Out of Space

Apparently I've hit my limit of pictures on my blog. I guess after 4 years and a gazillion pictures of my kids, it was bound to happen. So until I make books out my blog or start a new blog, the blog will be on a temporary hold!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Go Bears!

Dan is one of the coaches for the new charter school out in Bluffdale, Summit Academy High School. Since this is the first year for the school, they played 1A and next year they'll be 3A. Dan is the JV and Varsity Special Teams and Kicking Coach so he's been really busy with summer camps, daily practices, and games for the last 3 months.  He loves it though!

Summit made it to the playoffs but lost the the first game. They did really well for their first year as a school.  It was fun going to the home games with my friend Soleil (her husband is the JV Defensive Coordinator and Varsity D.B. coach and he works with Dan) and cheering on a high school team. I took the boys to one of the games but Austin didn't like the noise and Ethan was more interested in playing games on Soleil's phone than the football game. We'll try again next year and see how they do. I think they'll enjoy going to the games as they grow up! 

Halloween Fun

I met up with all the girls in my family for Witch's Night Out at Gardner Village.  I live just around the corner so I've walked over there with the boys a couple of times and always love shopping and browsing through the boutiques. Gardner Village goes all out for Halloween and decorates the entire place with pumpkins and life-size automated witches everywhere and then two nights in October they have a Witch's Night Out where you can dress up in your best witch costume and walk around the shops. I went to the first night with my Mom and our friend Ruby and we went the second night with my sister, sister-in-law, nieces and Mom.  We had a blast!

My parents had a Halloween FHE at their house and all my siblings and nieces and nephews came. We ate dinner, the cousins decorated Halloween cupcakes, and chowed down on Halloween candy. 

 My Dad is a big Halloween fan and decorates his house with all these scary ghosts and skeletons. He's made moving candelabras, skeletons that come out of coffins, ghosts that fly around the yard, and floating ghosts in the windows. It's pretty impressive! This year he had a machine that made fog bubbles and the cousins had a blast popping them and releasing the fog.

 We tried to take a cousin picture in their costumes. I think we were only missing Cole. He wandered off when we were trying to get everyone to hold still for the pictures. 

Addy-Ladybug, Mckenna-Witch, Parker-Skeleton, Aubrey-Tinkerbell, Halle-Spanish Dancer, Hayden-Mr. Incredible, Blake-Cow, Ethan-Lion, Tucker-Bat, Austin-Winnie the Pooh 

We also got the cutest pictures of the two littlest members of our family. Addy and Austin were so cute in their costumes. Austin would tug on her tights and Addy pulled on his ears.  

 We tried to take a brothers picture...this was a close as we got since they were both getting tired. 

 We took them trick-or-treating at Dan's work and a trunk-or-treat at church and they came back with so much candy that it'll take months to eat it all!

It was a great Halloween! 

8 Months Old

I know, I know, I've been slacking on updating the blog. Two months and nothing. Well, lets get to it!

Austin is 8 months old! My sweet, not-so-little, chubby baby is getting so big!  He's always the happiest little guy with a big smile for everyone. 

When I say this kid's built like a tank, I mean he is seriously built like a tank. He's a solid chunk of baby blues and baby fat. I love his squishy-ness! He's an expert now at sitting up by himself and he's starting to do some kind of  army-crawl/scoot to get around. He loves rolling over to the entertainment center and pulling the Xbox and cable box off the shelves. Austin's also decided that Ethan's toys are fair game now and is often found with toy cars, trains, and anything else with wheels clutched in his meaty little hands.

He's grown out of all his 6-9 month clothes. Actually, he's almost out of all his 9 month and 6-12 month clothes too. 

 Ethan and Austin are good buddies and I see Ethan giving Austin toys to play with all the time. Either that or they start wrestling each other. Austin's getting pretty good at steamrolling Ethan and giving him a run for his money. 

 Austin loves his exersaucer and Daddy's hats. 

He excels at making messes too!

Love this boy!

Hover Conversions and Flux Capacitors

Last Tuesday, Dan and I received some bad news about our Murano.

We took it to the mechanic since it's been making weird creaking noises when you brake or accelerate. A day later he called us back and let us know that besides having, not one, but two bent axles, there was a long, long list of impressive sounding mechanical problems and major repairs that needed to be made. When the mechanic told me over the phone what was wrong, I tried to write them all down, gave up, then wrote, "Murano is broken." Sums it up nicely. I had no idea what most of the repairs meant and probably wasn't writing them down correctly anyway, but it boiled down to several thousand dollars worth of repairs. Not good.

It's not like we took the Murano off-roading or anything. It's a 2004 and has a lot of miles on it so it was things that were starting to break down with age. Nothing to do with how we drive. Nope. Not at all.

We had this crazy idea to sell the car before something major broke and we had to fix it. Oh well, too late. Luckily, we'd already been looking for a new car and after trying to decide between a crossover SUV with enough room for three carseats or a smaller, more gas-efficient car that Dan can take to work and then, whenever kiddo #3 comes along, we'll get an SUV as well.  In the end, gas-efficiency won out and we went shopping.

So here it is: Our 2011 Hyundai Elantra.

I think it looks so futuristic and modern. Dan and I joked about how it's only missing a hover conversion and a flux capacitor. In  short, we love it. It has lots of space, huge trunk, comfortable seats, and AMAZING gas mileage, like 40mpg on the freeway!  Not to mention, my hubby is one awesome negotiator and got us a fabulous trade-in price on the Murano and a great deal on this baby!

So we said goodbye Murano and Heellloo Elantra!

7 Months Old

Isn't he adorable!

Wow, my little baby is 7 months old!  And he isn't quite so little anymore!
I can't believe how fast this past month seems to have flown by.  I think Austin packed on about 5 solid pounds this month. This kid's built like a tank! He's very solid in the chest and I get a kick out of the rolls on his legs. He's never had them before and I love it!

And yes, those cheeks are as squishable and kissable as they look.

If I prop him up on his hands, he'll sit there for a minute or two before doing his best impression of a rolie-polie bug.

He's happy all the time and LOVES the camera! Good thing too, since he's so photogenic.

 Ethan kept telling me he wanted to hold Austin so I took advantage of it and got an impromptu photo-shoot of the two brothers. It's not often I can get both of them smiling at the same time and these turned out great!

Ethan's at the age where he loves to play and interact with Austin..perhaps a little more then I'd like considering the fading bruise on Austin's forehead where Ethan wanted to play trains. 

Still, they both enjoying playing together and I know it's only going to get better as they get older.

Who's New at the Zoo?

My friend Kylie invited us to go to the Hogle Zoo with her on her buddy pass. Free zoo tickets? Yes, please! And we had so much fun! Kylie has two kids as well, Kaleena, 2 1/2, and Duncan, 1. So we loaded all our kiddos and strollers into Kylie's van and off we went.

We got there early to avoid the heat and crowds, which was great until I realized that I forgot Austin's formula. I swear I forget something for the kids every time I leave the house.  So Kylie watched the kids and I took the baby and drove over to the store. Once I got back, the kids were more then ready to go check out the animals.

We couldn't find the otters. They must have been sleeping. 

 So we played at the log near the otter exhibit.  

Peek-a-boo Ethan!

 Ethan loved this statue. He wanted to climb up by himself. 

 We spent the majority of our time at the sea lion tank. The three sea lions and one harbor seal would swim in circles around their tank and always come right by this window. 

 It was cute watching Kaleena and Ethan get so excited when a sea lion would swim by.

 Kaleena and Ethan-best buds!

They didn't want to get back in the strollers so they held hands and tugged each other over to the windows so they could see the harbor seal better.  

 This is Big Guy. He's a blind rescued harbor seal. Since he can't see, he swims around in a big circle and then flops up onto the rock before jumping back in and swimming around again. They said he is almost 700lbs which is bigger then their polar bear!

 The polar bear enclosure was Ethan's favorite part of the day. The polar bear played with the kids at the window.

He did this over and over again. Ethan wasn't scared at all. I don't think he would have even squealed if it hadn't been for all the other little kids. He just turned around and smiled at me afterwards and told me "Fun! Fun, Momma!"

We also stopped by the Tiger enclosures.  

 I took Ethan and Kaleena on the carousel. Ethan loved riding the Elephant (he really was having a lot of fun) and Kaleena on her Cheetah. 

I took the kids inside the bird and reptile house. Ethan turned his hat around because he couldn't press his face up to the glass or enclosures with it forward. Funny kid. 

 We had a blast hanging out with Kylie and her kids at the zoo! 

Downtown for the Day

On Saturday afternoon, Dan and I took the boys downtown for a much needed field trip out of our apartment. Since we only have one car and Dan takes it to work, I'm left at home with the boys and a limited travel radius around our apartment complex since our area is really new and mostly just construction sites. It was severely limited since before last week we just had a single stroller and could only go as fast as my toddler could walk--which is about the same pace as a snail. 

We stop and look at bugs, cars, trees, tractors, dump trucks (from all the new construction around us), people, grass, and anything else that catches his eye. So this means that our daily activity usually means a walk to the apartment playground or to the hill overlooking the Trax station to watch the "choo-choos" go by.  I bring blankets to sit on and we sit in the shade and wait for the trains to go by. Ethan loves going to watch the Trax trains and this activity is frequently his reward for good behavior.  He's wanted to go on a train ride for a long time and it was such a nice day to go downtown.

We loaded the boys into our new Schwinn double stroller (which I love!) and walked down to the Trax station.

 Ethan eagerly watched for the train to pull up and was a little overwhelmed when it came rushing by. He was amazed at how fast the train went once we got underway. He even got Thomas the Train fruit snacks in honor of his first "train" ride.  

We got off downtown and walked over to Temple Square.  We took a little break on one of the benches on Temple Square since Ethan was getting antsy from being stuck in the stroller for so long. So we stopped and let him run around on the grass for a little while. 

My handsome men!

 Ethan needs his own sunglasses.

 We took Ethan inside the Visitor's Center to see the Christus statue for the first time. He saw it and excitedly started talking about Jesus Christ.  

I love going downtown at Christmas time to see the lights at Temple Square, the Nativity scenes, and the Christus statute.  We'll definitely be doing that with our kids this   If you stand in the middle of the room, right in front of the statue, the acoustics make your voice echo and everyone can hear you even when you talk softly.

We looked around at all the beautiful painting of scripture stories and Ethan pronounced every man with a beard as Jesus. I explained each picture to him and he was excited I said names and stories he recognized like Noah's Ark, Daniel and the Lion's Den, Adam and Eve, and Joseph Smith's First Vision. 

 Afterwards, we went over to the SL Temple and walked around the grounds. The flowers on the grounds are everywhere and smell fantastic! Ethan kept stopping to sniff them.  He climbed up the steps to the huge temple doors. He was upset that they wouldn't open.  

 I have pictures in these same alcoves next to the doors when I was about his age. 

 

 Hanging out by the beautiful flowers.

The Salt Lake Temple is so pretty!

  We walked around City Creek Mall for a little while and checked out the Disney store but didn't do any shopping. I mostly just wanted to see the retractable roof over the mall. The boys were fading fast so we went back to the station to go home. 

Our tired little boy waiting at the Trax station

 This was Austin pretty much the whole trip!

We got home just as the light was fading and the boys were sleepy. It was a fun little family trip downtown and Ethan was so happy that he got to ride the choo-choos!