7 years!



For our anniversary we headed up north on the Wed before our anniversary.  We decided to spend the first night in a hotel so that we could swim.  The kids loved it!  They both thought the hotel room was the coolest thing ever!  Right when we walked in Hunter started telling us what bed was his and where things went, it was so funny!  And Aspen kept unloading thing from the bags, crawling them into the bathroom, and throwing them in the tub!  The next day we got up and headed to Hogle Zoo:

What was holding Hunter's attention?



The elephant!  When we first went over to look at it I thought it was inside, then all of a sudden he came walking out to eat some hay!

I think this is one of the only pics of Ben at the zoo.

This guy was cracking me up, he was sitting there eating cardboard the whole time.  His number orangutan was doing something else... his girlfriend.  And she was sleeping through it.  I'm glad my kids were to young to realize what was going on cuz they didn't stop the whole time we were in there.  The best was when a dad came in with his kids and he sat there and stared at the orangutans!

Hunter measuring up to the gorillas.

We were watching this bird cuz we thought it's hair coming out of it's feathers was funny.  Then all of a sudden it snapped at another bird and it's neck was like 6 inches long!  It was so crazy!

There were several cats like this.  I thought they just looked like house cats with stripes, haha. 

We liked checking out his huge paws!

I was hoping he would get up and walk around but never did, he was just lounging.  I guess that's what we get for going when it's cold.

I think the giraffe were Hunter's favorite.  They kept licking the walls, and when Hunter saw the picture today he reminded me that one of them peed.  Haha.  Of all the things he remembered,  although it did take it a solid 5 min to finish peeing so I guess that kind of time could stick in a 3 year olds head.

Aspen wouldn't leave her headband on.  She kept pulling it around her neck so when I pushed it back up her hair was crazy and tweaking everywhere!!

This was only a couple minutes after the picture above was taken.

 

Hunter looked at the camels long enough for us to get this picture, then he was too busy watching the fence open and shut for workers to get in the zoo, and was done with animals after that.  Good thing we were about done!

After that we went to a movie, then headed to Ben's Grandparents house where we stayed for the next 2 nights.  Friday we spent most of the day at the Hunting Expo (Ben didn't know about the Hunting Expo when we got married, otherwise there is no way I would have gotten married this weekend!)  Saturday we headed down to my aunts house and she watched our kids while we went to the Provo temple.

Ben of course had been to this temple before but it was new to me. It was really pretty.

After we picked up our kids we headed back to the expo to finish the last couple of rows he hadn't gotten to the day before.  Then we had a Birthday dinner for Ben's mom and brothers.  After the dinner we headed to our friends house where we spent the night.  Sunday we just hung out at there house.  It was nice to just relax after several crazy busy days.  And we finally got to meet there baby girl.  She was so cute!  After lunch with them we headed home.

Hunter only had 2 accidents the whole time we were there, and the crazy thing was that it wasn't on our long drive there or back.  He did awesome for the drive, I was really worried about it and almost put him in a pull up.  Ever since that weekend though he has been having accidents pretty often.  I don't know if he realized he can hold it a long time or what.  But now he keeps on having accidents when he is playing games.  I know it's kinda mean but if he has accidents he can't play games for the rest of the day, cuz I know what he's doing is just holding it cuz he doesn't want to pause the game.  The craziest part is that I don't really let him play games for very long.  Yesterday we were headed out the door for church and he peed his pants.  So frustrating... he had gone like a half hour before was all.  Oh well I guess we just have to play the up and down game for a while til he really fully gets it.

Well we had a great 5 day weekend and spent it with lots of family and friends.  We only had our trip to the temple to ourselves but it was still a great anniversary.

For Valentine's Day Ben surprised me with chocolates and flowers.  Well kind of, my brother told me about the flower part, he saw Ben buying them while he was buying his wife some.  Ben also surprised me with not having scouts, so last minute we decided to run to a movie, and his sister was awesome and watched our kids on such late notice.  Like it was 7:10 when I asked Ben if he realized he was late for scouts and that's when he informed me he didn't have scouts.  And I said we should have gone to a movie.  He said ya we should you find out if there's one that we can make it to and I will see if my sister can watch the kids.  The movie started at 7:25 and it takes about 10 min to drive there from our house.  His sister met us at the theater and we just switched vehicles and ran in just in time!  It was a good show and the first time we've been to the movies without our kids and us together in a long time!!  Thanks Jos!!

Ice Fishing

I forgot to put these on the last post.  Ben, his Dad and Hunter went ice fishing just before New Years.  Hunter was still talking about it for several days after.  Here are some pics of their trip:

In between Christmas and our Anniversary

These are not really in much of an order.  But it's basically all that went on in between Christmas and our anniversary, it's all just everyday stuff but it was a fun month and a half!  And as I was putting them all in here realized that I have way more of Aspen then Hunter :(  She is starting to get to that fun stage where she is discovering everything, so I guess that means more pics!

Sporting her tights hat on New Years.  This is my only picture of New Year's.  I think I must just get too caught up in the holidays since I only had one for Thanksgiving too, and only really got Christmas pictures at our house not much at the Grandparents houses. 

We spent New Years in Kanab with my family.  It was a great weekend except for one set back.  Hunter decided he wasn't even going to go number 2 in the potty anymore :(  I don't know if you will remember but he was always going number 2 in the potty, very rarely number 1 but hadn't had a number 2 accident in months.  It was so frustrating from the time we got to Kanab he started going in his pull ups and it was like 3 times a day!  We barely had enough pull ups to get us through the weekend.  I was hoping that it was just since we weren't home, but nope it continued when we got home.  Finally after a week or 2 of changing big poopy pull ups I found a solution.  You are going to think I'm crazy when I tell you this but it amazing worked.  I went and grabbed a pair of underwear had him put them on and told him he was not going to go poo or pee in them he was going to do it in the potty.  I really didn't think it was going to work I was just so frustrated that I needed to do something and I was just hoping that when he went in the underwear he wouldn't like how it felt and start trying again.  But he didn't have one number 2 accident until just a few days ago and it was kind of our fault, I'll tell ya more when I do that post.  He even started doing really good with peeing in the potty.  He still occasionally has accidents, especially if he is playing a game and doesn't want to stop, but I feel like he was doing pretty decent.  (Yes was, the past few days he has had quite a few accidents.)

Aspen grabbed Hunter's apple off the table and went to town on it!



We had some fun trips to the park.  Can you tell she loved the swings!

Surprise. Surprise.  Hunter even picks his nose while swinging!  No wonder he wanted the baby swing instead of the big kid swing.  We can not get him to keep his finger out of his nose.  I think half the time he's just doing it for something to do with his hands!  The turkey has caused himself to have bloody noses more times than I can count!

I think she thought I was taking too long getting ready or something!  I came out of the bathroom and found her half under the computer chair.

You always have to document the first time they eat an oreo!  I think she was pretty happy with her new found favorite treat!

Of course she was bound to get messier than the first picture.

She looked at her hands, saw they were all messy and I guess this is what she figured you're supposed to do with messy hands!

My belly is too full! Stop taking pictures!

We got a new table finally!  Our other table had one of the chairs legs broken so only 3 chairs, and with Aspen sitting on top of it in her bumbo she could reach every bodies plates.  It was definitely time for a bigger table!  It has a leaf in the middle so it can be even longer and we have 8 chairs total.  It also matches our kitchen really well.

I think the kids really like it too!  Hunter has already put some pretty deep scratches in it.  I was not a happy mom.  We had some Menchie's (a frozen yogurt place) spoons that he likes to use and the top of them are apparently sharp enough to gouge my table.  He doesn't get to use those spoons anymore.  He did it twice, the first time I didn't see when he did it so didn't know how he had done it.  Luckily you can't really see it unless the light hits it but you can sure feel them.

Aspen figured out where there were some binkis within her reach.  She started crawling just shortly after Christmas.  Or I guess you might call it scooting.  She will have one leg up or her foot and the other on her knee.  The last couple weeks she has started to sometimes crawl on her knees but she can move faster the other way so will usually cruise around like that.  Oh and one of her favorite things to do is go under the kitchen table to try to find a snack.

Success! She found the binki!

For Christmas Ben got me a bike and a trailer for the kids.  They love to go on rides!  For the Superbowl we loaded our snacks up in the trailer with the kids and rode to Ben's parents house.  It was fun but definitely wore me out.  The bike Ben originally got me was a Black Friday one and when we put it together it felt like it was falling apart, so we ended up taking it back and combined that money with Christmas money we got and got me a very nice one.  So of course Ben needed to get him a nicer one too.  So we knew tax money was coming so we ended up getting him a new bike too.  We are all set for many rides to come!

Hunter will usually ride his own bike.  Me, him and Aspen went for a ride the other day and I pushed him farther than he had gone before and he did great!

Aspen kept going in and out of sleep the whole time.  Just a few seconds before this picture she had been awake.

We finally cleaned out our basement.  We've only been here 3 years now, I guess it was about time to unpack something besides just the necessities :)  We ended up filling up both our huge trash cans (the ones the trash people pick up) full of stuff that we have no idea why we saved!  And we took several boxes and bags worth of stuff to the D.I.  Can you tell Hunter was loving going through everything?  He kept finding all kinds of treasures :)

We spent a good part of a Saturday with Ben while he was on call and got called out to work.  Hunter climbed to the top of this "mountain" which is actually one of their tanks.

The kids always love bath time and up until Aspen could scoot around Hunter always claimed the spot by the faucet.  Now that she can move she is always trying to get in there to play with the water too.

Aspen got her 3rd tooth shortly after Christmas (I think that's why she had a snotty nose on Christmas, she was teething.)  She didn't get her 4th tooth until about a week or 2 ago.  So the one top tooth was pretty much all the way in!  It looked so funny!  I was waiting for that one to come in so long that I didn't even notice that she was getting a tooth on the bottom too!  The day she finally got the other top tooth she also had a third bottom tooth.  So I'm not really sure which one was #4 and which was #5.

She loves to eat real food now.  I call her my little piggy cuz she will scarf down just about anything I put in front of her and usually won't stop til I stop giving her food!  Then when I set her on the ground and she heads under the table to try to get whatever she dropped!  There are some meals that she eats more than Hunter!  I have no idea how she is so little!  She must have her daddy's genes or something!

This day she had wiped her messy hands all over in her hair.  So I had to wash her whole head with the rag and this is how she looked after she got all cleaned up!

And one of her most recent past times is to yank the dish towel of the oven so she can talk to and kiss (I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of her kissing) the baby in the oven!!

2011 Randomness

I found a bunch of random pics that I had meant to post on here and I don't think I ever did.  So here are a few more memories of 2011!

This was at Tuckers baby blessing.  And the stroller is one of my niece Talee's doll strollers, but Hunter really wanted someone to push around in it!



This was in Kanab for my Grandma's funeral.  The kids were loving on dad!

Ihop had free scary face pancakes for Halloween for kids. They were huge!!

I always play with Aspen's hair after bath time so Hunter wanted his done too.

This was a very raining trip to Costco!  Hunter's hair is tipping over, haha!

Duh, mom.  This is what your supposed to do with Cars go fish cards!

Aspen snuck a piece of jerky of the table and was so proud of herself!

Oh the things babies find to play with.

I couldn't believe I hadn't posted this one yet!  We have pictures of Ben doing this with Hunter on here too.

And I bet you are all thinking I bet her New Year's resolution was to not let the laundry pile up so high that it takes her whole living room floor to fold it.  But it's not :)  Happy 2012 here we come!