Experimenting with Colors…

Who knew…

Water…

Some food coloring…

Bowls…

Spoons…

Measuring cups…

And two adorable children

Could provide so much fun!

 

A very good month

July is one of my favorite months of the year.  The weather is always warm and there are so many fun things to celebrate. 

Our anniversary is on July 8th.  This was our 5 year anniversary.  Wow, how 5 years has flown by!  It has been a wonderful 5 years!  I loved Patrick so much the day we got married, but our love is much richer, much deeper.  I love our life together!  I feel so incredibly blessed to have him as my husband forever.  Often we comment on how blessed we feel.  Life is so good and we are so happy.  We wanted to get away for a night or two like we usually do, but leaving our babies just didn’t work out this year- and that was just fine with us!  Instead, our good  friend offered to watch the kids during the day and we went to Tucanos for lunch- yum!  It is the same restaurant where we had our wedding luncheon.  That night we headed up to Sundance for a concert at their open air amphitheater.  It was incredible! 

Patrick’s birthday is July 14 and mine is July 18. Cal and Ellie “helped” me make birthday breakfast. One of Patrick’s gifts was a slip and slide (smile). We had lots of fun and Cal was an instant fan!  Stroganoff for dinner and pineapple upside down cake for dessert.  A very relaxing and fun day all together as a family!

 

On the 18th we went up to my brother’s house for a BBQ.  Lynell and her family came down to help celebrate.  Boy do they know how to party! In their basement they have a karaoke stage that includes disco ball and a fog machine- how cool is that?  My favorite chocolate cake for dessert and we were all in heaven!

 

Being with family is always the best way to celebrate!

I must be rich…

Calan loves to “drive” my car.  Several times a day he will ask me, “Vroom vroom mama?” Which means he’s asking if he can go out to the garage and play in my car.  He’s ok playing out there for a little while alone, but most of the time he wants me out there with him.  He has me sit in the passenger seat while he pretends to drive us here or there.  I will say to him, “Calan, can you please drive me to the store?” and he will giggle and then vroom vroom like a race car.  He even asks me to put on my seat belt.  Such a safe driver!

I thought only rich people had a personal chauffeur… 

I must be rich!

The 4th of July

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. 

From start to finish it is a perfect day!  We always start off with the Provo Parade.  This year Cal was quite interested in what was going on and spent most of the parade up on Patrick’s shoulders watching intently.  Ellie on the other hand was just happy to be there- as always.  I love when the Veterans go by.  There is always a lump in my throat and I feel so proud to be an American!  I love our country so much!

After the parade we went home for some lunch and some much needed nap time.  We had a fun, long evening ahead of us and we wanted to give the kids as much nap time as possible.

We headed up to Blythe’s house for our annual BBQ, swim and fireworks. We love this tradition and every year just keeps getting better! Our first time going together was in 2006 just 4 days before our wedding and now we are a family of 4- love it! AND now that Dave’s family has moved to Utah they too could join in this fun tradition.

 

Both Cal and Ellie are little fish! They love the water as much as we do! Cal was so brave this year and (with Loni’s help) went down the slide several times. He is getting so big!

We planned to have Cal stay up for the fireworks and put Ellie down to sleep, but to our surprise Cal crashed and Ellie was wide awake.  I tried to keep her ears covered during the show.  She didn’t mind the noise one bit and seemed memorized by the pretty colors.

Yes, it was a perfect day! 

The Sandbox

Last month Patrick fixed up the sandbox that was under the swing set.  It was a lot of work.  There were hefty weeds, but he got them all out, filled it up with new sand and made it quite nice. 

Calan has always been my little shadow.  He follows me around or asks me to come with him everywhere all day long.  The other day, Ellie was sleeping and I got busy doing this and that when I realized my little shadow was missing.  His independent play is a new thing so I set out to find out what he was up to.  I found him in his sandbox.  He was playing with his dump truck and having a great time. 

I stood by the window and watched him for more than 5 minutes before he saw me and came running for me to join him.  I couldn’t believe how grown up he looked.  His little imagination hard at work brought tears to my eyes.  He is so incredibly cute. 

The sandbox became an immediate hit.  Ellie loves to stretch out her toes in the sand.  She filled up her fist one time and got a good taste of it to know she never wants to do that again.  Smart girl!

Calan has played so hard he has warn out the knees in his jeans.  I love it!

So many wonderful memories being made outside in the sunshine. 

Ahhh, how we love summer!

The Yuck-Yuck Truck

Tuesday morning, around 7:15am, is a highlight at our house. 

Tuesday is trash day. 

For as long as I can remember, Calan has called trash, “yuck-yuck” probably because I would tell him it was yucky and needed to be thrown away.  AND, being such a boy he has an automatic attraction to big trucks… it is the perfect combination for our little man.

We live across the street from a cul-de-sac, so not only does Cal get to watch the trash truck pick up our garbage, he gets to watch it pick up 6 other houses with a perfect view from his upstairs bedroom window.  He is in heaven!  The only problem is when it’s all over Cal begs for more, which of course has to wait for another week.  A week is a long time to a 2 year old. 

After the truck is gone we pull out one of his trucks and he zooms around picking up “trash” and adding it to his collection.  He even has the sound effects down for when he decides to put his truck in reverse… he will “beep, beep beep” until he decides it’s time to drive forward.  Patrick has informed me that all boys are born with the ability to do sound effects.  You should hear him fly an airplane. :)

Just. Too. Cute!

This is one of my favorite pictures of our Ellie-

Still messy from feeding herself lunch…

And she could not be any cuter.  

You melt our heart! We love you so much little Bell.

She’s a Pro…

Ellie loves to eat!  In the last couple of months she has mastered feeding herself.  It’s not always neat and tidy, but she really does an amazing job! 

Her favorite is pasta.  Seriously, when I make pasta of any sort, Ellie can out eat Calan.  It is pretty amazing!  How can she eat so much and be so tiny? 

Before lunch…                                                                                          After lunch…

I haven’t found anything that she won’t eat… broccoli, frozen peas, eggs with zucchini, pesto chicken- you name it.  But when she’s had enough she’ll let me know by throwing everything from her highchair onto the floor with great force. 

Ellie never chokes.  If something is too big or she can’t chew it up, she will simply spit it out.  She is such a smart baby!

The only problem is that now she only wants to feed herself.  I have to plan meals that I can chop up small enough for her to feed herself.  Feeding her baby food with a spoon is now a no-go.  Such an independent little lady! 

Ellie has 2 new tricks at the dinner table.  She has started signing the word “more”.  She does it by clapping her hands together- which isn’t the correct handshape- but is perfectly understood just the same! 

Her other trick is folding her arms for prayer.  When I say to her “Fold your arms Ellie” She will clasp her hands together just the same as Cal does.  It is amazing to me how much she learns just from observing the world around her.  I love it!

Such a big girl! 

A Few Family Firsts

It has been cold and rainy for weeks.  We love to play outside, so it has really been a bummer for all of us.  We had to get creative to get out of the house and in the process we had some fun family firsts!

We decided to go to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.  It’s a very hands on place and was perfect for Calan.  He could touch several of the displays, play in the wet sand searching for “lost” dinosaurs and even become an archeologist and dig for bones.  He loved it.  We let him roam free and I loved watching him explore at his leisure.  He kept looking up at me as if to say, “Is it ok that I’m touching this?”  and I would tell him, “Go for it buddy!”

Ellie loved it as well.  She is such a happy girl and even though she’s not big enough  to get involved she loved watching Cal.

Cal has a fairly new obsession with trains.  We decided it would be fun to drive up to Salt Lake City and ride Trax further into town for dinner.  We told Cal we were going to ride on a train and the entire drive up went something like this, “Mama, choo choo?”  “Yes Cal, we are going to ride a train.” Two seconds later, “Daddy, choo choo?”  “Yep, we are going to get on a train Cal.” This continued non-stop.  He was so excited.  We bought the tickets and lucky for us Mr. Sunshine decided to pop out for a quick “Hello”.  It was beautiful train riding weather!  We are going to have to do this again soon.  Cal was in heaven!  He just stared out the window the entire time, taking it all in.  Ellie loved smiling at all of the other passengers.  She is such a social butterfly!

We went to Apollo Burger for some burgers and fries and ended by sharing a delicious chocolate milk shake, a first for Ellie.  Yeah, she was a huge fan!

Patrick had been itching to go to the airplane museum at Hill Air Force Base.  It is one of his favorite places and believe it or not, Cal had never been there.  It was time to introduce him.  We drove up and met Lonica, Johnny and Jalen.  Oh how he loves his cousins!  Cal literally ran from plane to plane and could not get enough.  Of course he and Patrick took their sweet time at the beloved B-17, the coolest most beautiful plane ever created.  He is as hooked on airplanes as his daddy.  I love it!  As always, Ellie was just happy to come along for the ride. 

All along I have been cursing the rain begging it to stop.  I still feel that way and look forward to running through the sprinklers and eating popsicles together.  But in the mean time we were able to make some very fun memories and experience several family firsts.  And that, is a good thing!