The Fair

We are finally ready to move on past the Lego Temple phase of our life. The past few months I have given up my husband, my money, and my counter tops for this creation. Luckily Tyler got the "sweepstakes" ribbon. That means he won his category (with a bonus of nine dollars!). Tyler was proud to see people at the fair taking pictures and talking about his temple. Lots of people at church told him how cool it was. The bishop wants him to bring it to show the primary, and the mayor of Brigham City asked him to display it at Peach Days. It has been Tyler's fifteen minutes of fame in Box Elder County.

So the temple ended up slightly more than two feet tall, two feet long, and a foot wide. It used approximately 5,000 pieces, and cost more than I would like to admit.

We took the kids to the fair Friday, it was pretty fun, but very very hot. Below are the ladies.

And here we have the dudes, Levi is in the perfect pose of eating his fair donut. They were delicious!

A Budding Photographer

Here is a sampling of Gem's work, which I found on my camera today.

More Walking

Big Babies

Levi is 13 months old now. It is quite apparent that he can walk, he just doesn't. I managed to capture his biggest walking adventure to date on video.

June is 2 months old now. We love to have her around, and I missed her when we were on vacation. She is still just like a platypus; (she doesn't do much). I have seen a few semblances of smiles when I talk to her.

Vacation

It all started with a plane ride. I wouldn't wish a plane ride on my worst enemy. Luckily we got to spend the whole trip looking forward to another plane trip on the way home. Actually the way home was considerably better. Except that the airport dairy queen was out of vanilla ice cream, pretty much it made me want to laugh, but also cry.

The next day we found ourselves at the Mall of America. It was huge, and held every store anyone could think of, so of course I didn't visit any of them, except when Tyler made me walk through the Lego store. We spent the morning riding rides, looking at stuff, and generally getting on each other's nerves. It was fun, and I would definitely visit again.

That afternoon we visited St. Paul's Cathedral. (Located in the town of St. Paul, if you can fathom that). It was beautiful, and I could have easily stayed four or five times as long except that we had two little children who don't really understand the concept of "reverent". Someday when I am not responsible for babies, I would like to visit more things like this.

Two days later found the boys at Devil's Lake, where we were supposed to bring them lunch. But we decided not to, literally leaving them stranded in the middle of a lake with no lunch.In a strange twist of fate, everyone except my dad caught a fish.

It looks like my dad and brothers successfully crossed the Delaware.

While the boys were getting sunburned and starving to death, we visited scenic Buffalo River State Park. It was relaxing and all the kids had fun playing in the man-made pond/beach area. My sister and I even went on an "interpretive" trail. Meaning they had mowed a path through the grass, and put up little signs with interesting tidbits on them about buffalo, grasslands, and such things.

Anyway everyone had a good time, but we are glad to be home.

Baby June

June is getting bigger and bigger. She will be two months old in nine days. She is officially sleeping through the night, we put her to bed between nine and ten and she sleeps until six-ish. Hooray!

Swimming Lessons

Gem enjoyed her first time at swimming lessons this year. I thought I would get some action shots of her.

Here she is waiting for lessons to start.

And here she is straggling behind the class.

In this picture she is the dot straggling behind the class.

Here she is preparing to jump into the deep end.

And after she thought about it, she decided to gingerly lower herself in instead.

The one thing she was really good at was going down the big slide on her teacher's lap.

Hooray for swimming lessons!

June

She and I feel the same way sometimes.

Playing Hide and Seek with a Four Year Old