiful that day. it was a sunny day, so all of the snow that was on the trees sparkled. we tried to go to a famous cabin that cameron's ancestors built, but there was too much snow on the little road that went to it. hopefully we will get to go again in the summer.





i took this picture of cameron on the jackson pass. he did some really cool edits to it--it looks great!

happy birthday

for camerons birthday, mom and dad invited us over for dinner a few days after his birthday. cameron wanted roast and potatoes for dinner. mom is an expert at roast, so it worked out perfectly. mom and dad gave him a drill.




the boys loved having another brother (and another birthday) in the family. these pictures are of the boys doing magic tricks. cameron taught matthew a trick. these pictures are of matthew attempting to trick jacob with his clever new trick.




i made confetti cupcakes for the "birhday cake", because that is what cameron requested. i am not quite sure what inspired us to make cupcakes, considering we were going to the larsen residency--which means the crazy boys would be eating them as well. instead of deciding on a different dessert option, we decided to use the cupcakes as entertainment. the following pictures are for your viewing pleasure:












even mom got in on the crazy action!


on camerons real birthday, which is january 10th, we had a lot of fun. we did not do homework or clean--we did fun things all day. we opened presents throughout the day and went night skiing.

because we went skiing on his real birthday, we celebrated with a birthday dinner and a few presents the night before. we had so much fun. cameron picked t-bone steak and baked potatoes. he wanted that oreo/jell-o dessert that comes in the box. it is so wierd that he always requests the easiest things to make. i would probably request some intricate, delicious dessert, but apparently he likes the easy things better. which is beyond fine with me! you can see how excited he was about the dessert by the picture that is located by the picture of the "cake". he thought he was getting a different dessert because I made him think it was in the oven--clever me. cameron had a little too much fun on his birthday (as you can tell from the pictures of him wearing my cowboy hat)!






so, apparently i thought i was smarter than i really am. i take a great pride in giving good, quality, well-thought out gifts to people. i guess i went too far this time. to provide a little bit of a background, cameron loves salt. let me re-emphasize this fact by stating that he puts salt on his food (on average) 6.34 times each meal. what has already been salted gets salted again. salt-aholic is a rather mild term for his obsession. we have nice, polish pottery salt and pepper shakers. but the problem with them is that the salt does not come out very easilly (which is a good thing because it actually limits his salt intake just a little bit). however, at target after christmas they had a very modern set of s&p shakers for 75% off. i thought this was a great idea for a birthday present for cameron. i would tell him that he could put the salt in the bigger shaker with more holes. genious, right? i was so excited when he opened the present-i mean, who would not love s&p shakers for their birthday? i stood by him with my camera and anticipated the excitement. but when he opened it, there was no excitement at all. i think the word to describe the emotion was utter confusion. he opened the present, looked at the package, thought about it, and then began furiously shaking the package. then i was confused. apparently he did not have any idea what the gift was. a sticker that said SHAKE was on the front of the package, along with a description of the items contained in the package. so, after reading the words on the packaging (except for the words which said that the gift was salt and pepper) he began shaking the package thinking it was some sort of crazy toy. i had to tell him what the gift actually was. talk about hilarious! the fourth picture in this section is of him actually discovering what the gift was. i think next year, i will stick with the usual man gifts.






january is the official birthday month in the knapp family. i am surprised i was even considered as an addition to the famiy since my birthday is in august. the day after camerons birthday is shawnees birhtday. burkes birthday is only a couple weeks after that. danielle, our soon to be cousin, also has the same birthday as shawnee. these pictures are of the birthday bash we had for shawnee, danielle, and cameron. we gave shawnee some perfume, and cameron got a tool set (i don't really know about what type of tool set it actually is because i am actually a woman, but i guess it is really cool). he also got movies, a camping flashlight, and a north carolina sweatshirt!