2014 Catch Up

I figure I'm never going to have the time to give each of these events the post it deserves, so I figured I'd just do a big one.  So just a condensed version will have to do.

Over the summer the kids and I spent 3 weeks in UT.  We has SO much fun, but missed Trent horribly!  It's always better when we can be together as a family.  Trent was still in school so he couldn't come with us.  We thought he'd enjoy the quiet house to study in while we were gone, turns out he missed the chaos.  But he did get lots of studying done while we were gone.

Here are just a few of the highlights of that trip:

We had a picnic at Bridal Veil Falls with Papa, Grandma, Julianne and Anthony, Jamie and her roommates.  We had plans to walk up to the falls and let kids play in the water that night, but it got really windy and just a little too late for my little crowd so we opted to come back the next day.  The kids had a lot of fun climbing up the waterfall with Jamie, sliding down and getting their bums dirty and feeding the fish in the pond.  Andrew was given his first taste of many solid foods.  His favorite, an ice cream cone, no ice cream, just the cone. :)  We spent an afternoon at the Living Planet Aquarium with Papa Blair, Grandma Rhonda, Kimberlee, Jamie and JoJo.  We were surprised to run into Karina and her family while we were there.  The aquarium recently had moved into a much larger location and we all enjoyed our afternoon there.  

We spent many afternoons with our friends.  We had so much fun visiting with our Utah friends!!  We went to the pond in PG one afternoon.  The kids LOVED it!  Carter and Hanna spent most of the time trying to catch a fish, which they finally succeeded in doing just before we left. It wasn't very big, maybe 6 inches, and they caught it with their hands and a bucket, they were so excited to have finally caught a fish.  We had a bbq with friends from our old neighborhood.  Water was involved.  Kids were SOAKED before we left, we had such a good time!!

We finished off our trip in UT celebrating Pioneer Day.  We didn't get to do fireworks for the 4th of July so Carter wanted to make sure we got to do them in UT.  We even let him light them off for the first time. Hanna and Hunter HATE the noise of the fireworks, the earmuffs solved the problem.  Eventually they both took them off as we didn't have loud fireworks.

We spent a morning at the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point with Ashley and Paisley, the kids really enjoyed it and would have spent HOURS there, but we had a grumpy tired baby who need to take a nap so I drug them out of there long before they were ready to go.  I also took no pictures as my hands were full of baby, although, I'm pretty sure I lugged my heavy camera along with me.

The rest of our summer was spent with friends at the pool, and with daddy when he had the time.  We spent every Tuesday rotating which pool we visited on post with our friends that lived there.  We'd pack a picnic and head to the pool for a couple of hours.  On the weekends we'd bbq with friends, hang out at the pool, and stay out way too late playing games and laughing.  A perfect summer indeed!

One night Trent after dinner Trent decided that we'd all go to the splash pad on post.  It was a cloudy/overcast kind of day, we were the only ones there.  Probably because it was FREEZING!  And by freezing I mean it was in the 80's.  This was also Andrews first time at the splash pad, he loved it despite being so cold he was turning purple.

Trent's semester break happened to fall on the week the kids went back to school, so we didn't get to go and do anything super fun as a family.  I enjoyed having Trent home for a week and he enjoyed a week of no studying and no tests.  We took one afternoon before the kids started school, and before Trent's official break, when Trent didn't have anything going on and went on a little family adventure.  We went to the Witte Museum not too far from our house.  They had a grossology exhibit that the kids loved! It was all about the gross things our body does; farting, burping, vomiting, snot, ect. There was also an exhibit about keeping our bodies active and healthy that we visited.  We spent a few hours there and didn't even see half of it, only two parts of it. But by the time we left Andrew was in bad need of a nap, and we all were hungry. I kinda wished we had gone a year earlier and got a year pass, it was pretty expensive to go just that one time, a year pass was just a few dollars more.

Andrew decided that crawling would be an awesome thing to do and started crawling in August.  His newly discovered mobility found him all over the house, but his very favorite spot was under the desk where all the cords for the computer were.

AND then we had the first day of school.  Carter went into 3rd grad and Hanna went into 1st grade.  Both were soooo excited for school to start.  This momma not so much.  School started way too early for me.  Bus picked them up at 7:15, so they had to get up around 6:30.  They both love school and were so excited to go back.

We went to a few football games for a local high school.  Our really good friend is the drum major so we wanted to go and cheer for her as she performed.  Football (and the treats that go along with it) was just an added bonus.

Of course we had Halloween this year too.  Hanna dressed up as Elsa (like every other little girl).  I had gotten an Olaf costume for Hunter, but with his cast he couldn't get it on right so he wouldn't wear it (speaking of cast...that deserves a post of it's own). So he decided to be buzz, just like last year.  Carter was a transformer, and Andrew was a dinosaur.  We met up with some friends from Trent's class and had a little Halloween party.  Complete with shooting an apple on someone's head with a nerf gun. We had dinner and went trick or treating.  We trick or treated for a long time, lots of the younger kids were tired by the end and so through with walking.  As soon as we got back the kids dumped their loot on the floor.  Andrew crawled as fast as he could to the piles, he had to sit right in the middle of all the candy!

Oh, then there was Thanksgiving!  We had 22 people over at our house for Thanksgiving.  It was SO much fun!!  We shared a wonderful holiday with people that we came to love so much while we were in TX, we were truly blessed to have gotten to know them!  We ate delicious food, played games, and enjoyed being with each other. Carter spent the day in heaven, there was another boy to play football and basketball with.  Hanna and Hunter had the attention of the teen girls and loved every minute of it.  It truly was a perfect holiday.

I'd like to say that Thanksgiving went without an problems, but it didn't.  The kids all got up and ate breakfast, excited to go play at the park while the 'men' played football.  About 2 minutes after Hunter ate he threw up.  Awesome.  So I in a panic text all the parties involved to let them know that I had a potentially sick kid.  He had no other symptoms, just puked after he ate.  All were agreed that they'd still come.  So the party happened as planned.  About 5 minutes after he puked Hunter started asking for food.  So I gave him a piece of toast.  That wasn't enough, he wanted more. So I let him have a banana.  Still, he wanted more.  Once I figured that he wasn't really sick (and I freaked out over nothing...) I let him be around people.  He ate and ate all day long (mostly pickles and olives).  And I'm happy to report that no one got sick after eating at our house!