Momentous Occasion

We've been in our house for 2 months and we can FINALLY fit both cars in the garage! What a great day! To be honest I thought this wouldn't happen until it started getting cold & snowy, but Trev surprised me and organized things so we could park both cars in the garage.

Good thing there's some extra space on the other side of the garage to fit the rest of our junk, otherwise we wouldn't have one car in the garage forget two!

Thanks, hon, it's so nice to have both cars in the garage! Now if we can just get our yard done....

Bear Lake

Trevor and I had such a wonderful weekend this past weekend. We went with our group of good friends to Bear Lake for three days without any kids! The Empey's hooked us up with an awesome condo that was right off the beach and a fancy boat that everyone drooled over every time we went out.

Here's a group shot of all of us (minus Sarah, who's taking the picture). Joel, Jen, Lindsey, Paul, Kelly, Zak, Me, Trev, and Cam. I'm not sure what we're eating in this picture but we had some AWESOME eats while we were up there. (Although I must say, Trev and I were only in charge of ONE meal, and we forgot the main part of it at home. Good thing there was more than enough food to make leftovers with!) We all brought snacks as well and had a "treat trough" that we indulged ourselves in.

We went on the lake all three days and had a blast! It was just nice to relax and enjoy the beautiful surroundings and great company.


Here's a picture of Joel putting us all to shame wakeboarding. I only attempted once and only barely got out of the water. Oh well.

This is Trevor and Paul attempting to tube at the same time. They decided it was too small for two and were to insecure with their masculinity to go at the same time.

In the evenings we hung out, ate like pigs, and played Rock Band (Thank you Erwins!). Yes, that is me with a towel on top of my head looking oh so attractive.

One of the mornings we were there the boys went golfing so the girls went out. The nearest movie theatre, spa, etc is a good 30-45 minutes away so we decided to rent a bicycle built for four and take a stroll around the city. Good thing none of our butts are too big, because there were five of us! We had the funnest time strolling around Garden City and were all exhausted by the time we got back.

We are so lucky to have such a great group of friends! We all have so much fun and there's never a dull moment when we're together. The time definitely went by too fast, and we're looking forward to doing this again!

It was so nice to get away and leave the kids at home (thank you SO much Shel and Marc for making this possible for us!!!). This was definitely the longest we'd ever left Brooklyn, but we didn't worry at all because they were in great hands. They seemed to have a blast while we were gone because they weren't even that excited when we went to go pick them up! They went swimming, rode ponies, went to the park, etc. (look at Shel & Marc's blog to see all the fun pictures).

(Thanks to Sarah and Kelly of the great pictures. I still can't believe I forgot our camera!)

Lagoon

A couple of weeks ago (I know, I know, I'm back-blogging again, but I just need to get caught up! ) Tara and I took the kiddos to Lagoon. It was our Stake's Lagoon Day so we got free walk-in passes as well as tickets to go on the train and carousel. We debated about buying Jace a regular admission so he could ride all the kiddy rides but I'm glad we didn't! When you first walk into the park there's a big fountain, and that's only thing Jace wanted to do! He is such my water baby!

This was the constant expression on Jace's face. We're just lucky he was looking at the camera at the same time. It's so hard to get pictures of him while he's playing because he won't stop at all.

Here's Jace testing out the water.

Jace gets mad every time the water stopped. He'd point down and say "wahduh". He got daring when the water stopped and would run into the middle of the fountain. This is where all the fountains around the circle meet and there's a TON of water. One time he ran out there and got stuck under all of the water. He was pretty scared. So was I, which is why there's no picture of it!

Here's Jace running out of the middle of the fountain after being caught in the middle of the downpour. (He got braver as the day went on).

We eventually convinced (okay, more like forced) Jace away from the fountain and went on a train ride. Here's the four of us waiting for the ride to begin.

Here's Jace and "Wuh wuh" having some fun on the train.

Jace is turning into such a big boy! He wants to sit all by himself. He loved the train and seeing all of the different animals.


Brooklyn loved the train too!

At first Jace wanted to sit on the little bear, but then he decided to move on to bigger and better things.

Here's Brooklyn on her pretty pony.

Look at that sweet mug. I love her teethy smile!

Thanks, Tara, for spending the day with us, it was a blast!

Weeds

So this blog is a bit outdated (I've been busy reading), and many of you may know this story, but I still wanted to share...

If anyone has been to our house, you know we have had a SERIOUS weed problem. These pictures are just of the front yard, the back yard was MUCH worse! So Trevor decided he would weed eat all the weeds. This took many long hours in the hot sun (on Trev's part, me and the kids watched from the air conditioned house!). When he was finished, he raked all the weeds to the middle of the dirt and decided to burn them.

Yes, I know, I didn't think he should be burning them either but Trevor has his own way of doing things, and sometimes it's not worth arguing with. So one evening he told all our neighbors about the fire, had a hose and shovel ready if things got out of hand, and started his burn. I stayed in the house because I didn't condone this activity.

About 45 minutes later Trevor came in the house and was all excited about something. He asked if I had been looking out the window. I told him I saw the fire but had been sitting on the couch watching TV. He proceeded to tell me how he had been visited by a policeman and firetruck and that apparently it's "illegal" to burn weeds in your front yard. Hmmm...maybe he should have listened to his wife! He didn't get a citation or anything, but I don't think he'll be starting any fires any time soon! I was just mad I didn't get any pictures for our blog! Here's a picture of the burnt remains...

Addicted

I should NOT be allowed to read! It encompasses my whole life and nothing else seems to get done. I'm not a normal person that can just read a couple chapters a day before I go to bed or read some here and there. I become encompassed and can't focus on anything else until I finish a book. And then when I finish I'm almost sad, in a way, that I didn't draw the book out longer and enjoy it a little more.

Well, last week (or so) the final book in the Twilight series came out and I decided I wanted to read (well, in this case, listen to) the first three books again to get myself all pumped for the last one. Tara so lovingly put them on my i-pod and I listened to all three in a week. I listened when I went on a walk with the kids in the morning, I listened while driving. Books on tape are such a wonderful thing! I finally finished on Monday and decided I wanted to read, instead of listen, to the final book since it would be my first time through. Anyway, I'm finally finished and now my life can go back to normal. Trevor is ecstatic to have his wife back and is excited to come home to a clean house instead of the mess he's been coming home to this past week. He hates it when I read! I guess I'll take a break until I read Harry Potter before the next movie comes out, unless anyone has a good suggestion for a new book for me to get addicted to!?

Happy Birthday, Jace!

Well, today is my little boy's special day. Two years ago (at 5:18 pm to be specific) I gave birth to my Jace Man. My life hasn't been the same since.












What happened to my little boy?! It seems like only yesterday we were taking him home from the hospital, and now he's TWO?! He wanted to get in Brooklyn's car seat today, and kept saying "buckle" (they barely fit) but I thought it would be a good way to show how big he's gotten. I can't believe how much our lives have changed in the past two years and how happy I am to be Jace's mom. He certainly keeps me on my toes, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Jace decided since it was his birthday he would sneak a cupcake early. He reached up and plucked it from the counter and shoved it in his face.


Here's Jace's cake. You can't really tell from the picture, but it's supposed to be a bouquet of balloons. Jace LOVES "noons", so I did this cupcake cake just for him.

We had a birthday party at "Mama" and "Gampga" Barnes' house since our yard consists of weed, dirt, and earwigs! Jace made out like a bandit! He got fun toys to play in the sand with, a lawn mower, a sprinkler attachment, a train, and a swing set (although we haven't been able to put it up yet because our yard is not quite a yard yet).

Even though Jace got a lot of fun stuff, his favorite things were the balloons and water. He decided to mix the balloons in the water to make it even funner!

Brooklyn was quite content playing with anything she could get her hands on. She particularly liked the tissue paper. (Now we know what to get her for her birthday!)

The day was not without a little blood and tears. Jace tripped and bumped his lip on a toy. Poor guy!

Jace started out with one cupcake and was pretty excited about it! He didn't quite understand to blow out the candles, he just pointed at the flame.

He decided that two cupcakes were funner than one. Eventually, he added a third, but didn't eat much of any of them. I was kind of disappointed because last year he devoured the cupcake and shoved it in his face. He had frosting everywhere! This year he barely touched them.

All of the kids had fun running around "Barnes Park". Here's Rylan, Kylee, and Dylan playing on the teeter-totter. Jace just loves his cousins!

When we got home, there was another present waiting for Jace. He wanted to play ball all night and had a hard time going to bed.

Jace seemed to have a pretty good day, and we were all exhausted by the end.

We were sad that Trev's family was not here to celebrate Jace's special day with us, but are happy we were able to see them last month.

We are so blessed to have Jace in our family, and it's fun to celebrate his birth. I hope Jace will always know how special he is to me and how much I celebrate the day they entered the world. It's not just his day to celebrate, it's mine too.

Splash Pad

There's a new park in South Ogden that has a Splash Pad that we absolutely LOVE! There are two playgrounds, lots of grassy area, a gazebo with picnic benches, and most importantly a large area with all sorts of fountains and water where the kids can run around and get wet. This is right up Jace's alley because he is obsessed with water! I've been really impressed with him too, he's really brave and isn't afraid to get drenched.

Brooklyn has enjoyed the park as well, and loves to sit by the little fountains and splash her hands around. It's funny, because whenever she crawls on hard surfaces she crawls on her feet instead of her hands!

Here are some really fun pictures my friend Becky took of Tara and I with the kids a couple of weeks ago.

It's been such a relief to have a fun place to go and cool off this summer, especially since it's FREE! We're just bummed because it's only 2-3 minutes from our old house, and now it's about 20 minutes away. Oh well, it's certainly worth the drive!