Cedar City and Beyond

A quick picture with Mac & Steph in Grand Junction. They're expecting a baby in January, weehoo! It was a short visit with them, just a few hours.

As I mentioned before, we arrived in Cedar with lots of work to do. First up was a HUGE yard sale at Sara and Joe's house. You can accumulate a lot of stuff over 8 years. Once that was done there was still a ton of packing/loading to do. I pretended to help while the boys tore apart most of the packing that was done. I kept meaning to take a picture of the moving process. The yard sale alone was epic. The packing of the truck was an art. I never did quite get that picture though.

Amidst all the packing we played too.

George and I got up early one morning and hiked the 'C' trail. Just over 4 miles with 2200' elevation change. A good little hike for some weak Floridians :)

The start at 6:30 a.m.

The top of 'C' mountain, less than 2 hours later.

When I took George down to Vegas to fly out, we picked up our niece, Chelsea, and brought her back to Cedar to stay with us for a few days. The boys loved playing with her! She's getting married in January, woot woot!

Breakfast time - the boys vying for Grandpa's attention.

Jack cleaning up after ice cream. He actually does a great job cleaning up when I give him his own wipe.

Sawyer & Dean rollin' in the barbie jeep. 

Cedar City has more parades than any other city I've seen. This was the boys' first parade. They LOVED it. Sawyer still talks about how he saw the tractor at the parade. In this pic we have Sue, Sara, Sawyer, Grandma, Mark, Jack, Hanna, Allie,Carter, Kaden, and Sara.

We hiked up Kanaraville Falls. That's the same hike where George proposed to me 5+ years ago. Time flies.

Papa giving out free rides.

We met the Hansen's up Kanaraville Falls. The kids enjoyed cooling off in a creek crossing. A thunderstorm chased us back to our cars shortly after this photo.

Sawyer with his cousins - milkshakes and a movie!

Cedar got a new park since we've moved. Sawyer's favorite was the spider web. The boys are both big time climbers. I feel like I'm holding my breath a lot hoping they don't fall...luckily they are great climbers and we haven't had a big fall yet.

The Melling (Sara's in-laws) reunion was going on so Abbie, the boys, and I snuck up to spend a day with all those fun people! It was a splendid day. It was up on Beaver mountain. I love (and miss) the mountains so much!

Cute kids showing off their candy necklaces. I believe Sadie was responsible for coming up with this craft.

Soccer!

Aunt Sara and Sawyer

Sadie and Abbie playing big time frisbee.

Jack was not impressed with the life jacket.

So fun to have Abbie down from Alaska :)

Kyson is getting so big! He turned 12 while we were there. Sheesh. Why don't kids listen and stop growing?!

Success! Both boys napping in the same tent. It took a while to get to this point.

Jack throwing rocks into the lake. Pretty much his favorite pastime.

Kyson - 'bow-fishing'

Aunt Abbie took Sawyer out in the canoe. I was so impressed with how still Sawyer stayed. Such a good 2-year-old :)

Although it was a busy time during our trip, it was nice to catch up and play with friends and family. It's strange to think we don't have family in Cedar anymore. We have lots of good memories of Cedar over the years!

Slow Water Farm

Duncle Dave has been helping a couple of his friends that bought a fixer-upper farm in Loveland, Colorado. He's in charge of gardening/animals and pretty much started everything up from scratch. He has two large garden areas and a huge area for squash as well. We were excited to check out what he's been up to! The farm was absolutely perfect after such a looooong car ride with little ones. We let them explore everything.  

Here is the farm's website Slow Water Farm. We got to help David fix his tractor (although it wasn't put back together when we left, hmmmm). George and David climbed some of their big trees and sawed off the large dead branches. We also helped him finish building the vegetable stand. Rumor has it on opening day he sold $60 worth of turnips alone. 

He had elk burgers ready for us when we arrived. Delicious!

They set up an outdoor kitchen in the porch while they remodel the one inside. I love outdoor kitchens. There is something about it that feels so good to prepare and eat food outside.

Get outta the car and STRETCH!

Gas cans are great toys for 2-year-olds!

Morning weeding. See David down there? One idea they have to do at the farm is Speed Weeding (instead of Speed Dating) haha. I think it's genius!


Trying to figure out which green stuff they're allowed to pull up.

The boys and Uncle David

Getting the veggie stand up and running.

Power tools!

Kilroy was here

Danger = Fun

Sawyer and Jack were in heaven playing on the ladder.

Sawyer the chicken whisperer

Jack holding his hands out to the chickens just hoping one will decide to run in to them.

Caught it himself!

It's an understatement to say they loved the chickens. If we couldn't see Jack, he was more than likely trying to break into the chicken coop to play with his friends. I think it was more of a one-way friendship.

"Weeeeee!"

David always rigs up the best swings - always in a tree, always 360 range of motion, and nice and high :)

Rough summer! 

We play hard and then we crash hard! This was about 5 mins into my bike ride, haha.

Trimming up the trees.

"Don't worry, Mom. I'm just doing some farm work."

Puddle heaven - Sawyer, Ella, and Jack

Run sheep, run! David told Sawyer over the phone that they had sheep he could ride at the farm. Sawyer talked about it on the car ride and spent a lot of time chasing after the sheep to claim that ride. He never quite caught them. They were a little on the wild side, so I wasn't sad he missed out on that :)

David and Jack trying to tame the sheep.

Snapping photos before we took off...

Thumbs up :)

Thanks you David for letting us come 'help' you (haha!), we had a great visit! Thanks to Erich, Erin, and Ella too for letting us stay with you on your farm. We're excited to see your progress over the years. We miss you and want to come back!

Road TRIP!

George got a couple weeks off work in July and we headed west. We set out on our 2,500+ mile drive from Florida to Utah on Friday July 12th at 9 p.m.  Our plan was to 'tuck' the boys in their carseats and drive through the night. I don't know what happened, but sleep sure wasn't happening! We didn't have a quiet, peaceful car until 4 a.m. Sawyer would fall asleep and then Jack's crying would wake him up, or vice versa. George and I were regretting our late night departure. After that first rough night though, things went fairly smoothly. They were both so tired from staying up all night that they napped through most of the next day so we just kept driving. George and I were hammered but we switched off enough that it was fine. We had a food box behind the driver seat and a toy box behind the passenger seat. We drove pretty much straight through from Florida to Missouri (18 hour drive time took us 21 hours) where we got our only hotel of the trip. The pool and bed were luxurious after being cramped up in a car!

The in-car entertainment staging area. I was anxious about such a long car ride with little ones, I went overboard.

Books, pill containers filled with army men, goldfish, micro machine cars, M&M's, cheerios, and other small trinkets/treasures, magnetic trays and magnets, glow sticks, black card stock and chalk (or white crayon), stuffed animals, helicopter lollipops (that spin and lights up), mini equipment (dump truck, grader, tractor, etc.) and rice for them to 'move' around, a dry erase board, reusable sticker books, and way too much other stuff. Oh yes, and a portable DVD player. We threw in our camping bowls (silicone bowls by guyot designs). They worked awesome for the boys and kind of double as a toy.

Mmmm, Swedish Fish!

I actually think they're gross, but I'm such a good wife I stocked up on them for Georgie :)

How they entertained themselves while we packed the car.

George cut off the bottom of a t-shirt to rig up this head support for Sawyer. 

Doing some construction with his equipment and rice.

Flying high at our first pit stop in TN.

This is the first stop we made in TN at a little cafe. It was perfect because they had this outside area fenced in where we could run around and get our wiggles out while eating a bite of breakfast in between.

Jack checking out real estate in TN.

My friend, Megan, crocheted these birds for the boys before we left on our road trip. The boys love them! They actually sleep with them at night now too. Thanks Megan :)

This was our view for a loooong time. Lots and lots of interstate...

George had me snap this photo so he could use it in teaching his students about weather/clouds.

With the exception of that first night, the boys were champs in the car. Sawyer fared well having just been potty trained a few weeks prior. We made it out to the farm David has been helping start up in Loveland, CO the evening of July 14th, just two days after leaving Florida...not too shabby.

When we left Florida to drive out, there was talk of my sis, Sara, and her family moving from Cedar City up to Idaho, but no firm plans. And my dad had mentioned he was looking at property/houses in Colorado. Neither of them had any firm plans, so we didn't think much of it. But in the two days it took for us to make it to Colorado, Sara and Joe had worked things out to be moved by Aug 7th and my parents had put an offer in on a house in Palisade, CO. Our trip turned in to a big moving fest and we ended up driving more than 4300 miles in the past 6 weeks. Good times! More details to come...  :)

Do you like pesto?

Jack does!

Jack - 15 months

This cute little guy. Oh how we love him. I can almost watch him grow. It's happening too fast. And now that's he's 16.5 month's old I'll give you his 15-month-old update that I started a month and a half ago :)

15 month stats:

Weight: 26 lbs

Height: 32 3/4"

Head Circ: 47.5 cm

Heart Beat: 113

O2: 98

Temp: 98.1F

He's a climber and good at it, fortunately for me he doesn't even try to climb out of his crib (unlike his brother at this age). He easily mastered going up and down stairs since we've been on our trip out west. He just needed the opportunity since our house in Florida doesn't have any. He graduated from swimming on July 3rd. It makes me so happy to see him be able to float in water. We are so proud of him!

His smile is sooooo cute! He still loves to be held and snuggled. He likes to sit and read books on his own, but will hardly sit and listen to a book when we read to him.

Jack is a great eater. He's actually been out-eating Sawyer these days. Some of his favorites are avocados, peaches, broccoli, turkey, and of course ice cream.
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He still loves my hair and it hurts! He's always grabbing for it and running his hands through it, or ripping it out of a pony tail. When I lay him down in his crib at night he loves it if I dangle my hair over him so he can play with it.

He is addicted to shoes. He's putting them on and taking them off constantly throughout the day. He's not picky, any and every single shoe will do!

He's gotten in one molar and working on the other three...this has led to him sucking his bottom lip constantly for the past week. (And a month later, he has 3 molars in, still working on that last one. Still loves sucking on his bottom lip though! Anyone have any good ideas on how to break that habit? I wasn't really going to try and do anything until he gets that last molar in...)

He understands very well when we talk to him, but he's not into talking to us. We get a few words here and there, but he prefers other methods of communication so far. He's said a few things very clearly and in the right context, but he holds out for the most part (up, down, powder, banana, papa, help please, mama, doggie, tractor, up, 'mmmmm' for cow etc). He makes the cutest pig sounds! He's always up for saying anything I want him to if I have chocolate ready for him :) Oh yes, and Sara has been perfecting his bird calls. (And now, a month of so later, he's actually using words quite a bit more now.)

He loves Sawyer, and thinks he pretty funny, especially when he's jumping or throwing running. He'll share almost anything he has in his hands if Sawyer asks him, but more often than not, Sawyer will take without asking and Jack pitches a loud fit.

Here are my big helpers in action.

His favorite book is Baby Animals. It's an interactive book that has pictures of animals that slide back and forth. Jack has learned how to take the pictures out. I put the pictures back in and he gets delighted when he finds the book again so he can pull them all out. He also loves Pat the Bunny, another interactive book.

He is very easy to put down for naps/night. I read a few books, sing a couple songs, give him a smooch and lay him down. Sometimes he'll cry, but it's usually only for a  minute or two.

He LOVES mud puddles. While we were at Uncle David's farm in Colorado they had some rain showers which left the perfect puddle for Jack to run through. He also loves animals, especially dogs. He gets so excited any time we see one. He's gentle with them too. And if any of our books have a particular page with dogs on it, you can forget trying to see any other page. His 'woof' sound is a short, abrupt, 'oof' and is easy to miss.

Whenever music plays he is ready to dance - usually portrayed by going in circles. He loves when I sing "If You're Happy and you Know It" and will immediately start clapping his hands, another favorite is "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man".

We love you Jack!