Family Pictures

This past weekend my friend Amber did some family pictures for us. It was great to go out with her and I'm so happy with the pictures we ended up with. It's never an easy task to get three kids looking AND smiling at the camera at the same time. We've usually done it with a tripod in the past, so it was great having Amber do them for us.
First of all, it was a HOT day! It was well over 100 degrees and very humid; think of a sauna. By the end of the afternoon the boys faces were completely pink-poor little guys, mom made them wear pants & long sleeves.
Even with the boys' short attention span and a scorchingly-hot & humid day, Amber did a great job. It was fun to be together and finally get an updated family picture. The boys were excited when it was done and they could take off their shirts and go get a treat. Afterwards we went for Rita's Water Ice- they had never tasted so good! We had a couple hundred pictures, but here are a few of my favorites. Thanks Amber!

Just Because

A few things from this past week.

Having to say goodbye to our good friends & neighbors the Marshs. They left Tuesday and we're already missing them. Jacob & Caleb keep asking were Clara & Max are, and keep looking through the mail slot into an empty and lonely apartment. At least they'll be in Twin where we can visit!

Walking back from a baby shower I saw this little toad hopping on the ground. I figured Jacob & Caleb would love it, so I caught it and put it in a cooler with some water until morning. After they ate breakfast, I told them there was a surprise in the cooler. They were pretty excited and had fun playing with it for about an hour. Then we took it back outside and let it go where it quickly hopped back into it's little hole.

The card I made for the baby shower. Jacob & Caleb wanted to do some "projects" so I brought out the cricut machine to cut out shapes & letters. While they were busy with their projects, I enjoyed trying out my new cuttlebug (it's the handy-dandy machine that does the embossing) and had fun making cards.
A couple of Matthew before we left for the gym this morning...just because I can't get enough of this sweet little boy.
His hair is starting to come in a lot more. He has lots of soft blonde hair and I love it because it's pretty straight and naturally stands up. It's hard to really capture the full effect with a photograph, but here's a little example. Love it!
Oh yea, and gas is now $4.11 a gallon at the cheapest station down the road.

New Looks

Here's Caleb's new look- red patent, peep-toed slingbacks. Just kidding...he just thought it was funny to put on my shoes and I couldn't resist a blackmail photo. He's 'boy' enough that I'm not too worried about the occasional girly shoes shot.



My new look. I don't know what the final straw was...the heat, Matthew's endless pulling, the fact that my hair was constantly in a pony tail, or just that I was ready to FINALLY try something new. Last week after getting out of the shower I figured I was ready to have my hair cut. Not too drastic, but noticeably shorter. Luckily my friend Kristen lives close by and it was finished less than 2 hours later before I could change my mind. While Jeff thinks the new look is cute, he's definitely not silent about letting me know how much he *loved* my long hair. I promised him I'll grow it out again, but at least for now during this hot summer, I'm going to enjoy a cooler hairstyle. I also had a good back-up weapon. I teased Jeff that if he didn't like the new look, plenty of others did.
Here's the story: The afternoon I got it cut I was picking Jacob up from a birthday party. When we went to head home the car wouldn't start. Sometimes the cables on the battery need to be adjusted a bit, so I popped the hood and was went to work. A big truck was stopped for a light & happened to be about 3 feet away. A late 20/early 30ish-aged guy (I throw in "attractive, tan, blonde, baywatch type" -just to make sure Jeff's listening well :) sticks his head out the window and asks if I need help, "I'm a mechanic." he adds. I explain about the cables and say that I'll be fine. He finishes by saying, "Okay, I'm really not a mechanic and I don't know much about cars, I just know you're beautiful." Tells me good luck, and drives away as the light turns green. I can't think of a better way to have your confidence boosted about a new hair cut than that.
Jeff's been giving me compliments on the new haircut ever since.

Kids Fun Run

A while back a friend had forwarded some information about a kid’s race being held in the city. It looked like fun, but the twenty dollar entry fee seemed a little expensive for a 20 second race. So Jordan decided to organize a race for all the little kids in our ward/area. The kids were all pretty excited. They even had official race numbers. We all met over at the local high school track on Monday night. Unfortunately the track was being used by kids in training, there was actually even one lady who was apparently training for the Olympic trials. She was amazing! At one point she was attached to a bike that her coach was riding, by a 10 foot rope, forcing her to run extra fast around the track-talk about crazy! We’ll have to keep our eyes open for her.

Anyway, we figured it would be fine to run across the field since the track was in use. We set up cones at both ends and let the kids run their 100 yard dash. The race was about 60 yards too long for some of them. Most ran the whole way, but a few took some breaks and enjoyed watching the other kids. It was pretty funny. It's always entertaining to watch the parents watching their kids too! At the end of the race, all the kids got a medal. I made about 30 of these little 'medals' with a treat in the middle.

Of course after the kids, we had to have the dads do their 100 yard “Daddy Dash” as well. It was fun to watch them, although I felt bad for Derek who had a pretty serious wipe-out about half-way through the race. I think they all did a great job!

And last of all, the moms had their race. I think it’s been a while since anyone has done a full-out sprint (other than chasing our children) but we had a good time as well.

It was such a fun evening. We really lucked out because the weather forecast said it was supposed to rain all day with severe thunderstorms in the afternoon, but it ended up being an absolutely beautiful and perfect day. After the races were all over, the kids had a blast playing in the sand pit while the adults visited for a while. Most of the kids went home in need of a serious bath, but at least they were well entertained for a while! I was grateful to have time to visit with friends. Our dear friends and neighbors, the Marsh’s, are leaving tomorrow and we are really going to miss them. At least they’re headed to Twin Falls so hopefully we’ll meet up again with them sometime soon in the future. Once again we were reminded how blessed we are to have such wonderful friends out here. We couldn’t ask for a better “family” away from family.

Primary Activity

This past Saturday was our Primary quarterly activity. It was my first activity since being put into the Primary Presidency, and thanks to good planning by our president, it turned out great. We had a 'Breakfast with the Bishopric' activity and the kids enjoyed eating the yummy food, coloring ties, and playing games. Caleb was especially excited to be included with all the big kids. Jeff had to do some work at the church so we all went together. It was an enjoyable morning and I think all the kids that came had a good time.

Just Another Day of Work for a Scoundrel

We’ve definitely had our share of occurrences here in the big city. We purposefully have older & imperfect cars so we won’t care so much when things happen to them. We’ve been hit a couple times, hit & run a couple times, but this is the first time we’ve had our car broken into and radio stolen, along with a few other things. It happened last Wednesday, while Jeff was parked in the parking garage at his work. The crazy thing is that Jeff would have caught the punk if he had been there a minute earlier or if he hadn’t been reading the paper while walking to the car, they walked right past each other! They have the whole incident on camera, but really…what are they going to do? Most likely file a police report and just add it to the continually rising statistics of crime. It really isn’t that big of a deal, there are worse things than having property stolen, those things can be replaced. I'm glad Jeff didn't meet up with him, even though he was just a little teenage kid. The nice thing is that we found a great deal on glass ($90 to replace the window instead of the first quotes of $140-$180) and these guys came to our house to do it early Friday morning, and even offer to vacuum up all the glass when they’re done. Although Jacob enjoyed having a permanently opened window, I wasn’t loving the “keyless entry” feature. It’s nice to have it fixed. Now we just have to get a new radio, the wires don’t look that great.

The Crime Scene

(It looked much more "criminal-like" with the shattered glass, but I was tired of it pouring all over into our freshly cleaned car & removed it.)

The Loot

(We still don’t know why he chose our car, the radio really wasn’t that great. The Big Bummer was that in addition to the radio he also stole about 8 DVD’s and mainly children’s DVD’s at that, including Cars, Ratatouille & a bunch of others. That’s what really made me upset, stealing movies from kids? To top it off, he stole our ‘Rita’s Water Ice’ punch card, which just happened to filled up and ready to redeem for a free treat. Grrrrr!

Matthew is 8 Months

Where does the time go? Only four more months until a year. We celebrated today by going to the pool. (Okay, we just happened to go the same day he turned 8 months old)

• Loves to try and grab, and play with my necklaces & earrings. Good thing I have clip-ons!
• He’s so funny, sometimes he’ll clench his fists, clench his jaw & make a funny little face with his mouth and grunts. Not sure exactly why, but it’s cute!
• Gets his 1^st tooth! And his 2^nd.
• Showing personality, and gets upset when you take things away from him. He definitely lets you know!
• Seems to sleep mainly on his tummy now. I love it when he has his cute little bum up in the air. Sweet boy!

• Starting to see that boy appetite coming through! He eats A LOT! And he always seems to be hungry. He loves his solid foods and can really put it away, and he still nurses about 5 times a day as well.
• He’s a mover and gets everywhere he needs to go by army-scooting and rolling. He’ll move from one end of the room to another in just minutes. Funniest part about that though is that he still can’t scoot forwards, only in circles. He looks like he’s starting to try to move forward and just ends up doing his little ‘dolphin kicks’. Too funny.
• Loves to blow raspberries….only now he especially loves to do them while he’s eating which means dirty clothes, dirty floor, and dirty mama!

• Matthew loves listening to classical music. I’ll turn it on, on our piano and he just gets really calm and enjoys listening.
• Has his first train & boat ride. (At busch gardens)
• Likes to play with his shadow.

• Sits alone very well. When he’s excited he likes to grab a hold of his pants or shorts, and rock while he’s sitting. He can really get going!

Still enjoys the exersaucer and boy can he make that thing move! He’ll rock it back and forth, and even manages to move it across the floor sometimes. When he was at the YMCA, he was sitting in one and apparently they had never seen a baby rock it like that so they took him out.

We love this sweet boy.

Virginia Vacation Part 3

On Thursday we only ended up staying for a few hours at the water park before heading home for lunch and some sight-seeing around colonial Williamsburg. That was a lot of fun! All the little shops, sites, and people in costume were so neat to see. The boys enjoyed going into some of the stores to see how saddles were made and what mercantile shops looked like. We got to watch a colonial-era pipe band perform and heard the cannons being fired. We loved seeing the courthouse and had fun trying out the stocks. Maybe we should invest in some of those for time-outs! By the end of the day it was hot enough we figured another stop at Rita’s was in order and picked up a couple water ices for the trip home. After dinner and getting boys to bed we started to get things packed up so we’d be ready for our 10am check-out. Apparently they have a 30 minute grace period, then they start charging you $100 an hour every hour you’re over, so we wanted to be sure to be outta there!

Friday morning went surprisingly smooth and we only had to chug 1 gallon of milk, and 10 popsicles before we checked out, which the boys were happy to volunteer for. We figured we’d end out the trip with one more trip to Busch Gardens and had another fun-filled day. Luckily it wasn’t quite as hot as it had been earlier during the week; of course though, that combined with the fact that it was a Friday made for a more crowded park, but still not too bad. Jeff and I took a couple turns going on some rides, but it just isn’t the same when you have to go all by yourself, so we spent most of the time taking the boys on rides, and saw a few shows. One in particular, was a cute little show with all sorts of animals that did funny things, Jacob & Caleb got a kick out of that one. I loved riding with Jacob & Caleb in the sky tram. We loved riding together as a family on the train, and also on the riverboat. That was our last ride of the day and I was so pleased that Jacob, Caleb & Matthew were so good. Jacob & Caleb wanted to sit together on their own little seat and enjoyed the ride and seeing the sites. While they were excited, they were still very well-behaved. Matthew was just happy as could be and kept giving smiles to everyone around him. There were two older gentlemen with beautiful southern accents operating the boat and they kept going on about how impressed they were with our children. One of them made the comment, “It’s always a pleasure to have nice young people aboard.” And their last comment to us was, “You should have another child.” Now, Jacob and Caleb were definitely NOT perfect throughout our trip, they’re typical kids-just think back to Caleb's incident at the water park, but it was sure nice to have such a good experience on our last ride. I think all mothers need a few of those moments to keep you reassured that you’re doing a good job with your children. I know I appreciated it. (I do have to add though, just before coming down to the ride I had found a penny on the ground near the wishing fountain. I threw it in and wished-yes truly & seriously- that Jacob & Caleb would be sweet, happy little boys the rest of the day. I guess it worked. YEAA! That wishing well was the real thing! I need to go back so I can make some more wishes!)

At the end of the day, we had all had our fill of rides and amusement parks for a long time. I do have to add though, that my favorite ride in the park was definitely the ‘Griffon’ ride. It’s the world’s tallest dive drop, floorless coaster in the world. It’s 205 feet tall, but the best part was that it’s first big drop, drops you 205 feet at a 90 degree angle (that’s STRAIGHT down) at over 70 miles per hour. That’s just seconds after it dangles you for 3 seconds hanging over the edge, and moments before it sends you upside down and through loops, drops, etc. It holds 30 passengers in unique stadium seating so everyone has a great view. It was a blast and the only thing that would have made it better would have been to have Jeff there with me. Oh well, I had some nice people to chat with while waiting in line.

At the end of the day we were all ready to head home. All three boys took a pretty good nap at the beginning of our long car ride home, and as hard as I tried not to, I joined them for a while. The car trip should have only taken about 6 hours or so, but just outside of Washington DC we hit horrible traffic and it took us almost an hour to go three miles. Good thing we were stocked up with lots of fruit, water, and other snacks. Matthew especially has a fondness for goldfish crackers. Eventually we did make it home to our apartment, which felt remarkably similar to an oven, where we quickly turned the ac back on and unloaded our bags. On Thursday night Jacob had asked me, “Do we have to go back to our other house?” I think everyone had the same feelings, a vacation is a great time to enjoy our time together, but it was also nice to get back home and get settled into a routine. We were just grateful we had all day Saturday to re-coop before Sunday and the upcoming week. It was definitely a vacation to remember!