Cedar Weddings Sky Fest 2010

Just one of the festivals that I love in Cedar! My kids love this every year.

Zi-AH-n

We love to make fun of everyone not from Utah that says Zion as "Zi-AH-n" instead of the hickish way we say it as "Zi-in." Okay I'm only mentioning it because we decided to use our national park pass from Kolob and to go to Zions since it was good for a week. So we packed up the kids and hiked Emerald Pools. It was a hike we've done before, but its always new fun with kids, especially kids that can hike on their own now. Anyways I love Saturdays that aren't spent cleaning or doing yard work (although the next week I can definitely tell when we've had such a mini-Saturday-vacation). And this Saturday was nuts. It was Zions till noon, then the Golden Corral in St. George for lunch, straight home to watch BYU get slaughtered by Airforce, then straight to the SUU football game, swing on by Little Ceasars for a 9:30 dinner and home for bed.
Anyways here's the pics from the day.

Check out this toy creation Seth and I made one day during quiet time. I think it was more fun to set up then play with but still cool dont you think?

If you could hie to Kolob....

Labor day weekend, we of course went hiking. I think its officially becoming a labor day tradition in our little family. So this year Neal and Brittlyn were here, so they came with us to Kolob, the Northern most part of Zions. They were smart and brought their national park pass....us...well, lets say $25 later we bought a one week pass to go on a 1 mile hike at the end of a road that took us only 10 minutes to get to. So there's not a whole lot of day hikes in Kolob, but it was still breathtakingly beautiful. And its nice to have actually gone to Kolob canyon since it seriously is like 15 minutes out of Cedar. The kids loved it and had a good time. Poor Brittlyn had a shadow seriously all weekend long cause Seth would not leave her side. But really its her own fault. Anyone who spends 2 and 1/2 hours playing trains with him Saturday morning is bound to win his undying affection for life.

Neal and his girlfriend Brittlyn

Seth's first day of Pre-school

Seth has officially started school (well preschool) but he LOVES it. The first day, he had a mini melt down when I left, but apparently he just lied down on the couch they have for reading and eventually calmed down enough when they got out some snacks. He told me he fell asleep on the couch and when he woke up, he was happy and not crying anymore. I never did ask his teacher if he really did fall asleep. But if he did that would explain the reason for him being so irrationally sad when I dropped him off the first day. And I totally feel responsible for this one because we kept him up too late the night before at Cordelle's work party. Bad mother moment. So we went to bed early that night and the next day he was pumped and ready to go back so no harm done.
The only other preschool mishap we had was this last week. Apparently he really had to go to the bathroom and being the shy, non-confrontational kid that he is, just kept on going to his stations and outside for free-time before he had a little accident and then was hysterical about it (because that is the way he reacts if even the tiniest bit of anything gets on his underware) and probably because he's never done that before. Seriously, when his teacher called me cause he wanted to go home and change, I almost didnt believe her cause Seth almost never had any accidents the whole time he was potty training or since. But of course here at preschool he would. I felt so bad for him, cause I think he truly was just embarrassed about it. But his darling teacher Mrs. Douglas was great with him and reminded him that he could always tell her if he needed to go and showed him again and again where the bathrooms were. Come to find out, Cordelle did the same thing in Kindergarten, so maybe this is somehow genetically his fault. :) Needless to say I MAKE him go twice before leaving in the morning now. I'm glad he's too young to be afraid of what the other kids might think of him. That part of real school does not excite me. But he was ready and determined the next day to tell Mrs. Douglas if he needed to go to the bathroom. So lesson learned. Anyways I LOVE having some one on one time with Jaq and I think he really does love school. So I'm glad I decided to put him in even if he will do 2 years of preschool.

We have GRASS in our backyard

It was a CRAZY busy two weeks, where I didnt see Cordelle from the second he'd get home till way after the kids were in bed. And poor Krista, my neighbor, felt my pain, as her saintly husband helped Cordelle every step of the way. But now...grass....no more weeds and 8,000 sq. ft later we have a mini soccer field! I love it!

Being silly on the back porch

We were out on the porch the other night and started taking these random pictures! Some Cordelle took, but most were taken by Seth (if he's not in them, he's taking it), and I think we were finally able to get one or two with a timer. Anyways it was a random fun family photo shoot.

We've been seeing this one a lot with our announcements so we were trying to recreate it....its not so romantic with a weathered wooden chair and bbque in the background.

This and that

My first random pics come from my August project...Seth's room. This was a PROJECT. Between leveling, marking, painting, taping, re-painting....caulking, the chair rail...and then kids walking in, leaning their backs against wet paint....it might be awhile before I attack Jaq's room.

This is a fun hair-do, I was so proud of. I stole it from my super cute neighbor friends, but then had to snap a pic cause who knows if Jaq will ever let me do this again. :)

We love our humming bird friends. We fill up our 4 humming bird feeders 1-2 times a week. We've had up to 5 birds out there at once....they are such cool creatures. They fight and are very territorial, its such a fun part of our summers.

Okay, this may not look as big as it was....but try opening your door and having this stare you in the face...its leg to leg span was like 3 inches! Seriously the biggest spider I've seen around here in a long time. And then to make it weirder, I found 2 of them in the same day. Gross, I hate spiders.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SETH!!!

Handsome Birthday BOY!!!

Of course Jaq wasnt a big fan of all the attention going to Seth, so I snapped this one of her and it was cute, so I thought, eh I'll post it.

Birthday hug! Sometimes they can be sweet.

So on August 15 it was Seth's birthday!! It was a Sunday so our plans were a little limited, provided we wanted to keep the sabbath day holy :). But we gave him some new Sunday clothes that he was able to open before church....and doesnt he look handsome? He desperately needed a new white shirt, and new dark socks...and the poor kid with his birthday in August is bound to get school clothes for the rest of his educational life.When Cordelle was able to to come home with us after church (he has meetings all morning long), we opened the rest of his presents which included more school clothes, a remote control car and a nerf gun. Cordelle was completely against more toys, repeatedly telling me how many toys the kids have, but you cant have a 4 year old's birthday and not give him toys! (So I compromised and gave him clothes AND toys!) So we spent the afternoon playing with those, finished off the day with a family bike ride and overall had a pretty chill, nice day.The big excitement came when I completely lost my marbles and decided to invite 12 kids all under the age of 5 to a birthday party at the park. THIS WAS BONKERS! I had short quick games planned, but even those games kept their attention spans for probaby 2-3 minutes, if that. Luckily, we were at a park so they could run, I had our good friend Ryan tie balloons, and cake and icecream took a long time. And check out this cake that my friend Patrice made....its so perfect! She's starting a cake blog...so I told her I'd put her link. Check it out. cakesbypatrice.blogspot.com I did however do a big treasure hunt that led to their party bags which was a huge hit, and probably the only time in the 90 minutes I had their complete attention. I think parents are wise in waiting till their kids are just a little older to do birthday parties. Ah, well. I guess you live and learn. But I'll tell you, I was frazzled. Especially because half way through Seth was running on the pavillion concrete and slid and whacked his head so hard that it left him with this shiner!Can you believe the size of this thing? So for about 25 minutes I was trying to convince a crying 4 year old that he didnt want to go home from his own birthday party. HA! I think overall it was fun, and the kids were cute...but man....okay enough complaining on my part, I think aside from the bump on the head, Seth had a good birthday. (...bump on the head....wasnt that like a birthday gift tradition when we were little?....random, but fitting.)