Sanna is One!!!

Our baby girl turned one! What a year! I think back to what we were doing a year ago and I just can't believe it.  That sweet little baby is now a energetic-spitfire-toddler! She lights up our day, eases tension by her cute mimicking, and teases us with a mischevious smile and twinkle in her eye. She climbs up everything, I'm constantly pulling her out of precarious looking situations. She just thinks she's one of the kids!

See that mischief I was talking about? You can see it written on her face...

I will post her one year old/cake smash pics soon. I haven't actually taken them yet... Brent was out of town and she was sick and I was too tired from dealing with a sick baby. Speaking of her being sick, if anyone has dealt with diarrhea problems with their baby this age and has any advice please message me. I'm so at a loss to know what to do.

Anyway, other pics from the week:

Our neighbor came by to show Brent this wasp he found. Brent was out of town so I took a pic so we could show Brent.  I've never seen one that big, it's crazy!

My sister is getting married! (Oh yeah, I should probably post her engagements soon).  Anyway, her bridal shower was yesterday and it was a lot of fun!

 Silly Sanna

Following the shower we had a birthday party for my Uncle and then at the end of that party we had a piñata for one of our nephew's birthday. So fun!

 The kids have hardly gotten to see Brent at all this week. In the pic above from yesterday's party he is just getting off work (hence the scrubs) and the kids just attacked him when he arrived much like the picture below.

The picture below is from when we were picking up Brent from the airport on Thursday.  We had dropped him off at the airport on Monday morning because he had two interviews for PA school! So he flew back east and had two different interviews at two different schools on back to back days.  It was exhausting, the timing was bad with sick kids at home, and I worried about him constantly.  BUT we are SO grateful that he got the interviews and we would be thrilled if either school offered him a seat. We will keep everyone posted!

See what I was saying about the climbing? I mean how is that even stable? The box is open!!!

Sanna climbed into her carseat to chill while eating an apple.

I gave them chocolate peanut butter toast.  Griz looked a little too much like The Joker, I had to get a picture.

We got out the camera to try and see if we could replicate the Chico video we have of him standing on the chair like this and shaking it and laughing hysterically when I was "smelling his bum". It didn't end up the same but she's still cute!

I've been trying to squeeze in some drawing and painting this weekend, it's been really fun.  I was struggling with a sketch I was doing of Chico, he looked at it and said, "that's the weirdest picture of me that I've ever seen". I laughed and said, "I know, I'm having trouble getting it right." So then 10 minutes later, probably feeling bad about what he had said, he came back and looked at it and said, "that's looking good mommy" with such a unintentional patronizing look on his face. I was laughing so hard on the inside but I accepted his compliment and thanked him. He'll have to work on his acting skills a little bit more I think, lol.

week of the sick kids

This week...oh this week. We spent much of this week at home because the youngest ones had colds and coughs. Then Sanna started having a fever Thursday night.  With continuous fever reducing medication she has still been as needy as a newborn. Except she doesn't sleep as much as a newborn does. Let's just say I am very very tired.  Oh, and did I mention she's had diarrhea off and on all month? I guess it could have been worse. But I'm tired so here I am complaining.   We've had a lot of screen time because of the sickness. Luckily Sanna could care less about tv and while the boys are watching she'll be doing her own thing.  She sure loves books lately.   

"Uh-Oh"

 Dismount

 Easy-peasy

Chillin in the car seat.  When she first started doing this we thought she heard us saying to the kids, "time to go, let's go get in the car" and so she got in too.  I think it must have just been coincidental timing because she does it at random times during the day too.

In an attempt to cheer up Sanna I opened up "Photo Booth" on the computer and it actually did cheer her up for a bit.  Notice I put her hair in a little pony tail, her first one ever. :)

Chipmunks...

Blockheads....

Power portal...

Stretchy...

Lookin good!

Other notable things from this week... we took my sister's bridals on Monday, that was fun!  I had a visit from a friend on Tuesday and that was fun too!  Look at me finding the positive! ;)

Bubbles, Mud Holes, and Dinos

Well, here it goes,  I am going to try to update the blog more frequently than once every month or two. I want to record more of the things that are going in our lives, not only the things I happen to capture in pictures but also day to day things. So, I will start by talking about the kids. From youngest to oldest:

 Sanna is turning into a kid before our very eyes. During this week she has started to prefer walking to crawling. It is the cutest thing in the world to see her stomping along in an unsteady gait as fast as she can, constantly losing her balance and plopping on her bum.  She loves having books read to her now.  She says a few words, uh oh, mama and dada of course are her words she says a lot. But I SWEAR she can say the boys names too!!! I'll be calling out to the boys and she will copy me and it sounds like she is calling out to them too! Chico walked into the room this morning and she lit up and I swear she said his name. It is so cute!  I am listening right now as she is battling Griz for a book. She is fierce. She is going to be good at holding her own with two big brothers.

Griz has been seeking for more attention lately, often by destroying things in the house lately. Being the middle child I think he has felt a little neglected.  Well it worked, and we have been trying to show him extra attention and it has really been paying off.  He has grown up so fast and likes to talk with us but he still needs cuddles and loves. He is a crazy man on his bike, he loves riding it. He is actually quite good. He can ride a tight circle over and over again. Granted he is using training wheels but still. He's quite a good 3 year old rider.

Chico has loved creating lego things lately. He almost always has a lego creation in his hand. He loves building with the little legos so much and has really enjoyed the fact that I finally have let him have legos in the house. He still loves to draw though he hasn't been doing it quite as much this summer. The other day he pulled out his drawing stuff and after about 10 minutes he said, "drawing relaxes me".  That is so cool to me.

I went to my high school reunion last Saturday. It's been 10 years! It was fun to see old friends and talk to some that I haven't gotten to see as much.  I really missed some that are far away and couldn't come... like in Korea ;).  Brent felt like he knew more people at my reunion than he would have known at his own. It's because of photography jobs, I'm grateful for photography that keeps me in contact with old friends. Though friends, I'm happy to hang out whenever, you don't have to pay me to get together. ;)  Brent said that two different people asked him if I'm still writing. That surprised him to have them ask that because I haven't been doing any writing since then.  I think it's cool that people thought the poems and essays I wrote back in the day were good. I loved my AP English class, it was seriously one of the best classes I had in High School.  Of all the things I was interested in back then (art, choir, and writing) I don't regret my decision at all to pursue art in college.  Maybe English would have been a good minor but it was really cool to learn Spanish so I don't regret that either.  One thing I do regret though is from high school, I almost signed up for swim team but chickened out. I've discovered my love for swimming laps in this last year and a half. It would have been a great sport for me back then. Oh well, at least I can do it now!

Anyway,  now onto the pictures:

 Griz was playing with bubbles and I came outside to take pics, though he wasn't in the mood. Sanna was standing at the window wishing she could come out.  She's constantly got something in her mouth so that's not surprising!

It's $2 Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point in August so we went to check out the dinosaurs with the cousins. It was a lot of fun!

 Later that day the boys (with a little help from Daddy) dug a really deep hole that they then filled with water. It looked so funny seeing his head poking out of the hole.

Climbing out of the water hole.. notice he is wearing ninja turtle clothes. Anytime they are clean he loves to wear them!

June & July

 My Grandpa has always loved walking around the babies.

Brent needed to do some PA shadowing in Kamas for a few hours one morning. So I packed up the kids to go with him.  While he was in the clinic I took the kids up to the Uintahs and we "hiked".  The hike was quick but the rocks were so much fun at the trail head and the scenery was gorgeous. I was so glad I had our camera with us. I got some beautiful and fun pictures of our cute kids.

 After Brent finished shadowing he changed his clothes and we went on a real hike.  It was called Noblett's trail and it wasn't hard but it was beautiful!

The end of the trail is this beautiful spring flowing straight out of the mountain.

 We dumped out our "Spring" water and filled up with water from this spring

 ahh, so cool and refreshing. ;)

 Kids just love to play on fallen logs. Especially if it involves getting wet!

And at the end of the day after the hike was done we drove down to the Uintah Drive-In for some AMAZING hamburgers and some shakes. Wowzers they were good!!!!

Children are so precious when they are asleep... 

Summer fun caught on the Cell Phone:

No hat is safe on a head if Sanna is around.  She won't rest until she can get it off of you.

Chico likes making fossils that he has "discovered"

 Thanks for the help Bubba.

Sweet Sanna crawled over to Chico during story time at the library and just hugged him.  I got out the phone in time to capture it! It was SO sweet.

This girl is just growing up too fast!!! She wants to ride those bikes SO badly.

Chico stole my phone one day and took it across the street to the neighbor's house and took a bunch of pictures. Here are just a couple:

Bathtime!!!

We went with my family up to the Bear Lake area for three days. It was a ton of fun. Here are pictures from the time we were there. I need to steal pics from other family members but here are the pics I took:

Minetonka Cave:

Such a cool (literally cool) cave! The tour took us about a 1/4 of a mile into the cave. The tour ended and they said it went even farther than that, another 1/4 of a mile that visitors weren't allowed to see.  The whole time we were walking through I kept thinking of Tennis Shoes among the Nephites.

The  Ranch House we stayed at was owned by an older gentleman who restores model-T fords. He took groups of us out on a ride around his dirt road.  Then he parked it here and let us take pics:

Love this one...

 I want this house...

 I could get used to having this as a backyard:

Dad grilling hamburgers.  My parents went to a lot of work making this all happen. Thanks you guys!!!

I woke up early our last morning there and looked out the window and had to immediately jump out of bed to grab my camera and run outside to capture this sunrise. Living on the Wasatch Front I don't get to see a lot of beautiful sunrises so this really wowed me!  

We went to the Bear Lake and had a blast.  I didn't get any pics during the day but just imagine pictures of us paddle boarding, kayaking, trampoline jumping out on the lake, boating, skiing, tubing, and sand castle building.  I even did some lap swimming.  It was so cold!

Chico turned 6 this year!!! He wanted a spiderman cake and after looking online I came up with this cake.  

 This is his face right after seeing it.  He LOVED it!

 They were pretty excited that I let them eat the cupcakes before the party started.  They ate almost all of them.

Chico got a new bike!

 A bow and arrow!

 One of the darts got stuck in the tree.

 He was a bit weird about all the attention he was getting. 

The party was fun, even though the sprinklers turned on randomly while we were out there. I'm not going to lie, I totally grabbed the cake and ran out of there when the water turned on. The kids can fend for themselves but I spent a lot of time on that cake!!!

Visiting Shriner's Hospital after our friend had surgery, wow what a fun place!!!

We had the fourth of July weekend off so we went backpacking in the Uintahs. We were a little late in the day and rushed so we took the wrong trail and had to stop to set up camp before we got to a real lake. But it was about to rain so we had to hurry and set up camp.  With it raining we decided to squish ALL of us into our little tent.  Let's just say that I was not a happy camper that night. I have a bit of claustrophobia.  I vowed I'm not going backpacking again until we get a bigger backpacking tent.    I had weened Sanna from nursing so that worked okay to just feed her a bottle during the night but at one point she wouldn't take that cold bottle so I just tried nursing her and I had just enough milk left that I got to nurse her one last time. Kind of a memorable experience for me. She bit me at first and I thought, 'dang it, bad idea!' but then she calmed down and it was fine after that.

Next morning we made oatmeal and packed up a day pack and went exploring to other lakes to try out some fishing.

Chico and Griz made a spider's web.

 Didn't catch any fish, but they had fun trying. Chico was fun to watch casting off.

Long Lake was just beautiful. We wished we could have camped there.

 I was feeling sick to my stomach and dreading another night in that tent. We decided to hike home.  Brent carried so much weight on his back because Griz wasn't wanting to hike AT ALL.  So I carried Sanna and my heavy pack. And Brent carried Griz and his even heavier pack.  

We made it back to town in time to go see Kaysville's firework show with my mom and sis-in-law.  They made it fun for the kids by providing glow sticks.  

Sanna...

 Griz

Chico...

More summer fun...

I love the rec center!!!

 They both made it to the top this day, rather easily! Brent had taken them the week before and they had been trying really hard but had never made it to the top.  We just stopped here for a minute on our way home from the pool one day and they both made it rather easily. They were so pleased with themselves!

I guess if you don't feel like riding bikes there is always fort building with bikes and lawn chairs... 

 Lookin good in her brother's hat.

My sisters-in-law invited me out for a girls night out. We went and got our nails done (I didn't get to get my toenails done because that day my big toe nail had finally come off.  It had been slowly working it's way off since clear back in March when I skied the powder on that amazing day, guess I had been skiing wrong and totally killed that toenail.  Anyway it was almost all the way off and I was showing Chico how it was only connected in one spot. He says, "Here mommy this is what you do," then he grabs my toenail and just rips it off!  It hurt and bled a lot but it was pretty comical at the same time.

Anyway, back to girls night, after we had our nails done we went to Costa Vida and just talked there for a long time. It was really fun. I was glad they invited me!

 Enjoying our backyard one evening.  Doing some ninja fighting. Cell phone took some pretty cool pics!

He loves Grandpa!

I always wondered when this might happen to one of my kids.  When it happened I was trying to be stern with Griz, telling him it's not okay to draw on your baby sister.  When Brent walked in to see what happened he just turned around and walked out before bursting into laughter. It was so funny. It's all over her leg too but I didn't get a pic of that.

Sanna can walk now!!! She does the cute little Frankenstein walk. I love it! I can't get the video to upload, but oh man it's cute!

 There is nothing like a good summer sunset...

Picking grapes off our side of the fence...

Doing some sparklers Grandma bought...  Kids weren't old enough to write words while doing sparklers but we still got some cool pics...I love the sunset in the back too.