Daddy N' Me

I have always been impressed with the way Ty so naturally plays the part of Daddy. Because of my own growing up...I (perhaps unfairly) expected a lot from a man in that department and Ty does so well. The following are some pix I've taken with him and our little ones:

(just a side note: look at Vanna's little gut hanging over her pants - she's really growing but she hasn't grown out of sucking on that hand yet:))

Ty genuinly enjoys spending time with Cash and Vanna. Vanna adores Ty and Cash would much rather play (rough house) with his dad than me and gets so excited when Daddy comes home. He follows him around everywhere and always wants Ty to hold him when he first gets home. And, of course, there's drama when Ty leaves in the morning for work.

The main reason we're here in Payette is because we prize the time we get to spend together as a family and because Ty wanted to be home with the kids as much as possible. His job offers Sundays and Holidays off, he's home in the evenings and has three days off a week -one week he has Wed., Thurs., Sun. off and the next he has Fri., Sat., Sun. off so it works out great. We have really enjoyed having Daddy home and available (while in school he was often home but studying so not "really" home). We are truly blessed!

A Bug's Life

Cash has been so facsinated with bugs (and this has been for a while) and we've seen some new bugs lately that caught his attention; one of which was a preying mantis.

I don't recall that Cash has ever seen one before and within a week we saw like five in our yard. They made him a little nervous and he would only look at them from a distance.

We also saw a black widow spider just outside our front door. It scared me to death. At first I thought it was just another spider so as I was taking out the garbage I thought I'd smash it with some of the garbage I had in hand. As I got closer I realized how big it was and because of the way it looked I said to myself, "I wonder if that is a black widow." Well, I hit it with the garbage and it happened to flip the spider over and lo and behold there was a red hour-glass shape on it's belly. Yikes! I quickly stepped on it and put it in the dumpster with the rest of my garbage. It really made me nervous because Cash will touch most any bug and want to play with it. It made me realize I need to carefully teach him that some can be very dangerous. Anyway, that has been our excitement.

Zzzzzzzzzz!

Vanna is discovering she can actually make things happen when she moves her hands toward something or when she grabs or hits something. She's started playing with the toys that are attached to her swing and has gotten big enough now that I've started putting her in the exersaucer my parents bought for her (I still have to wrap a blanket around her to help her sit up well though of course). She is fascinated with the toys on it and plays so hard that she wears herself out.

This has happened a couple times already (I've only had the exersaucer out about a week). It's interesting to me how little it takes to wear out a baby. It is fun to see Vanna explore her new world of movement. She's getting so strong and we're sure that before long she will be rolling all over the place.

Our Little Get Away

Well, we finally made it down to visit family over the Labor Day weekend. Ty had Friday, Saturday, Sunday Monday off (without even having to take any vacation time which was nice) so we decided to make our way to Rigby to spend the weekend with Ty's family.

We took off early Friday morning and got to Rigby about 3 in the afternoon. We just enjoyed visiting with family and viewing James and Orillia's new additions to their house (they've added a large family room to their house, a couple patios and added on to their bedroom to include a large walk-in closet-very nice). No one could believe how much Vanna had grown. Later we headed down to the barn where Cash got to see the new baby calves and where he took a couple rides on Grandma and Grandpa's four-wheeler.

Saturday we went to the Idaho Falls Zoo. Cash is at such a fun age to take to the zoo. He particularly liked the monkeys. Afterwards we went out to eat and after returning home, the ladies had a chance to go to a cute crafts store in Rigby where I would have bought a bundle if only I had room in our car to take it home.

Sunday we enjoyed our church meetings and some relaxation. We also played Nick's Wii throughout the weekend and, believe it or not, I bowled a 177 (it's much easier to bowl Wii than real life)!

Ty went fishing all morning on Monday with his dad. He's been dying to get out his pole. They didn't have much luck but at least they got outdoors and had some laid back time which was something Ty needed. We had to say our goodbyes that afternoon (those are never fun) then we headed to Pocatello where we saw some of my family for about an hour then had dinner with my mom and Tab before hitting the road back to Payette. They were so nice to buy us dinner and I'm so glad they got to see the kids for a bit.

We always get to see Nick and Chase when we get to Rigby and it's always good to catch up with them. We got to meet Chase's new girlfriend, Chelsea, over the weekend too. I think Cash developed a little crush on her largely because she was too nice and gave him so much of her time. She was sweet. Marcy and Zak made it down with their family over the weekend too so we were able to visit with them most of the day on Saturday. Cash and Hallee like to wrestle or least Cash likes to and Hallee just puts up with it. I'm so glad he has close cousins to play with.

It was a full weekend and we loved every minute of it-the kids even did amazing during the travel time. We were so glad to see so many of our family members (hopefully in October we can spend more time with my family and maybe even stop by to see some friends). We are always treated so good by them and just love them to death.

The only downfall to the trip was that I never got any pictures. Bummer! I'll have to do better next time.