Aspen turned 2!!!
Doesn't she look so excited!! I love that cute face!
I let her open this one present in the morning.
They always love the living room full of balloons.
Her hair is getting long! I love how cute it is in pig tails!
Dad's home, time for the rest of the presents!
It's been too long, I can't remember why she has two shirts on! I know there's got to be some story behind it but I can't remember!!! I definitely need to stay on top of my blogging so I don't forget these stories!
And of course her big brother thinks he has to help her.
I love how she was opening her present from Grandma Lisa.
Of course she's got a helper again.
Opening presents from Grandma Ewell now.
Making her cake was an adventure, they both fell apart when I took them out of the pans! I did manage to salvage them OK though.
Here's her Hello Kitty cake, I think it turned out pretty cute!
Having a shy moment.
Haha! This kid loves bugs!! I would have been freaking out having a bug on my eye! He didn't care at all, he just thought it was funny!
We got to have Talee and Tucker stay at our house for a couple days while Brandi and Mike went out of town. It was quite an adventure getting them all to fit in the one room but we did! It did take a little while to get them all to sleep though, one night we had to move Aspen into our room cuz she wasn't going to sleep. I think they loved all sleeping in there though.
Tucker was hungry!! Silly boy!
The kids love to help cook dinner!
And I'm sure you didn't know that sunglasses were a requirement!
After our trail blazer was having all it's problems we ended up trading it in for a Hyundai Elantra, and since we still would like to have 4 wheel drive we sold our Celica and got a truck. It was a sad day for me! Ben got this car right after his mission so we have had it for a long time! We dated in it and it was my car when we got married, so many memories!! But we had definitely outgrown it, it had never had any problems though it was just getting old.
Bowling as a family is always fun!
Aspen wanted to touch the ball that I was getting for me and the worker saw me hold it down for her and thought I was handing it to her and started panicking and said "Please don't!!" Haha, that would be pretty scary if someone would really give a bowling ball to their 2 year old!!
Our final scores.
Ready for church, I straightened her hair it looked so cute!
My handsome man ready to go!
Brandi watched our kids for my birthday and did Aspen's hair in this cute braid.
Hunter got a cavity filled, here is his numb smile, hehe!
They warned me that he might chew on his lip since it felt funny, so I talked to him the whole drive and when I went to get him out I asked if he had bit it, he said no, then I turn and gasped! The poor kid had blood all over and he had no clue!! When he saw himself in the mirror it scared him since he had no clue. His lip looked like hamburger!
I love how she was riding in the bike trailer, silly girl!
We went fishing to Enterprise.
Love fishing with daddy.
Hunter's getting pretty good at casting!
We love when it gets warm enough to run through the sprinklers! And it's much funner now that we have a full lawn to do it on!
Tubby time!!
Look at all that hair!
Ah!!! This was a busy crazy day, I had a lot on my mind I was trying to clean, pack, get activities ready for my giraffe group, and finish our family flag all for our Wood Badge camp out. I was taking some puff paint into the kitchen for when we were going to do our flag in a little bit and as I walked past the front entry way I saw crayon drawn on the floor going from our half bath all the way to the living room! I went into the living room sat on the couch had a talk with them, then we cleaned it up, I felt like I handled it better than I usually handle things like that, then I went back to cleaning. As I was going from task to task I kept wondering where I had put the paint, thinking oh I must not have grabbed it out yet, oh I must have already put it in the kitchen... then it donned on me, I had had it in my hands when I sat down to talk to the kids. Then I realized they had been awfully quiet. "No, no, no, please no!!!" I said that in my head multiple times as I hurried to the living room, I was too late! When they heard me coming Hunter crawled over to the corner and tried to hide, he knew he was in trouble! And the crawling away made it even worse, they had the paint all over their hands so then there were hand prints showing right where he had went! I then yelled the "NO, NO, NO!!" Let out an exasperated scream. Walked out of the room. Came back. Another exasperated scream. Walked out. Hit my head on the wall. Came back. Flipped out and dumped a bucket of toys on Hunter. Then yelled at them not to move. Walked out. Came back to this:
Poor Hunter, he knew he was in trouble so he got the brunt of the yelling and flipping out. As you can probably tell from the picture he had been crying and Aspen doesn't seem like she has a clue she was just doing something super naughty.
They had started out on a piece of paper using the pain as finger paint and it just spread and spread. If any of you aren't familiar with puff paint it is made for fabric, so it is not meant to come off! After I calmed down enough to function again I took the kids and got them cleaned up, I couldn't deal with cleaning it yet, I knew I would just start flipping out again if I went back in right away, so we had lunch which gave me enough time to really calm down, and time to text a friend for ideas of how to clean it. After lunch Aspen went down for a nap and the cleaning began. I scrubbed for so long that I literally fell asleep scrubbing! My arms were so tired from scrubbing that I laid down for a different angle to rest my arms a little and a little while later I woke up to a cold wet hand (I was using an old sock for a rag and I had my hand inside the sock.)
This was as good as Ben and I could get it. If you aren't standing close to it you don't really notice it, but when you look closely you can still see quite a bit of paint. There is also still a little paint on one of the couch pillows and we ended up throwing away another one that had more than a little on it.
Luckily we did ended up having enough puff paint left over to make our family flag. I think it turned out pretty cute! Not cute enough to forgive the paint for sticky so well to my carpet though.
For the LaVerkin Stake we had a Wood Badge with a family encampment too. I guess this is not very common to have the families there too, my dad went to a Wood Badge but it was just that no families or boy scouts there. We were not planning on going to it at all, then a week or two before it one of the guys in our ward ended up not being able to go, so they asked Ben he would take his place since it was already paid for and food accounted for him. Dwayne and Dixie were also going to it and they had paid for Joslyn and her boys to go to it (they were living with them at the time), but they ended up not going either, so Hunter, Aspen and me took their places. I called the lady in charge to let her know about the changes so that names and camping areas could be updated, when I called I asked if there was anything I needed to be helping with, well.... I ended up being in charge of one of the kids groups! They had more kids than they thought and needed to split up one of the groups, I guess she had called quite a few people trying to get a leader and no one was available to do it, so I ended up doing it. She wanted two leaders for each group so Morgan helped me the first couple days, then Tami helped me the last couple. It was kind of crazy trying to gather all the info, records, making our flag, getting activities ready for my group, etc ready in the short time that we had decided we were going!
On the drive up there Hunter got a little car sick. They had family campsite for everyone in tents, then anyone in a trailer had an area where all the trailers were parked, (this was up on Kolob at the girls camp area.) We stayed in Dwayne and Dixie's tent trailer with them, I think we were the furthest from the main camp area. We were camped right next to the Young's Gary & Karlene, Todd & Tami & their kids, the Christensen's and the Prince's too. They had a kitchen crew up there that made all of our meals, they cooked them for the family group, all the Wood Badge group, and 2 or 3 boy scout groups that were camping a little ways away from us! It was amazing what they did I can't remember for sure the amount of people but I know it was a couple hundred people! Meal time was the main time we saw Ben and Dwayne, the rest of the time they were off doing the Wood Badge program, while the kids, Dixie and me were doing the family encampment stuff. They had a nursery group, for it they had a big tent set up with toys and snacks and even a porta crib if any of the kids needed naps. Aspen loved it for the first couple days, then I think she was getting sick of not being with me, I would have to sneak out of the tent to drop her off, it was definitely the longest amount of time in 5 consecutive days (we went from Monday morning to Saturday afternoon, there weren't any events on Saturday) that me and her had been apart. Then the other groups they had a 3-4 group, 5-6 group, 7-8 group, then Activity day group, Cub Scout group, and a Young Women group (which Dixie was the leader over), and the Mother's group. Every morning and after lunch we would meet at the flag pole and do songs and role call and a flag ceremony. Then we would have different activities scheduled that we would go with the kids to, most of them had other leaders there guiding us, there were some of them were they just had the station ready and we would do the activity with the kids. It was so well planned that I really didn't have to do much extra, I had planned 2 Giraffe (that was our groups name, they were all animals) activities to fill time and had other games in mind that we could do, but really we only ended up needing to have 1 of the activities I had planned and we kinda squeezed the other one in because I thought the kids would like it. It was really amazing to see all that was put into this and how well it all went! When they first announced it in the ward we didn't really want to go, then they approached us and asked Ben to go (since he is in scouts) and he decided no, so then when it just kind of fell into place for us to go, it was kind of surprising, they had tried to have all the names a whole year in advance. I'm so glad we ended up going though it was really fun and really cool. My only complaint was just that my kids were a little too young, it was rough having to sneak away from Aspen the last 2 days, and one time our group had to walk by the Nursery tent and she saw me and started crying, it was sad! And they needed a leader for the 5 and 6 year olds and Hunter was only 4 but I thought it would probably be easier if I had him in my group, I just knew he would have rough times and end up being brought to me so I figured this way he would just be with me... plus it's funner to get to see what my kids are doing. They originally were going to put me as a partner with the 3 and 4 year old group but they finally found a person that would help be a leader but she needed to be with the 3 and 4 year old leader, so that's why Hunter ended up in the older group. He wasn't a whole lot younger than the others though, just a few months.
For the LaVerkin Stake we had a Wood Badge with a family encampment too. I guess this is not very common to have the families there too, my dad went to a Wood Badge but it was just that no families or boy scouts there. We were not planning on going to it at all, then a week or two before it one of the guys in our ward ended up not being able to go, so they asked Ben he would take his place since it was already paid for and food accounted for him. Dwayne and Dixie were also going to it and they had paid for Joslyn and her boys to go to it (they were living with them at the time), but they ended up not going either, so Hunter, Aspen and me took their places. I called the lady in charge to let her know about the changes so that names and camping areas could be updated, when I called I asked if there was anything I needed to be helping with, well.... I ended up being in charge of one of the kids groups! They had more kids than they thought and needed to split up one of the groups, I guess she had called quite a few people trying to get a leader and no one was available to do it, so I ended up doing it. She wanted two leaders for each group so Morgan helped me the first couple days, then Tami helped me the last couple. It was kind of crazy trying to gather all the info, records, making our flag, getting activities ready for my group, etc ready in the short time that we had decided we were going!
On the drive up there Hunter got a little car sick. They had family campsite for everyone in tents, then anyone in a trailer had an area where all the trailers were parked, (this was up on Kolob at the girls camp area.) We stayed in Dwayne and Dixie's tent trailer with them, I think we were the furthest from the main camp area. We were camped right next to the Young's Gary & Karlene, Todd & Tami & their kids, the Christensen's and the Prince's too. They had a kitchen crew up there that made all of our meals, they cooked them for the family group, all the Wood Badge group, and 2 or 3 boy scout groups that were camping a little ways away from us! It was amazing what they did I can't remember for sure the amount of people but I know it was a couple hundred people! Meal time was the main time we saw Ben and Dwayne, the rest of the time they were off doing the Wood Badge program, while the kids, Dixie and me were doing the family encampment stuff. They had a nursery group, for it they had a big tent set up with toys and snacks and even a porta crib if any of the kids needed naps. Aspen loved it for the first couple days, then I think she was getting sick of not being with me, I would have to sneak out of the tent to drop her off, it was definitely the longest amount of time in 5 consecutive days (we went from Monday morning to Saturday afternoon, there weren't any events on Saturday) that me and her had been apart. Then the other groups they had a 3-4 group, 5-6 group, 7-8 group, then Activity day group, Cub Scout group, and a Young Women group (which Dixie was the leader over), and the Mother's group. Every morning and after lunch we would meet at the flag pole and do songs and role call and a flag ceremony. Then we would have different activities scheduled that we would go with the kids to, most of them had other leaders there guiding us, there were some of them were they just had the station ready and we would do the activity with the kids. It was so well planned that I really didn't have to do much extra, I had planned 2 Giraffe (that was our groups name, they were all animals) activities to fill time and had other games in mind that we could do, but really we only ended up needing to have 1 of the activities I had planned and we kinda squeezed the other one in because I thought the kids would like it. It was really amazing to see all that was put into this and how well it all went! When they first announced it in the ward we didn't really want to go, then they approached us and asked Ben to go (since he is in scouts) and he decided no, so then when it just kind of fell into place for us to go, it was kind of surprising, they had tried to have all the names a whole year in advance. I'm so glad we ended up going though it was really fun and really cool. My only complaint was just that my kids were a little too young, it was rough having to sneak away from Aspen the last 2 days, and one time our group had to walk by the Nursery tent and she saw me and started crying, it was sad! And they needed a leader for the 5 and 6 year olds and Hunter was only 4 but I thought it would probably be easier if I had him in my group, I just knew he would have rough times and end up being brought to me so I figured this way he would just be with me... plus it's funner to get to see what my kids are doing. They originally were going to put me as a partner with the 3 and 4 year old group but they finally found a person that would help be a leader but she needed to be with the 3 and 4 year old leader, so that's why Hunter ended up in the older group. He wasn't a whole lot younger than the others though, just a few months.
These were from when we first got up there, just exploring the campsite.
The first night there was a family flag parade, we walked around all the campsites until everyone was with us then we went up to the amphitheater for a talent show. Just a little bit into the talent show Aspen threw up all over! Dixie saw it coming and caught some of it in her hands, I had wipes to clean up some, and someone behind us happened to have a grocery sack, so I pulled her clothes off cuz she was COVERED, and carried her back to the tent trailer while Dixie clean up (kicked dirt over) what landed on the ground and she also got Hunter for me too. The next morning 2 of the moms of girls in our Giraffe group came volunteered to take our group so me and Aspen could have some time to see how she was feeling. They have showers there so me and her went and got showered off and then she was acting pretty good so we did end up staying up there. I was pretty nervous to stay I didn't want her out camping while sick or getting all the other kids sick, but since she acted just fine we think it must have just been the overwhelming effects of getting up really early and staying awake all day (she was still usually taking naps at this time) and playing way hard too.
While me and Aspen were getting cleaned up one of the moms that had taken our group took this cute picture of Hunter, this activity was playing in bubbles. I'm not quite sure how it worked since I didn't see it but it sounded pretty cool and like they had a blast, all except for the part where Hunter inhaled some of the bubbles, whoops!!
The same mom that sent me the bubble picture sent me this picture, my camera and phone were back up at the tent trailer when this craziness happened! One of the older groups had the activity to make mud art, they did some pretty cool things, there was even an alligator! When the little kids saw the mud though, they just couldn't resist, Hunter completely lost a sock in it that he couldn't find at all!
Can you tell he had a blast!! And yep this was the night that he had a shower! They tried to encourage us to conserve water and to limit our showers, so most nights I would just wipe the kids down with wipes, but throw up and mud were a must shower.
Here was Aspen after her mud fun, no where near as into it as Hunter was!
This is our cute Giraffe group! I still see and say Hi to some of them when I see them around town! They gave each group a piece of fabric to tie on them somehow so that you could tell which kids were in your group, I love how Hunter had is on, it's like the old house wives, like "I love Lucy." Silly boy. Also can you tell that something funky is going on with his shoes? Well he had only been wearing flip flops lately so we hadn't noticed that he had outgrown his shoes until we were up on the mountain and his feet were hurting! He tried wearing his flip flops a little bit up there but it was so sanding/rocky that he would have to stop pretty often to get rocks out of from under his feet, so someone suggested cutting the tips of his shoes off. We didn't want his toes getting hurt so we used some red duct tape and wrapped it around the tips, the tape didn't stay on great but it was better than what it had been.
One of the nights the Wood Badge came and did skits for all of us to watch, they turned out pretty funny! And I loved watching Ben do it, I've never really seen him do something like that so I thoroughly enjoyed it! That night they also had a competition to see who was having the most fun, how they decided was who was the most dirty, the picture above is how Aspen looked that night (and most every night) we sent her and her friend Suzy up there but they didn't win, we sure think they should have though! I bet if it had been the night Hunter rolled in the mud he probably would have won! The Wood Badge people also made bottle rockets in their Wood Badge groups and brought them down to the family camp for us to get to watch them go off, the kids loved that! The Wood Badge camp was about a mile away, so the ones that didn't have family with them would sleep up there, then the ones that their families did come would just walk up there for the activities, but they all had to come down to the family camp for meals.
They had a zip line set up and the Mother's group came around and would take other peoples kids groups so that the leaders could have a turn on the zip line. This was my first time ever on a zip line! We had them at my girl's camps but my first year I was too scared and the other years I didn't want to wait in the huge lines. Hunter was pretty bummed that he didn't get to ride it, but he thought it was cool that his mom and grandma got to! Ya I definitely wouldn't have changed going up there, it was so cool!! If I was asked to go again I would, but probably would make sure we didn't have that young of kids, that did make it a little harder, but still totally worth it! We must have needed to go or something with how perfectly it worked out for us to go last minute like that. The other crazy thing about this was that most of the leaders were from Toquerville! There are only 3 Toquerville wards with a total of 12 wards in our stake, so it was pretty cool that Toquerville was so well represented, and especially as leaders of the family groups. Our ward alone also had at least 4 of the very limited kitchen staff! The lady that was over the kitchens told us at a fireside afterwards that she had less than half the amount of kitchen staff she had wanted, she said that she saw so many miracles just in getting us all fed, what a huge task she had to organize and feed that many people and groups!! Especially since the boy scouts groups very rarely came down to where the family and Wood Badge groups ate, so they had to deliver theirs to their camp!! If any of you ever have an opportunity like this don't hesitate, take it!!
Got to love summer and cleaning the car!
And the make shift pool!
He loves rolly polly's!
Can you imagine how many bugs they were swimming with?! Ew!! But they sure had a blast!
I love when she is getting warm, she's just too cute!
Derrick graduated Chiropractor school! And their baby #3 is on the way!
Popsicles at grandma Lisa's house!
We took Dwayne's boat out to Quail to test it out before our annual Delta trip.
This was when Hunter really started trusting his life jacket, he did great!
We had a picnic dinner on the boat.
Aspen was terrified!! She likes playing in the water but always right by the shore and barely in the water!
Grandma managed to calm her down a little bit.
Lucas is only 4 months older than Aspen and so brave!! This kid has NO fear!
Love my man!
Hunter likes to be the flagger.
Ben and Hunter
Dwayne and Aspen, Grandpa was the only one that could convince her to go!
See what I mean, NO FEAR!!! He's 2 and wanted to go on the tube by himself!!
This was Hunter's first time by himself
She was exhausted!
And Ben always amazes me with how it's like second nature to do things like this! I'm lucky if I stay up, and then when I do I start panicking wondering now what!!
It was a busy couple months but they were a blast!
