Giggles, Cross Country and Life

Aren't baby giggles just the cutest thing in the world?  I hope this puts a smile on your face!  It sure does for me but of course my opinion doesn't count since I'm his mom.

This little guy is growing up way too fast!  The fantastic news is that he mostly sleeps through the night.  His pacifier has turned into my snooze button so when he starts to stir at around 5 am I give it to him and usually get another hour of sleep.  It is amazing how much more productive I am with a full night's sleep!

Skyler at 3 months

Andrew has been super busy since he started Jr. High.  It was quite the adjustment at first to have him gone for nine hours every day.  He's on the cross country team at Mt. Ogden and had his first meet a couple weeks ago.  It seems so crazy to me that he's old enough to be on a school team now.  When I drove up to the park and saw all the cones set up for the course it gave me the same butterflies in my stomach I used to get when I was in high school going to cross country meets.

The course was almost two miles.  Andrew ran a terrific race on a hot afternoon and looked great!  He placed 6th.  Mt. Ogden has a terrific boys team this year and placed seven runners in the top ten!

Andrew received his Life rank advancement in scouts this month.  This is a great accomplishment to be so far in scouting before he even turns 13.  I used to think boys who got their Eagle really quickly were pushed too much by their parents but he deserves all the credit.  He's worked really hard in scouting and has such a great attitude about it.  He was awarded 11 merit badges at this court of honor and is only one merit badge and his project away from his Eagle!

Summer's Over

Summer flew by so fast and now it is starting to feel like fall.  Here are a few pictures I never got around to blogging from the summer and some even from the spring.

My brother, Spencer, came to visit during his vacation from work this summer.  He loves baseball so we braved our first baseball game with Skyler and went to the Ogden Raptors game.  The game got a  little long when the Raptors were getting blown out but we made it all the way to the 8th inning before the kids were exhausted and needed to go home.

Skyler's first baseball game!  Many more to come in the years ahead!!

My sister, Rebecca, and her daughter, Laura came for a few days from Ohio.  These two cousins are so cute together!  I wish they could see each other more often.  They had a great time playing together.  Laura is nine months older than Kaitlyn but they are the same height.  Here they are chilling at the pool.  For some reason it's the only picture I got of them together.

Jason's Aunt Jane passed away in August.  Here's a picture of Jason's mom and her siblings that are still living.

Nancy, Martha, John, Liz and Pat

They are so much fun together!  Even though it was for a funeral I always love to see them.  Jason had a great time seeing cousins he hadn't seen in years.  I hate that funerals always end up being the time to see everyone you never get to see.  I guess someone needs to plan a family reunion...

These are pictures from a trip we took to Moab in the spring with our friends the Howards and the Larsens. We had a great time even though the weather didn't cooperate.  I did as much hiking as possible when I was 8 months pregnant and I watched the little kids while the older kids and adults went mountain biking.  It was a fun weekend but I can't wait to get back there when I'm not huge and pregnant and can do what I want! (I must have been forgetful at that point in pregnancy too since I kept leaving the camera in the car.  That's why there are so few picture!)

Ibantik Backpacking Trip

The kids were a little frustrated this summer that we weren't going on vacation with a new baby.  Jason had promised that he would take Jared on his first backpacking trip.  He was so excited!  He couldn't wait for it all summer.  The night before they left and the pack was all loaded I started to worry.  The pack looked so big on him!  All he was carrying was his sleeping bag, a change of clothes and his water but I really didn't know how he'd handle hiking with all of that on his back.  I also started to stress out when shortly after they left thunderstorms started rolling in.  I was sure my poor little boy was soaked and miserable and would never want to go backpacking again!  I was wrong though and he came back all smiles!  He couldn't stop talking about the trip for days and can't wait until next year!

Here are some pictures from their trip.  They hiked about two miles in from the Crystal Lake trail head to Lake Ibantik in the Uinta mountains.  It was a beautiful area and they caught lots of fun and just had fun exploring the mountains.  They were joined by two of their uncles, Vance and Sam.

Andrew and Jared couldn't stop talking about the mountain goats they saw.

School, Football, and a New Temple!

These next posts might seem a little random and out of order.  I'm just trying to get caught up on several events from the past few months.  A couple weeks ago we went to Brigham City to see the new temple for our church.  It was a beautiful building and so fun to take the kids to see the inside of it!  Temples are so important in our religion because we believe that the temple allows us to be with our families forever.  We also loved having our good friends that live across the street come with us.

I've avoided posting anything about this until now but the other day when all of the nieces and nephews were signing Jason's cast I asked permission to take pictures.  Without getting into too many details, the fancy mountain bike we gave Jason for Father's Day ended up being a little more dangerous than we anticipated!  Hopefully the cast will be off soon!

Here's a cute picture of Jared and Skyler.  I think they look a lot alike in this picture.

This little boy is loved so much! (Too much sometimes!)

Here are some pictures from Jared's first football games.  Their new Wildcat uniforms weren't in yet so they wore the old Ogden jerseys.  We couldn't resist taking some pictures by the big O.  Jared was made for football and loves blocking and tackling!  Notice in the picture he's the second one from the left on the line and doesn't seem a bit intimidated by the boy who is quite a bit bigger than him!

Here are the first day of school pictures this year.

Andrew 7th grade

Kaitlyn 1st grade

Jared 4th grade

Getting to work already!

Andrew is in 7th grade now and loving Jr. High.  I was pretty nervous for him to go but he wasn't nervous at all!  He didn't have any trouble finding his way around and thinks it is so much better than elementary school. His days are really long since he leaves over an hour earlier than the younger kids and stays for cross country practice after school.  Kaitlyn is in her first year of all day school.  It seems strange to have the house so quiet for so long.  She's done really well although she's awfully tired and hungry by the end of the day!

Boys love to get dirty

Here are some before and after pictures from Jared's football game in the rain. This boy sure loves to play rough and get dirty!

2 Months Old

Skyler is two months old now!  It's hard to imagine life without him now.  Time is passing much too quickly and even though I knew it would it doesn't make it any easier.  At two months Skyler weighed in at 9 lbs. 4 oz. and was 21 3/4 inches long.  He's such a good baby.  I'm enjoying longer stretches of sleep and usually only having to get up once during the night.  It really makes everything in life so much easier with a little more sleep!  Skyler is adored by everyone although sometimes picked on by Kaitlyn who is still struggling with losing her spot as the baby.  She really does love him though and often tells me, "I love you Mom, but I love Skyler the most!"  He is smiling and cooing all the time now.  He's decided Daddy is his best playmate.  As soon as Jason walks in the room he spits out his pacifier and starts cooing and smiling no matter what time of the day or night!  The other day we stopped by Jason's office.  Jason was having a busy day at work and didn't have time to pick Skyler up and he let everyone in the office know he was unhappy about that!

15 Years!

Jason and I celebrated our 15th anniversary on Aug 14th.  I was told we have now bested the national average by double.  It has certainly been an interesting 15 years.  The first 10 were spent with Jason in training and we have really enjoyed the last five years moving on with what we dreamed and hoped for 15 years ago although life is never perfect.  We have welcomed four beautiful children into our home.  We've traveled on three continents together.  We've moved six times (four of which were over 1000 miles.)  We've had our share of loss, disappointments and sorrow but there have also been many times of joy, fun, and accomplishment. 15 years is a big enough milestone we should have celebrated by traveling to Hawaii or something but with a new baby this wasn't the year.  Jason instead suggested we take all the kids with us to Salt Lake.  We enjoyed wandering around Temple Square and City Creek.  We had a fun afternoon.  Kaitlyn loved the flowers and I found myself wishing I could hire a maid for my house so I could spend all summer in my flower beds and have them look like the one's at Temple Square!  Jared wondered what we were going to look at when there weren't Christmas lights up but we were surprised to see they were already working on putting them up.  The kids were quite entertained with the rock climbing gear they were using to install lights on the trees!  Later in the evening Jason and I were able to get away for an hour to go to dinner.  (That's been harder to do this summer!)