Utah Trip #2

Here is the second installment of our trip to Utah. We were there for five weeks so it was hard to narrow down the pictures. For Claire's 4th birthday Aunt Peggy gave her a trip to Color Me Mine. Claire picked a bowl to paint. Here she is with her bowl after it was painted. Thanks Aunt Peggy...Claire had a blast!!
On the Fourth of July, my family got together at my sister's house and had our own mini firework show. Claire wasn't so sure of doing the sparklers, but by the end she loved every minute of it.
My mom and I took the girls to Temple Square. Claire had asked about a hundred times where Bryan and I had gotten married. I made sure to show her. Here we are at the Christus Statue. Claire loved this room. She was amazed at the painting of the planets and constellations on the wall (yes she called the stars constellations).
Of course we had to take a picture at the famous "wedding spot". Claire was being her goofy self while we were at temple square.
One day we visited Antelope Island. I grew up in Utah and had never visited it before. When paying to enter the park the park attendant asked to see my dad's license for the senior discount. My dad said something to the effect he gets in cheaper since he is an old man...Claire then asked me "mommy, is grandpa an old man?" I just said, "that is what grandpa called himself huh?" Here are my girls with their grandparents and the Great Salt Lake behind them.
Clarie and I walked out and put our feet in the Great Salt Lake. Claire kept complaining about the smell. This was right before we found the buffalo. Claire and Mia both loved seeing all the buffalo. They were so close to us. Claire informed us all that another name for buffalo is the American Bison.
One night Aunt Peggy brought over her wii game called Just Dance 2. We had so much fun and got a great work out. Thanks Aunt Peggy. This one is of my mom and I having a great time.
Even Bryan and Claire got into the video game. Claire had a blast dancing. I think this video game is a hit!!
Each year my family attends the Ute Stampede in Nephi. This year was no exception (we love it). There is a carnival and Claire enjoyed the rides. Thanks Cort and Ty for going on the Ferris Wheel with Claire. She loved every minute of it.
Mia went on her first carnival ride. As a family we went on the Merry-Go-Round. This pictures was taken before the ride started. Mia wasn't so sure of it during the ride. I had to go up and down with her just so she wouldn't cry. Oh well, Claire cried the first time she went on it too.
While walking into the Ute Stampede, we ran into Cotton Rosser (he owns Flying U Rodeo...all the livestock used at the Ute Stampede) he let the girls pet his horse...the only problem was Mia absolutely was terrified of the horse.
Mia did enjoy the Stampede. This was her first one and she was a night owl for it. What a great girl. She enjoyed eating cotton candy, snow cones and seeing all the activities. It was a great night.
We had a fabulous trip. We got to run in the rain, paint with water on the back porch, help eat the peas from the garden, see lots of baseball games, have lots of fun with cousins, watch movies, laugh, jump on the trampoline, find rainbows and just make a lot of fun memories. Thanks for a great trip to Utah and thanks Bryan for letting us go for so long!

Utah Trip #1

Before my family reunion began, Bryan participated in the Wasatch Back Ragnar race with some of my family. This is the group photo- The guys....my brother-in-law Zach, his brother Ez, his uncle Tristan, Bryan and I don't know the other two guys)- The girls my sister Shannon, my sister Kris, my sister Ginet, my oldest niece Cortney and I don't know the other two girls.
Each team needs volunteers to help with the race. My best friend Peggy and I were volunteers. They encourage you to dress up and have fun so here we are ready to cheer the runners on. Our shift was from 6:30pm-12am. It was a lot of fun!
We got as many of the grandkids together that we could and had an updated grandkid picture taken.
After Bryan went back to Washington I got to spend a lot of time with my mom and dad. One of the things we did was go to the International Peace Gardens. Here are the girls and I at the gardens representing France.
This is something I have always wanted to see...the little mermaid statue. It is a replica of the on in Denmark. This may be the closest I get to the real statue.
There were a few rainstorms while we were visiting; on one of those storms my mom and Claire were at the grocery store. It started raining before they left to come home, Claire didn't want to get her hair wet so this is what my mom improvised with to stop her hair from getting wet. Way to be so creative mom/grandma!!

With rainstorms comes some beautiful rainbows. I just loved this one!

The girls, my mom and I went to the Hogle Zoo one day. Here is Claire with a Falcon at the bird show.
It was Zoorasic Park at Hogle Zoo this summer. They had the awesome life size dinosaurs all over the zoo. This one was down where you could take a picture on it. Claire loved trying to find them all.

This is just a classic photo opportunity. How do you measure up to the apes?

Here we are making friends with the ape statue.

Mia got two new teeth while we were in Utah and she learned how to climb up stairs. Here is a video of her.

Hey everybody this is Bryan and if you follow our blog at all you know that I don't get on here and post stuff very often but I guess it's because I often feel I don't really have anything interesting to say. Anyway today I wanted to do a little bit of self promotion because for the last 6+ months a friend, Brady Larson, and I have been working on a game for iPhone and Android and it's finally finished and available on the Apple App Store, Android Marketplace and even the Amazon App Store.

Here's a link to the Apple App Store page so you can check it out, our game is called Ricochet: Speck's Adventure.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app​/ricochet-specks-adventure/id4​46039227?mt=8

We also have a little video we did of it on youtube and so here's a link to that as well. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v​=ibGwkH3FgkA

If you need something to help you kill some time and enjoy a little bit of a challenge than I totally recommend you check it out. The full game is only $0.99 but there's also a Lite version so you can check it out for free.

We have big dreams for it but at the same time are being realistic and know that we'll probably only sell 10 copies at the most. :D

Thanks Everyone!

Family Reunion

We had a great time at my family reunion this year. We once again went to Anderson Cove. We all got to spend lots of times with siblings, cousins, parents, aunts and uncles and of course grandparents! Here are some of those fun times!
Most of us had our bikes or scooters up there. We all took turns on each others bikes. It was a lot of fun. Here is Bryan on one of the scooters.

Claire's cousin Cole helped her have a turn.

I took a turn on Claire's bike and Claire had a turn on Janey's bike.

Mia liked to be a part of everything....even when we were trying to prepare meals. So we did what we could to make her "a part" of the meal.
As we have posted many times before we enjoy playing lawn games; the latest lawn game we like is one called Kubb. In this picture my brother-in-law (Mark), sister (Shannon) and niece (Cortney) are doing their version of the Haka.

Here is a picture of an intense game of Kubb....it was a popular thing to do this year.

We also had a net up and we could play volleyball (with a jumbo blow up ball) or badminton. This is a game between my niece (Summer) and my nephew (Braxton).
Even though we were camping we had technology with us. All the kids enjoyed playing games on the ipod, iphone or whatever smart phone they could get their hands on. One good thing is well all shared some of our favorite apps and now we have some new games to play.
One of the days we were there we rented a canoe. Aunt Ginet and Aunt Shannon were gracious enough to take all four of the littlest girls on the canoe. Claire loved every minute of it.

That same day we rented a stand up paddle board as well. Here is Bryan trying it out.

Claire even got to try out the stand up paddle board; thanks to her cousin C.J. for helping her out with a ride.

Here are some of the little girls, with Cortney, enjoying the cold water of the edge of the dock.

Last but not least...we let Mia get in on the beach fun. She wasn't so sure of the water (I don't blame her it was freezing), but she loved the beach. She even tried to see how it was as a snack. From this picture you can just tell how much fun she had at the beach!
It was a great family reunion. It was so much fun to spend so much time with everyone. The sad part is we don't all live close enough to do this more often...it makes you cherish these moments even more.

All About Claire

For the past six weeks Claire had swimming lessons. Here she is one day before the lessons started...she said she was a bathing beauty!
This pictures is from her first swimming lesson. She was terrified of putting her ears and face in the water. I wasn't so sure she would want to go back after this lesson.
She now owns swim goggles and that made her braver in the water. She loved this kick boards so much. She now owns and Little Mermaid kick board of her own now.
This pictures is from her last lesson. She will now put her face in the water and her ears. She is getting so good and she loves the water. She can't wait to have more swimming lessons.
Here is Claire with her swimming teacher...teacher Terry. Claire really loved teacher Terry!
Her is a video of Claire and her fifth swim lesson. We are so proud of her. She went from being terrified to put her face and ears in the water to really enjoying doing it....as long as she has her swim goggles on.

All About Mia

Mia is now 9 months old. I can't believe it. She is in the 90th percentile in both her height and weight. She is just a joy to have in our family. I mean look at this smile...
We recently went to a birthday party where there girls got to be fairy princesses. Mia even got to join in. She was so proud of her crown, wings, tutu and wand.
In our household we don't teach our children to throw their hands in the air and say "so big" we teach them to throw their arms in the air and say "TOUCHDOWN"! Mia is catching on...if you listen carefully at the end you can hear her attempt to say touchdown.

The other day when I took Mia to the doctor for her 9 month check up, she started doing this in the doctor's office.

Graduation and More

We will start with the "and More" part of the title of this post. We can't believe how quickly Mia is growing up. Next week we will take her to her 9 month doctor appointment to see how big she is. Her newest thing is standing on her own.
She loves crawling all over the place and she also loves to pull herself up on things and walk around them. We hope she'll crawl longer, but I am sure before long she will be trying to walk. Another new thing for her is grass. We took her outside the other night to play on the grass before bed...the picture below is her reaction to the grass.
This past Tuesday was preschool graduation. Bryan and I have spent countless hours in preparation for the graduation. We started out having the kids paint a picture frame and then we had our program (a video of the kids and pictures from the school year) and handed out diplomas. We also had a giant soccer net and ball to play with and a parachute. The kids loved it. We finished off with a potluck type lunch. Overall I think graduation was a success.
We tried Claire's graduation 2011 glasses on Mia, but all she wanted to do was eat them and Claire just likes to see them glow in the dark.
We did body outlines of the kids and then the kids got to color them. Here is Claire's body outline. She had pony tails the day we did the outlines and she wanted me to trace them too. She tells everyone that her piggy tails look more like doggie ears.
This is one of my favorite pictures I have seen (so far...I am still waiting for mom's to send me the pictures they took) from graduation. Claire has so much fun with these two kids. They are also in our ward. Ella is such a bubbly happy girl and Jaxon always says something to me to warm my heart.
Here is Teacher Stacie (that is what the kids called me) giving Claire her diploma. I loved being her teacher, but I love being her mommy even more!! I am proud of my girl for her hard work this year.
I can't believe that the preschool year is over. It seems like it just started, but Mia was only two weeks old when it started and now she is almost 9 months. It is nuts. I will truly miss the eight kids I taught! The kids learned a lot this year, but I think I learned even more!