Sledding Adventures

We had some fun sledding adventures at the sand dunes outside of Rexburg, Idaho. We spent Christmas with Mandy, Tyrel and their family, and Randy, Holly and their family and had a blast with everyone. Christmas Eve afternoon was spent playing in the snow. Randy and his family found a steep dune to "jump" off and sled down. Daylen had fun climbing up and sliding down on his bum. He's overall a pretty cautious kid, but when it come to sledding this kid has no fear it seems. He LOVES is while Kate, my crazy daredevil, is quite the opposite when it comes to sledding and snow. I got some nice footage, but unfortunately I have not been able to upload it successfully. I'll keep trying and post it later if I can.

Daddy and Daylen

Taylor, Randy, and Holly pulling Cayden and Jordyn

Mandy, Ivan, and Derek

Daylen and Kate tuckered out and being carried by an even more tuckered out daddy back to the van.

Brooks and I kept each other nice and warm.

Field Trip

Daylen had his first preschool field trip. Kate, Brooks, and I tagged along for some fun. It was COLD since Winter decided to show its face all of the sudden yesterday, but the kids still had fun. We went to the Red Barn pumkin patch in Santaquin. We rode the tractor hay ride out to the pumpkin patch, looked at all the pumpkins, the kids all played in the cute maze they had set up out of apple boxes, took some pictures, and headed back!

Daylen's cute preschool class!

Shout out to the Spanish Fork Library!

I just felt like telling you all how much I LOVE the Spanish Fork library. The children's section is AWESOME. I love that my kids love to go to the library, of course I'm sure the biggest reason is the super fun computer games they love to play.

Our library routine consists of first going down the elevator, (way cool for kids, and adults in my opinion) as soon as the door opens, booking it to the computer to play a couple of games, (as long as they are open) while the kids play a game I peruse the books checking to see if any of our favorites are there first, (ever read the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Williams? Definitely our favorites) after games we look for more books depending on time, sometimes we pick up literacy backpacks, like we did today, (so cute for the kids) then we go check out. Check out not only consists of checking our books out, but the kids get to pick a stamp for each hand, love it! After this has been accomplished we head back to the elevator (otherwise known as the "alligator" before Daylen could actually say "elevator") then we check out the DVD section upstairs. They have all kinds of movies, including new releases, and getting movies at the library is even better than Red Box, it's free and we get to keep it for a whole week. If we find any movies we are interested in we check those out and head on our merry way!

This is another reason I love the library...as soon as we walked through the door today, Kate and Daylen plopped down on the floor, inspecting what cool treasures they could find in their literacy backpacks. Daylen picked one purposefully that had a puzzle in it, the kid LOVES puzzles. So of course Kate is getting in to puzzles now, so she ran and got her favorite one, Curious George and put it together as well. I loved just watching them do their thing, "read" their books and play with puzzles while I was doing my thing.

Brooks can be so contemplative and serious. He frequently examines his hands for lengthy periods of time, you think this could mean he may actually have somewhat of an attention span?


He also has a great smile when he's in the mood to share it with us. It's becoming somewhat more frequent. I've never had to work so hard to get my child to smile, Daylen and Kate smiled anytime anyone just looked at them! We still love him to pieces though, can't complain too much about this one!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game!

We took Brooks on his first family outing to the BYU Baseball game on Saturday. I think he enjoyed it...he didn't even realize he had left the house, he slept the whole time. He was all snug in his sling, no point in opening his eyes. We met Rachel, Tyler, and Austin there and enjoyed an exciting game, BYU coming back from behind to beat San Diego State, Go Cougars! Daylen especially enjoyed the popcorn...after the game we decided to make a night of it and go eat dinner at the Olive Garden, yum! We don't ever take our kids out to eat unless we are out of town, they did great!

Dance Competition

My little sister, Lori, had her first dance competition at BYU! She competed the waltz against all the other 184 students, and did pretty good! They got a couple of call backs. We went to watch and cheer her on, it brought back so many fun memories of my dancing days at BYU. I was in her same shoes as a freshmen, competing the waltz in my very first dance competition and my partner and I won 2nd place! I realized how old I am getting though, I didn't know anyone there, not even the teachers! Just the heads of departments. It was a fun night, way to go Lori!

Aloha Run

Yeah! We finally have the internet again! We just got connected last night, I feel like I've been cut off from the world, but I am back. Now that I am back I can post pictures from my very first 5K run! It was the Aloha run in Mapleton a week and a half ago. Namifiers sponsered it, so I actually didn't even think about doing it until the night before. Rachel and I decided to do it together, the only time I can run with her is when she is pregnant, that way I can't slow her down. Brad ran it pushing the kids in the jogging stroller and still killed us. I hadn't run in about a month so I was a little nervous, but we jogged the whole time and felt good! It was just a small race so I never found out what my time was which I am bummed about. We didn't even think about wearing a watch, but we think we did it somewhere between 40-45 minutes. It was a fun experience!

I put Miss Kater's hair in her very first ponytail the other day. 15 months old and barely has enough for somewhat of a decent hairdo. It sticks straight up, but I thought she looked cute!

$2 Tuesday!

Thanksgiving Point has $2 Tuesdays for the month of August so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go check out the Dinosaur Museum. Unfortunately, half of the Salt Lake Valley had the same great idea. The line wrapped around 3 sides of the building! It's a big building. Luckily the line moved pretty fast, it only took us about 45-50 minutes to make it to the door. We went with our friends Becky, Ben, and Julia so the time in line seemed to go fast. The kids had fun playing with the dinosaurs, puzzles, running up and down the ramps, and digging for bones in the sand. It was impossible to get many pictures of their faces, they were just too busy for pictures, definately worth the $2 for a fun morning. Thanks for going with us Becky, Ben, and Julia!

Cousins Party!

We had a fun lunch party at the park last week

to celebrate birthdays and babies. I love getting together with my family.

We need to do this more often!

Brad's first time ever...

on a horse!

It was pretty entertaining seeing him mount his first horse ever. Sorry I laughed Brad, but you did look pretty funny! Some friends in the ward go up Payson canyon a couple of times a year for a week of camping, riding horses, and relaxing. It is beautiful up there! They invited us to come up one night for dinner and a ride, so we went last night and had so much fun! Thank you Burninghams!

Daylen got to ride with me and he did really well for his first time on a horse. Brett's horse in front of us stopped to poop at one point and you wouldn't believe how long a 2 1/2 year old can have a conversation about a horse pooping. Of course, it was just the same conversation over and over. The only part Daylen didn't really like was going downhill, it was a little painful for him I think.


Meet Buck, Cisco, and Josie from left to right. The Burninghams assured us Buck got his name from the fact that he is a buckskin horse and not for other reasons. They were such good horses, so fun to ride. They were perfect for Brad's first experience on a horse. The mountains and area was absolutely beautiful, and the weather was perfect. We had so much fun!




After our ride we roasted hotdogs over the fire and had a yummy dinner. Kate had a little too much fun crawling around in the dirt, filling her cup up with wood chips and dirt and whatever else she could find. She was soooo dirty by the time we had to head home, but she didn't care she had a great time!

Daylen "roasted" the same marshmellow all night. It never got close enough for the fire to actually cook it, but that's alright by me. He had more fun carrying the roasting stick around with a marshmellow on the end, than actually eating the marshmellow.

Daylen still roasting his marshmellow with Kaitlyn, our trusty babysitter.

Even Kate wanted to try roasting.

This picture doesn't quite do justice to how dirty Kate really was. She has a crazy mad look on her face in this picture, but she was really just talking really loud and playing and the camera happened to capture an odd face. Thanks again guys we had so much fun!!

I love to see the Temple...

For Family Home Evening this last Monday we had a little lesson on Temples, then went to go see the Provo Temple.We have never just taken Daylen and Kate to go see it and walk around,

so we thought this would be a good time to do it.

Daylen was so excited when we told him we were going to go see the Temple, he shouted a "YEAH! We are going to the Temple!"

Then the whole way there he kept saying, "We are going to the Temple" with a huge

smile on his and he'd look out the window at the passing scenery. It was a great family night!

Perfect Park Day

We had a perfect day at the park this afternoon with our friends Janell, Rylan, and Asher. The weather was beautiful, we amazingly had the park all to ourselves, and the kids played so well together. I'm so glad I finally thought to bring my camera. We usually walk every morning and stop at the park while we're out to let the kids play. We missed our walk this morning, so we went this afternoon for some fun and fun it was.

Kate has a fascination with noses right now, so poor Asher played guinea pig to her exploration.

Good thing he's such a happy baby, he ALWAYS has a smile on his face.

Daylen and Rylan having fun with the park all to themselves.

Enjoying a "picnic" of sticks. It's fun to see their imagination and pretend play blossom.

Kate likes to climb on the playground like the big boys.

If it's not the swings it's up and down the slide.

I love being a stay at home mom!