Halloween Cheer

So bright

Even though it is still dark out side when she wakes up, if there are lights on in the house, Kate says it is too bright. She comes out of her room with her hands over her eyes and gets her sunglasses on.

Here she is getting the butter out of the fridge for her toast.

Bread next.

Now she is ready to show her sleepy eyes.

Funny girl.

Pumpkin Walk 2009

Last Friday we headed to the North Logan Pumpkin Walk. Always a good time. Here are a few of the highlights. Kids in cutouts, pumpkins made to look like all sorts of stuff, and some pretty good cookies and cheese sticks.

Fall!

It was kind of short, but we did have fall this year. Here are the kids with a buddy enjoying the leaves. It is crazy how much fun can be had in a pile of leaves.

Boo at the Zoo 2009

I guess this might become a tradition. For those who don't remember, at our little local zoo they have crafts and games for kids to play each year around Halloween. The kids had a great time but it was a bit colder than last year. Bry got to come with us this year which makes everything more fun. He was pretty into the scavenger hunt. He found all the right stuff and earned smarties for the whole family. Good family fun.

Here is Bry with the kids, blonde snow white and Wolverine, getting started.

Jake was not wanting to get his picture taken that day so here is Kate with George and the man in the yellow hat.

Posing with "Frank Einstein" as Kate called him.

Kate catching some air at the gymnastic station.

A boy and his tape

He got 12 rolls in the mail. What a happy day.

They really are friends

I came in to the living room from doing breakfast dishes and found this:
every dragon needs a baby right? I think he mostly agreed to be her baby because that is the seat he usually sits in when he watches morning cartoons. If she would not move that is as close as he could get. If you look close you can see her hand rubbing his head. So sweet.

The greatest show on earth!

Mid September we got to go down to Salt Lake to see The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. They call it "the greatest show on earth". I have to admit it was a lot of fun, but that is quite a claim to make:) We all had a great time but unfortunately the camera did not work so well for the actual show because it was so dark. The kids ate tons of candy and watched all sorts of animals and acrobats. A good time was had by all.

Jake was so excited to go but he looks more tortured in this picture.

The fam before the show.

A blurry but action packed shot of the opening of the show.

Seriously, that hair!

Almost every morning Kate wakes up with a rats nest in her hair. Isn't it cute?! It is a good thing she wakes up so happy otherwise I might never let her out of her room.

23 hours in I.F.

Back on Labor day we wanted to get out of town, but because of work and church commitments we could not get out of town until Sunday afternoon. We headed up to Idaho Falls(I.F. for those who have lived close by:) for a night to stay with Tyler and Janna. We had a yummy dinner, played games, had yummy breakfast, and went to the surprisingly great Idaho Falls Zoo. The only pics we took were at the zoo, so that is all you get to see.

Ty being a nice uncle and hauling Kate around on his shoulders.

Kate on the tiger.

Jake on the tiger. In his had is a map of the zoo that we got when we arrived at the zoo. He held onto it the ENTIRE time we were there and was always good to let me know where on our map that we were. Such a help:)

Kate on the lion.

We did actually look at animals and not just at the kids the whole time. Check out those huge tortoises!

By the time we finished at the zoo, stopped for lunch, packed up our stuff, and took off we had been there for less than a day. Sad to have to go so soon, but fun while it lasted. We will have to go again sometime, for a little longer next time:)

Jake's first day of school

Jake started Kindergarten on August 31st. His teacher's name is Mrs. Schmidt, which proved a bit tough to figure out how to say at first, but he has picked it up pretty well since. He's looking like such a big kid these days. We went to parent/teacher conference last week and Mrs. Schmidt had lots of good things to say about Jake. He is one of the best listeners in class, has a really good vocabulary, is respectful, and a good worker.

Bryan's Top of Utah Half Marathon run 2009

This is Bryan finishing up the Top of Utah Half Marathon, which he ran on August 29th. As a side note we had our 8-year anniversary on August 16th, but we didn't take any pictures. It was fun though and we spent much of the night trying to figure out how 8 years has already passed. Bryan's report on running the 13.1 mile race is as follows. The first 7-8 miles were great, miles 8-11 sucked, and miles 11-13.1 were okay. He wants to run a half marathon again and a full marathon someday too, but he has not committed to when either of those will happen. Here are some other pictures from after the race too.

Friday night fair fun

The county fair was in town last weekend. It is a block and a half from our house so there really is no way around going. It turns out we are sure glad we did. Bry had to work at a Wells Fargo booth Thursday and Saturday night, so Friday night it was. A cold front moved through so it we started out in short sleeves and I ended up making a trip home to grab coats. So nice. We are excited about the new kiddo on the way, but it was such a simple evening with no diaper bags, strollers, or bedtime worries. The camera was the only thing in hand beside each others hands. The first ride Jake went on Kate just wanted to watch, but after that she was ready to go on everything he did. They went from ride to ride with smiles the whole night. We made a pit stop by all the food and ended up with churros and a shared bag of cotton candy. I think the fact that we had spent the week before apart made being together seem that much better. Just our little family, having a great time, in the nice weather, in our little town. It was like all was right with the world. We finally walked the few blocks home at 10:30 and the kids crashed, sleeping until after 9:30 the next morning. I have to say, for me anyway, it was a night to remember.

Please excuse the fuzzy pictures. Between the lighting and the moving targets, it was hard to get clear pictures.

Here are a few videos of the kids. When they were not on rides, they could not hold still. They were sure funny to watch. Keep in mind they had only shared part of a bag of cotton candy so it was not all sugar rush. I'll blame some of it on the excitement of the night it guess.

The quiz answer is...

Most of you already know, but we are adding kid #4 to our family this Christmas. Here are a few pictures from the big ultrasound last week. Can you tell it's a boy? A bit too much info?

Though Bryan says this is spooky, the arrow is pointing to his upper lip. To the left of that is his nose and to the right is his bottom lip.Feet. They could end up size 15.The upper left picture is his little bum.

Now if we could agree on a name. It is hard enough between Bryan and I to agree, not to mention the fact that Jake has quite an opinion about it. Hopefully we will get this one named before he is born.

Caitlin came to visit

Caitlin came home from Oregon with us and stayed for a few days. It was like old times, except she didn't do laundry when she was here. It was so great to have her here. We did not take pictures of anything but here is Kate wearing her sunglasses that she forgot.

All things Oregon

The last week in July my parents came out, from Oregon, for my brother and his wife's graduation, and we were lucky enough to snag them for a few days before they headed up to Rexburg. One of the days we made it down to Thanksgiving point and the kids LOVED it again. Kate even made it all the way through the IMAX movie this time.

A few days after my parents left, we loaded up and left bright and early for a fun filled week of family events in Oregon. Sadly, Bry could only stay for the first few days, and was missed like crazy the rest of the week. During the week we enjoyed family dinners, church at our old ward, three days at the coast, shopping, Caitlin's sealing, Jamie's baptism, many different sleeping arrangements, and tons of cousins having fun.

Here is a little video of Jake touching the shark at Ocean World. He had been waiting years to do this!

Summer Recap

Since I have done next to no blogging this summer I thought it was about time to let you all know what we have been up to. The sad thing is that we were not always so great with the picture taking, so some of it you will just have to take my word for it.
The end of June and the first part of July we spent a week in Washington and got to see Bryan's whole family, at one time or another, as well as some good friends. We got to relax, go to parks, ride bikes, swim at Jan and Jim's, eat dinner with someone different almost every night, play some games, watch fireworks on the 3rd, have a big barbecue on the 4th, and relax some more. We all had such a great time. Once again, it is to bad we have so few pictures. Here is a slide show of a very few things that we did.

This was just a pic of the kids looking and acting cute before church one Sunday. Sure love them.These are some cool glasses I found in a box when I was sorting things for our yard sale and Kate loves them. They look great, don't they?

On of the last few weekends in July we got together with two other families and had a yard sale. I love getting rid of stuff! We opened pretty early so we could get closed down early as well. We all made a decent amount cash, cleaned up, and headed to Bear Lake. We haven't got to spend much time up there because of the traveling and other stuff we have had going on. We were so excited to go and the lake did not disappoint. Sun, warmish water, bbq hot dogs(minus the buns, sorry again guys), and relaxing. Definitely one of the funnest things to do in the summer.

Well this is getting to be too long of a post so I suppose I will move on to the next and talk about all things Oregon...kind of.

The newest addition to the family...Scotch Tape

Jake likes artistic things. Drawing, painting, cutting paper and taping it back together into different shapes. Since he likes to do that last one so much, his grandparents got him a ream of paper and a six pack of scotch tape, among other art supplies, for his birthday. Well the taping of things took on a life of its own. Why stop at taping paper when it can stick to so many things?

If you want your sister to stay out, tape your door nob. Luckily she is two so this strategy worked.

Just in cast that same sister grew three feet and could reach your lockers full of your prized possessions, tape them closed. Kind of.

I think this was being taped on, but not all of it has an obvious reason behind it.Like this one? Apparently tape also doubles as spiderwebs and if you are making your room into a haunted house you just put it everywhere to make things scary.More scariness?These are the remnants of what is left from when he taped some of his stuffed animals to the net.And what toy bin handle doesn't need a little tape?

These pictures hardly do justice to the presence that tape has had in our lives. It is on clothes when I get them out of the dryer. It is on blankets as I tuck the kids into bed. No less than 15 strands of it where used to block his entire doorway, as high as he could reach, to also keep people out. That worked a little too well because he can reach high these days and I could not step over it to get in his room to put laundry away. I find it on the carpet and even stuck to the bottom of peoples feet. The first six pack has long sense come and gone (over 6600 feet of tape might I add) but luckily Jake has a grandpa who would hate to see him go without tape, so he is now on the last roll of his second six pack. That is literally miles of tape that have come and gone through our home. I guess it is a small and sticky price to pay for his good time. Like his grandpa texted me,"His to enjoy, yours to clean up." So true.

Video highlights

Here are some videos from the last few months also. Fun times.

This first video is yet again Kate limping after scraping her knee. Telling her to "walk it off" is pretty much not going to happen, especially if she is going to walk like that.

This next video is of Mason. He is 2 and loves to wrestle. Then there is Jake. He is 5 and is ticklish and thinks that wrestling is so funny that any skill he might have is rendered useless by laughing. Then there is Kate. I guess her contribution to the whole event is a good back scratch.

Pretty much the whole month of June was full of thunderstorms. A lot of the mornings were nice but by afternoon the clouds would roll in. The kids thought it was pretty fun to watch. Here they were one afternoon watching a storm.

One night just before bed, the kids started playing this game. I don't know where it came from and have not seen it since. Jake tries to explain it but you can't really understand what he is saying. It is fun to watch them have fun together. Even if we have no clue what they are doing.

Some fun news

So we wanted to share some fun news and Bryan thought of this fun way to do it. We are going to have a little quiz. It will be multiple choice and you can leave your answer in the comment box. Comments must be left in the comment box before any phone calls will be accepted by us to give you the correct answer. Now you don't have to call to get the answer if you don't want to because we will post the correct answer in a few days. If you do call though, remember, we will only give you the correct answer if have left a comment. No calling other people to see if they already know the right answer because that would be cheating and we don't look highly upon cheaters. Good luck and the winner will get the knowledge of having answered correctly. What a prize!?

The fun news is...

A) We are moving...again...this time to the Phoenix, Arizona area because 2000 square foot, 3 year old houses that have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a 2 car garage are selling for $85,000!

B) Bry is getting into the licenced banker program because he is awesome.

C) Jessica is pregnant, and we're thinking about naming him or her Quad or Quatro since this will be number 4! Pretty cool names, right?

D) After some pre-kindergarten evaluation we found out that Jake is going straight to first grade, following in the similar footsteps of his Uncle Mikel, who skipped 3rd grade.

E) Kate can bench press 50 pounds.

I know. It has been forever.

Between trips, babysitting, preschool, graduating from preschool, and life in general, I have not taken the time to post. Don't think that I haven't heard about it from MANY different people. Now it has been so long that I can't help but feel really behind so these may not be the way I would have posted them when they happened, but much shorter in the interest of time. Here are the last few months in a nut shell...

While Bry and I were in Vegas, the kids were in Oregon with my parents. Then we joined them for the rest of the week. They were happy to see us when we got there, but I don't think that many(if any) tears were shed in our absence because "dapa and dapa" know how to show a kid a good time. When we got there we got to go to Wild Life Safari.

Here is Jake feeding a goat.Kate would not feed a goat but would pose as a sheep.

I just had so show how comfy this guy looks.
The rest of the time in Medford was spent hanging out with family and visiting friends. The kids love hanging out with cousins.
Kate snuck in time to take a ride in dapa's car...and time to hold Caitlin's kitty.The ride home was long, but Jake is usually a happy traveler.

Kate struggles a bit more with traveling, but she did sneak a little snooze in. Once we got back to Utah it was busy life as usual.

Kate had some serious bed head.

Jake had his big preschool graduation. He had a great year and a great teacher. He was a little sad to realize that he was not going back there but once we told him he had to start kindergarten he recovered quickly. Here he is with his class. His waving hand blocks his cute face.Waiting for the big moment...and here it is. He had to hold his hat on when we was walking. He is growing up so fast.
Kate got a bike from her cousin Jamie while we were in Oregon and it only took a day or two before she was a pro at zipping around on it. Since she has a need for speed we got her a helmet. She also really wanted one because Jake wears his whenever he rides his bike and she must do whatever he does. Here she is sporting her helmet where you are supposed to wear it, on your bike.

She was a bit obsessed for a while so she wanted to wear it all the time. Here she is protecting her head while watching t.v. Safety first I guess.

So there you are...a few happenings from the last couple months. Now on to the next post. This may be the last one you read because it is the oldest so if that is the case, you are done.

Vegas!

Bryan and I got to go on a little trip to Vegas last week. We went with our friends Reese and Lacey. Other than the fact that every thing is dirty and smells like smoke, we had a super fun time. Here is a little slide show of our adventures.