Kyler's 7th Birthday

 Birthday Breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes and V8 splash

 Kyler is definitely my most creative child. He loves to design stuff: Lego creations, costumes, and cakes. He really wanted a Skylanders cake so here is his design. The circles are Oreo cookies covered with frosting and an element symbol drawn to represent each of the 8 skylander elements.  The circular cake on the top is the Portal of Power.

My Ky Guy is such a sweet heart ( and a stinker at the same time) . He has the cutest personality. It did make me sad when he told me that he didn't want a friends party because he didn't have any friends yet. So instead we all went to the movies to see Despicable Me 2 and Jon made chicken wings on the smoker (Kyler's favorite)

Randomness of the Summer

 We have really been enjoying the huge backyard that we have at our new house. Especially the climbing tree.

 Or just laying around soaking in some sun. We also did plenty of swimming but I always forgot to get pics of it.

 We headed out for some day trips up the mountains and fishing etc and on the drive back the boys  fell asleep. Doesn't look too comfy to me.

 The boys are enjoying have lots of dogs around and loves dressing them up. Here's Nikki , Jennifer's boxer.

 And of course Dex

 Jon using a hammer drill.  Jon decided to build a pergola to cover an  outdoor kitchen that he's creating for his sister. The summers get pretty toasty down here that if we can cook without having to heat up the kitchen it helps a lot. 

Here's the pergola all finished minus the paint.

4th of July

Since Jon now has a desk job he actually gets holidays off. And working at headquarters has its perks. Skywest is one of the sponsers of the big St George festivities. We got free dinner and front row viewing of a live band.

 Of course they shot off fireworks and they had patriotic music going through the loud speakers while the fireworks went off. It was a really good show.

 Jon and Kyler enjoying the fireworks. Oh yeah and it started to rain while the band was playing a little bit ,but down here in the summer heat we welcome the rain. It didn't last too long but the band and most of the audience started to dance around.

 Landon being silly. They pasted out flags, necklaces, and other fun stuff to all the employee's kids.

My crazy monkeys! There are a lot of really fun parks down here to play at. Yes, I know my boys are missing there shirts but this spin park also has a splash pad.

Grand Canyon

With the Grand Canyon only 3 hours away we had to take the kids.

 A herd of buffalo

 Taking in the beautiful view

 

 Getting a picture of the two of us together isn't always easy. My hair was blowing in the wind. But It was here that we decided that next year (2014) Jon and I will complete the Rim to Rim hike. We will hike the entire Grand Canyon from South rim to North rim. 

 Scouts

Our new ward does a lot of really fun activities. Here are few pictures but some that I forgot to get photographic evidence of were: hiking to see the petroglyphs, making boats out of recyclable materials for the rain gutter regatta.

 Shooting bottle rockets.

They arranged for some different courageous people to come and tell about what they do and the got to try out some of the stuff too.

An Army medic demonstrated the stretchers that fit in there packs. 

 This gentleman is a retired police officer who told the boys about a high speed chase and shoot out he was apart of. 

 And of course a firefighter

We were able to go out camping too.

 Ky in the fort the boys made.

 My cute puppy. He tossed and turned for most of the night in the tent. He finally fell fast asleep when he crawled into Kyler's sleeping bag (with Kyler )

Me and my boys

 Oh my, Landon just keeps getting bigger. Here he is mowing the lawn. He is trying to earn money for his trip to DC next summer. 

And of course what would St George be without climbing the red cliffs. We are lucky enough to have cliffs really close to our house that we can hike when ever we want.

Nathan turned 4

We ended up moving on Nathans birthday. So we asked him what he would prefer... celebrating early before we moved or after we moved to St George. His one stipulation was that he had to have his Uncle Jared at his birthday. Well, since Uncle Jared lived by our old house, we celebrated a day early. After spending all day loading the moving truck we then went over to Jared and Sarah's house. Sarah was a life saver. I had purchased everything for Nathan's cupcakes and everything but I had forgotten to keep out baking stuff to make them with. So Sarah baked up all the cupcakes and put all of the Perry the Platypus stuff on them. She also had pizza ready for everyone.

Nathan sporting his new superman attire and his toy edger and goggles.

I can't believe my baby is 4 already. This next pic is how we spent his actual birthday.

Jon drove the moving truck with one of the boys. His parents drove his car with the other two boys. and I drove my van filled with all the TVs and fragile stuff and oh yeah Dex rode shot gun with me the entire way. 

This was my view for almost 7 hours. I followed Jon the entire way.

 I know this is out of order but here is a pic of my boys and a few of their cousins playing in the back of the moving truck before it got all loaded up.

Back at Last

Yes, I know I haven't posted in almost 9 months. But since Jon is traveling a lot right now for business, I've decide to re-enter the blogging world. So I will be posting a lot in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to try to recap what all has happened in the past few months in order. So if you see pics and stories from this past spring... feel free to skip them or just enjoy the pics of my cute boys. So here we go!

Here's the story that started a ton a craziness of our lives for the past 9 months. In the end of January Jon told me that he kept having the impression that we should move to St George, Utah. I thought, YA RIGHT!!! There was no reason for us to move. We had a beautiful home, Jon had a good job and was a senior at Weber University. Every time were would discuss moving I would just bust into tears. Until finally, I decided that I needed to know for myself if a move to southern Utah was the next step for our family. So I prayed about it. And after I received a reconfirming feeling that moving was the right step for us, I never shed another tear. We went forward with repairing our house to sell and Jon began the job hunt.
We had a ton of showing on our house and each time we had to leave for usually and hour at a time. It sucked big time. So we went and wondered around stores a lot.

 Here's Nathan test driving a Jeep and helmet for the umpteenth time

During a Saturday open house we headed down to Scheels. Of course Ky (our goof-ball) had to pretend to sniff a skunk that was at a photo op in the store.

Our lovely home sold in just 2 1/2 weeks. UNBELIEVABLE!! That still blows my mind. But keep in mind that had still not found a job yet. So we were beginning to discuss the possibility of us having to live apart. We began searching for housing in St George and was having no luck. I began to get very stressed out and discouraged. Jon's sister contacted us about possibly living in rental property that she had decided to put on the market to sell. Well, it felt like the right move for us so we packed up our house and moved to Syracuse (about 7 minutes away from our home). The one challenge was that I was then work on showing and selling this home too. (With the real estate agent that we used)

 This is the final time we drove away from our first home.

After we frantically got the Syracuse house ready to show we were back to having to get lost anytime potential buyers wanted to walk through. Well, it most have worked because we sold that house in 3 weeks. ( Man, we must be really good at selling houses or something). We were still looking for housing and a job in St George. While we were down there visiting, Jon's sister Jennifer approached up about moving in to her house with her and her daughters. Jennifer had been diagnosed with an advanced stage of Lime Disease. It has been difficult for her to do a lot of things and just needed some extra help. Once again we received a very reassuring feeling that that was where we needed to go. 

Jon did find a job, thank goodness, and it's with the same company he has work for for 9 1/2 years. He is now a Performance Data Analysis for Skywest Airlines. So instead of working at the airports he is now at  corporate headquaters in St George, Utah. So we packed up our family again and began our new adventure. Oh yeah and Jon started his new job the exact weekend we needed to move out of the Syracuse house.... isn't it funny how things work out perfectly when they're meant to be.

January in a nutshell

So, I January has come and gone and yet I didn't get any posts done. It's been pretty busy around here. So here are a bunch of pics from my cell phone of what we've been up to in January. 

IT SNOWED, AND SNOWED, AND SNOWED!!!!!  It has been the worst snow since I've lived in Utah (9 yrs). We went for weeks without getting out of the teens in temperature, and a lot of times not even getting to the double digits.  The snow was so bad that we even had a snow day from school. WHAT?! I know really Utah actually had a snow day. Then a couple weeks later we had a horrible ice storm that had the schools running on a 2 hour delay. And did I mention that I've shoveled a lot of snow.... multiple times a day even. Here are a few picks of the fun we've had in that snow. (notice there are no pics of me shoveling because that was definitely not fun)

 We went sledding. This is Jon and Nathan.

 We made snow caves, this is Nathan popping out to say hi

 Ky in his cave with a snowball

 Landon holding a pile of snowballs

Jon's parents flew up for the annual auto expo. The boys had a blast.

 Nathan driving a truck

 Nice ride boys

  Nathan and Jon is a Jeep. Nathan loved watching the Jeeps drive around the course they had set up.

 There was a booth where kids could build lego cars and then race them down a ramp. Of course Kyler was excited to do it.

 His car creation

Kitchen Fun

 This is Landon making dinner to pass off a requirement for cub scouts. He's making Pigs in a Blanket (aka hot dogs rolled in crescent roll dough and baked)

 My mom sent Nathan a cute cooking/activity kit to help with being stuck inside due to this harsh winter. Nathan made banana pops ( half a banana dipped in chocolate then rolled in sprinkles) He was so excited and proud of his cooking creation. 

Nathan is 3 and he totally acts 3.

 On this particular night, Nathan refused to eat his dinner later started to demand a banana or something. While throwing his fit, he fell asleep against the counter.

Awards

 Landon received his Bobcat badge for scouts. He was very excited and we're very proud of all his hard work.

Kyler received an award from school called a Peace Builder Award. This is his big smile while eating an ice cream to celebrate.

As you can see we've been pretty busy. Let's just say there is never a dull moment with these crazy boys in our family.