Skyler's 2nd Birthday

Two years has gone by too quickly and our baby has turned into a little boy.  He is in such a busy stage.  He can make a mess ten times faster than I can clean it, he's always getting into something and the only time I get anything done is while he is napping.  The other day he flushed a brush down the toilet.  $80 later the plumber had gotten it out.  Yet there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful he's part of our family.  It is strange to think that our family ever felt complete without him.  It was a cold June day that we celebrated his birthday.  We started out with a barbecue on the back deck but had to move inside when it got too cold.  That will probably never happen again on June 14th!  He can't seem to hold still long enough to get his picture taken lately so these are the best shots I got.

 His siblings wanted him to open all his presents at once but he was so excited when he got a present open that he wasn't interested in opening another one.  It ended up taking all evening to get the presents opened.

Skyler's not a big fan of cake or ice cream but he loves strawberries so we made strawberry shortcake.  He was fascinated with the candles.  Andrew had to hold his hands back to keep him from grabbing them but he actually blew the candles out all by himself.  He was so proud of himself and started clapping and cheering (yay!) when he blew them out.

Here's a look at Skyler at two:

He's 24 1/2 pounds and 33 1/2 inches.  He is 11th percentile for weight on the growth charts.  The biggest he's been since he was a newborn!  His vocabulary is exploding with new words every day.  He's mastered "no" and says "yay" for yes.  Every time we walk in the garage he points to the van and says "mama" and to the truck and says "daddy".  He loves to go for rides in "Daddy's truck."  He loves trains, cars and trucks.  He likes to sleep with and carry around all of his blankets.  He likes books, legos, and puzzles.  He loves chocolate milk, strawberries and peas.  He is adored by his older siblings and literally lights up the room when he comes in.

Families are Forever

May marked the one year anniversary that Jason's brother, Vance passed away.  We have thought of him and missed him so often the last year.  Our faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and our belief that death is not the end has brought us so much comfort and peace.  One of the most joyful teachings in our church is that in the temple families are sealed together forever.  We also believe that those who didn't accept and receive saving ordinances, such as baptism, can still have the opportunity to do so after they have died through temple work.  In May we were able to meet as a family at the Jordan River Temple and do the rest of Vance's temple work that hadn't been completed.  It was a bitter-sweet day for all of us.  We also did the work for Jason's great-grandfather, Lefty, and his brothers. At the age of 12, youth are able to enter the temple to perform baptisms for the dead.  Andrew was baptized for Grandpa Lefty and his brothers.  It was a wonderful occasion where we remembered the lives of these family members who we love and miss.  I have grown to love and appreciate all of Jason's family and feel so fortunate to be a part of them.

Kaitlyn's Baptism

Kaitlyn's baptism was a wonderful day we were able to celebrate with lots of friends and family.  She has been so excited for months for this day. When she came up out of the water after her baptism she was just beaming she was so happy.  It was neat for me to be able to help her get dressed since Jason helped the boys at their baptism.  She loved the dress they had for her to get baptized in and she was so excited after the baptism to change back into the pretty white lacy dress we had bought for her.  She had the biggest smile I have ever seen when we walked back into the room for her confirmation after she changed and she didn't stop smiling the rest of the meeting.

It was such a special day and it was wonderful to see how happy Kaitlyn was.  I am so proud of her for this important step in her life and for the sweet girl she is becoming.

Kaitlyn's 8th Birthday

Kaitlyn's birthday was a busy Saturday with lots of activities.  She had a soccer game in the morning and a piano recital in the afternoon.  We found a couple hours in between to go to the mall to get her ears pierced.  She was so excited!  She was really brave about it too.  She picked out earrings with her birthstone, emeralds.  Now she has to wait the long six weeks before she can wear all the other cute earrings she picked out.

After the recital we went to Olive Garden for dinner and then home for presents and cake and ice cream.

Kaitlyn was so excited about the Frozen dolls her grandma gave her.

Blowing out her candles: she almost got them all.

  

Here's a look at Kaitlyn at 8:

What Kaitlyn loves: singing (all the time around the house, especially Frozen songs: it drives her brothers crazy but I love it), talking (she will talk any one's ear off that will listen), playing the piano (most of the time), dancing, reading (she has become quite the bookworm, going through chapter books in a few days), dolls, princess movies (especially Frozen), school, friends, strawberries, and raspberries (when she goes out to pick hardly any make it into the house).

What she doesn't like: getting her hair combed, doing her chores, cleaning her room, practicing the piano (sometimes), and being told it's time to stop playing.

What I love about Kaitlyn: her happy fun personality, she's smart, her smile, how outgoing and friendly she is, listening to her talk, her hugs (and that she still loves to give them to me),  how cute she is with her little brother, and how she likes to help me make dinner and come places with me.

Eight is Great!

Eight years old is a big milestone in our church.  It's the age children can be baptized.  Kaitlyn has been so excited the last few months for her baptism.  She loved going shopping for a dress.  She didn't want to look at any others after she found the one she wanted.  A few weeks before her baptism we got some pictures taken in her dress.  She loved getting all dressed up for pictures and actually getting to wear the dress that had just been hanging in her closet.  My photographer found this orchard in Fruit Heights for pictures and I love how they turned out!  Kaitlyn looked beautiful, although way too grown up!

The End of Another School Year

The end of the school year always brings lots of activities and awards for the kids.  This year wasn't an exception.  A few weeks before we left for Boston I found out that Andrew was being awarded Scout of the Year from the Trapper Trails Council.  I was so excited for him to receive this honor.  I was disappointed when I found out the banquet they were holding to present the awards was being held while we were in Boston.  One of his scout leaders went instead to accept the award for him.  Here he is with his trophy after we got home.

Kaitlyn was really sad that we didn't ever dye Easter eggs with our trip to Boston.  So I told her if they had any egg dye kits left at the store we could do them for family home evening the Monday after we got home.  She was in luck.  There were some on clearance.  The kids were quite creative with their eggs this year.  I also made some bunny rolls so we could have our traditional Eater breakfast the next day.  Better late than never!

Andrew also earned several awards at school including student of the month for April and the high honor roll for another year with a perfect 4.0!

Andrew also missed the first track meet of the season while we were in Boston so the only meet he was able to participate in was the District Meet.  He ran a new PR in mile at 5:27.  Here he is with his team's first place trophy.

Kaitlyn had her end of year dance recital.  She had a great time in dance class this year with her two friends, Ariana and Ruby.  It was always interesting carpooling these three girls!  (There were a lot of Frozen songs being sung and listened to every week!  They were thrilled that their teacher Brynn chose Let it Go for one of their dances.)

In April Kaitlyn had a field trip to the Ogden Nature Center.  It was on a Wednesday and I figured Jason would be home to watch Skyler so I would go with her.  Kaitlyn had other plans though.  As soon as she heard it was on a Wednesday she came home begging her dad to go with her.  I asked her why I couldn't go and she said she really wanted Jason to go with her and I could wait and go to the Dinosaur Park with her class in May.  So since neither of us could tell her no, that's what we did.  I had to find a sitter for the Dinosaur Park field trip but it was fun to go with her.  She was thrilled to be in the same group as her friend, Sage.  Here they are digging for dinosaur bones.

The kids had their end of year piano recital.  The theme for this recital was movie songs.  The parents had to guess which movie the songs were from that the kids played.  Kaitlyn played a song from The Lion King.  Jared played a song from Pokemon, and Andrew played a song from Star Wars Phantom Menace.  Their teacher also handed out the awards from federation.  Andrew and Jared both earned their first cup from receiving superiors three years in a row!

One morning we saw in the newspaper that this Big Boy train had stopped for the day in Ogden.  It was being towed somewhere to be restored.  The train fan in Jason came out and he insisted we stop by Union Station on our way home from Kaitlyn's softball game that night to see the train.  Skyler loved all the trains at Union Station.

Spring also means sports for our family.  Almost every night is spent at the ballpark for baseball and softball games.  This was Kaitlyn's first year with coach pitch.  At first she struggled to hit the ball but by the end of the season she was hitting really well.  Here she is with her trophy.

Most of Jared's friends aren't playing baseball anymore and he ended up on almost a completely new team with a lot of kids he didn't know.  He has made some new friends though and his team has had a lot of success winning quite a few games.  It's fun watching him getting so much better with his hitting and throwing.  Here he is hitting the ball.

The weekend of the Ogden Marathon Andrew and I decided to run the 5K.  I was still recovering from Boston and wasn't up to the longer races but I thought it would be fun to do something to participate and it's always fun to run races with Andrew.  I knew the tougher competition would be in the longer races and wasn't planning on running too fast.  It was my first time in my utahrunning.com elite racing team gear.  There were a bunch of Bonneville High School cross country runners there and I started out the race keeping up with them.  It was mostly boys but one girl tried to keep up with me.  It felt like a comfortable pace but I looked down at my Garmin and it said I was running 5:35 pace.  I didn't think it was really that fast.  I figured the watch was still trying to find the satellites and it would find my real pace in a minute.  About a half mile into the race the girl trying to keep up with me dropped back.  It was just me and the boys from Bonneville.  It was kind of fun to run with them because you could tell they really didn't want to get beat by a girl.  I hit the first mile marker at 5:35.  My Garmin had been right!  I really was running that fast!  I'm so used to running longer races that when I hit the first mile marker I thought, Oh good, I'm almost done!  Only 2.1 miles to go!  My second mile was almost as fast 5:45.  By the time I got to the last mile I realized I had a chance of breaking 18:00 if I could keep my pace under a six minute mile.  I have never broken 18 before so I really kicked it in that last mile.  I won the women's race in 17:50.  Andrew also ran a PR in 20:15.

Kaitlyn was so excited about her class play they were putting on the last week of school.  She did a great jog singing a duet in the play in front of the whole school and a lot of parents.  She didn't even look scared!  Here she is dressed as a "wind sister."

A Week in Boston: Part 2

Wednesday was not the most enjoyable day of our trip.  We checked out of our hotel downtown to move a little farther outside of the city to a less expensive hotel and to get a rental car to be able to visit some sights outside the city.  That meant we had to get all of the suitcases packed up and take the trip on the subway with everything back to the airport.  It took all morning to get out to the airport to get the rental car.  We finally pulled into Minute Man National Park at around noon.  We had stuff for a picnic lunch but it was pouring rain.  It would have made a great spot for a picnic if it weren't for the weather.  So we ate our lunch in the car and then pulled out the rain jackets and umbrellas and headed inside to the visitors center.  They had a fun video inside the visitors center that explained a lot about the start of the revolutionary war.  We grabbed some Jr. Ranger booklets for the kids to do.  Andrew and Kaitlyn were excited but Jared was not happy about it.  He said it was just like school and didn't want to do it.  So with one unhappy child we headed back to the car to visit the other sights at the park and fill out the booklets.  By then the rain had stopped but it had turned off really cold and a strong wind was howling.  It was miserable to be outside.  There were lots of trails through the park that took you to different sights but it was way too cold to be outside much.  We also found out that we were there off season and several of the buildings we would like to have visited were closed.  I didn't get many pictures that day since it seemed like we were running back to the car as quickly as we could to get out of the cold.  The kids were tired from the long week and late nights and getting sick of sitting in the car next to each other.

Concord where the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired.

The kids taking their Jr. Ranger pledge.

Besides the starting place of the revolutionary war, Concord was also home to several favorite authors.  After visiting the North Bridge in Concord we stopped by the Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott but found out that it had closed for tours for the day.  Our next stop was Walden Pond, where Thoreau went to have his experience out in the "wilderness."  We were surprised to find that it sits right outside the town of Concord.  I always assumed he was a long way from civilization when we learned about it in school.  It would have been a lot of fun to walk around the pond to Thoreau's cabin on a nice day but we were all so cold by this point and the kids were getting really tired and ornery so after taking a quick picture from the window of van I made the decision to just grab some fast food for dinner and head to the hotel.

The next day everyone was feeling a lot better after a night's sleep.  We were headed to Plymouth and since it was supposed to be windy again we went prepared with more layers of warm clothes.  At least the sun was shining that day and it made a big difference.  All of the kids said that Plimoth Plantation was one of their favorite things we did on the trip.  At the Wampanaog Homesite we got to see a village where Native Americans showed us how the people live in the 17th century.  The kids loved watching them burn out the inside of these tree trunks to make boats.

We got to go inside their houses and ask questions about how they lived.  These two cute boys are hanging out inside their winter home.

Skyler loved playing with the leather ball they had made.  We had a hard time dragging him away from the toys.  He didn't want to hold still long enough for me to take his picture though.  Here we were protected from the wind a bit and with the sun shining the kids were having a great time outside.

Jason checking out the food they are preparing.

The summer home.

Then we went to the 17th century English Village.  This was on a hill overlooking the ocean and it was a lot windier.  We ran from one building to the other trying to get out of the wind.

In this village the actors played the part of the English settlers in the 1600's.  The kids really wanted to find our ancestor Peter Brown but we were told by the other villagers that he was gone for the day up north cutting wood.  When Skyler got bored of sitting in houses and talking to people he found the chickens in the back yards and loved to chase them around!

The kids had a lot of fun with the children's games.  Here they are bowling.

We were never able to find Peter Brown but when we headed over the replica of the Mayflower the kids were excited to find his name on the list of passengers.

The replica of the boat was really cool to see.  It was amazing to see the conditions they lived in while crossing the sea.  We also discovered that they continued to live on the boat after arriving in Plymouth for shelter.  Without it they probably wouldn't have survived.

On board with one of the passengers.

This next picture in front of the Mayflower is kind of silly but it shows just how windy it was that day!

We were disappointed when we saw Plymouth Rock.  I won't include a picture because it's not worth it.  Jared's comment when he saw it was "They ruined it!"  It was pretty anticlimactic and definitely not what you imagine when you think of Plymouth Rock.  I'm not sure how big it originally was but it had been cut and placed in a monument.

Our last full day on our trip we drove up to Cape Ann northeast of Boston.  The towns of Gloucester and Rockport were scenic sea coast towns.  We found, as we did other places, that we were there before tourist season and a lot of the things we would have enjoyed were closed.  We were too early for whale watching and the boats out to the lighthouses weren't going yet so we had to view them from a distance.   We actually found the lighthouses hard to get to, even the ones that weren't on islands.  We had to drive down obscure, sometimes private roads to get there.  Apparently they don't really want tourists going there.

This was as close as we could get to any of the lighthouses.  After driving around to try to find some lighthouses for a bit we went to Bearskin Neck to grab some fish and chips for lunch.

I was told this red barn is the most photographed building in all of New England.  It certainly made for a picturesque backdrop.

That evening on the way back to the hotel we were able to meet with one of Jason's mission companions, Adam Jarnigan, and his family.  They are a wonderful family and Jason enjoyed catching up with an old friend.  We ate the only food we hadn't eaten the whole trip, Mexican!

With our flight not leaving until late afternoon we decided to stop by Concord again after we checked out from the hotel.  We were able to tour the Orchard House which was really cool although Skyler wanted to touch everything in the house which they specifically asked us not to since most of it actually belonged to the Alcotts.  We also met up with one of my good high school friends, Laura Forsberg White who now lives in the area for a quick bite of lunch before heading for the airport.  It was a great trip but Skyler was so ready to be home to his normal routine.  I had forgotten how hard it is to travel with a toddler!  We may not plan any more big trips for a couple years until he is a little older.  It was so much fun having the whole family there and hopefully it is a trip the kids will never forget!