July 2009

Happy Fourth of July! Our traditional July 4th activities include: going out to breakfast, fishing at the fish farm, coming home and cooking our fish and having a fun themed Americana dinner. This year we decided to add roasting marshmellows on the BBQ to make smores. Yum! We also thought it would be fun to have a pinata and the boys loved it. It took a lot of hits to get that candy out.

Happy Birthday to James! 5 years old! He wanted to have a Star Wars birthday so we went all out - even making Jedi costumes for him and his friends. Of course Alan and I had to have costumes at the party since we were the Jedi Masters! It turned out really cute and he had a blast.

Alan and I went to France together this month. Since Alan speaks French from his mission, this makes this experience all the better as people can understand us! We spent a couple of days in the south of France and saw probably 50 different fields of lavender - one place had 52 acres of it. It smelled sooo good. We also spent a couple of days in Paris.

This is a Roman Aquaduct - it is gigantic! We had such an awesome time.

Our hotel in Paris was just down the street from the Eiffel Tower. Each night the whole thing would sparkle on the hour every hour for five minutes. It was so pretty!

This is me in front of a Monet waterlily painting at a museum we went to in the Tuileries in Paris. Monet actually designed the museum around these paintings. They were amazing.

June 2009

Happy Birthday to Mom! Nothing beats a fun filled day with all my boys. James and Jacob were so excited for me to open presents and have cake.

James was so excited to buy some face paint and to have a mask painted on his whole face. He LOVED it! Jacob thought his rocket was pretty cool as well.

Father's Day! James and Jacob were very excited to give
Dad their cards they had made for him.

May 2009

Mother's Day. Each year we go to Thanksgiving Point to the Mother's Day Brunch. It is so much fun - great company, great food - no clean up!

You have to love Build-a-Bear. The boys each choose a turtle to stuff but James dressed his in a karate uniform
and Jacob dressed his in a Spiderman costume.

Alan's brother Kevin has a boat and the lakes in Arizona feel like warm bath water so when we were visiting we all decided to go up to the lake together. The boys had fun riding in Kevin's blow-up tube behind the boat and so did Alan and I....at least when the speed wasn't too fast!

Playing in the pool in Arizona. Here is Alan and the boys with Alan's mom in the background. Both James and Jacob LOVE swimming. James just got to where he can swim without using floaties anymore (but with adult supervision of course!) and Jacob loves bobbing around in the pool with his floaties. Nothing beats a day of sunny fun in the pool.

Jacob had his Springtime show at gymnastics. He was awesome and Dad loved being his helper. Jacob has taken Mom-and-Me gymnastics for the last year.

James loves going to Karate. This is his teacher - Master Oliver. He just earned his tiny tiger yellow belt today. He did a great job!

April 2009

Each year at Easter time we make bunny cakes out of two 10" round cake pans. I cut them out and then hand the frosting and decorations to the boys. They love it and then love eating them. Alan and I watch and don't share in the eating since there are about a good inch of sprinkles on there but the boys love it!

Easter Time! We have the typical Easter traditions - we dye eggs (even Alan and I would dye eggs before the boys were born!) and then the Easter Bunny hides them that night. Easter morning the boys get to open their Easter baskets which are full of fun treats, small toys and then new Easter Sunday clothes. After that they race around the house finding the eggs. This year they loved eating the eggs which was a little funny since neither of them would eat the yellow center!

Easter Sunday! The boys looked so cute in their Sunday outfits.

Lagoon! This year we bought Lagoon Summer Passes and it is so nice to go in April when it isn't boiling hot! The boys absolutetly LOVE it...even Alan!

March 2009

Here we are at our neice Miya's second birthday party. The boys are excited for her to start opening her presents!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Each year we start off the day with a GREEN breakfast. This year we had green milk, green pancakes and green scrambled eggs. Honestly -- it works better to just swallow it down REALLY fast without looking at it because it makes you feel a little...um....green.

Disney On Ice. We went to the Energy Solutions Center in Salt Lake to see the show with James and Jake. They loved it and it really got us all excited for going to Disneyland the very next week.

Disneyland!!! We LOVE going to Disneyland - riding the rides, seeing parades and getting great Disney souvenirs.
James' favorite part this year was being choosen to be a part of the Jedi Training Academy over in Tommorowland. He was also the only one out of 20 kids to get to fight Darth Vadar. He used the force and was victorious! He has wondered many times since why he cannot use the force to move objects around the house though....

The boys are at that great age where they LOVE to see the characters. Jacob was especially excited to see Tigger and was also a little tired -- I think he would have just gone to sleep in Tigger's arms if they would have let us hang around.

Me & James on the Buzz Lightyear ride. The boys do a great job shooting all of the targets. Alan and I "compete" to see who comes out ahead at the end score. Alan usually schools me.

I LOVE this cupcake store in California called Sprinkles. My favorite flavor is red velvet. Each time we go to California we also take a stop at my favorite little snack store.

No trip to California is complete without a stop at the beach. The boys had a blast collecting shells and hunting for "treasures" like cool stones, seaweed or little crabs and digging in the sand.

February - Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day! We made chocolate covered Strawberries. The boys thought that is was awesome!

In addition to strawberries we made lobster, shrimp and crab legs for our family Valentine's day dinner. One of James and Jake's favorite things to eat is crab legs. We had lots of fun eating all of that seafood for dinner! We need to have this be a new tradition. We do have a morning Valentine tradition - we always have little gifts at the breakfast table and have a yummy breakfast together.

We took a trip down to St. George, Utah on the way to Scottsdale, Arizona to visit Alan's parents. Alan has some family in St. George who own horses and the boys LOVED going horse back riding.

Fun in the sun. One of our favorite things to do in Arizona is to go to a Train Park where they have a carousel, huge playground, old western town playground and a miniature train that goes around the whole park that you get to ride on. Here we are with Alan's parents just about to go around the park for a ride.

January Fun

We went to the Draper Temple open house with James and Jacob. When we walked into the Celestial Room, Jacob's mouth dropped open at seeing the huge chandelier and he said, "Whoa!" James really liked seeing the sealing rooms and the baptism font. It is a beautiful temple but a REALLY cold day to see it!

We have so much fun playing in the snow! We make snowmen, have snowball fights and make snow angels.