Thanksgiving 2013

My (Judy's) family came out to OK this year for Thanksgiving. We had 8 people in our house and it was cozy. While they were here we shared a stomach bug so we didn't go out much, but we had a turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and I made my traditional apple & pumpkin cheesecake pies.

Thanksgiving Day was my 10,000 day of life, so Dale went to a bank and got 10,000 pennies...$100 worth of pennies which weighs about 60 pounds! I was so shocked he actually did it and am still not quite sure what to do with $100 worth of pennies :). I had the stomach bug that day and couldn't figure out what the banging was in the kitchen...I realized it had been my dad & Dale having fun assembling the pennies, and the rolls tipping over repeatedly.

One day we went to the "rocket ship park" here. We took some family pictures and everyone enjoyed the merry-go-round.

We also went to the "lake park" to ride the Polar Express Train. The local Kiwanis club runs a small train through the park during Christmas season to see the lights around the lake.

My mom, sister & I also took some pictures at the park.

Overall it was fun to have them here. My boys loved having Grandma & Grandpa, though every time Grandpa would hug Cameron saying "I will hug you and squeeze you and call you George" Cameron would flip out saying George wasn't a people name. I realized later he must have been thinking about Curious George :).

Fall Leaves

Last year, Kimball begged me to rake a pile of leaves for him to jump in, so I did it while he was at school to surprise him. When he got home, his face fell because my pile wasn't big enough! He refused to jump in the leaves for the rest of the season.

This year, he declared it was time to rake, even though 70% of the leaves were still on the trees. After raking the whole front yard we finally had a pile big enough to enjoy and the boys played for ages!

Dale turns 30!

This year, Dale turned the big 3-0! He's handled it pretty well ;). For his birthday, I invited a few friends over a few nights before his birthday for a game night. Cookies, cheese dip, and cake were all enjoyed. This year, Dale requested a tank cake and this is what I came up with:

The boys were so excited for Daddy's birthday and could hardly wait for his to open presents! They had to hand him each one and Dale seemed to enjoy torturing them by looking thoroughly at each present before he moved on to the next one :). 

I got him a remote control helicopter and started to regret it that night when I woke up to it buzzing above my head...

Happy Birthday Dale! 30!!!!

Halloween 2013

Kimball decided he wanted to be Bumblebee from the Transformers for Halloween and I was really stressing on how I was going to make his costume, until I went to the local children's consignment sale and found a Bumblebee costume for $6! You can't beat that :). I also found a dinosaur costume for Cameron so everyone (including me!) was happy...

I LOVE this picture of Cam smiling up at Kimball!

On Halloween, Cameron's class went to a local theater to watch a Halloween movie, and I got to join him...

 Afterwards, we baked a bunch of candy corn sugar cookies to take to Kimball's class Halloween party...his class played a bunch of games and it was fun to see both of my boys interacting with their classmates.

That night our ward had a trunk-or-treat where Cameron mastered the "hit-and-run" technique of going to every trunk whether it was supervised or not and ended up with at least twice as much candy as Kimball (who spent most of his time inside playing the games). 

We carved our pumpkins with my pumpkin as an American flag, Dale & Kimball carving a spooky face and Cameron designing his own pumpkin face...

We went trick-or-treating to the "popular" neighborhood this year which ended up being a crazy mass of people walking door to door. Next year we'll just go around our own neighborhood! It was a fun Halloween and it's so much fun having the boys be old enough to enjoy and understand it more.

Boys

Recently, the little boys in our house were playing in their room with Duplo Legos and Dale decided to give them some help. While he built a tower to the ceiling (solely for the purpose of knocking it down with the ceiling fan), K & C kept chanting "You're a genius!"

When the ceiling fan took off there was much laughter and cheering, and they all worked to build another fire station tower after.

Star Skate

During Fall Break we decided to finally take our boys to the local skating rink since Kimball had been begging to go for ages and they had a great family discount. I was worried Cam would hate it because he tends to be a little clumsy, but he turned out to be decent at roller skating. He kept falling and rubbing his rear end gingerly but I was impressed with how quickly he got back up. I was super impressed that when Cameron fell and I was too far away to help him right away, a couple of older boys would skate over, help him up and assist him while he skated over to me.

 Thankfully they had walkers for kids to use which the boys took turns with. Kimball got pretty fast with the walker and was able to skate quite a bit without it. He probably could have skated for another hour after the rest of us had gotten tired. The only way we got him to leave was the promise of ice cream when we got home and even then, he kept begging to go back the next day!

Dale & I realized how poorly our muscles were prepared for the constant pulling, lifting and de-tangling involved, but we all had a good time.

Farm Boys

Right now, both of our boys are aspiring farmers. They are obsessed with the idea of becoming farmers when they grow up!

Cam insists that his farm will be built on our land. I will be his farmer's wife because he has to be married and daddy doesn't need me as much as he does (according to Cam). He will have a store behind his farm house to sell the food he grows, but he will give food to people who don't have any. Cam is also insistent that he will save some carrots for the bunnies so that they will like him. Duke will obviously need a puppy to be friends with.

Kimball says he won't get married because no woman would want to help him take care of the animals. He will deliver the food and leave the hard labor to Cam.

They talk about their farm all the time and it's fun to hear how their plans develop and change over time. I don't remember any of my friends dreaming of becoming farmers growing up, but maybe that's the price of living in OK? :).

Conference Weekend

For General Conference weekend, we got to go up to our sister-in-law's family farm in Kansas. On the way up, we spent the day in OKC and went to the 45th Infantry museum where the boys conned Dale into buying them soldier hats. The boys were enamored with the weapons, vehicles and other aspects of the museum.

 After that we went to the Railway Museum which happened to be a "Day out with Thomas". Though we never saw Thomas the Train, the boys got to do several Thomas related activities. They got balloon animals too. Cameron wouldn't go anywhere near Sir Topham Hatt, and this was as close as Kimball would get...

Then we drove up to KS. It was nice to escape from regular life and the boys loved playing at the farm. They especially loved the 4-wheelers!

Duke found his true calling herding cattle and was quite impressive with his instinctual skills chasing a bunch of cows across the pasture.

Dale enjoyed Duke's company in the car (probably far more than anyone else)...

Garden 2013

I've been so excited to have a garden this year and was very pleased with how it turned out. This year, I decided to mostly experiment and learn through trial and error. So far, I've gotten 3.5 cups of corn (blanched, cut off the cob and frozen), 3 cups of pureed pumpkin, several bell peppers (green, red & orange), and 35+ pounds of tomatoes which I have used to make 15 pints of salsa and 18 pints of crushed tomatoes.

Cameron next to our tomato hedge on top of the tornado shelter

I planted a bunch of tomato seedlings on top of the tornado shelter since grass hadn't grown in, and they went insane! While we went to Utah earlier this summer, the plants went from tiny to too ginormous to put in cages, so they just made a huge hedge.

This was my first year canning as well and even though I was extremely nervous and intimidated, it worked out well!

Tonsil-less

At the end of July, Kimball finally had his tonsils out. In June he had to do a sleep study to prove he had mild sleep-apnea. He was so good at the sleep study, especially considering he was covered in monitors...I however froze and slept horribly on their lousy recliner.

On surgery day, the staff at the hospital were great with him. In pre-op (pictured below) he had his own TV to watch while we waited. They gave him some loopy medicine to calm his nerves, let him ride in a wagon to surgery and gave him a cute little puppy which he named Chocolate.

We were only in the hospital for a few hours and he was very drowsy when he woke up. I ended up riding in the wheelchair with him on my lap because he didn't want me to let go of him. I was very stressed about making sure he stayed hydrated, so I made him take sips of water every so often, refusing movies or anything until he had taken a drink.

He was super cuddly for a week afterwards and was-understandably-grumpy, sore, and sleepy. Basically, I am extremely glad to have this behind us, and really hope that this means he won't get strep nearly as often as he's had it in the past.

First day of school 2013

We've gone from the first day of Pre-K for Kimball (which seems like only yesterday) to celebrating the first day of first grade today! First grade sounds SO MUCH OLDER to me than pre-K or kindergarten. He came home with a bag of treasures from his teacher including fun sunglasses and a visor.

For some reason this picture screams "I'm the son of Dale Rex!" 

Still sporting his gap toothed grin in first grade

Cameron celebrated his first day of Pre-K today! My little boy suddenly seems so much bigger and he has been so excited for this day for so long. When he got home he exclaimed "we didn't learn ANYTHING at school!" I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?

Before school and SO READY TO GO!

After school sporting his monster hat he made

Rhinos with Grandpa

Whenever we visit my (Judy's) parents, the boys and grandpa LOVE to play rhinos. They get on all fours and paw the ground while grunting, then charge and butt heads. Cam actually took grandpa down once using the element of surprise.

Getting ready to charge

Riding Grandpa Rhino

No Training Wheels!

A couple of weeks ago, Kimball asked if we could take the training wheels off his bike, so with MUCH apprehension on my part, Dale took them off. The first day was rough and Kimball was scared, wanting to go back to training wheels. But, we knew he was so close and told him he would just have to practice.

Two days later, we went outside and I had him use his bike like a balance bike, just keeping his feet near the ground to balance as he went down the hill. He did that a few times and then it clicked! He took off, riding up and down hill. I couldn't believe it.

I told him he was going to make me cry and his response was "but a happy cry, right mom? Like in church when people are talking in the microphone and they cry. That's a happy cry." What a smart boy. He's growing up so fast! As he started riding, I kept thinking "is this how I will feel every time he learns something new? This fear that he will get hurt, but such pride when he figures it out?"

Cameron, of course, was out on his trike and I couldn't resist a cute picture of him...

Cutest tricyclist ever!

UT (July 2013)

We had a blast in UT this summer...so much to do, so many people to see, so little time! We spent some time on BYU campus and went back to some significant sites for our family...

The statue where Dale proposed

Heritage Halls, where we met & it all began :)

We spent some time in Brigham City with Grandpa & Grandma Rex where we got to go to the Brigham City Temple. Grandma Bundy was able to come babysit the grandkids while we were in the temple with Grandpa & Grandma Rex and Nate & Kelsey Bundy. We went to Bear Lake the next day with my brothers John & Nate (with his wife Kelsey & daughter B). The sand was super hot but the boys loved the water.

The Ferrells put up with us for a few days and went with us to Ikea, Costco, and Scheels which has a ferris wheel inside the store! Still waiting on our group pic from Justin! Kimball refused to go on the ferris wheel, but Cam & Dale did...

For the Rex reunion, we got to spend a few windy days in Flaming Gorge. Thankfully it never got too hot! We all got to go on a boat through Flaming Gorge...

Steering the boat through Flaming Gorge

We also got to rent rafts and ride down a river and take a tour of Flaming Gorge Dam (just imagine a large group of Rex Mormons having way too much fun with the word Dam :)). It was pretty funny watching 40-50 some-odd Rexes in matching t-shirts walk around the dam.

Standing on Flaming Gorge Dam
(couldn't get K away from his cousins!)

We drove down to Alb, NM for a couple of days with the Bundy clan, then headed home.

Kimball's Tower, 2013

Whenever we go to Utah, it is required that we stop by Kimball's tower (2010, and 2012). This year, we were able to explain a bit more why it is named Kimball Tower, after President Spencer W Kimball, and Kimball actually referred to it as President Kimball's Tower for much of the trip afterwards...

He begged to do a silly picture and it turned out perfect...

 

Poor Cameron kept asking when we would see Cameron Tower...turns out there's one in London, so we'll have to stop by someday! :)