Flaming Gorge 2010

We had a wonderful time in Flaming Gorge this year.  Lots of swimming, fishing, shooting, sand castle building, garage building and of course family time together.  Here are a lot of pictures to document our time.

 

 

 

The End

What to eat on a hot summer day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YUMMY!!

Kellyisms

I have not posted for a while because our memory card from our camera, which has hundreds of pictures on it, is erroring out.  So we can’t get our pictures off of it, so, I am just moving forward.

Kelly is my wonderful 3 year old, and she talks non-stop.  Well, she talks non-stop if she knows you, otherwise, she is quiet as a mouse.  But, this last month Kelly had me rolling on two occasions, and I need to get them down so I can remember them.

First place, Wal-Mart parking lot.  I just pulled in and was getting Kelly out of her car seat.  Right next to me was a gentleman that has his window rolled down and is smoking.  As soon as Kelly sees him she says really loudly, “Mom, why is that man smoking?”  To which I reply, quickly as I am hurring her along, “He chose to smoke, he can choose to smoke if he wants to.”  Then Kelly says, “Well, that is bad for your body, and I choose not to smoke, right mommy!”  This whole time, this man is sitting there staring at us.  Ugh!!  Well, hopefully he realized that if a 3 year old knows better, he should too and quit smoking.  Maybe she saved his life, right????

Next, we were in Coalville, UT celebrating their heritage days.  They had a live band in the middle of main street playing fun music.  My kids are out there dancing to the music.  Right in the middle of the crowd is a very drunk man that has taking off his wife beater shirt, yeah, thanks dude!!  When Kelly sees him do this, she runs over to me shouting, “Mom, that man is dancing NAKED!!”  I bust out laughing.  She runs back and dances some more.  At the end of the song she comes running back, “Mom, I can see his thingys!!”  She is saying this pointing to her chest.  Oh man, I was dying.  She is just too funny!!  I hope she never changes!!

Alex turns TWO!!!

My little man turned two on May 19th.  It is so hard to believe that it has been two years since he has been with us.  It has for sure felt like he was always here.  He is such a wonderful addition to our family.  Having a boy has really made a huge difference in our family.  He has taught us so many things, and has really blessed us with he awesome personality.  Yeah, I love him!!  Right now, his favorite things are trucks, tractors, trains, balls and teasing Kelly.  Not particularly in that order, it depend on the day!!  He is quite the little talker too.  He has had to do that because of his sisters.  He needs to keep up with them.  One thing that blew me away that he did a few weeks ago was count to TEN!!!  WHAT!?!?!  I think it is because I count a lot when the girls are doing something they are supposed to do, I mean A LOT!!!!  So I am thinking that is where he learned it from.  He is funny, handsome and super smart.  He LOVES to be outside at all times.  One thing we are working on while playing outside is him throwing dirt at his sisters, which he loves because they squeal when he  does it, and he  throws rocks.  Yeah, he is all boy!!  Well my little man, Happy birthday.  We sure do love you!!!

We had two birthday celebrations for him.  One on his birthday.  I made cupcakes and his favorite dinner, chicken enchiladas.  He loved when we sang to him and also blowing out his candles. 

Blowing out his candles.

Here he is taking a big bite of his cupcake.

Here he is showing you his big bite of cupcake, hahaha!!

 

Then on the 22nd we had a family celebration with both of our families coming over for a BBQ lunch and cake and ice cream.  Plus, gifts.  I think that Kelly loved the gifts way more then Alex.  She was so excited for him, she really wanted to open all his gifts so she could show him everything.  He got lots of clothes and shoes, plus a fun train book, a spiderman dress up outfit (don’t know why he needed that, see previous posts about his dress up options here), a cool bike, a new tractor, a talking saw, and a new dinosaur flashlight that talks.  Yeah, all boys things and NO BARBIES, YEAH!!!! 

His spiderman outfit

I had to post this one, look at Kelly’s expression, so funny!!  Again, way more excited.

His new batman bike, again, look at Kelly, she is too funny!

Alex and his Pooh bear cake.  (I took other pictures of the cake, but they were way too blurry)

Here is my little man just a few days old. 

Now my little man looking way too grown up!!

Love ya buddy!!

FINALLY!!!

Yes, I have finally updated my blog. SLACKER!! I was just having so many issues with Blogger, it was driving me nuts!! So, it just didn’t get done. I really don’t have that much time to mess around with these issues, so I didn’t do it. Well thank heavens for friends that know how to do things!!! My good friend and neighbor, Cathy, told me about Windows Live Writer. So, I down loaded it and it is AWESOME!! So much easier to use, and the pictures go where they need to go, and it doesn’t take forever to download pictures. I highly recommend it. Thank you so much Cathy for steering me in the right direction!! So, hopefully now I will update more. Everyone, keep your fingers crossed. ;) So scroll down to see what was up in March and April for the Bingham family. Thanks for reading.

Oh, just had to share this one picture. How cute are my kids??? I just love them and I am just so grateful for them. This is why I blog so I can remember things before they get too old. It is a good reminder why I do this.

Heidi’s Baptism

Heidi became an official member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on April 10th. We are so proud of her!! She looked like an angel that day.

She was excited and so calm. We were so grateful for the family that was able to come and see her. Eric’s parents, his brother Kyle and his Aunt and Uncle were able to come. My parents, my brother Kenny and his family, and my sister Merideth were there too. We missed Stacey and her family. Everyone did such a great job making this day special. Thank you. More importantly, we are just so proud of Heidi for choosing to get baptized and being such a great example to her younger sisters and brother. Heidi, we love you so much!!!

Easter

We had a fun Easter this year.  It started with dying Easter eggs on Saturday, the 3rd.  The girls had so much FUN doing this.  We tried some new things this year. 

We used tape to try different designs on the eggs. 

That was cool, because we got some pretty interesting colors and designs. 

Sunday morning we had our egg hunt and the kids found their baskets full of candy and books and outdoor games.  They loved them. 

Alex even started to figure it out and had fun looking for his eggs. 

The rest of the day was so relaxing listening to General Conference and really understanding the Love our Savior has for each of us.  Thanks Easter Bunny!!!

Heidi’s Birthday

Heidi’s birthday is three days after mine. Hers is way more fun to celebrate!! She turned eight this year. So hard to believe!! I have an eight year old. We celebrate friends birthdays every other year, and this year it was a friend party. Heidi, being the social girl she is, invited 16 people to her party. It was great.

I had to think of a theme that would encompass a wide variety of ages and boys and girls. So, we did a mystery party. I had so much fun planning this one. What I decided to do was have the kids be detectives. We set up a game where there were two groups, and 10 clues for each group that lead them to the mystery box. I tried to use different types of clues to get them to various areas of the home and neighborhood.

They even had to visit some neighbors house. They loved running around and solving the clues. We started the games with a big game of memory.

Once the solved the memory game, on the back of the pictures, was their first clue as a puzzle. They had to put the puzzle together to read their first clue.

Then after the game, we opened presents and the had cake and ice cream.

We really had fun!! Happy birthday big girl Heidi. We can’t even imagine our family complete without you. WE LOVE YOU!!!

My Birthday

Yep, I had a birthday.  March 20th.  I am two years away from 40.  It feels weird, because I don’t feel that old, AT ALL!!!  Oh well, can’t stop time.  I got a carrot cake for me, because no one else likes them.  Then, we got cupcakes for everyone else.  It was perfect.  More cake for me, yeah!!!  The kids got me a new shirt and Eric bought me some new jeans.  It was great.  

(Yes, these were the only candles we could find at the time.  So, with the cake facing me, I am 16!!!)

Deep thoughts.....

Post Edit-I was thinking about my last post just before I fell asleep and I thought about the differences between the experience I had with Amy compared to Heidi. Heidi's was a breeze. She went in just before her birthday, sat down, smiled, had it done and then cried a bit. We got ice cream, and it was done. What made me ponder was how different my kids are from each other. A good thing, but a challenge to a parent. I believe as a parent, we have a big responsibility to raise our children so they are happy, confident, well adjusted kids. But, with the dynamics of your children being so different, we have to learn what each individual child needs, and react to them individually. What a huge task that is!! I have really learned this with my two girls, they are total opposites of each other. Heidi is confident, loves people, makes friends easily, and loves to help out. Amy, very shy, loves people, but the shy thing stops her from doing it a lot, and it takes bribery or threatening to get her to help. Amy also has anxiety issues that I am starting to realize. I am grateful that my girls have their own personalities, but as parents, what a huge challenge it is to learn how to raise them with these different personalities. What I thought was nice about this experience was that both girls had the same ending. Just very different path to get there. I just hope that the more I learn about my kids and their personalities, I will have the ability and confidence to teach and lead them so they will arrive on the same ending, happiness, but that I have the willingness to change and adapted to get them there. Deep thoughts happen in my head, just before I fall asleep. Some nights it is a challenge.

Amy's Ears

So, How long does it take to get Amy's ears pierced??? Well, a long time. I have set the age of six years old being the youngest age you can get your ears pierced in our house. It is an age where they are old enough to take care of their ears and earrings, so I don't really have to. Amy knew this and has been waiting for the time to come to get hers done. Well her birthday is in December, this is now February. Yeah, she needed some convincing to get it done, even though she wanted to do it. Well, my sister Merideth wanted to get hers done too, she had to let hers close up, and my sister in law Lena, also wanted to re-pierce, so we made a big date to get them done all together thinking this would help Amy. Well, it kind of did, and kind of didn't. Merideth went first to show Amy how easy it was. Merideth didn't even flinch or anything, she just smiled the whole time. As soon as she was done, Amy started to cry, a lot. She did not want to do it, she kept saying. So we left the store.

Lena in the meantime needed to find another place to get hers done, because of her drivers licence issue. No big deal, it had just happen to expire, and she is a busy women, and can't go in to get it renewed yet. (Hate the new law because of this issue, anyway, back to the story.) Oh yeah, don't go to Icings in Layton hills mall, worse place to get your ears pierced, FYI!! So, I started to talk to Amy about all the great earrings that she could could wear if she would just get it done. We walked in some stores to show her how many great earrings there are out there. In the meantime, Lena found a place that could do her piercing, and they also had a great deal of buy on, get one half off. Well, this was perfect, but we had to get Amy on board too. So, we finally convinced Amy that it was a good thing, with bribery of course. ICE CREAM and a ride on the little .50 cent rides they have in the mall. She braved up after another walk around the mall. The ladies at Pagoda Piercings were wonderful. They were kind and considerate of Amy's feelings, unlike the other place. Plus, they would pierce at the same time, unlike the other place. So, she finally did it, and she didn't even cry!!! It just took around two hours to convince her to do it, but hey, whose counting. I have to say, I am pretty proud of her, because she overcame a huge fear. It really showed me how much courage she has, she just gets there a little longer then others, but she does get there. She was pretty proud of herself too. She should be!!!

Amy, right after it was done. Just a little tear, but the first time she smiled all day was at this moment. HAHAHA!!
Merideth and her pretty earrings.

Heidi got to come too. She even got ice cream afterwards as well.

Thanks Mom, Merideth and Lena for a great time and for being so patient with Amy. She has an amazing and supportive family!!