Happy Birthday Ryan!

We had a cookout at our house with all the grandparents and a few of Ryan's cousins for his birthday. Of course he didn't know what was going on, but we had a good time.

I made him a rubber ducky cake. He couldn't wait to taste it, he got a little sneak preview before the party.


Some of the party guests. I should have got a picture with everyone, oops!
Food + Family = Good times!


Ryan had lots of help from his siblings and cousins in opening his presents. I think they all opened one and he didn't open any. He got lots of really cute and fun toys. Thank you everyone for the gifts!


Even with all his new, cool toys, he was most fascinated with this red bow.


Riding on his new bike.


The birthday boy and the kids, getting ready for the cake.


And here it is. "Do I get to touch it now?"


"Mmmm, that tastes pretty good."


"I think I'll dig in a little more and see what's inside."


"I like yours too Cruise"


"Man that is good!"


We had a fun little party. Ryan was pretty ticked about his hat a first but he couldn't figure out how to get it off and then when the cake came he forgot all about it. Thanks everyone for coming and celebrating with us.

Happy Birthday Ry Guy! We love you!

One Year Old

Well, it happened. Ryan turned 1 year old yesterday. I can't believe it, this is the fastest year of my life. All day yesterday while at work I kept thinking, one year ago I was in the hospital giving birth to Ryan, it just doesn't seem real. Anyway, I am so happy that Ryan is a happy and healthy little boy and is learning and growing and is such a fun little guy. His brother and sister just adore him, as do his parents. We are so happy and thankful to have him as part of our family.

I haven't taken him in yet for his one year check up so I don't know his height and weight yet, I'll have to add that later. Ryan is such a busy kid. Like any one year old, he won't sit still for 2 seconds. He loves to stand up and walk around furniture, and will stand unassisted for quite awhile, until I want to get a picture of it anyway.


He has taken a few steps a couple of times but will only try once. After he falls down you can't get him to stand up again, he just goes limp and doesn't want to try again. I hope this isn't any indication of how he'll handle other challenging things throughout his life. :) Ryan jabbers all the time but can say a few things like mama, dada, and uh-oh, he nods yes and no, and will count 1, 2, 3. He doesn't say the actual words but if we say it he'll copy the sounds and inflection we do, then throw the ball or do whatever we were counting for.


Ryan loves to eat, and likes most things. If anyone is eating he is right there wanting to share. He has loved eating watermelon this summer and thought it was pretty cool that he got to hold his own piece. He didn't care if he was eating the red juicy part or the hard green part.


Ethan and Ally both have little chairs in their rooms and Ryan loves to climb and play on them. He climbs up and down, over and over, and it keeps him entertained for quite sometime. He thinks he's pretty big when gets up in there and is pretty proud of himself.


We went on a little cookout the other night when Dale and her kids and Michael and Payton were home. Ryan loves being outside, exploring and tasting things. He thought this bucket was pretty fun too. I think he was trying to hide it behind it head but the handle kept getting stuck.


The other day I was trying to get several things done before we had to be somewhere and feeding Ryan dinner was one of them. I just didn't have time to do it all myself so I asked the kids to help me feed Ryan. Ethan and Ally thought this was the greatest thing, and I was pretty surprised that Ryan actually let them feed him. As you can see he was getting his bites in double time.


What a cute boy. This is Ryan at one of Ethan's soccer games. I love that smile. Love you, little buddy!

1st Day of School

On August 20 Ethan and Ally had their first day of school. I'm just a little behind.

Ethan started kindergarten and goes in the morning. He was very excited to start and has done very well so far. He has been really good to get up in the morning and get ready, and usually doesn't put up too much of a fight. After school he is always really excited to show me what he did in class or tell about something they have done. I'm so happy that he has had such a good attitude about school and has enjoyed it so far. Now, if we can only get it to last for 12 more years.


Ally started preschool at Tiny Tots Preschool, where Ethan went last year. She was also very excited to go and especially since it was Ethan's first day too. She loves school and is only sad because she doesn't get to go everyday like Ethan. She is so proud to show me the little things she makes and learns. She can already write her name and knows many of her letters. I'll give the credit to Ethan for teaching her them.

Javan Went Fishing

A few weeks ago (Aug. 5-8) Javan, Mike and Pratt went on a Fly Fishing trip up to Island Park, Idaho. It is near West Yellowstone, on the Snake River. Javan has never been fly fishing before and wasn't really sure he would like it. But his is always up for a new adventure and had a great time.

The same company that took us to Jamaica, Contractor's Heating and Cooling Supply, sponsored this trip. So on Wednesday morning they met up with the rest of the group and headed up to Island park. They did some sight-seeing on the way up. This is Brian Gillman from Contractor's, he and Javan have become pretty good friends since they have been working together on different projects. They visited a natural spring called Big Springs, it is one of the largest freshwater springs in North America. Approximately 120,000,000 gallons of water at 52 degrees Fahrenheit flow from the spring daily. Crazy.


This is Mesa Falls, it is fed by the Big Springs natural spring.


I guess Contractor's takes this trip every year and there is one guide, Rod, that they call "the fish Nazi" because he is serious about his fishing. When they were assigning people to the guides everyone laughed when Javan got Rod as his guide. He and Brian were going on the same boat, but since Javan has never been fly fishing before Rod wouldn't let Javan even get in the boat until he had mastered the correct fly fishing technique. Looks like he's doing pretty good, and concentrating hard.


A view of the Snake River. The floated about 20 miles down river the first day while fishing then camped on the river's edge and fished again the next day.


Pelicans, doing a little fishing of their own.


Mike, with some nice fly fishing action.


Pratt and his guide, on a trek through the river. I don't know what they were doing.


Javan with one of the fish he caught. He said he caught about 30-40 fish throughout the trip, of all different varieties. They are all catch and release so he didn't bring any home to eat, not that I would have participated. :)


Javan and Rod getting ready for lunch. Rod puts out a pretty nice spread.

Patty Cakes

I finally got this video to work. It's mostly a recording of me singing but Ryan is cute in it too. He was clapping and playing a lot better until I got the camera out. Of course. Still so cute.

11 Months Old

11 months. I am seriously crying inside. I have taken so long to do this post that it's almost time to post about his 1st birthday. I just can't believe it, it pure craziness. Doesn't anyone else think that Ryan isn't old enough to be one yet?

Although I am sad about Ryan growing up too quickly it has been fun to watch his personality grow and develop. He is such a fun kid. He has been acting kind of shy recently. He'll tuck his head into his shoulder when someone talks to him or when I cheer for something he has done. It's pretty cute. Look at him. He's like a little boy in this picture, not a baby.


He loves to clap and cheer and play pat-a-cake. I have a cute little video but I can't get it to upload (stupid blogger). He jabbers all day long, I love hearing his little baby talk.


I thought I would include this picture because it's a rare one of Ryan acting nice while wearing a life jacket. He absolutely hates them. He loves going on the boat as long as he can crawl around on the floor and play, without his life jacket. Safe, I know.


Ryan has become really good at pulling himself up to standing and walking along the couch or whatever it is. He is the fastest crawler I have ever seen, it's so funny. People are always commenting on how quick he cruises along. He has let go of things and stood by himself a couple of times, but only for a few seconds. Once he realizes what he is doing he hurries to sit down.


Ryan absolutely loves to help with the driving. He makes it pretty impossible to drive when he's helping, but he loves to climb all over the steering wheel and push any buttons or pull any levers he can reach.


We were camping with Bayley's family over the 24th of July up at Foy Lake where the dirt is black. I hesitated putting Ryan down for the first hour because I knew how dirty he would get. But I couldn't hold him, and he didn't want to be held so I finally relented and put him down. This is what he looked like for 3 days. I pretty much looked the same from holding him. It was so funny to look at him because his face solid black with two bright shining eyes peering out.


I am amazed every time I see this. How do boys know how to do this already? Ethan finally let Ryan play with one of his 4-wheelers and the first time he grabbed it and started pushing it around and making little driving noises. It's so fun to see them play together.


One day Ryan was crawling around and playing and he got really quiet. You know what that means. So I went looking for him to see what he was up to. I found him hiding in Ally's room with her bag of parade candy. This was his greatest day, he was so happy with himself. We let him get good and sticky and really enjoy himself before we put him in the bath.

Lake Powell Preshow - Charles Hall Ferry

I wasn't going to post about this since we were getting on the lake the next day for a whole week but Ethan and Ally thought this was one of the greatest things we have ever down so I decided to document it.

Javan's sister Bayley has an RV Rental business (Arches RV Rental) and she occasionally rents our camp trailer out so we can make a little money on it when we're not using it. Some renters had the trailer down at Bullfrog for a week and we had to go pick it up. It's much faster for us to drive to Hall's Crossing and ferry across to Bullfrog and we thought the kids might get a kick out of riding the ferry. Boy were we right.

We got to the ferry loading ramp about 30 minutes early and could see the ferry coming across the channel from Bullfrog. It docked but then we had to wait until 2:00 on the hour to load. It was quite a long wait for those little kids. We passed the time by skipping some rocks in the water and eating our picnic lunch.

We finally got to drive onto the ferry, we were the first ones to load. This was quite exciting. Ethan and Ally couldn't believe how many cars could fit on the ferry. I think there were only 6 or 7 that got on. I told them it could fit at least 13 and they were amazed. I remember as a little girl when we were down at the lake counting how many cars got on and off the ferry.


Once we were on the ferry they couldn't wait to get out of the truck to check it out. When the ferry started to pull away Javan pretended that he was driving it. Since we were right there in front it really looked like he was, he had Ethan and Ally fooled for a few minutes.

Me and the kids riding the ferry.


Javan and the kids looking over the edge watching the water.


Getting ready to off-load from the ferry. This was also pretty exciting because we were the first ones off and got to watch for a minute the other cars getting off.


We didn't ride the ferry back on the way home because when you pull a trailer on the ferry you have to pay by the foot of how long you are, which adds up in a hurry. Plus we didn't want to wait 2 hours for it to come back. So we drove around the long way. It's about 1-1 1/2 hours longer.

We stopped at Hite on the way home to take a dip in the water. Hite is where the river comes into the lake so it is pretty cold and also has a pretty strong current so we couldn't let the kids get too far out of our reach.


Just an interesting side note. The people that rented our camp trailer were out tubing and having a good time when they got hit/t-boned by another boat. The boat that hit them went completely over the other boat. The driver, our renter, was thrown about 50 feet. Their boat sank and he was life flighted out. I guess he was complaining of back pain and they just wanted to be safe. The other boat was also pulling a tube and one of his riders fell out so he was looking back and turning around to go pick up his rider when he hit the other boat. Thank heavens no one was seriously injured. I keep wondering what happened to all the kids on the tubes when all of this was happening. So scary.

Lake Powell - The Greatest Place on Earth

Last week we went on our annual Lake Powell trip with my family. We went with my parents, and brothers Michael and David and their families. Amber and Nate's families weren't able to come this year. But Nate and Dale are going to visit Amber and Steve next week, so at least they will get some family time in too. I'm so jealous.

Anyway, I LOVE Lake Powell. It's something I look forward to, and have every year since I was a little girl. I have so many wonderful memories of Lake Powell and am so happy that I get to share it now with my kids and nieces and nephews. It's the greatest place. Aaahhh, I just can't say enough. (That's not what you all were thinking.)

Okay, this is a pretty long post, but I wanted to include lots of pictures for Amber and Nate since they missed out. I know I would want to see them if I wasn't there. So don't look if you don't want to see.

We kind of had a rough start to our trip. I had to work for a little while on Monday so Javan and I weren't going to go down until later in the afternoon. The guys forgot the houseboat keys and had to have the ladies leave a little earlier to bring them down. But when they got to the loading ramp they learned that each boat has to be inspected for these zebra muscles before you can launch it. Well they didn't have an inspection and nobody comes to Hall's Crossing to do inspections on Monday or Tuesday. So what, you can't launch a boat on Monday or Tuesday? So they spent 2 hours trying to find someone to do an inspection. The people at the marina wanted them to pay to ferry the speedboat over to Bullfrog, get an inspection, pay to ferry back to Hall's Crossing and launch the boat. Is this the lamest thing you have ever heard? Anyway, they finally got the inspection and were able to get on the water.

BUT, we were bringing our boat down when we came, which also hasn't had an inspection, and they close the launch ramp at 5:00 pm. My dad called Javan in a panic, who called me at work in a panic, and put me in a panic to hurry and get home so we could get to the lake in time. Well they also knew that even if we got there before 5:00 there wouldn't be anyone there to do an inspection, so Michael, in a stroke of genius, asked a boat that was leaving if he could have their inspection paper, and they gladly handed it over. So they left that for us in their truck.

So we were all on the water and headed to find the houseboat, which was about a 30 minute boat ride. Ryan HATES his life jacket and screamed the whole time. It was not pleasant. Just as we got to the houseboat, the wind kicked up and pulled the houseboat loose and we had a battle with the ropes for awhile. But we were finally able to jump in the water to cool off and relax.

Michael took some of the kids out to wake board. Davis wrecked and the wake board came up and hit him in the head and sliced it open. It was a pretty nice gash, about 1 1/2 long. Michael cut the hair away so we could assess the situation. We had a hard time getting it to stop bleeding. I was preparing to give my first sutures with a sewing kit. But, we put some ice the cut to slow the bleeding and we were able to super glue it closed.


Davis did great. He was really brave. He worried me a little when he said he was getting cold, I thought he was going into shock but then I remembered he just got out of the water. Just after we got Davis patched up we heard on the radio a call for life flight because a child had a prop injury. Oh, this is my worst nightmare. We were thankful for a small laceration to the head. Later that night Kennady stubbed her toe on the door jamb and sliced it open. Then Ryan fell and bonked his mouth on the deck and cut his lip open. We weren't sure we could handle this all week. But things went pretty smoothly after that.


Ryan loved his little pool on the back deck. Especially since Grandma put warm water in it for him. All the big kids would try and sneak into with him to get the warm water. The lake water was 80 degrees, it wasn't that cold itself.


Carson and Spencer swam across the bay to the rocks on the other side. They were pretty proud and celebrating when they reached the other side.


One of the greatest things about the lake is that we eat like kings. Each meal is a feast. My brothers and sisters probably don't appreciate it because I always tell the kids on holidays and vacations that they can have whatever they want. It doesn't happen everyday. It's my excuse to eat what I want. Here is Michael grilling us some yummy ribs.


Ethan caught a nice catfish with the batman pole. It's a lucky pole, and always catches the fish. Some of the older boys are getting old enough that they are getting into the fishing, they're getting pretty good.


Javan, Ethan, and Ally out for a swim. I don't know if Ethan got his hair wet the whole trip. He is such a little scaredy cat.


These guys love getting their picture taken. Dave has started a new tradition of taking our last years lake shirt and "modifying" it for this year. They liked to wear the sleeves on their heads.


Javan surfing behind Michael and David's boat. This is something new we have started this year, and it is so fun. We can't do it behind our boat, we don't want one of those prop injuries I was talking about earlier. But this is so awesome. It's crazy because you're right by the boat, and you're going so slow that when you wreck it doesn't hurt. We need more practice but we all loved it.


Since Javan was already in the water and Ally was in the boat we threw her in to surf with Javan. Can't you tell how much fun she had?


We like to make our kids try new things. (Make being the key word there.) They are so scared of the thought of everything that they don't want to try it. But I know they would like it if they did. Here's Ethan getting ready for a tube ride. Looks fun, huh. Once he saw that we weren't going to tip over and he wasn't going to fall out he settled down.


Ryan and I out for a swim. Ryan loves the water as long as he doesn't have to wear a life jacket.


My brother Dave catching some nice air on the wake board. The picture is kind of blurry, but that's just cause he was going so fast, he's just that good. :)


Ryan wanted to get in on the fishing action. Ethan's batman pole finally bit the dust after 3 good years of fishing. I hope his new pole will be as lucky.


My brother Michael skiing. I love watching them do their little rooster things.


My dad skiing. The old man's still got it! Just kidding Dad. He's an awesome skier, and he loves to do it, so I'm glad he still can. He's quite impressive.


This is Dave skiing, even though you can't see him. I just thought this picture was cool. It looks like a postcard.


Javan catching some sweet air on the wake board.


Mom. Lake Powell's not her favorite thing anymore but she's a good sport and we're thankful she puts up with it so the rest of us can enjoy it too.


Ally is a little water dog, just like when I was little.


We told Ethan he either had to go down the slide or surf with Javan. This is what he picked. He took a whole day to prepare himself. He did really good. He didn't cry, but had a pretty concerned look on his face. And didn't like the water splashing in his eyes.



This year's group shot. Hey Ryan!


Our family.


Ethan fell asleep out on the boat one day. He stayed like this even with the boat turning and all the waves. Pretty funny.


The houseboat. It looks so tiny compared to all the massive rocks.


The kids enjoying some arts and crafts time, and playing cards. Ryan was quite happy that he could play with the big kids. Thanks Grandma for the crafts, always a big hit.


My dad always gets some kind of injury at the lake. This year his arm got tangled in the surf rope, then he wrecked and we dragged him for a minute until he got out, that wasn't my favorite. Pretty nasty rope burn.


Ryan in a bucket. He thought this was so fun.


Ally and Cydnee floating in the water.


Austin with a nice fish.


Mass confusion while fishing. One pole caught a fish but the fish started to swim away and caught all the other lines. Everyone was trying to untangle them. It's hard to tell what's going on. Michael jumped over the rail to save a pole and hit his leg on the pole holder and had a huge bruise on his leg. I'm mad I didn't get a picture of his injury.


A beautiful shot of the lake and one of our favorite new camping spots. This is one of the reasons I love Lake Powell so much. It's so beautiful and peaceful and relaxing and fun. I love it. Thanks everyone for making it so fun. We missed you Amber and Nate's families. Next year for sure!