July 24th

Just had to share this photo. Tyler has started to copy a lot of what Kaitlyn does and this is how they were watching cartoons together on Wednesday.
July 24th is Pioneer Day here in Utah. We celebrated the day by taking the kids to the pool and going to the parade.
Tyler is now a pro at the parade thing. He loved to watch everything go by and even waved at some of the people.
But even more, he loved collecting the candy! It was so cute.
It was Kaitlyn's first time in a parade. She was invited to sit on the float with the other kids in her preschool and she was SO excited! She made sure to find out exactly where we were sitting so she could wave to us. But she still ended up on the wrong side of the float so I sent Sam running down the road after it to get this photo. :) Kaitlyn had so much fun throwing candy she is already asking when the next parade is so she can be in it.

Friend's BBQ

Our Girls Saturday this month was a BBQ for our old friends. Alisha, Cheri, BeauDee and their families all came over to our house to eat and have fun. The kids got along really well and had a great time playing with Kaitlyn's outdoor stuff and running around the yard or playing Hide and Seek. The adults just sat around eating, talking, and trying to keep the kids out of trouble. It was great! :)

Good Husband Award

And the Good Husband Award goes to...Sam of course! Ok, so maybe I've been watching too much of the SunnySideUp Show on Sprout. :) But I really do want to give a big thanks to Sam for helping out so much yesterday for the BBQ. He spent more than 2 hours on the grill doing batch after batch of fries (which I woefully overestimated and still had half left over after all was said and done) and the meat for everyone. He also took Kaitlyn to the pool while Tyler took a nap so I could have a little time to myself earlier in the day. And of course he helped with some of the BBQ set up and a LOT of the clean up. (also thanks to everyone for pitching in on that) He did Ty's bath then washed the dishes while I did Kaitlyn's bath. See...very good husband! :)

Krystal's Pool Party

Happy Birthday Krystal!

Our neice, Krystal, turned 13 on July 9th. For her birthday, Sharon and Orvil reserved the Centennial Outdoor Pool in West Valley for a fun party. We had the whole thing to ourselves for a couple of hours. I was amazed by the number of people there - Krystal must be pretty popular :)
The pool had a lot of great fountains and slides and the kids had a blast. I was a bit stressed because Sam had drill and was an hour late for the party. It's rough handling 2 active kiddos in a pool. But we did get some help from the family - thanks Jacalyn, Colette, and Robin - and we managed ok. I'm sad that I don't have many photos - but I couldn't play photographer and be in the pool at the same time right? I'm still regretting that I didn't stop by WalMart and buy a disposable water camera.
Tyler spent most of his time pushing around one of the beach balls and playing with the fountains in the shallow part. He liked to walk around with the ball for a minute, then sit down on my leg to watch all the action in the rest of the pool.
Kaitlyn was all over the place. She went down the small kiddie slide a bunch of times. Played catch with me, with Robin, with Shayla, and whoever else happened by. But I think her favorite part was the larger slide in the deeper area. It was probably 8' deep so one of us had be treading water at the bottom of the slide to catch her. She came shooting out of that thing so fast the catching part was HARD. I turned that job over to Sam after doing it twice :) I was suprised that Kaitlyn - who is usually timid about that sort of thing - liked it so much. But we couldn't get her off it. She just kept going over and over as fast as she could. I was just about to go grab the camera to take a mini-video of it when Sam missed one of the catches and pulled her arm when trying to reach her. That sent her into a crying jag. But it was pretty much time to go by then anyway. And the promise of cake and opening presents perked her back up.
Sam's mom gave the kids these cute little scuba mask sets. Both the kids were too excited to get into the pool to try them out in the beginning then we forgot about them until right before we left. :( Kaitlyn was so excited to try them out that she had to take a bath this morning and play with hers in there. She is also asking non-stop when we can go to our pool. And if we can fill up her wading pool today. And.... any other deals she can come up with :)Anyway. We finished up the party back at Sharon and Orvil's. That place was packed with people! We all had cake and ice cream and opened presents. Kaitlyn was SO excited for the present part. She had picked out Krystal's present herself and had even paid for it on her own. (Bon - she LOVES the wallet!) Once again - no photos. I really need to teach Sam to just pull out the camera and start snapping away when my hands are full. So if anyone has great photos from the event that they would like to share (Robin!), please email them to me!

Memories

This one is making the rounds. I thought it would be fun! I hope you will play along. Here are the directions:
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you have of Sam or me. It doesn't matter if you know us a little or a lot, anything you remember!
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.
It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about us, We'll assume you're playing the game and we'll come to your blog and do the same thing. Thanks for playing!

Uh-oh! There's no stopping him now

What is he doing with that chair? Well, Tyler has learned the fine art of problem solving and getting what he wants. He recently learned how to climb up on the bar stools and this week discovered that he could push them anywhere he wanted to go. When I found him trying to turn on the sink for the 3rd time in 10 minutes I decided the stools needed to go into lockdown and hid them in the laundry room. But that didn't stop our determined toddler. Tyler promptly found the dinig chairs and started pushing them around. Not only does he try to play with the water, but he positions them anywhere he can't reach so putting things "away" on the counter or island is no longer an option. We really don't have room for the chairs in the laundry room and even if we did where would we sit? I swear Katy was not that big of a trouble maker at this age - argh BOYS! What's a mom to do?


This one stops your heart doesn't it? When I spotted him it was worse. His little tootsies were on top of that cupboard door and he was standing there proud as could be! (you can just see me shaking my head and sighing right?)

4th of July

Our 4th of July started with a bang - literally. Oakley City shoots off a canon (or fireworks? whatever it is, it's LOUD) at 5:00 AM every 4th of July. Then they take it around the town shooting it off every few minutes, just to make sure everyone hears it. I counted 7 blasts within half an hour. So of course there was NO chance of getting back to sleep UGH! Luckily the kids slept through it.
First on our agenda for the day's celebrations was the parade of course. Our tradition is to watch the parade from the Haakenson's house (the family of one of Sam's high school buddies) - where they go to the trouble of setting up chairs and shade for us and always making something yummy for us to eat. It's one of the few times a year we know we will be seeing them and we look forward to it. Part of Sam's family usually joins us there too.

Kaitlyn had a great time standing by the road with Mix and JD grabbing all the candy. She also made a point of waving at all the people in the parade as they went by. It was so cute!
Tyler, after falling down a few times on the slope of the drivway settled on my lap to watch the parade and snack on the candy Kaitlyn collected.
After the parade it was a quick stop at the house to collect our supplies (including a change of clothes since his nice white shirt which hadn't stayed white 5 minutes into the parade. Gma Jackson said we should term his look "red, white and BOY" LOL) then we were off to my parent's house for lunch and playing around.

Wyatt was feeding grain to the horses, so of course Kaitlyn had to help out. And there is Eddy, who we discovered was great with the kids especially Kaitlyn, looking out for her.
Mom had plotted against my dad - who LOVES water fights - for the boys to attach him with water guns and lunch ended with a splash.

The kids then changed into their swimming suites for more water fighting. We then moved on to launching water balloons with the slingshot at tagets in the field. Mom decided that wasn't exciting enough so she took the 4 wheeler out to be a human target, and Sam joined her out there after a while. We weren't accurate enough to hit them though :( We also did water gun target shooting. Then we loaded the kids in the car to continue our partying with Sam's family. The whole gang (plus some!) was gathered for cooking over the campfire (most of them were camping out in tents on the lawn that night) and waiting for it to get dark. To pass the time most of the kids went out on Colette's boat (Sam's sister), but Kaitlyn was content to play in the small pool at the house. Tyler doesn't like to get in the wading pools (I still can't figure out why) but he insisted that we strip him down so he could play with the pool toys.


With dinner eaten and marshmallows roasted, the night was rounded out by a nice firework show.
It was a great holiday. Now I will be content to take it easy today and try to rest up because I'm exhausted - the kids don't seem any the worse for wear from the late nights though!
I hope everyone else had a wonderful 4th of July too!

Rodeo

All ready for the rodeo! Kaitlyn had been looking forward to it for days - since Grandma Alene took her to the western store and got her an entire cowgirl outfit and Kaitlyn couldn't wait to wear it. She was also looking forward to eating cotton candy :)

Cowgirl Kate

Cowboy Ty

The rodeo runs 4 nights, but we decided to go on Thursday (July 3rd) because our neighbor was singing the national anthem (good job Camille!). We picked up tickets for Gma Alene, Wyatt, and for Rick (Sam's boss) and his family. When we found out my aunt Lenore and her two boys would be spending the week here as well, Mom managed to get them tickets too - though not right next to us. So there was a decent sized group of us there and it felt like a nice party. The family all had dinner at our house before the rodeo (I smoked ribs - with Sam's help - for the first time!).

Our seats were over the bucking chutes, on the second to top row. From the top row you could see the horses and bulls below and that's where Tyler wanted to spend the whole rodeo - watching the animals from as close to the top of the fence as he could get. We did get him to sit down once the rodeo started and kept him there with bribes (licorice!) when he got restless. But toward the end he just HAD to get back there to see the animals again and deserted his dad's lap for Amy (Rick's daughter that was sitting behind us - who we had only met that night. Very uncharacteristic for Ty to go to someone he doesn't know) and he watched the bull riding and the fireworks with her.

Kaitlyn had a blast! Once she got her cotton candy (she started asking for it the minute we sat down) she could concentrate on enjoying the rodeo. She cheered with the crowd and had a great time. The above photo is Katy trying to get them to toss her one of the Tshirts they were giving away. And both the kids were mesmerized by the fireworks
All in all it was a great rodeo and a great way to start our 4th of July celebrations.