not afraid of heights...

My kids didn't inherit my fear of heights, for which I'm grateful ~ I think. Nathan has spent most of summer pushing himself a little more each time we go to the pool. I like that he goes out side his comfort zone. I try and do that, but I couldn't do this. He started on the diving boards last year and was quite confident jumping from the first platform earlier this summer. As summer progressed he made it to the second platform and last week he jumped from the highest one. He flailed his arms and legs like his life was depending on it, but he didn't scream (I would have, not that I would have ever made it up the ladder). What made it even cooler is three of the kids he goes to school with saw him jump and were super impressed.


Why is that while Monday was the last day the pool was open it was barely made 80 degrees and now that the pool is closed it's back up in the low 90's?

little stitchers

Nathan asked me recently to teach him to cross stitch. I had a sinus infection that next week and spent most of a whole day in bed and... taught them both to stitch. Nathan had an easier time and was able to come back up through with the second half of the stitch and could read his patterns by himself but I was still impressed with Andrew. He was able to work the thread from the front and could follow my instructions on how many stitches per row. Nathan made the lady bug on the left (for Andrew) and Andrew made the book mark with the three stars. So neat they were intrested in learning this.

toothless

We went camping again for Labor Day. We're usually out of town and although we were again this year, we camped near Heber Utah and I finally managed to get to Swiss Days for the first time ever. It was pretty neat. Nathan lost another tooth the first night we were there. That's three teeth in two weeks. He has more gaps than teeth now.

We had amazing sunrises and....

Sunsets.

Played lots of games and had lots of fun!

Now back to school....

We asked Andrew if he liked kindergarten, and he does -but he says there are too many girls in his class.

catch up

Nathan started school last week and is enjoying it. He sure has a lot of homework for 2nd grade. Andrew is excited to start later this week. Nathan also lost another tooth this past Saturday and has another one loose. We were joking that all he'll have for Christmas is his two front teeth - all the ones to the sides are falling out. We had Sam for the whole weekend as well which was lots of fun. For now some more pics from the cruise and hopefully later this week I'll get some up from this weekend.


This is from our excursion - we rented sand rails and riding in Guadalupe Valley.

This is at the Ensenada port. I thought the flag was really big, we found out it is the second largest flag in the country. The largest is in Mexico City. They told us to use it as a guide to get back to port when you were out sight seeing - it works, you can see it from everywhere. We also saw the actual Black Pearl from the Pirate movies - it's docked down here because maintenance is less expensive. It was behind a really big fence so the picture is only of the top half and not really good.



This is from the upper deck, there were twelve decks.

These are the other couples from our dining table. They were all cruising for their anniversary as well. The couple to our right was at 17 years and then next to them was one year.

lost tooth

Nathan lost his fifth tooth yesterday. I hadn't realized he had one so loose, he says it wasn't as loose as the others had been. He bit into an orange, must have just hit it right. The little poser requested me take pictures of him in various poses holding the tooth and then just grinning a toothless grin. He was directing me from the other side of the camera of what shots to take - definitely my kid. At least they will be scrapbook worthy. We have extended family in town as well and were able to have dinner with them last night. It's always nice seeing family. Never get to see them enough. Paul and I are going to take a little break without kids for our tenth anniversary. It doesn't seem like we've been married that long. We're going on our first cruise. I'm excited! I'll tell you all about it when we get back

Rainmakers Campout

We went to Pineview Reservoir this weekend with our church for their annual Rainmakers camp out. It rained... hard too. One couple had three poles on their tent break when the storm blew in. It didn't last long and the rest of the time it was perfect weather. We've had so much rain lately all the reservoirs are full and there was only about four feet of beach instead of twenty, but everyone shared. We had a really good time and ended up meeting another couple from our church that lives literally down the street from us with a little girl Andrews age. We're going to try to get together again after our next trip.

The kids were being silly one morning while I was making breakfast in the fifth wheel and I took this video, as I was loading the pictures to the computer today I showed it to Nathan and he laughed so hard I had to stop so he could go to the bathroom.

Not a box

I mentioned we had dinner with our friends Saturday. I have to mention it again, the food and company were really good. And they had just bought some furniture. Which everyone knows comes with a toy for the kids. This is their new clubhouse/boat....whatever, but it is not a box. My friend even had a book titled Not a Box. My boys love *not* boxes. We currently have "trains" in each of their rooms - housing all the baby dolls that are going on a ride and a "house" in Nathans room with doors and windows. I've even seen another friend build a three room, two story (really!) house with the reinforced stove/dishwasher/ boxes. The kids could sit in the top story. The not a box really is much more fun that the useless item that only does one thing that came in it. I however couldn't get the other kid in there. He was having too much fun launching the play lawn mower down the slide.

I love this funny picture, and it intrigues me as well. Nathan and Sam look more like siblings than Nathan and Andrew.

Regatta races

Can you tell our little guy was excited! The Cub Scouts held Regatta rain gutter races last meeting. Nathan won for his age group and came in second place over all! And he's in the youngest age group. The other boy that won had a completely different boat design than all the other kids - which apparently works really well. Most of the the kids had issues with their boat tipping over. Nathan's daddy knew this would be a probably and kept testing different sail designs when assembling the boat. The other boy went with a catamaran type setup for the hull to deal with the sail issues. Nathan also rewarded with 5 new belt loops and two badge/patches. Most of which he earned during the Scout-o-Rama event. To top it off the Air Force was doing training exercises and flew over -RIGHT OVER us almost a dozen times. It was pretty cool.

Saltue to Disney

Nathan had his first grade program yesterday and all four classes got together to do a salute to Disney. All classes sang each song and then one class at a time came forward and did a performance. Lots of my favorite songs were sung like It's a Small World and Spoon Full of Sugar. I really liked the song his class performed to. It was "I've Got No Strings" from Pinocchio. They had little sticks and did a tapping sequence along with the music and some dance moves.
They have been practicing the songs for weeks now and Nathan even had a speaking / introduction part. He was fabulous.

Wow this is a busy week. Paul and I each have something planned for every night after work and it's month end which is an accounting headache and I just realized that month end is Thursday not Friday. Funny how things that are stagnant on the calendar sneak up on you. I have the evening news on while working and just heard it's 77 in Moab.... that sounds good right now. The 77 degrees and Moab, both sound good. Here's another picture from our trip of Nathan being a goof.

cousins

When we were in Moab my Sister-in-law drove through with her family so we all had dinner together along with my Brother-in-laws parents from Grand Junction. Here's a picture of all the cousins. Last night we had our second class in the Fireproof series and we gathered in small groups. I really enjoyed the people that ended up in our group. Good thing, we're going to be together for awhile. I think the idea is to form groups that support each other even after the class is finished.We'll see how it goes, but it's off to a good start.

Roadrash

Weirdest thing, my camera will only download pictures from one USB port on my home computer, I have eight. I've had this problem before so at least this time is was faster figuring out what the problem was. Anyway, here are the pictures of Nathan on his bike.

Before.....

After..... (at least this time it wasn't his face again).

Here is Andrew and his friends from his party and his smiley face cupcakes...

Nathan rode his bike without training wheels for the first time yesterday. He also ran into our neighbors fence (big owie), hopefully for the last time. I have video and pictures...but I can't seem to get them off my camera. We had birthday party Saturday for our five year old. It was actually pretty mild considering I had a house full of five-ish year olds. We had some out of town relatives come for it as well since they were visiting and they mused they thought they were at the wrong house it was so quiet. I had three craft projects for them to do which as usual, is really good entertainment. They really are also a great bunch of kids. Once again I forgot to hand out treat bags after the party. I think I've only remembers to hand them out twice out of all the parties I've thrown. We had all same relatives over for dinner last night for another family birthday. We ended up with four generations from one side of the family together, which was neat. We also played Apples to Apples, I love this game! So since I have no pictures of Nathan or his owie you get a picture of Andrew from Christmas morning.

kissy kissy

Funny how things can seem so busy when your just 'catching up' but not really doing anything. I finally broke down and bought a new computer. It's been waay too long since my last one, especially considering I pretty much live on the thing. Turns out the USB ports on the front didn't work properly. They would load my pictures but not movies. The ones on the back worked. Not really a critical error, but who knows what else might not be working, and I actually rely heavily on the USB connections, it was one reason we bought this one. It had four more USB's than the last one, so we had the computer company send a replacement one. My dear husband actually wasted about 5 hours trying to figure it out because we thought it was a setting on the camera not the computer. The place we bought the computer from sent out a replacement one so I spent part of the weekend re-doing everything all over again and catching up from Andrew being sick last week. I had him home Thursday and Friday from school. He was still recovering Saturday. He had a fever most of Friday. He had such a pathetic little look on his face and when I'd ask how he was feeling he'd say "bad". He's doing fine now.

The picture below was a couple weeks ago. Nathan would tell Andrew to kiss him and then pretend to be grossed out. They got a kick out of that and a lot of giggles.

The wiggles

This video is from about a week ago. I'm hoping they got all the wiggles out, altough I'm sure they didn't. I'm driving off this afternoon with just the kids to visit my brother in Las Vegas for a few days. Thankfully, it's not too long drive. It's my first time going that far out numbered by small people.

Happy St. Patricks day

I found a lot of cute photos digging through my archives the other day. This is one of my favorites, it's from St. Patricks day 2006!

the Horse and the Cow

I wrote yesterday about Andrews shoes, so I thought today I'd share Nathans loveys with you. These pictures are from 2004. He has long since moved on from them, but the horse and cow were his faithful companions that went on most of his adventures. They eventually had to stay home because we almost lost them at a store once which resulted in a panic attack from mom (not Nathan). They would always wait for him to return. They slept with him, ate meals with him and ...were potty trained before him. They had some interesting adventures.

I had a beanbag doll I was told I couldn't part with. I loved it to the brink of death to have it saved during a nap by my grandma. I have pictures of me with the poor mangled thing, which I'm grateful for. I don't really remember the doll. Just the stories my grandma told me.

I've been told by my MIL that my husband had a favorite screwdriver he slept with (for those of you that know him that's probably not all that surprising).

What was your lovey?

There's a medication that can fix this?

I honestly can't keep a straight face when I watch this. Maybe I should switch to organic food???

rubber ducky you're the one

Andrew figured out how to get his rubber ducky stuck to his head. Both kids thought this was hilarious.

Night at the museum

Last week I was googling museums in Utah because I thought it might be fun to take the kids to Hill A.F.B museum and I came across a museum in Lehi I had never heard of - The Hutchings Museum of Natural History and they just happened to be doing a re-enactment of Night at the Museum - just like the movie. We went down Saturday night and were greeted by a replica of Rexy in the lobby. Dum Dum was there as well, spitting dumdums out of his mouth rather than gum. And they had three live birds: a horned owl, a huge parrot, and a golden eagle. They had character actors dressed to the part. While the museum was small, it had an awesome collection of specimens. I was very crowded, due in part or (mostly) to their event. I think we might go back and spend some quality time there. It was really impressive and the kids really loved it.

Sadly, we found our yellow feathered visitor from last week at the base of a tree in the back yard today. He must have been sick. The kids gave him a proper burial in the back yard and marked it with a yellow marble.