Highlighting 2011, 2012, and 2013

Two years? Wow! I know in the last post I said that I was going to get all caught up. haha Looks like that went pretty well...

I have been missing blogging so I decided to try again. I have resigned myself to the fact that getting caught up on the last three years probably won't happen. However, I can give you the highlights. So, here we go.

In either late May or early June of 2011 Wyatt broke his arm.

June 15, 2011 Rockwell Clinton was born. 9 pounds 12 ounces. Clint and I could not agree on a name so he went without a name for two months. We still hear about it! We decided to have a home birth. Crazy but such a great experience!!  

April 2012 Kale got baptized! I didn't feel old when he turned eight, I felt old the day he got baptized. Don't you love the boots?

August 2012 We sold our house. It has been a bitter sweet thing. I loved that house. It was the first house Clint and I built and lived in together. Rockwell was born there. And many other things. But we have been so blessed since we sold it. We moved into a camp trailer which was quite the adventure! We also started building a house next door to the old one.(We are still in the process of building. We might finish this house someday....)

February 12, 2013 We finished off our family with Josie May. 9 pounds 14 ounces. (It was a good thing she was a girl because we couldn't agree on another boy name.) We had a home birth again. Darcy was so excited to finally have a sister. She said through the whole pregnancy that she wanted it to be a boy so she could be the only girl. We think that she just said that because she didn't want to be disappointed again. I was sure that Rockwell was a girl and had Darcy convinced too. When she found out he was a boy she almost cried. When she found out Josie was a girl, you could just see the excitement on her face.

June 2013 Rockwell broke his arm.

August 22, 2013 Clint and I celebrated TEN years of marriage. Clint bought me a motorcycle and we took off on it for a week. We had so much fun! We went up into Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. We pretty much did a big circle around the Tetons. Clint has those pictures on his camera. Most of them are of me and not very good ones at that. 

We have also spent time camping, fishing, going to Lake Powell, riding horses, and hunting, watching dance, soccer and wrestling, and just being together! We are having so much fun raising our little family. Clint is especially excited for the kids getting big enough to go with him. He has taken Kale on a couple trips to the High Uintahs and both Kale and Wyatt got to go deer hunting with him this year.

To finish things off here are the latest family pictures we had taken. 

 A shout out to our photographer Mindy Smith. melindasmithphotography.com If you are in our area, you should check her out. Seriously. She is so good to work with. Our kids love her. They actually like taking family pictures with her. And she can get a real smile out of Kale. Not only that, Rockwell broke his arm like a week or two before we were supposed to have our pictures taken, and I did not want his arm in the cast for the pictures. She was so awesome about rescheduling. I know it was during her busy time of year and she probably ended up over booking herself. I recommend her to everyone!

Jessie, This One's For You!

Jessie, You inspired me. I am back! Now hopefully when you check there will be regular updates. :)

So, I know I am a total slacker with this blog lately. (ok, ok for like a YEAR!...or more since the last real post) I have had every intention of starting it up again but I never do. I guess I have been way overwhelmed by the thought. I really want to get the whole last year caught up. Aren't you all so excited! haha I know probably boring for you but important to me. To start off, here are some of the random pictures I wanted to post from last year!

Poor Kale. He was so sick but wanted to be outside with us so bad.

Our cute little neighbors have the funnest yard. I have probably posted about their train but I am too lazy to check. I think this was their anniversary party.

I had my sister bring my nephews over to go for a ride. They all love the train so much but it isn't easy to get a good picture of them.

She had been eating cotton candy and was covered in blue. This wasn't even the worst of it.

My sister Cindy wanted to try making fondant and I wanted to try using it. If I remember right, Gavin wanted a map birthday cake and so this is what we came up with. We had a lot of fun. Gavin even made his own "I".

Have you seen those "Shake and Go" cars? Well, Mom bought all of the kids one and then they had to go outside and play. It was too much fun!

The kids love to play on Mom and Dad's grass in the summer. They get out the pools and go to town. I think in these pictures they were being turtles.

We had Gar in the back of the truck while we were down at Lloyd's garden. Clint's sister didn't realize he was there and opened the door and he was leaning against it and the poor thing face planted.

At school they have a Harvest Festival or something like that. They have the kids make a creation out of things that grow in their gardens. (I think that is how it works anyway. I might be remembering wrong) I can't even remember what Kale made. It was some kind of creature.

Our ward grows a garden and they had a ton of corn left and no one was going to pick it so I went down and picked a bunch. At the time we had the fence around the house so the horses could get rid of our weeds. I didn't even think about it and put the corn on the porch. Those horses all decided that corn would make a great treat. So I had visitors. Clint tried to get this one to come in the house. And of course everyone who drove by and saw it got a pretty good kick out of it and had to say something to be about it. I admit it was pretty funny except those nice little presents you can see they like to leave me.

Kale learned how to ride his bike on his own. He just went out one day and started riding! We went on a lot of bike rides last summer.

I love how happy he looks in this picture! Plus you can see his little vampire teeth.

I don't exactly remember the story behind this. But I think I told her to go take a nap and she didn't want to. I don't know why in the world she would decide to use books as her pillow. She is such a funny girl!

I have decided I love to make candy bouquets. I am not very good at them but I sure have fun. I made this one for Clint's little sister.

I think Wyatt left his sandwich laying around and mister Garrett found it. Or maybe he decided he needed to watch the kids outside while he ate his sandwich who knows.

Hm...I can't remember who this one was for. Either Clint's brother or his wife.

Look at how proud he is that he climbed in the tub by himself.

They picked these flowers and arranged them for me all by themselves.

I love all the funny positions they sleep in. I don't know how he could stand to have her foot on his head though.

Kale and Darcy both got fishing poles for their birthdays and Wyatt wanted one of his own so bad. We decided to use it as incentive to get him to potty train. I know there aren't a whole lot of stickers on that page but it took us a LONG time to get all those. He was so excited when he finally got the fishing pole.

So I think that is all the random pictures. Stay tuned for more updates....and hopefully it won't be another year before I get back here!

Straight No Chaser

The following videos make me smile. You should take a few minutes and watch them.

Gar Turns ONE!

This little man loves his grandpa, who loves him just as much if not more.

He started out just using one finger.

Then his whole hand. 

Then the spoon

He had cake EVERYWHERE!

Even in his eyes.

He wasn't sure about opening presents and got a lot of help.

Here he is with his two best helpers. They are all less than four months apart.

I can't believe my baby is already a year old. It freaks me out to think about it. I still feel like he is a little baby. Even though he can do way more than a little baby can.

He is so much fun. He has a sparkle in his eye and makes everyone smile. I am the luckiest Mom ever!!

PS Doing a one-year-old's birthday at the park may not be the best plan if you intend for them to dig into their cake. Luckily, I did think to grab some wet rags.

Clint's Birthday

Clint had a pretty lame birthday this year. I think he worked all day and then came home and we went to dinner with his family. Poor guy has pretty boring birthdays. One of these years I will pull off a fun day for him.

I couldn't decide what to get him. If he ever wants something, he goes and buys it. I actually could have come up with something if I had the funds. Well, I finally decided on what to get him. I knew that his combination license had expired and so he probably hadn't bought his elk tag. Perfect! I decided just to get both for him. I was so excited to give it to him. I knew he would be surprised, which I never manage. The night before I was cleaning up the kitchen and there was a license on the counter. I had looked at it a few times and it was expired so I almost threw it in the garbage but I decided to wait and make sure he didn't need it for something. I think I asked if he just wanted me to throw it away and he says something like, "No, that is my current one." Wait. What!?! Yeah he had bought it. I had checked online to see if he had bought it and it didn't say he had one and they let me buy it at the store so I thought for sure he didn't have one. So I went and got the one I bought and gave it to him right then. I asked when he had bought it. He told me he had to have it to buy his elk tag. :( I was so bummed the same thing had happened with the elk tag. So I went and got that and gave it to him too. That was all I had planned for presents so he didn't get to open a single present. Major bummer especially for someone who likes to open presents.

His birthday cake is pretty sad looking. I thought it would be fun to make him a fun cake this year. So he was surprised by that I guess. Too bad I only took like one minute to decorate it so it doesn't look that great.

The kids were so cute singing happy birthday this year. I think we spent at least five minutes singing to him. Even Gar joined in. We even had a contest to see who could sing that loudest. I am so glad that we have a video camera to capture all those fun memories!!

How I looked at that license and figured it was expired is beyond me. Unless when I looked at it I had in my head that this year is 2011 instead of 2010. *shrugs*

Lake Powell 2010

If you know me very well, you know I am not a water person. I really wasn't excited to go to Lake Powell this year. I just knew it would be hot and none of us would sleep well and we would all be ornery. Clint made some point about regretting making our kids miss out on fun things or something. So we all went. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Actually we all had a lot of fun. It wasn't too hot either. It stormed quite a bit. It was kind of funny because Clint told me we wouldn't want jackets or blankets. haha We needed both. ( I snuck them into our stuff when he wasn't watching thank goodness)

This was probably within five minutes of getting on the houseboat. He loved playing with the steering wheel. I don't think he got bored the whole time we were down there.

Wyatt loved helping to drive and I think helped Grandpa every time we moved.

(we moved every day)

Kale's first fish of the trip.

These three were so cute watching....

these four.

Here's Kale's big catfish. It was so funny. He was trying to hold it while I took a picture but it kept slipping out of his hands. He probably dropped it on its head five times before we got a decent picture.

Here's Wyatt's first fish. He wanted to be like the big boys so bad!

This was Clint's biggest carp of the trip. You can tell how impressed Wy is. haha But this also shows just how big it really was.

Can you see the kids up there? There are four of them. I had to put my other lens on my camera to be able to even tell who was who up there.

My children do not take after me. They are all little water babies. Gar loved it and would just crawl straight into the water until the little waves would get in his face and I would bring him out.

He actually caught this catfish on his fishing pole but it was so big and fighting so hard that he couldn't get it in. So we grabbed his spear pole and someone held the fishing pole and he jumped in and speared it. It was the biggest catfish of the trip. I was going to post a different picture of Clint with this fish because the look on his face is so cute. He looks like a little kid but I knew someone would say something and I would get in trouble. But he was so excited about that fish!!

These were all the catfish he caught our last night there. He wanted a bragging picture to show his friends up here that he goes catfishing with. When they go they don't catch much and when they do they are pretty little. At least compared to these. 

The last morning we were sitting out on the front eating breakfast and the carp were swimming right by the boat. Wy wanted to catch one so bad. I tried but couldn't get one to take the hook. I went and got Clint and he helped and this is what they got. He is seriously too cute!! And you can tell he warmed up to being around the fish by the end.

As I am sure you can tell by these pictures they did a lot of fishing. I think at least one person was fishing from the time we got up till we all went to bed.

We kept life jackets on the kids pretty much the entire time we were down there. Kale and Darc were so comfortable playing in the water they would just swim around. Wy wasn't sure and wanted to be able to touch until the last two or three hours we were there. While they took the houseboat back where it was supposed to be we played in the water (it was way too hot to just sit out on the beach) And Wyatt finally got comfortable enough to swim around a little.

It was really a lot of fun. I loved watching my kids have so much fun!! Thanks Lloyd and Kalynn for the trip!!