It's been a few months since I've posted so here's what we've been up to. Since there's a lot of pictures I'll try to keep the reading to a minimum. :)
Aly turned 2 in April!
Blowing out candles on her basketball cake took both mom and dad's help.
Love the smile!
Showing her 2 fingers.
We surprised the kids and went to a carnival one night that supports the Search and Rescue. Being pregnant means I took the pictures and watched. :) The girl on the left of the slide did wrestling earlier this year with Crue.
Riding the cars.
I was going to skip the ferris wheel figuring Aly wouldn't want to go. Was I ever wrong! She LOVED it as shown by her expression!
The boys below.
We got ice cream after.
Visiting a local nursery during a free hamburgers, hot dogs, and lady bugs day. They also did train rides that the kids loved, and gold panning.
Memorial Day weekend brought a terrible camping trip that deserves it's own post! Let's just say, this mini excavator only goes about 4 mph (downhill). We found out after Jared and his brother had to drive it to the property after crashing the truck pulling it. Luckily it wasn't our truck. That was in addition to Aly throwing up all over her sleeping bag and blankets Sunday morning and then finding out that we weren't supposed to have open fires in the subdivision the property was in (campfire is a must when camping!). Along with not having clear enough directions to get there Friday night resulting in a lot of driving around, cold pizza by the time we got there, and having great difficulty leveling the trailer around 10 pm that night. At least we had good food while we there and no one got bit by the huge rattlesnake Jared's brother saw in a wood pile by where we were.
Cooper helping dad clear and level the property above, and Aly below.
Jared only messed around in it a little bit. His brother and their friend that originally started bringing the tractor up both did most of the leveling.
Crue had a lot of fun with his second year in t-ball. He's excited to start machine pitch next year.
More work in the front yard. Aly got her turn with daddy in the tractor.
And of course Crue and Cooper had to have their turns!
Crue was a little big to sit on dad's lap.
The boys also did their first swimming lessons. A girl we know posted about doing private lessons and it was about the same as we'd spend with the city but they'd get one on one time.
We tried out the new playground. It's nice because it has a section for bigger kids and a section for smaller kids. Aly loved it because she could go down the slide by herself.
The boys on the "rock" wall of the bigger playground.
Cooper turned 4 in June. We invited friends over to let the kids ride bikes and have cake and ice cream.
I love that she's got her helmet on and her feet are up just hanging out while dad pushes her up the driveway.
Cooper wanted a train cake. Kit Kats for a track and a toy train was enough to make him happy.
Just a little dirty from ice cream. But I love her bright blue eyes in this picture!
We watched the Utah Summer Games Opening Ceremonies fireworks from across the street with some friends. Crue and their son Tyler had fun.
Aly sat with Joe, the dad, who was in heaven. He has 4 girls and 1 boy that are bigger and he just loves Aly (and her attitude!). He jokes that Aly is Tyler's 2 year old girlfriend because she likes Tyler too. Cooper was with Jared for a little bit until he moved by Sam (below) who is one of their daughters.
Jared went down a river with the Young Men and Young Women from our ward so his mom and I took the kids to the splash pad and a lazy river in St. George.
For FHE one night we went to a local museum (after hours) and checked out the big steam shovel used for mining and an old railroad car. You could go in the steam shovel but not in the car.
The kids loved it and still point them out every time we drive by.
Cooper ended up having a fever for a few days, including the 4th of July. Instead of going to our friends' bbq, we stayed home and had our own fun with sparklers and pop-its. Luckily we can see the city fireworks from our house so we sat outside under blankets and watched them.
My brother, Kyle, and his friend Bevan, raced dirt bikes in Cedar one day so we went and watched them. We missed his big wreck during the first run but were able to watch the 2nd run. Cooper on Kyle's bike.
Aly on Bevan's bike.
After we had our friends help us finish stacking the boulders and leveling the front yard, our friends (the ones we're watching fireworks with above), hooked us up with a guy that does landscaping and needed someone to work on his vehicles. Now our front yard is a mess. :) But at least it's done right! This is where he dug down 3 or 4 feet to put some pipe that will go to the backyard to two faucets. One will be where our fire pit will go and the other where the shop will go. Then when we do our back landscaping all we'll have to do is connect to those pipes instead of tearing up our front yard. I don't have a picture but he's already graded most of our backyard too so he can know how deep to put the pipe. It's pretty nice and I'm really excited!
We also watched parades (except the 4th of July when Cooper was sick).
Our friends had a carnival on the 24th of July and the kids got silly string so we had some fun.
It sure made for some happy boys.
And a happy mom and dad.
Unfortunately Aly didn't like it as much. But her face was so cute we couldn't help but laugh!
We had a record breaking rain storm. 2.25 inches in an hour. Jared and I had to go shovel some dirt around to keep our basement from flooding. It didn't take long for us to be completely soaked. There was not a dry spot ANYWHERE on us. This is our backyard. The guy doing our landscaping dug an area out that's about 35 ft along both fences and then arches between them. We'll put a fire pit in there eventually. This was at the beginning of the storm. By the end, it was almost to the top of the dirt on the left side (3 ft deep!). It was crazy. All the water in the backyard flowed to it.
The front was pretty much water too.
This window well started filling up with water. It did it during a big storm a few days before so we watched it and figured out where it was coming in. We had dug out dirt where Jared's dumping the water. We thought it was flat but it actually angled toward the window well just enough to collect water and have it go pouring in. We shoveled away from it so the water could go out (although that pond he's dumping into wasn't much lower) and then piled dirt against the window well to make it slope the right way. Right as Jared was about to start using the shop vac downstairs to suck out the water the power went out. So back in the rain he went to empty the window well with a bucket.
Aly loves anything with wheels. We've found her a few times in the Power Wheels Jeep. She had her helmet on from riding her bike earlier (she loves helmets because she knows she'll get to ride something with wheels).
Crue started kindergarten! And still loves it.
The bus picks him up at our house (afternoon kindergarten). I was going to meet him at school the first day after he rode the bus to get a picture and make sure he knew which direction to go for class but the bus never came. A few minutes before class was supposed to start I ended up taking him to school. The bus has come every day since and he gets so excited when he sees it. The funny thing was on the first day it came, Aly was in tears when I told her she couldn't ride with him.
He gets to ride the bus home with our next door neighbors and loves it. I love that it drops him off on the corner so I can either walk right there to get him or watch from our driveway.
Labor Day weekend camping went much better, other than a LOT of rain. Luckily Jared's brother has a screen house and Jared got me an used awning the week before we went since rain was forecast every day.
Jeremy was riding his four-wheeler and hit a wall of rain by the reservoir before it came to camp. He was drenched from head to toe!
We had some dry times too luckily. A lot of people went shooting and then the kids kept shooting the bb guns at cans we hung near camp. Crue is using Dylan's gun and Paisley is using hers.
How could I not take a picture of this cute girl in her camp chair that she loves?!
Jared, Aly, and Cooper are riding our four-wheeler (you can barely see the top of Cooper's head above Jared's shoulder) while Crue rode Jeremy and Molly's four-wheeler. They got a 110 cc I believe for the same price we got ours for. Basically a smoking deal for both. Ours is big enough to take the adults around (with a passenger or two) and Jeremy & Molly's will do pretty good with an adult but it's small enough the older kids can drive it themselves. The kids were definitely in Heaven!
Not shown in all the pictures is our trip to Lagoon. That itself had about 4 times as many pictures as are shown here so I'll do another post for that one someday. We had two days of fun, with me mostly watching and taking pictures. Aly was big enough to ride some of the bigger rides (Bombora, the pirate ship, and some others) and Crue was big enough to ride all but 4 rides there. My mom and two of my sisters came which was really handy on a few of the rides when all of the kids needed an adult and I couldn't ride. I told Jared we should go in about 3 years when the baby will be big enough to ride most of the rides and I won't be pregnant and unable to ride almost everything!
And in case you didn't know until now, we're expecting #4! We're having a girl in about 2 months. Now we'll have two spoiled girls instead of just one. :) Good thing there's two big brothers to keep the boys away as they get older!
