Snow Basin

The leaves are starting to turn and although I dread winter more this year than I ever have before. . .I'm still trying to enjoy what usually is my favorite season. Every one else seems to sense that it won't be too long before the cold keeps us indoors. This is a typical night on our street. . . notice how outnumbered the adults are:)

We went up to visit my Sister and her family for my neice Emma's birthday. During the day trip we drove up to Snow Basin and explored one of the trails for a little bit. It's so gorgeous up there! Noah was pretty cranky for a while until he found two perfect throwing rocks.

Hyrum was busy exploring with his cousins. Lately, whenever I ask him to smile for me he does this weird expression that I like to call dork face. . .I hope he doesn't do this for family pictures. . .well, good thing he's still cute anyway.

The boys kept complaining that the sun was too bright, but I think this was a good one of all of us. Brett's at Man Camp 2010 with the guys (pictures to come later:)

The Raspberry Park

So a week and a half ago I got the boys so excited about going to a raspberry briar to pick lots of berries. It was a 30 minute drive south. I packed the bag and we got down there only to find that they were all picked out for the day. Bummer. So, to try and alleviate a total meltdown I told them that the raspberries weren't done growing, so we needed to go to a new park instead. Luckily, I found one about half way between the briar and our house. So, according to Hyrum, this is called the raspberry park:)

I was very happy that this week the berries were ready for picking. The boys had SOOO much fun picking berries and carrying buckets around. . . I can't say a berry ever made it into either of their buckets, but they were happy to eat whatever they found:)

The beast

I mentioned in the Spring how we had spent countless hours in the backyard attempting to reclaim it from its wild roots. It has been a LONG process, and there's still work to be done next spring, but we're really happy with the progress. I had to post some pictures now that we finally have something to show for it.

Before's:

I love Lilac bushes, but we had three planted in a small garden area. They were about 5 feet high and 4 feet wide. The bees were so bad that I didn't like the boys playing in the backyard last year.

Pretty much all of our backyard grass areas looked like this. It was full of spiky weeds!

Afters:

I was amazed that Brett was able to turn a weed pit into beautiful green grass!

The boys now have their own worm digging garden where one of the lilacs was before. They love finding treasures!

And here's the happiest reward! Where the other 2 lilacs were we planted 6 baby watermelon. They've grown beautifully and have reaching vines all over our metal frame now. We've found two tiny watermelons growing! I realize with a frost coming soon they won't survive, but the fact that something grew (from a seed) just makes me ecstatic!

Things to come. . .

I'd like to say that I am able to cherish every moment my boys have. . . but I'll be honest in saying that there are a lot of things that I can't wait to be done with (ie: diapers, teething, sticky fingers on everything, etc.) Don't get me wrong, there are a MILLION things I could list that I love about baby's and toddlers, and I always want to remember those precious moments. But there's something about 3 and 4 year old's chasing a soccer ball around that just makes me happy and excited for Hyrum to get older and experience all the fun sports and activities available. I can't say that what they were doing at this practice resembled soccer too much. In fact I kept thinking about the movie UP with the dog that would be saying something and then kept getting distracted by squirrels. They'd run around with the ball for a few minutes and then play in the grass, and then chase a balloon, and then kick the ball for a minute, and then. . . well, it was a lot of exploring. I'll be posting more about soccer once I get some pictures of their games. I'm so happy that our coach is a friend of mine and has two girls about the same age as our boys. It will be nice for Hyrum to play with kids that he already knows and sees in nursery.

A great and terrible week

Being up in the mountains we have a lot of bugs (thank goodness for pest control! We rarely see any in our house, phew!) Some of the bugs are big and scary, but some are really fun to play with. Just before we mow our lawn, when the grass is a bit long, we can walk through the lawn and find grasshoppers and things that jump up on us. Hyrum was actually tracking a couple of praying mantis' that were climbing our fense, when I noticed that one was walking up his back. He was so excited and just stood still as his little friend crawled on him. He of course had to run in and show Dad. "Dad! Look! Praying mantis on my head. . . crawling all over me!"

Hyrum has such an imagination! He loves to pretend all sorts of things. The other day he was on his bike and said he needed to race with his goggles on to make him go faster. He was really cruising at about one mile an hour:)
I had the most terrifying experience today at church. I was sitting in the foyer just before Sunday School started while Noah was playing by the doors. Someone left and Noah followed them. I went after him to grab him, but when he saw me follow he giggled and started to run. I started to run. He kept running into the parking lot in between two cars right toward the traffic of cars from the other ward leaving. I yelled and waved my arms, "STOP! NOAH, STOP!" I screamed as an SUV was driving out and wasn't stopping as Noah was running right in front of it. Not three feet from being hit, Noah tripped and face planted into the asphalt. Having a fat lip and a dirty face was the greatest gift from Heavenly Father today. He heard my quick prayer and saved him. It all happened in a matter of a few seconds, but my heart pounded for an hour. I know that this happens frequently, but now that it happened to my little baby I will forever be terrified. We love our little Noah and his cute words and loves. Here he is after he woke up from his nap today. I put some pomade in his hair for church, and the nap turned it into a funny mo-hawk. He is the sweetest little man!
My boys sure love their chocolate!Today Brett turned 28! Woa, I can't believe I married a man so much older than me!:)

Oh what a week!

Brett started a new job yesterday. The last couple of weeks have been filled with anticipation, curiosity, . . . and a little worry. We are very grateful to be so blessed at this time when we recognize the job market is scarce. He is excited to be working for this new company called Simplifile. He is still working as a Software Engineer, but is excited to be doing something different. We've been able to have some good family time this week before he started his new job. We all went to a Farmer's Market last Saturday. The boys liked petting the animals and 'riding' on the tractor. Brett and I worked together to can some raspberries from the trip when we got home. A mid-week Father/Son basement camp-out. Brett and Hyrum decided to rough it in our basement one night and have smores and watch movies. I came down a couple of times to see how it was going, and they would be laying the exact same way. It was sooo cute!Another exciting thing that happened this week was the purchase of a car for Brett to take to work, which means I now have more freedom during the day. Today I took the boys up to the Timpanogos Caves Trail (which is only 2 miles from our house). It was so much fun and Hyrum especially liked looking at our map and having an adventure. Since I was by myself we only went up 1/3 of the way, because i was a little worried I would have to carry 62lb. of cute boys down the trail back, but they did great the whole time!The boys always got excited to find trail markers and other signs. We would stop and read them, Hyrum said this sign says, "Watch out, don't fall off volcano!" I'm glad he's thinking safe.

Legoland

On our last day in California we went to explore the fantastic Legoland. I'm so amazed at what people can do with Legos. Mini land was incredible!We spent the majority of time in the Pirate section with all the water. The boys had a blast!