Into Everything

Levi is constantly into everything. I have found that if I want to get anything done anywhere I have to barricade him out of the room. For example Gem and I shut ourselves in the bathroom to do her hair, I shut myself into my room to make the bed, and to do the dishes I have to make a little blockade out of chairs to keep Levi out of the kitchen. I can't even imagine what precautions I will have to take to protect our new little baby from him.

Stage 6

I hope we are almost done with yard updates. This is actually a couple weeks old. We put the playground in and one pallet of sod, so that the kids could play outside while we are waiting for grass everywhere else.

Gem loves the playground, she plays on it everyday. When she goes out by herself she usually only lasts twenty minutes, but if I go outside she will play indefinitely.

We are headed in the direction of getting grass. Last night the guy that is going to hydroseed for us came and sprayed round-up into the jungle of weeds that needs to be turned into a lawn. So now we let the round-up sit on all the weeds for 5 days or so. Then we will be having someone come out and till, level, and remove the weeds. He uses a preseeder machine, and it will only take him a couple of hours to prep the whole lawn for the hydroseed and then hopefully the next day we can spray the hydroseed on. So maybe this time next week we can start watching the grass grow.

First Time Enjoying a Banana

Baby Towels

I know that everyone out there wants to know what I did while Gem and Tyler were having a great vacation. Well the answer is pretty much nothing. Though I did make two super cute hooded baby towels; one for our new little girl, and one for a good friend who is expecting in September.

Can you believe our little girl is due in less than a month? Me neither. Anyway here we have Levi modeling the two towels. (He wasn't the best model since he had no desire to sit still). Anyway the purple one is for our little June, and I splurged on my friends towel and got the cute polka dots. They are so easy to make and so much nicer than the tiny store bought baby towels.

Some First Steps

My vacation with Gem and my family

Gem and I just got back from a week in southern California with my family. For some unknown reason, Tara preferred to sit this one out instead of walking all over the place for a week as an eight-month pregnant woman with a ten-month old (heavy and energetic) infant in-arm. That's OK, and it truth it might have saved our marriage. It was a great opportunity to just spend time with my family.

We left at 4 am on Saturday and drove the whole way that day. We had a pit-stop in Vegas because my mom wanted to get the kids some shirts at M&M world. We pulled into Anaheim and spent the evening walking around the Downtown Disney shops.

Sunday we needed to find a way to use up the day without getting into trouble with things we shouldn't be doing on Sunday. So we drove up to Port Hueneme to attend Sacrament meeting with my old ward. It's a two-hour drive each way so it sucked up most of the day. On the way there we stopped at the LA temple.




















The visitor's center was open so we went inside and looked around. Some Sister Missionaries showed us a really good video about the importance of the temple and why we need it for our families. It was a perfect way to start Sunday. I was able to shoot the picture below which has turned out to be my favorite from the whole trip.




















It was great to see lots of friends in Port Hueneme at church. We really felt right at home. After sacrament meeting we met up with the Henshaw family in Ventura for dinner at their new house. It was really good to see friends that we've had for the last few years.

On Monday, we drove down to the San Diego temple, but it was closed (I didn't really think it through.) Then just Gem, me and my parents went to Legoland. It wasn't too busy and we had a good time. I was really amazed at all of the things they had built all over the park. I've got more pictures than any sane person really wants to look at if you're interested someday.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at Disneyland. It rained Tuesday morning and that's why we all look like drowned rats. Nonetheless we had a great time. I was really proud of Gem because she actually wanted to ride some of the bigger rides. We rode Soarin' over California, and the open-air swings (see picture below). Granted, these aren't the biggest thrills in the park, but it was a big step for Gem.

Tuesday night we went to Johnny Rocket's for dinner and got a nice picture of all the kids.

Thursday, I spent with my parents and the kids while the other adults escaped for a day at Knott's Berry Farm. I think they really needed it.

Friday was spent at Legoland again. It was more busy but Gem liked having her cousins there. She actually rode on a kid roller coaster that she didn't dare go on when we were there on Monday.

After Legoland we took another drive down to the San Diego Temple to get some pictures. It turned out to be a nice day.

Saturday morning we were on the road again at 4:30 am and drove straight through.

It was a long week but a good week.

Blowing Bubbles

Stage 5

Well, I don't know about you guys but I am pretty sick of hearing about our yard. And I am sure you are too. I am beginning to wonder how many "stages" I am going to be forced to post about. Maybe next year all I will post about the yard will be pictures of beautiful flowerbeds, luscious grass, and a thriving garden. :)

Anyways Saturday Tyler and I finally buried all the sprinkler heads and pointed them in the the right direction, but before we got to that we had to find and fix a problem with a sprinkler zone that wasn't working. So picture number 1 is all the stuff we dug up to try and find any sort of leak or kink that would prevent our sprinklers from sprinkling. Eventually we had to take apart one of the connections that we had put in a few weeks prior.


We found this lovely obstruction right in front of our connection. Whoever had put the connection on (I am not going to say any names, but it may have been the other adult that lives with me) had somehow forgotten about or not seen the end cap on the pipe. We decided to laugh about it, instead of cry. We then redid the connection and reburied all the pipes. Unfortunately it will still be a couple of weeks before secondary water comes on because of some flooding in Brigham City :( But once it does we will be all over calling the hydroseed man to make an appointment.





In this last picture you can kind of see our beautiful, amazing fence. I like the fact that you can only kind of see it. We were a little worried it would be an eyesore, but it isn't even noticeable. Hooray.

The Story of my Life

The Zoo

We went to the zoo on Saturday. Of course I forgot the camera, so we only got these two fuzzy pictures off of Tyler's phone. Oh well. It was a great day anyway. It was only about 40 degrees, so that kept all the crowds away, and we got to see everything at our own pace. It was really nice to not compete to see the animals. It was also really nice that it wasn't too hot, it seems like the only times we ever go to the Hogle Zoo it is a million degrees and we want to leave as soon as we get there.