Cara's First Summer and Birthday

Like I said, I've been (not so) awesome at updating my blog. So here are some highlights of our summer featuring Cara ending with her first birthday!

Seven Months old and playing outside at Grandma's house.

7 mos - Riding the safari train at the Animal Safari Park in San Diego.

San Clemente beach

Cara became proficient at the army crawl for quite a while.

Mmm, spaghetti. - 8 months

Almost 9 months old. 

Crawling! and in a cute dress from when my sisters and I were little.

Dinner at snowbird - 9 months

Peach Days Parade, 11 months

Being a girly girl.

Cara has rights to the lick the birthday frosting spatula.

First Birthday cake! It was strawberry cake inside.. mmm

Happy Birthday Cara! Your brothers, dad and I love you so much and enjoy every day we are with you.

William Is 3!

This last week our little William turned 3 years old! We had a little family party at home. The main present that he got was a Cars 2 scooter for him to ride with his brothers outside. He is so fun and cute and independent sometimes. He very much lives up to him name. We are working on potty training but I don't think it will happen until he "wills" it to. Ha.

Yes, 3 cars, 3 years old!

We often have a hard time getting him to open his eyes for pics. As soon as we say "smile" he closes his eyes.  So we usually have to catch him by surprise.

It's Great To Be Eight

My little boy turns EIGHT! (insert obligatory sensitive mama line here) He's grown so tall, smart, and mature. I don't know what I am going to do when he turns 16. 

The week he turned eight he decided that I'm not Mommy anymore and KC isn't Daddy, we are Mom and Dad. And he is very good about only using those terms. 

We opened presents as a family the night before his birthday with Grandma and Grandpa. Then on his birthday he got to have a friend party. There was no theme. It was just meant to be "All About Andrew" and it was. The cake was plenty green (His favorite color since Isaac has picked blue.) and it wasn't too unsightly. I had issues with the frosting. Anyway he loved it all and had a great time.

I just realized why I seem to often have lousy cakes for Andrew's birthday. He is the beginning of the birthday season in the house and I'm a little out of practice.. that must be it.

End of Summer?

Despite the continuing heat summer vacation is almost over, for our family anyways. Being on a year-round school schedule has it's benefits but also it's annoyances of course. I'm still not sure which are which. Andrew and Isaac will start school here soon but then have a couple weeks off at the end of August. It's not like we were going to be doing much in August though. We had to get get all of our trips in as with KC's newish job, August is a really busy month and he can't really take time off. The baby "should" be coming just a couple weeks after things slow down again for him at work. Perfect timing. I think there was some divine intervention in that. Also now that I'm towards the endish of my pregnancy I don't know if I want to be too out and about anyways.

So I wanted to share some memories we have made so far this spring/summer in all of our comings and goings. Get ready for a picture dump.

First, birthdays... I've been a bad blogger and neglected to share the boys birthdays back when they happened in late winter and spring.  Starting in February through June we have 1 birthday from our family a month. It keeps us drowning in cake. A good thing I suppose. Will's cute cake was made by Grandma, the one I made at home wasn't even a cake.. just cupcakes, we LOVE Grandma! Andrew had a party with family this year and Isaac got to have his first big friend party.

In May we did a little vacation in Southern Utah with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa took us flying and shooting. We went to Zion's National Park and went hiking too. The weather was perfect.

Grandpa has a nice collection of fun old-timey shooters. KC really enjoyed being able to shoot these.

Compliments of the shotgun.

On Memorial Day weekend Grandma and Grandpa came to visit us. We took the opportunity to visit the zoo while the weather was still nice. The boys were really excited about the bird show.. at least Andrew and Isaac were. William only stopped covering his eyes after being there for 15 minutes. (Some birds were really loud)

In June KC participated in the local triathlon, Andrew played soccer (no pics, all I have are videos and you don't want to see those), we did some local sightseeing, and we went up to Snowbird for a few days with KC's Grandma. This year was the first time we could go sledding and then go swimming on the same day. This was the last weekend in June! The ski resort was open through the 4th this year. Crazy. Also

Notice the big pile of snow still melting in the swimming pool area. (upper left of photo)

Finally the 4th of July weekend came and we got to go camping with Grandma and Grandpa and cousins. Our campsite had a fun rope swing on which we tied a stick for the kids to sit. That was the main entertainment along with the 4-wheeler. We went to the Fillmore parade and enjoyed those festivities along with their cool fireworks show. We also got to spend time with extended family where they had a huge slip 'n slide set up.

 We were driving VERY slow, otherwise there would have been helmets and less kids.

 William didn't appreciate the sirens from the fire trucks very much.

Random Update

• Despite the glowing post about cloth diapers have yet to make the leap, the chasm looks so big from here...
• I made the Sweet Potato Curry with Tofu again. I suggested making it with light coconut milk to make it more healthy. It's more healthy, but like most health foods it loses a lot of the flavor. That darn fat in the coconut milk is just so yummy. We had to add a lot more salt to get some flavor. You've been warned.
• I was thinking of getting Will off the pacifier when he turned two, but today out of necessity (I couldn't find a single pacifier), I put him down for a nap without one. Did he care? No, as long has he had his special blanket.
• Andrew had his birthday last week. It was a small family thing with pizza of course. There is something about going from the age of 6 to 7 that makes a kid seem so much older.
• I'm very ready for spring to come, it's so close! I am thinking I need to hurry it along by growing wheatgrass again.

A Pink Cake for Isaac

Isaac has finally turned 4. Now when people assume he's 4 almost 5 at least they will be right that he is 4 years old instead of 3. He had a friend party last year so this year it was just family. We went swimming at the community indoor pool. The boys just finished swimming lessons so they were excited to be able to play there as much as they wanted. We then picked up some pizza for the birthday dinner then had cake and ice cream.

A word about the cake. KC wanted to hang out a little with Isaac on his special day so they went to the store together to pick out a toy and his cake. Originally Isaac had been saying he wanted a chocolate cake with blue frosting, but they came home with a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. Isaac really loves strawberries so I guess he couldn't resist it. I didn't think much about it until later when I realized this kid who is very much boy was going to have a pink cake. Oh well it tasted great.