Fun in the Sun

While we were at my parents house they wanted to go to a corn maze. There was one close by that they had heard that it was fun so we went to check it out. It turned out that there was these slides at the same place and it was the same price just to get in the door. So we went for the corn maze and spent most of the going down these huge slides. They had these burlap sacks that you got in to go down the slide. They warned us that you needed to keep your arms inside the sacks. I learned why you wanted to. OUCH!!! Major burn. The kids had so much fun. And yes we still went through the corn maze. It was the shape of Bugs Bunny and you had to find five markers for a treat.

Trevor was the first one down. He was so scared at first but when he got to the bottom the first thing he said was "That was awesome. Lets do it again."

Picture of how high the slide was. In the summer they have water running down the slides and the bottom is filled and you just stop in the water. Here they put those balls like in the McDonalds play pens to stop you.

I took Alexa down with me the first time and she had a blast. She just wanted to go do it again and again.

My mom took Maya down and she did not like it at all. She was so scared and she would not go down again. I finally convinced her that she could go with me.

Kolby had such a blast and the employees were happy to see him helping throw the balls back in. That kept him entertained because we thought he was to small to go with down the slide.

Trevor trying to get out the the balls. It usually took some one to help him get out.

They had a small slide for the little kids and the girls had a blast on it. Maya was finally to go by herself and had a blast as well.

I took Kolby down the small slide and the smile on his face says it all.

Weekend Trip

We took a trip up to my parents a few weekends ago and had a great time. It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise and so my parents spent the morning out in the garden getting things pulled and ready for winter. It does not matter where or when but my kids love to play in the dirt. They were right out in the middle of the garden pulling carrots and onions and anything else that they could pull. Even some things that they were not suppose to but my parents loved the help and the time they got to spend with their grand kids.

Here is Trevor, Alexa, and Maya just always ready to have their pictures taken.

My parents pulling up the onions. They had every type of onion that you could think of planted.

Maya and Alexa trying to get some carrots out of the ground.

Kolby just decided to site wherever he wanted, even if it was right where the digging was taking place.

ITS CANNING TIME AGAIN

It is always a fun time of the year when we are canning, or at least it starts out as fun. I always for get about the amount of time that it takes to process the products after the initial canning is complete. This year was did tomatoes and peaches again. We canned 60 quarts of tomatoes and 33 quarts of peaches all in two days. We did get some help from the little ones who want to be involved with anything that goes on in the kitchen. Here is Maya with her apron on helping put the cut tomatoes in the bottles.

Alexa learned how to peel the skins of the the tomatoes really fast that it surprised me. By the time she was done helping she was covered in tomato juice but she had so much fun.

WE REALLY DO TEACH OUR KIDS MANNERS

We really thought that we had been being good with Kolby but I guess when we are not around all is forgotten. This picture was taken as Kolby was relaxing after breakfast. This kid is crazy but you cannot help but laugh.

FAMILY FUN

For our family summer get together we went up to Jon and Karissa's cabin again. This time it was not so cold and the kids could run around outside. It was a lot of fun. Every night a fire was built and we sat around it and talked while the kids ran around and wore themselves out. This picture shows Trevor waiting patiently for a smore. Maya loved the smores. This was her second one and made such a mess. But if you don't get dirty, what is the fun of camping. Alexa was not as fond of the smores as Maya. She got chocolate everywhere, but still enjoyed it. Grandma organized the whole trip and we are grateful for all the work and prepartion that she put into it. Thank you.

Grandpa is here relaxing after hard work cooking his dutch oven chicken and potatoes. It is still the family favorite and is always requested whenever we all get together.

Thank you Jon and Karissa for letting us use your cabin again.

POOR TREVOR

Well Trevor has so much fun at recess. One day Brigitte got a call that Trevor had fallen off the monkey bars at school during recess. They thought that he was all right but that she should come pick him up. Trevor was being so brave and was not crying, but the second that he saw Brigitte, he started crying. Brigitte called and got Trevor into the doctors. After initial xrays the doctor thought it was just bruised but needed the radiologist to look at it. The bad news came that Trevor had a hairline fracture on the his elbow. This picture was taken shortly after he got home from the doctor. Because of the nature of the fracture, Trevor had to go to a specialist.

Trevor had to keep his arm is a sling for a week because the swelling was so great they could not but a cast on. When time for the cast, they asked Trevor what color of cast then wanted. Trevor said he wanted bright green like Sonic the Hedgehogs eyes. The things that kids notice.

Trevor had to had his cast on for a mere two weeks and is now going to physical therapy so that he can get his arm to bend like normal again.

It has really been 9 years

Well, it seems like it has been a while since I updated the blog and as I started to write this I had a flashback to one year ago when I wrote about our 8th anniversary and could not believe that it had all ready been a year since I wrote that. My how time flies. As they sing in primary, "One year older and wiser too." I am not sure about the wiser part but celebrating my 31st birthday made me realize that I am getting older.
This last year has flown by. It was so weird when Trevor headed off for his first day of 1st grade on July 20th. He has grown up so fast. The girls turned three and it seems like they aged overnight. Kolby is running everywhere. Whenever the front door opens it takes everything to get him before he is down the stairs. They are just growing up so fast.
This year for our anniversary we decided to go to a play at the Desert Star Theatre. Our back door neighbors, the Featherston's anniversary was on the 30th so we decided to invite them as well. We dropped the kids off at Brigitte's parents and then went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. That was the first time that we had been there and the food was sooooooo good. We walked around the mall for a while and then went to the play. The play was James Blonde Agent 7-11 in Casino Real. It was hilarious. They always are. It you want to have a good time then i would suggest trying it. We have even contemplated about getting season tickets, but the budget has never allowed it. Anyway, it is hard to realize that nine years ago Brigitte and I got married. I just want Briggite to know that I love her very much and am grateful for everything she does for me.

SAN DIEGO WAS GREAT

Brigitte and I have never went on a vacation by ourselves and we decided that it was time. We decided that we would go to San Diego for a weekend. I had never been to Sea World and thought that it would be fun. We got some really great deals. Delta was having a special where you could use sky miles to pay for the entire flight, taxes included. We still had to pay the baggage fee. We Pricelined our hotel. I was scared that we would not get a good hotel but we got a great hotel right in along the harbor. The Manchester Grand Hyatt was were we stayed for $75 a night. I would priceline a hotel again anytime.

Our hotel was three blocks from Petco Stadium, home of the San Diego Padres. No we did not goto a game because we spent the day that they played at SeaWorld.

We had a great time at Sea World. We first went to see the Killer Whales and sat in the 4th row. We got absolutely soaked. From there we went to Journey to Atlantis and got even wetter. We were there from when they opened to 10:45. Then we had to catch the bus to the trolley. It was a late night.

Our hotel was right next to the Seaport Village. We spent the first night walking the pier and visited all the stores.

The last full day we were there we took a tour of San Diego. We visited the Hotel del Coronado. It was massive and beautiful. Also expensive. We spent $7 on a single peice of fudge.

We also stopped at Balbo Park and walked through a couple of gardens. The gardens were also beautiful.

The day we were to fly out I wanted to go to the Midway Museum, but breakfast was a little hard to find and we spent 45 minutes standing in line to have a delicious breakfast. We walked down the boardwalk to the ship to at least say get a picture. Overall it was a great trip. Look forward to doing it again next year.

April's Scrapbooking Pages

Brigitte is a Close to My Heart Consultant and she makes layouts every month. This month the layouts used were the That's Amore Paper. The first layout she put pictures of when the girls got their ears pierced. I thought that it turned out really cute.

The second layout was of Trevor's Valentines Day party at school. It shows him making his Valentine bag and where he sits. Trevor was really proud of his bag.

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY KOLBY

Kolby is really 1 year old. Man it does not seem like that long ago that he was born. He has all of a sudden decided that he does not want to eat baby food anymore and all he wants is to have what we are eating so tonight he had steak, broccoli, deviled eggs, and pineapple. He loved it and ate two whole pieces of pineapple.

Thursday night after decorating eggs we opened his presents from Grandma and Grandpa Gorton. He really got into the unwrapping until he tore off his first piece of wrapping paper and then that is all he wanted to play with.

Saturday we went down to Grandmother and Grandpa MacKay's for another birthday party. Kolby is to the age where if there are alot of people around he gets into that stranger danger stage and is really clingy. But once the presents came out he was all right.

Brigitte made a really cute birthday cake for him. The caterpillar was suppose to be upright but the cake was so soft that it would not stand up so instead she laid it down. I still think that it turned out really great. And it had my favorite frosting - Cream Cheese.

Kolby was once again clingy and did not want to sit in the high chair for his birthday cake. The whole time we were singing to him he was crying and screaming. He wanted to have nothing to do with the cake. He finally had a few bites but that was all. No big mess to clean up. Hallelujah!!!!!!

WONDERFUL FUN OF COLORING EGGS

It is that time of the year again. Time to decorate the eggs and hope that no one spills the dye and ruins their clothes. We made Trevor go get his old shirt on.

We made the girls take their clothes off. This way we did not ruin any clothes at all.

The kids had so much fun decorating the eggs. They were so sad when it was all done but at the same time we were glad.

This egg decorating kit was really weird. It had the space theme with stickers of bunny-nauts and egg ships. It even came with glow in the dark stickers and glow in the dark paint that never really existed. It came with these punch outs that you could use to put rings around your eggs.

CAMERA FUN

Trevor has a bad habit of waking up really early in the morning, some times as early as 5:30 and going downstairs and watching TV. We have tried everything to stop him. We did not know that he had gotten a hold of the camera until we downloaded the pictures off of the card. We found some weird pictures. I guess Trevor really wanted a self portrait. This one was quite funny. I am not sure how he took it.

This was more like the ones that we found on the camera. He took pictures of either the ceiling or the TV. That is how we found out when this took place. He got in some trouble for these. In totla he took about 20 useless pictures.

Ears peirced

We decided that it was time to get the girls ears pierced. We went to the mall and was in line to get but Trevor threw a huge fit so we went home. We went back the same day with the girls blankets because we were not sure what they would do. Alexa went first. I took Maya away so that she did not watch. Alexa was all right until she had her first ear done. Because there was only person there trained to pierce ears they had to one ear at a time instead of one both at the same time. Alexa was doing good until they pierced the first ear and then they had to hurry and do the other. She was crying so hard. The lady looked at her and asked her if she wanted a sucker and she immediately stopped crying and was just fine. Maya heard her crying so she was not sure if she wanted to do this.

Maya had to have mom hold her during her turn. She did not even cry or make a sound during the whole procedure. She was so brave.

Both girls looked so cute after they were done. They both had suckers to help them.

They each got there own little bag with the cleaning stuff for their ears. They looked so cute carrying their little bags through the mall.

He is getting so big!!

Kolby is getting so big. Now that he has decided to start eating food finally, that is all he wants to do. He has also started standing up to everything. And he crawls everywhere. He has even tried to venture up the stairs but got stuck when he realized that he had went up one stair.

What Markers can Do!!!

The girls got a hold of Trevor's Markers after he was told to put them away. Brigitte did not know that they were downstairs coloring. Coloring themselves that is.

This picture says it all. The look on their faces is so precious. Whenever they see these photos all the can say is "we haughty."

Poor Alexa. Who can help but laugh when they see this picture. Good thing that it was washable marker.

Maya did not get the worst of it but she was the artist for the worst of it.

Brigitte was so mad that she made the girls go to the next door neighbors without washing their faces so that maybe they would learn a lesson from this experience.