4th of July

We celebrated the 4th of July with my family while they were here helping us the first week after Blake was born.  That morning, we put the kids in their outfits that Gaga bought for them (Connor's said Mr. Independent, totally fitting), Connor was in a "parade" with his friends Lincoln, Jackson, and Teyla from across the street, we all watched Thor, ate yummy food, and watched fireworks later that night.  Great day.

Love how smiley Will is all the time!

Love my two boys!

Flags, drums, pinwheels, and pom-poms.  We love our friends!

Big sleepy smiles!  Happy 4th of July!

Water Balloons

One of Connor's favorite activities this summer has been playing with water balloons.  We have done it so much, it deserves its own post.

We did a last-day-of-school water balloon party on May 25 with lots of friends from our ward (even though Connor isn't in school yet, a bunch of his friends that we meet at the park every week are).

After all the kids threw water balloons, we had a "pick up party" and made a contest of who could pick up the most balloon pieces.  The top 3 winners got $1 and everyone else got a quarter or 2.  Best idea ever.

Look at the piles of balloon pieces!

We invited our friends across the street (Stacey, Lincoln, Jackson, and Teyla) over a several times to throw water balloons with us.

I also did a really fun activity with my Young Women.  We did a service scavenger hunt.  Each task on the list I gave them was assigned a point value from 1-5 points (easier tasks like washing a window or taking out the trash were 1 point, harder tasks like scrubbing a toilet or vacuuming a room were 5 points), and the girls had to go to ward members' houses that were in need of service.  There were 12 Beehives, I challenged them to get 75 points total and if they did there were 500 water balloons waiting for them at my house that I filled earlier that day.  The girls did awesome and earned 92 points!  The girls had a blast and were really nice to let Connor throw balloons with them.  I love summer!  (If any of you serve in YW and want my service list, let me know, I'll send it to you.)

Family Vacation - Arizona

We went on our family vacation this year April 4-8 (instead of the fall because this year we will have a new baby) to Arizona - Glendale, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon.

We left Wednesday night when Brad got off work and drove as far as Vegas (about 6 hrs) to stay the night.  We rolled into Vegas at about midnight and Connor was asleep in the back.  As we were driving down the strip to get to our hotel Connor woke up, sleepily gasped and said, "Beautiful" at all the Vegas lights.  We laughed.  Then walking through the casino to get to the hotel front desk (way in the back, of course) Connor, seeing all the flashing lights and hearing the bells from the casino games said, "Let's play Skee Ball!"  (his favorite game at Chuck E. Cheese).  We told him if he could find a Skee Ball machine, we would definitely play.  Obviously, we didn't get to play that night. :)

We drove to Glendale, AZ Thursday morning (about 5 hrs), stopping at the Hoover Dam on the way.  I've seen pictures, but it was really cool to see it in person!  (What can I say, I'm a civil engineer. :) )

Driving across Hoover Dam. 

Side view.

Looking straight down.

The new bridge to get across Hoover Dam.  Hoover Dam is now a side-stop, not part of the main hwy.

It was really windy at the top!

Lake Mead side of Hoover Dam.

Giant spillway.

We stayed in Glendale, AZ with our friends Jared and Aubrey (and their cute kids Addie and Dallin).  Jared and I were in the Civil Engineering program together at BYU and they used to live in Huntington Beach when we were living in El Segundo before they moved away.  We miss you guys!  It was so fun just hanging out Thursday night and most of Friday.  We also got to do lunch on Friday in Phoenix with our friends John and Becky (friends from El Segundo that moved shortly after us), but we didn't get any pictures with them!  Bummer.  We are glad we got to spend some time with all our friends.  

Friday night we drove 2 hrs up to our hotel in Sedona and stayed there 2 nights.  (Our hotel was free because we signed up for one of those time-share presentations for an hour on Saturday.  Worth it!)  From there, we toured around Sedona a little, visited the Grand Canyon, and then drove 11 hrs home on Sunday.  It was a lot of driving, but Connor was a CHAMP in the car the entire time, reading books with me, watching movies, eating snacks, singing songs.  We left at 3 a.m. Sunday morning so he would sleep a lot of the time, stopped for breakfast around 7:30 a.m. and got home around 4 p.m. with the time change.  It was a fun trip to just get away!  

Connor loved climbing on all the rocks.

It was unexpectedly COLD at the Grand Canyon (about 45 degrees)!  We thought "hey, it's Arizona, it's hot."  Wrong.  Fortunately, I put coats in for Connor and I before we left (Brad declined) thinking "just in case."  Good thing!

It was really beautiful!

Connor's favorite thing the entire trip was throwing rocks over the edge.  A week after we got home he was still asking me if we could go throw rocks in the Grand Canyon.  Love him.

March Trip to California

March 6-14, we all went down to visit my family one last time before Baby #2 comes in July. As always, we had a great trip.

Disneyland with Claire and Jaxson:

Lounging around the house with my family:

Walking around the Spectrum:

And, of course, another trip to Disneyland with our friends the Tullis'.

Oh how we miss our family, friends, and DISNEYLAND!

January and February

January was fairly low-key.  After New Year's, we spent most of January recovering from our Christmas vacations, and Connor and I took one small trip to Cedar City with Brenda and Cami (Brad's mom and sister) January 25-28 so Cami could take her nursing school exam. I didn't get any pictures, but it was a fun trip with a little bit of hiking in southern Utah.

February was a crazy month.  We did a lot of fun things, and a few not-so-fun things.

We started off the month - Sunday, February 5 - with Brandon and Jen's daughter's baby blessing.  Alexis was so beautiful in her blessing dress and was a champ during her blessing. (You can see the beginnings of a baby bump - this is me almost 19 weeks pregnant.)

Then we started celebrating Valentine's Day.  February 9 was a MOMS Club activity decorating  valentine boxes/bags and passing out valentines to our friends.

Valentine's Day was great. Connor and I visited Treehouse Museum while Brad was at work, and I made dinner and dessert for Brad that night - Malibu chicken, asparagus, and spinach salad with strawberries. Dessert was homemade chocolate fondue with strawberries, bananas, and rice crispy treats for dipping ("rice kiss-me treats" according to Connor). :)

Connor riding the bull at Treehouse.

Fun Valentine fact involving my kid(s) - it was on Valentine's Day 2009 that I found out I was pregnant with Connor, and Valentine's Day 2012 I was exactly 20 weeks pregnant (half way done!) with baby boy #2.This ultrasound was taken Feb. 13, 1 day short of 20 weeks.  The picture of me was taken on Valentine's Day.

20 weeks exactly on Valentine's Day!  Half way done!

A couple days later, we took another one of our frequent walks around the neighborhood. It was starting to get warm and it was BEAUTIFUL outside, so I had to take some pictures.  One of Connor's favorite toys - his lawn mower - that comes with us on all our walks.

Friday, Feb. 17, we met my cousin Alex and his wife and kids (Maryanne, Craig, and Brooke) at the Children's Museum in Salt Lake. We went to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen after. We all had a great time!  (Sorry, these are phone pictures.)

 

Saturday, Feb. 18, Connor went to his first friend birthday party! Jackson Trujillo lives across the street from us and we go to the park together all the time. He turned 4 and had a super-hero party with toys, presents, coloring, lunch (corn dogs and fruit), cake and ice cream. Connor had way too much fun, he didn't want to leave at the end.

Birthday boy Jackson, his brother Lincoln in the middle, their friend Alex at the left.

Their friend Josh (who meets us at the park frequently, too). How cute is he?!

Wednesday, February 29 we celebrated Leap Day by going to the last free admission day at Hogle Zoo for the winter (every last Wednesday of the month between October and February).


Then something not so fun...  When this first happened, I wasn't going to blog about it but now that it's been a few months and the sting is gone, I sort of want it on the record. It was quite at ordeal! On February 22, I got the scariest call you can get - Brad's boss, Phil, called me and told me Brad was injured at work! He told me Brad had been unconscious for a bit and had some "lacerations" on his face. He said they didn't know at that point what happened because no one was around when it happened, but Brad was conscious again and cracking jokes (that's my Brad :) ), and an ambulance was taking him to the hospital. I quickly dropped Connor off at a friend's house and headed straight for Ogden Regional Hospital while calling Brad's family to tell them he was in the hospital. Worst 25 minute drive ever.

It turns out he just passed out while working in the lab and after a battery of tests (CT scan, chest x-ray, blood draw, and EKG of his heart), the doctors determined there was no real reason why (he even ate a good breakfast that morning). They said it's just one of those things. I have actually done the same thing before and know several others that have too, but unfortunately the saying "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" is true. And Brad is big. He scraped his face up pretty bad (carpet burns), broke his nose, and got pretty bad whiplash. He ended up having to get surgery to reset the bones in his nose, and we joked together for a couple weeks that he broke his smolder (have you seen Tangled?). Near as we can tell, Brad did exactly what Flynn Rider did when he falls unconscious out of Rapunzel's closet (right on his face and then screeches along the floor 'til his body straightens out), but just didn't come out looking like this after:

Instead, he looked like this:

And 2 days later, like this:

Fortunately, 2 months, 1 nose surgery, and a $20 3-inch tube of Mederma Scar Cream later, his smolder grew back handsomely. I love you Braddy! I'm glad you're ok!

We finished off February with a trip to Hogle Zoo on Leap Day, Wednesday, Feb. 29.  It was the last free admission day for the winter (last Wednesday of every month between October and February).  We went with Brenda and Cami and had a great time, even though it was a little cold still.

This turkey walked right up to us.  I asked Connor what the turkey says and he said the usual "gobble, gobble."  Right then the turkey gobbled back really loud and startled him.  He did it again and the turkey gobbled back.  We laughed.