Gunlock Rodeo

We are really lucky to have so many fun things going on nearby, all summer long.  We're even luckier to have family around that can do fun things with us.  The Gunlock Rodeo is pretty inexpensive for a night of entertainment for the family, and there is something about a local rodeo that is just special.  When the announcer knows the genealogy of the competitors off the top of his head, and all the people around you are greeting each other like long-lost family members (okay, so maybe most of them are related), it's just a nice small-town feel. Here are my awesome (not really) pictures of our fun time at the rodeo. 

The chicken chase.  If you've never seen it, you must check it out...ranks right up there in hilarity with the watermelon race! 

Lily - 9 months

15 lbs 4 oz

29 inches

Likes: reading board books, "singing" along with Mom, playing on the floor (especially scooting around to pick things up), eating everything, tasting new foods (especially finger foods), Katie, Daddy, "honking" noses, being held by mom, the phone, swimming/splashing,

Dislikes: being held by other people, going to bed, laying still for diaper changes, being put into the carseat, green beans, peas, crackers, applesauce, and bananas

Milestones: first baby signs (more, all done), waves hello and bye-bye, clapping, pushes up onto hands and knees, first and second teeth (bottom front), scooting/army crawling, pushes up to sit, crawls on hands and knees (a few "steps"), shakes head "no" and nods "yes"

Lily, so much has happened over the past three months, you're almost a totally different baby!  You can get anywhere you want (even down the hall to different rooms), and you know how to tear apart a room in a few minutes.  You love to play on the floor, and frequently choose to be put down (hallelujah!), but still prefer for Mom to hold you.  You love to play with your brothers and sister, and have become much more interactive now that you can clap, point and grab and imitate words.  You started learning to fall asleep on your own, then had some teeth come in that made you so cranky, so we've had to start all over learning to go to sleep. 

You eat everything you find on the floor, you are the most likely to choke on something of all my babies.  And while I've given you finger foods from the beginning, you still gag during most every meal, poor thing.  You make the most entertaining faces, and are so fun to watch.  You make the same "scrunchy face" that Katie made as a baby, and you still love to stick your tongue out all the time.  You also engage the neighbor kids or whoever is sitting behind us in church in games of nodding and shaking heads, as well as peekaboo. 

You are very aware and I love spending time just with you because I notice how much you are picking up on.  You "sing" along any time I am singing ("ahhhhhh"), even in another room, and you'll often wave your arms to "lead" the music, too, like I do in Relief Society.  When I say a word to you, you repeat it, and it often sounds just like what I am saying ("done," "dad," "hi," "bye-bye," "honk," etc.).  When I read The Going to Bed Book to you, you start rocking when I get to "...they rock and rock and rock to sleep." 

You don't laugh readily and when you do laugh it sounds rough, like it's difficult for you to do.  But I love when you do because it's all the more special because you don't do it often.  I can hardly believe how quickly the time is going; before long you'll be a year old! 

Isaiah Turns 8

My little boy is not so little anymore!  I sure love Isaiah and I'm so proud of what a sweet boy he is.  Here are a few things you may not know about him if you don't live with him. 

• He is very smart and is always trying to figure out how things work.  He especially loves experiments and elaborate projects. 
• He is very creative and loves to draw, sculpt, and invent things.  He makes his own Pokemon cards (they look very much like the store-bought ones, and he says they're accurate).
• He is really good at math and can solve all kinds of problems in his head.  He also looks for patterns and can find parallels in all kinds of situations. 
• He loves to play and exercise and use his energy.  He loves video games as much as any of his friends (and is really good at them), but he also loves to pretend and play hard outside.  Sometimes he gets frustrated when his friends don't want to play. 
• He is learning to program by making video games, and he's getting pretty good at it.  Adam downloaded a program, called Scratch, made my MIT that helps kids learn to become proficient at programming. 
• He loves to read, especially comics.  But he loves chapter books, too, and prefers fiction to nonfiction. 
• He is very loving.  He gives me hugs and tells me how much he loves me all the time.  He and I don't have a whole lot of common interests, but he is always trying to bridge that gap by being interested in what I do and complimenting me. 
• He is very outgoing and can converse with anyone he meets, from baby to senior citizen.  He loves being the center of attention!  (Okay, if you've ever met Isaiah, you already knew that!) 

I throw the kids a big themed party every other year, and this year was an off year, so we let him choose an activity that he could invite one or two friends to.  He wanted to have a sleepover with his two neighborhood buddies, Kirk and Gabe.  They had so much fun playing Isaiah's new video game, Bakugan Dimensions, watching a movie, eating cake (Isaiah picked a lemon cream pie at the store) and sherbet, and slip 'n sliding in the morning.  Happy birthday, Handsome!

Slip 'N Slide...in the nude!

It gets pretty hot here...the funny thing is that this was at about 10 am! 

Scrunchy Face

Ah, my silly girls, making silly faces.  I crack up when Lily does her scrunchy face, not because it's funny necessarily, but because it reminds me of her sister 5 years ago.  (When Katie did it, I just laughed because it was funny!) 

City Pool - first outdoor swim of the season





Riding the Bus

I have fond memories of riding the bus into downtown Salt Lake with my mom when I was a little girl.  We'd go shopping at ZCMI and walk around Temple Square.  So when Adam suggested we take the kids on a bus ride last year, I got really excited about the idea, thinking of the next time we could do it all together. Summer is a perfect time for excursions, and we planned a trip out for lunch and to the Dinosaur Tracks.  It was a fun trip even though we accidentally took the wrong bus, which added an extra 30 or 40 minutes, we had to take three of the four routes to get where we were going, and even though the kids were disappointed to find there were no actual dinosaurs at the museum.  (And then there was the incident where Max set of the alarm by opening an emergency door...it was awesome!)  There is just something special about rushing to catch the bus, meeting kind strangers, and seeing your hometown from a different perspective.  (And they had a whole display of origami dinosaurs at the museum, and the kids got to make origami cranes, the highlight of the trip!)

We interrupt this blog...

Okay, so it's been a long time since I posted.  Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that I used to blog a lot.  And it was fun.  But life has really been getting in the way for a while, and it has become super stressful. 

So I'm just not going to blog for a while.  Maybe the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" thing will kick in.  Maybe not.  But for now, I'm going to stop feeling guilty when I choose to live life rather than blog about it for a while.  Because there is only so much of me to go around, and if I have to choose between snuggling and reading with my kids or yelling at them to be quiet for two more minutes while I finish a blog post, I'm going to choose snuggling.  At least for a little while, since they are still little and won't be for too much longer. 

In the meantime, I need your help. Will you comment and let me know if there is something you have enjoyed seeing here on this blog? I need a reason to come back from my little break.  Thank you ever so much, dear friends! 

Karate Tournament

Isaiah had his first ever karate tournament at the Utah Summer Games in Cedar City.  Adam took him up the morning of the tournament, then I came later with the other kids so we could watch. Grandma Linda and Grandpa Doug came up to watch, as well.  He had to wait a while before his events were called, but he did really well both with his form and sparring. 


Waiting.  And waiting some more. 

This video shows Isaiah doing his form and receiving a score. 




Isaiah and Kirk decked out for sparring

Isaiah won his first round of sparring:

Then, in the second round he fought against the best kid in his age division, and got the wind knocked out of him.  He was pretty upset, but his instructor got him psyched up to go back in, and Isaiah did score a point against him.  He was pretty thoroughly beaten mentally, though, and felt pretty upset afterward.  He didn't even want to go back in to watch the rest to see who won.  We were really proud of him for doing as well as he did, especially not giving up after getting kicked in the chest.  And we're hoping that the competition will help him as he continues to work and grow. 

Gak

Looking for a fun project to do indoors while it's 100+ degrees outside?  Oh, it isn't 100+ degrees outside where you are?  Well, lucky you.  But here, sometimes even playing in the water isn't worth hanging out outside for, so we came up with something fun to do when our cousins were over playing: gak! 

Here's a link to the recipe and directions.  It's pretty fun to play with on it's own, but our suggestions for a fun time: a pack of army men and/or plastic bugs or animals from the dollar store and some cookie cutters.  The kids played with this for a very long time, and when they were done, we put it into the fridge in Ziploc bags and saved it for the next day.