August 2014

Well we finally buckled down and tried potty training Aspen, she hadn't really shown much desire to so we started a chart and let her pick what price she would get once she completed it.  Her toy stayed in the window seal in our bathroom just eyeing her down waiting to be played with, and she would frequently be found in there staring right back at that toy just waiting for the day she could play with it... Well the excitement of it only lasted a few days.  She would still go stare at the Elsa toy and say that it was hers, but she just had no real desire to try.  So it took quite a while for her to finally get the toy, several weeks what should have only taken a couple days.

But she was very excited when she finally got to hold that Elsa toy!!  Unfortunately the potty training didn't stick at all.  And she was back in pull ups with very rarely going potty right after she finally got her toy.

She was so nice to even share a turn holding the Elsa with Timber, who didn't even hardly notice it on her, but the second picture she happened to wrap her hands around her and that just warmed miss Aspen's heart to see her baby sister holding her Elsa!!

Hunter lost his second tooth!  I love how exciting it is to loose a tooth!!

And this cute girl discovered her fingers!

I love this smile!!

Notice the binki under her arm?  She never did really care for a binki.  We were glad when she discovered her fingers though, she became a much happier little girl once she did!!

We went to the fair as usual, Aspen had me go on the dragon roller coaster with her, you can barely see her.  She wasn't a big fan of it this year, with every bump she would make a little squeal and eventually started saying "I-don't-like-this" with ever bump.  She went on only small rides after this.

Going up high made her a little nervous, but she definitely liked this ride better than the dragon one.

Joslyn's kids were also able to go to the fair with us, Aspen loves playing with cousin Lucas!

Hunter loved every single ride!  Over all they had a blast!

I love the sister power in this house!

First time actually doing her hair in an elastic.  Isn't she a doll!!!

It never ceases to amaze me at the crazy ways that an immobile baby can get tangled up!

My parents love to go to Mesquite and play bingo, so this onesies cracked me up!  I of course had to send a pic of it to my mom and sisters too, who also love it!

Trying different hairstyles!  Her mo-hawk is getting a bit too long!!

I love how intent she looks!  Hunter was loving showing her everything he was drawing!

My kids love doing perler beads!  I made them both the dogs and the ones closest to them are the ones that they made, they can sit there doing these for hours!

I love when babies discover their feet!

This was the day that Hunter got to go to school and meet his teacher, the pictures are just ones he did at home, but his name tag is from his school.  He had done his kindergarten testing the week before.

This was Aspen's first day of preschool (the same day as Hunter meeting his teacher in the pic above.)  We did another preschool co-op with her and 3 of the other kids in our neighborhood.  Two of the kids were going to kindergarten the next year, and then Aspen and one of the others will have another year of preschool next year. 

  Her cousin Talee gave her this old dance costume for a dress up, she loves it!

Hunter's first official day of kindergarten!  He was pretty excited to go on the bus for the first time!  I was not... It made me so nervous sending him on the bus!  I lived only a block away from my elementary school, and 3 blocks from the middle school, then in high school I was close enough to walk but there was a bus that happened to drive near my house on it's route so I would sometimes ride the bus home in the afternoons, but that's it for bus riding for me!  Ben rode a bus for all of his schools and just thought I was being crazy being so nervous about it, haha!  Lucky for me most moms seem to be, cuz when I followed the bus to school to make sure he really made it there ok, there was my neighbor and several other moms following the bus too!  In kindergarten you have to be there at the bus stop or they won't let them off the bus, which I loved!  Just 2 houses away was another mom of a kindergartner, so if one of us was running late we would pick up each others son.  Unfortunately they ended up moving only 2 months into the year, right after her son and Hunter had gotten to be pretty good friends.  They had also been in the same class at school.

Got to love her pinkie up in the air!  That must be the "proper" way to use scissors!

Remember those fingers?

This night she was very tired!

 So anytime I would have to take one hand, to wash, dry, lotion, or dress...

She would switch to the other hand!

Even once she got done nursing and was just about asleep, she still had to suck those fingers!  Did you notice how she likes the pointer and middle on her right hand and the ring and middle on her left?  Occasionally another rouge finger might end up in there too, but as she gets better and better with her hands it's generally just those "chosen" fingers.
Timber had her 4 month check up this month and she was 12.5 lbs and 23.75 in. long.  That put her in the 25% for her weight and 30% for her height.

Tucker and Aspen playing at Grandpa Keith's!  I think we went there one weekend that Ben was gone hunting... it's been way too long to remember for sure!!

Look how huge these rain drops are!!

Ben got him a spike!

The bus stop happens to be right in front of an older couple in our ward.  They have an amazing garden and orchard.  Hunter and Aspen love to go visit with them, and they are so very sweet and share their hard work with us!  Hunter loves these, they are called a pluot (Plum and apricot combined together) so they gave us several bags of them... We didn't really have room for many of them in the fridge and I didn't want them to go to waste, so I dehydrated them.  It was a lot of work and took several days to get them all done!  Unfortunately I wasn't quite fast enough and some of them ended up going bad, but I did get a lot of them done and had several containers full of them!  The kids definitely liked them better fresh but still liked them dehydrated too.

This kiddo gets bloody noses a lot!  Most of the time the are from him picking his nose, yuck!  The first day he wore his school shirt he got blood all over it!  Luckily I have a friend that showed me Fels-naptha that works wonders to get stains out!

Peach days fell on the last weekend in August this year.  We always have a great time!  Hunter was way excited when he saw they had a zip line!  Ever since he saw me go on one at the Wood Badge camping trip last year he has wanted to go on one!  It made him a bit nervous at first, but ended up liking it so much he went a second time!

I think Aspen was still a bit nervous from the fair rides so she was pretty picky of what she would go on.  The only thing she really said she wanted to do was this train ride, you can barely see her, she's in the brown cart second to last.

Hunter had been eyeing this ride ever since we walked up, he couldn't wait to do it!

But quickly decided he didn't like it.

He's all hunched up and the kid next to him was trying to talk with him...

We don't even know who this kid is, but I was very grateful to him, he was very sweet to Hunter and even let him cling onto his arm for part of the ride!

Look how red he turned!  We were worried he was going to throw up after!  He bounced back quickly though and was ready for any ride except that one!

This cute chubby girl hung out mostly in the stroller and got stripped down to just her onesie since it was so hot!!!

Can you tell he loved this!?

He liked this right up until Ben told them to go to the next faster setting, then he bailed off of it as quick as he could!

Aspen liked it for a few seconds, and of course Ben wanted it faster, but since Aspen didn't like it faster he bailed with her.  Their bailing off of it ended up flipping Aspen's legs clear out and around, I was a bit worried for her but it didn't phase her at all.

Got to love the crazy pictures I find from this boy!!

July 2014

July always tends to be busy for us.  Busy but always full of fun!  For the 4th of July we did our annual trip to the cabin in Delta:

Aspen and Lucas playing in the sand.  One nice thing about having a daughter afraid of the water is that you don't have to worry about her venturing much further in than this!

The kids had a blast with the tube hooked to the dock!  They kept jumping from the dock onto the tube and then pulled each other around on it.

Ben and Hunter lounging.

I love how curly the water makes her hair!  Notice me not in a swimsuit??  Miss Timber wouldn't nap for more than 10-15 min this trip unless I held her!  So I don't think I ended up going in the water even once!  People offered to hold her while I went on the boat, but I'm not a huge fan of the boat anyways, and she was being a stinker for anyone but me, so it was just better that way.

Grandpa and that cute little stinker.

Aspen's swimsuit would not stay on her shoulders!  Thank goodness she had a life jacket on to keep covered up!

All that water waiting to be played in and of course if Grandma was playing a game on her phone all the older kids had a tendency to gather.

I think she was bit worn out, don't ya think?!  It took her a few minutes tops to fall asleep like this!  Megan had no clue she was asleep since she fell asleep so fast!  Aspen was Megan's little buddy this trip, she was a huge fan of Aunt Megan!

She just loves the sand!

I love his wind blown hair from a boat ride!

This is how we found Logan when we came in the cabin one morning!  All we could see were his lips!

Waiting for the parade to start!

All that time not napping at the cabin caught up to her in the stroller!

I love this cute face!!

Here it comes!!

Did you notice Aspen's plugged ears in the above 3 pictures?  She was not loving the volume of the parade, especially not the firetrucks!

After the parade we headed to the park for lunch and the activities there.

I would say that's a pretty proud brother!

I love these three!

Bounce house time!

This was the only bounce house Aspen would do!  She waited in line with Hunter for a couple, then when they finally got to the front of the line she wouldn't do it!  So finally I had her take me to the one she wanted to do, and she was happy as can be with just this one bounce house!

We let Hunter and Aspen get a balloon at one of the booths.

Isn't Aspens ladybug bracelet so cute!!  Hunter unfortunately popped his pretty quickly after he got it, doing exactly what we told him not to do or he was going to pop it.  He was very upset and wanted a new one, but there was no way we were going to stand in that line again!  We had to wait about a half hour to get them!

After the festivities we headed back to the cabin and packed up all our stuff.  We then went to the derby as usual and had a great time.  There was one point that I needed to go change Timber's diaper and I asked Ben if he would carry her down the bleachers for me, good thing I did, because 2 steps down from our seat I slipped and fell!  My shoes has dirt on them and slipped right out from under me!  I just landed hard on my bum, so not a big deal, really was more embarrassing than anything, but can you imagine if I had been holding Timber!  So glad Ben had her!!  We left the derby before it ended, probably 9ish, went to Lotsa Motsa got a pizza (we had fed the kids before we went to the derby, but getting Lotsa Motsa pizza after the derby for the adults has become a tradition), then got our kiddos in their jammies and had them go to the bathroom and headed to Kanab.  Karter was getting baptized in Kanab the next day so we decided to travel through the night so that we could still do our 4th of July tradition and still go to the baptism too.  I think we got there around 1 or 2 in the morning, so not too bad.  And we lucked out and our kids slept almost the entire way!  Timber did sleep the entire way and she was the one we figured would for sure wake up to nurse!  Our kids have never done great with sleeping in the car for very long, and sure enough Aspen woke up hysterical, but since Timber was still sleeping we kept driving while we tried to talk to her and calm her down, which luckily she did end up calming down and going back to sleep!  We found out the next day that after we had left the derby one of the officials on the side lines ended up getting hit by a car and dying!  So sad!  And I am very glad that this was the year we chose to leave early, I can't imagine being there and having our kids see that!  From the news feeds it was the opposite end we were at so I'm sure we wouldn't have been able to see much, but still I'm glad we weren't there!

Kanab was fun and full of cousins!!  After the baptism we got rained on pretty hard!  All the grandkids stripped down and played in the stream that always happens in front of my parents on a rainy day!

All those boys!!  It was so fun getting to watch my kids having fun doing the same thing I always did when it rained as a kid!

The cute littlest ones, besides Jack and Timber who were too little to join in.

Here's the whole muddy crew!

And any muddy day isn't complete without my dad getting the house to spray you off before you can go back in the house!

After we got our mud monsters cleaned up we headed to my 10 year class reunion.  They had had a breakfast in the morning with only adults, but there was no way we were going to wake up early enough to go to that after arriving so late!  So we just went to the evening dessert/meet the kids part.  It was pretty small and I felt a bit awkward, there weren't many people at it that I have stayed in contact with, and the few that I have it's not really in contact with them, it's more or less I read their blog.  Haha!  The few that I actually still talk to didn't end up going.  It was still good to see them though!

 

We lucked out in the fireworks department!  Since we left the derby early we missed the Delta fireworks, but Kanab's fireworks had gotten rained out, so we got to watch their fireworks later that night!

Aspen and Dace decided to walk home from church with Grandpa the next day.  It was too cute not to get a picture of them coming home!

This was the first time I ever put a hair thing in Timber's hair, I didn't think it would work very well, I was just curious if it would even hold!  It looks nice and crazy when your not actually trying to do it, haha!

Got to love the things they want me to take pictures of!  I do love how he can be so neat and organized, I just wish he was that way without the prospect of getting his picture taken!

Isn't she the cutest flower you have ever seen!!

She was going through a phase of making spit bubbles with her tongue, if you look close she has a white bubble mustache!  Silly girl!

I clearly need to dust my keyboard occasionally!  But I had to take a picture of this and send it to my co-worker, if you look at the function keys you can totally tell which keys I use for work!  I did dust it after this picture, I just thought it was pretty funny that you can tell exactly which ones I use!

It always amazes me how much babies can move in there sleep when they can't hardly move when they are awake!

For the 24th of July we went to the town festivities.  Aspen loved her crown!

Hunter got him some flames painted on his cheek.  Also, Hunter loved riding in the parade again this year.  Since me and my counselors were in charge of the float this year we just had them ride in the back off a truck and they were dressed up as pioneers of future and past (that was the parade theme.)  We had the junior primary dressed as pioneers of the past, and the senior were of the future, we had some dressed as missionaries, pharmacists, etc.  The other leaders and I walked along side the truck and helped the kids throw their candy out.  I wore my work scrubs to be a nurse. Me and Hunter changed right after the parade so we wouldn't roast in the hot day!

After the festivities at the park we went back to Ben's parents to swim in their pool.  Timber fell asleep pretty quick after I got in with her, who knew cold pool water would be that soothing!

I love that Ben got this picture of Dwayne dropping Dixie into the water!!

Were you wondering where miss Aspen was?  Yep this is about what she does at their pool, she will put the life jacket on and climb the ladder and dip her toes, then if anyone tries to get her to get in the water with them she will hurry and get down and stay away from the pool!  Too bad she doesn't have the sand of Delta here!

We had a small gathering for brownies and Great Grandma Ewell's homemade vanilla ice cream for Ben's 32nd birthday.

I just thought this picture was funny, Ben asked me to take a picture of these containers to send to someone, Aspen just happened to be down by them and I couldn't help but laugh!  She has a ring pop in her mouth and it totally looks like she has a binki!

I loved how she had wiggled and gotten her head close enough to the bars to have a little curl peaking out of the crib!  I love sleeping babies, they are so cute!