Kindergarten Christmas Program

Savannah could hardly contain her excitement about her Christmas program this year.  She was always practicing her songs and telling me all about what they were going to do.  The girl loves to sing! I am so impressed with how quickly she can learn the words to songs.

The whole program was so cute!  They had a lot of parts where the kids could dance around and be silly, but Savannah would have none of it.  She is totally fine belting out a song, but asking her to dance in front of a lot of people is going too far I guess.

Sooo cute!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Montana.  We always love our trips to Belt!  It was nice to be able to visit with family.  We of course, had a really yummy dinner and even did my first ever Black Friday shopping.  How did it go? Meh...it was okay.  Probably won't happen again.  

 We always have to walk down to see the swinging bridge.  Savannah loves it, Maxwell hates it.

We have been sorting through some pictures, and I realized how bad we are about getting pictures of our whole family together, so much to my family's dismay, I am going to start making them take pictures all of the time.  Maxwell even gave a sweet thumbs up!
Happy Thanksgiving!

Sawyer

Our little boy turned 1 last month!  Isn't he cute?

 We had a small little family party for him.  He did invite his best buddy, Houston over for some cake.  We gave him a cute little animal train that looks suspiciously like the same train Savannah received for her first birthday.  He doesn't seem to mind though.

 He really hadn't had many treats before his birthday cake, and he loved it!  None of my kids have ever pounded their birthday cake quite like this kid!  He has kind of been a treat junkie ever since.

We are so happy to have Sawyer in our family.  He sleeps great for the most part, but is picky about being in his bed to sleep.  He rarely falls asleep in the car/stroller/anywhere but bed.  You can always tell he is tired in the car when he talks to himself a lot.  I guess he is trying to keep himself awake.  He loves his brother and sister despite his many battle wounds from playing with them.  He is a great shopper, and is almost always happy while we run errands.  I guess he just loves to be out and about.
Sawyer hates to me thrown in the air at all.  He is kind of a chicken and wants to be hanging on with both hands at all times.  He is a pretty major momma's boy right now, but every now and then he will take a liking to other people.
 He practices blowing spit bubbles all of the time, and can now blow some pretty impressive ones.  He loves sticking out his tongue and trying to copy words/actions we do.  The kid can make a serious mess too!  I swear he is trying to make me crazy because he always hits the spoon full of food out of my hand, so it goes flying!  I have to sweep under the high chair probably 5 times a day.  He also sits and waits all day for the bathroom door to be left open.  If we forget to close it, he will be in there splashing in the toilet in a matter of seconds.  Last week I left him alone downstairs for a few minutes.  I suddenly realized the bathroom door might be open and raced down to check.  It was too late.  He had gotten in the toilet paper stash and shredded parts of 4 different rolls.  When I walked in, he was standing in a pile of shredded toilet paper, splashing away in the toilet.  Gross!  He definitely keeps us busy, but we sure do love him!

Lake Powell

This year, Matt's big work party was at Lake Powell.  Sawyer got to spend the weekend with his Aunt Jennie, while the rest of us camped out at the lake.  We had a great time!

 One of the guys caught this frog right away, and Savannah would not leave it alone!  We kept trying to free him, and he just kept coming back.  Poor thing was loved to death....literally.

 The water was a little chilly, but the kids didn't mind.  Considering it was October, it was a lot warmer than we expected.

 We came across some beautiful mermaids, just lounging around on the beach.

 Getting to play with trucks in the mud all day long is pretty much heaven for these boys!

I had almost forgotten how much I love Lake Powell!  Thanks to the Gordons for entertaining Sawyer!  He had a great time too!

There is really no reason to pause an exciting game of hide-and-seek just because someone needs to go potty!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I turned the big 30 last month, and am officially old now.  I wanted to go for a little family hike for my birthday.  We went up Payson canyon and hiked The Grotto.  It is a perfect little hike for our kids.  There were lots of fun bridges to cross, and a lot of places where the trail would split then meet back up. Savannah loved taking her own way.

 Sawyer loved being carried around in the pack.  He is pretty darn cute!

 I love when these two are cute little buddies.

 The hike ends at a cool waterfall.  I didn't take any good pics because there happen to be a ton of kids up there.  Some scout groups were there I think.

Next, we headed higher up the canyon.  Matt wanted to take us to an area he had been hunting.  I love living in such a beautiful area!  It was amazing!

 Savannah picked me tons of wildflowers for my birthday.  The girl loves to pick flowers!

It was a great day!  We came home and had yummy salad and breadsticks with an ice cream cake.  Being old isn't so bad!

Visitors

We were lucky to get lots of visitors this summer.  We saw several of Matt's siblings and their families.  Unfortunately I didn't take a whole lot of pictures when everyone was here.  Pam and her kids stayed for a week.  We rode horses, got bucked off a horse, went up the canyon, and went to the Ute Stampede.  The next week we went to Tremonton for a BBQ with Chris and Janet and Rory and Kathy. There, we got to chase chickens, ride on a cart pulled by a donkey, and have baby cows suck on our fingers!   A little while after that, Marcy and Britney came with their kids.  We packed that week full of shopping, playing at the Spanish Fork Res, and 4-wheeling up the canyon.  It was fun for our kids to be able to play with cousins they don't get to see very often.  Here are a few of the pics I did take:

 These cute girls got along so well!  They spent a lot of time picking wild flowers up the canyon.

 The boys, on the other hand spent a lot of time playing in the dirt and driving the 4-wheeler.

 Look at that dirty face!  A sure sign they had a good time.

1st day of school

Savannah is so excited to be in Kindergarten this year!  She is growing up way too fast!

 She is lucky to have so many neighbor friends that go with her.

She has been so excited to be able to ride the school bus, and I think it must be everything she hoped for.      She loves it!

24th of July

I love that we have two July holidays in Utah!  Mapleton does a little parade every Pioneer day.  It is pretty small, but the kids love it because they get to be in it with the ward Primary float.  This year, they wanted to ride the donkey, Batman behind the float.  Sawyer and I watched from the side to cheer them on.  Joe and Heidi came with their family too.

Isn't Batman so cute?
The rest of the day was pretty low key.  Mapleton put on a big concert/fireworks in the park that night.  We had a great view from our front porch.  It really was an amazing firework show!  I hope they do it every year.  We are so grateful for the pioneers.  The sacrifices they made and they faith they had amazes me!

Nap time

A few weeks ago we went to the Spanish Fork Reservoir.  It was a fun day to just play on a beach and ride around in the paddle boat.  Even though it was only a 5 minute drive back home, the kids completely crashed.  Usually they wake up as soon as we stop, but Maxwell stayed sound asleep.  I carried him in and just put him on the floor while I went back to get another load from the car.  I couldn't believe he just stayed this way.  He must have been so tired.  Sometimes I wish I could just be carried in from the car and crash like that.

 Sawyer loves his Johnny jumper he borrowed from his cousin.  He will just bounce forever!  One morning while he was bouncing, I went to clean the bathrooms.  I was surprised he was so content for so long, so I went to check on him.  He was completely crashed in it.  It was so funny because every now and then he would snap his head back up, jump up and down a few times, then fall right back to sleep.  Poor kid.

Ode to Mille :)

We miss you Johnson family!

 

Our neighbors moved a few weeks ago, and we were sad to see them go.  I found these pictures of my kids playing with their buddy, Millie.  Hope you guys are loving Boston!

Independence Day!

It's pretty rare for me to want to go anywhere bad enough to deal with a crowd.  It's not that I don't like people, I just don't like lots of them in one place.  This year, that all changed.  I was really excited to get up super early and do all of the fun things everyone else does.  We started off with cinnamon rolls for Savannah's birthday breakfast, then headed to the park for the hot-air balloons. 

Poor Sawyer was so tired.

 I guess it was a bad year to finally do this.  The balloons didn't even fly.  The winds were to high, so they just inflated them for us to see.  It was still pretty cool.

 Savannah got to go touch them as the filled with air.

 Darth Vader and the Piggy were the big hits!

We hadn't planned on staying for the parade, but Matt's Aunt and Uncle were there with their family.  They were nice enough to share their spot and snacks with us.

 Savannah's 9am cotton candy.  Oh well, it was her birthday!

 I loved how everyone stands and cheers for the missionaries!  We love the missionaries!

I honestly don't remember what we did during the day.  I'm pretty sure there was a nap and a donkey ride involved.  That evening we got together with family and friends for a BBQ and fireworks.  We had the best of both worlds this year with the fireworks.  We got to set off all of our own in front of my brother's house, but we also had a great view of all of the neighbor's aerial ones.

I love the 4th of July!  Really, who doesn't?