Long Time Coming

Yes, it's been forever since I've done anything with the blog. And I think probably too much has gone on in the last 5 months to really catch up, but I will add some pictures and stuff.

At the end of July, we went to Utah to visit family and to go to the family reunion. While we were there, we took the kids to Temple Square to see things, since we hadn't done that with them before. They had a good time. Here are some pictures:







Shortly before school started, Ben and Alex both learned how to ride their bikes. They hadn't really wanted to try, but I finally fixed the tire on one of our smaller bikes (yes, I did all by myself) and they were willing to try on that one, after I bugged them about it enough. It really only took them each a couple of minutes to figure it out, and now they love riding their bikes all over. I have videos of them riding, but not still pictures, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Then school started on August 18th for Ben and Alex. Ben was going into the 3rd grade with Mrs. Roderick as his teacher, and Alex was going into the 1st grade with Mrs. Escutia as his teacher. They were both pretty excited for school to start, but not so excited for me to take their picture on the first day of school.



A couple of weeks after Ben and Alex started school, Chris had his 5th birthday and then started preschool a few days after. He actually could have started Kindergarten this year, but with his birthday being the day before the cutoff, we thought it would be best to hold him back a year. So far he loves preschool and says he's the smartest one in his class, which is probably true, since he can already read a little bit.





We had a big day during Labor Day weekend. Ben was baptized! We had lots of family come up for it, which he loved. He said his favorite part was being in the water because it was warm, so he didn't mind when he had to do it twice. His friend Jayden was baptized the same day and he had to do it twice too, so Ben thought that was pretty fun. Thanks to everyone who came up and made it even more special for him!



I think I'll end this one now and post pictures from Halloween and Christmas and Alex's birthday later after I upload the pictures from my new camera to the computer. Hopefully it won't take 5 months. :)

4th of July, Ben's birthday

We enjoyed a quiet 4th of July at home this year. Bryce had a nice 4 day weekend, so that was nice. Of course we ended up with too many fireworks to light on just one night, but we didn't go as overboard as we have in the past. And this year, Chris and Daniel actually stayed out and watched them instead of running into the house and sometimes peeking out the front window. Daniel did go run inside after I mentioned that they had been actually staying out, but I don't think he was actually scared. And Abby loved the fireworks and wanted to see more.

Here are some pictures from our nights. Since Abby put our camera in the toilet, I've been having to take everything with my phone. Luckily, the phone is a 5.0 megapixel camera too.










And if you've seen any of my posts on facebook, you've heard about Daniel breaking his right big toe (or great toe, as all the doctors and nurses called it) by dropping a big rock on it 2 minutes after I told him to stop playing with the rocks. He was upset when he saw the cut on his toe and kept yelling, "It's broken! It's broken!" But after he calmed down, he was pretty good about it and even entertained all the doctors and nurses to the point where they all said they wanted to keep him there all night. And as we were leaving the ER( we had gone to a Quick Care place where they took the x-ray first, then sent us to the ER where they'd be better equipped to be able to deal with an open fracture, even though the fracture was an in-place fracture and the cut on his toe was caused by the rock, not by the break), Daniel was very cute and kept telling everyone he saw, "Thanks for fixing my toe!" And if you missed the pictures on facebook, here they are again:





And Ben celebrated his 8th birthday this month. Since it's an even-numbered birthday, he got to have a friend party and decided he wanted to go bowling. The problem with birthday parties in the summer is the large number of kids invited who were going out of town that weekend, so didn't get to go. He still ended up with 3 friends plus his family there, so it was fun. He even got a bowling pin from the bowling alley at his party, which was pretty cool.








And Alex lost his second tooth recently, which wasn't the one we thought would come out second, but he was still pretty excited to get another visit from the tooth fairy.

A few more odds and ends

As I stated in the previous (or next, depending on the order you read them) post, I went to Youth Camp this year. I was really glad I was able to go for the whole week, and really grateful that Bryce was able to take the time off to be with the kids. The camp was amazing. I think we all came out of it with stronger testimonies and a firmer resolve to do what is right. We had a lot of fun, we froze, we laughed, we cried, we ate really yummy food, and just had a really good week. I was a little sad to see it end. I didn't take many pictures up there, but here are a few I did take.

On the Thursday morning, we had a nature walk/values presentation. We were divided into 7 groups and would go to each station as some of the lites (laurels) presented a little thing on each of the values before we met back together to talk about the 8th value, Virtue. These two pictures are taken during that walk. It's Rebecca and her friend (whose name escapes me right now) and Makenna is with them in the second:



We each did ward skits on the Wednesday night where we were assigned a scripture and acted that out and then showed how it applies to us today. These other 3 pictures are from that. The last is of one of the other leaders, Jenny, who would probably kill me if she saw this picture. The other two are of the skit:





The Sunday after I got back from camp, Alex got a special treat: he lost his very first tooth. He's got both bottom new teeth coming through, so it was about time one came out, but I don't think it was early enough to save him from getting braces. Poor kid. Not really surprising though. Here are a couple of pictures of him with his newly lost tooth:




And here are a couple more pictures. Abby finally started taking a couple of steps a little over a month ago, although it would only be a couple and she was pretty chicken to try more. She's walking all over the place now though. The first is a picture Ben took of her walking, although she was walking with her walker toy here. Isn't she cute?



And now this last picture is just one of Daniel, Abby, and Chris playing in the laundry basket. Abby wasn't too thrilled to be in the basket, but she does like playing with her brothers:

Daniel Turns 3

Daniel turned the big 3 on June 15th. Because I was heading to Youth Camp (basically Girl's Camp with boys), early on the morning of his birthday, we celebrated his birthday the Saturday before. He was a little sick, but felt pretty good most of the day.

We went to Primos for lunch, which is one of our kids' favorite restaurants. They love the all you can eat pizza, especially the garlic cheese pizza and the cookie dough dessert pizza.

When we got home from the dinner, we let him open his presents and then had cake and ice cream. Since Daniel's favorite color is orange, he wanted orange frosting on his chocolate cake and cupcakes. He also loves marshmallows, so they're decorated with some of those as well.










Earlier in the day, Bryce and Jarom went over to a house where some people in our ward had recently moved out and told Bryce that we could have their old swingset, and brought it over and set it up. Daniel was of course convinced that it was another one of his birthday presents. Here's Bryce setting up the last part of it:


And just for comparison, here's a picture of Daniel when he was just a tiny baby. He was 7 weeks old here:

Alex Graduates from Kindergarten

The last day of school for the boys was June 3rd this year. On that day, Alex officially graduated from Kindergarten. Yes, I do think that Kindergarten graduations are a bit silly, but he was pretty excited about it. Unlike Ben, he actually sang the songs with the rest of the kids and did the actions. He got his regular award for completing Kindergarten, with his teacher talking about how he's already working on 1st Grade sight words, plus another one for being a super homework kid, since he was one of the few kids in his class who turned in all the homework stuff throughout the whole year.

Here are a couple of pictures I got from my phone with that. Alex is in the middle in the green shirt, next to the kid with the red shirt. Yes, I did have some video too, but the same thing happened with those videos as with the video of Chris in the previous post.




I think Alex's favorite part of the whole thing was after the presentations when they got to have cookies and punch outside. He ate lots of cookies.