Canyonlands Day 1

Last week we took a little 4 day camping trip to southern Utah. We stayed right outside Moab and decided to spend our time in Canyonlands National Park since we had never been there before. The first day we spent at the north end of the park in the Island in The Sky area. It was sunny, but windy and a bit chilly. Most of the time was spent hiking to different viewpoints to look down into the many vast canyons. It was beautiful. We really needed to get out of town, and heading for warm and sunny weather was fabulous for the soul.

The boys were so excited for this trip. There were such super little hikers, and as always loved to find an excuse to fill their pockets with rocks and climb around off trail any place they could.

The views were beyond description and the air was so clear that we could see forever. These mangy and gnarled trees somehow withstand all the wind and harsh weather that hits this parks.
Cute little Henry.
Favorite phrase used on this part of the trip- "If all your friends were named Cliff would you jump off them." (Jimmy Neutron's Dad)

Caleb making us all pretty nervous on top of the arch overlooking a 1000 foot drop.
The happy newly-weds... yep, I mean Us.
This is the cabin where we stay for the first 2 nights of our adventure. It had a queen-sized bunk bed and a playground about 20 yards away. The boys loved it, and even the pregnant lady got a little sleep while we were here.
The next few posts will be picture overload, my apologies in advance, but I prefer this method to the huge slide show that I would otherwise end up with. It will take me a bit to get it all posted, but since I firmly believe we saw some fabulous parts of Heavenly Father's creation and that you all need to be burdened with my pictures.

Seasonal Depression

That what I have when this is the view from my front porch on the 6th day of April.It has snowed more days in April than it did in February, and I am none too pleased about it.

Keep in mind I no longer have a winter coat that fits... grrrr.

The Big Bunny

Friday when we were grocery shopping Henry saw "The Big Bunny" at Sams. Gavin explained to him that it was the Easter Bunny who would bring treats and eggs to our house on Easter. This all sounded fine until Saturday night when he was acting pretty nervous about all this talk of "The Big Bunny" coming into our house. Luckily, I was able to reassure him that the bunny would only show up while he was asleep. Whew- close one. :-)

All fears left when he realized he would get to eat some jellybeans before breakfast.My attempt at bunny pancakes.

Thanks to the horrible weather the boys spent the morning discussing how it might be Christmas instead of Easter, except that we didn't have a tree up. They finally decided that Santa would be more than will to help the Easter Bunny with his sleigh if it turned out that the poor Bunny didn't own snow boots... All I have to say about snowy Easter is- BOOO.

Easter Egg colors

I am a little embarrassed to say that this is the first year in our kids lives that we have dyed Easter eggs. It goes without saying that the boys loved it. Henry only broke one in the coloring process, so that was also nice. Here are a few of our beauties.

Gavin was very meticulous and detailed, and loved trying to do so creative things.

Henry was his very silly self and loving the colors.
Even Dad was getting super creative and testing out his skills.
We just had to post this one since the boys can't stop laughing at Henry's crazy antics.

Colorado Blue Sharks- Game 1

Gavin started a Pre-K soccer league last Saturday. He is so very excited to be playing the 8 team games, and to have a cool uniform. His team was assigned the color of Colorado Blue, and then picked their team name- SHARKS. There are 20 Pre-K teams in the league so it was pretty funny to see all the varieties of colors that the rec center had to come up with for all the teams. We didn't have any friends our age who were signing up so Gavin is making all new friends on this team, which I think is good for him, and he is too excited about playing to even notice.

Highlights from Game 1:
Unofficial score of the game- Sharks 2, Lime Green 0
number of goals score by Gavin... 2.
Number of parents on the sidelines to ask me- "How old is your son?"... 4
There is no goalie in these games, but twice Gavin jumped in front of the Lime goal and blocked their shots. One of the other dads that coaches some 1st graders was loving this and cheering so loud for Gavin every time.
He had a couple of really nice fast breaks.Watching Gavin line up with the other kids to run a few kicking drills before the game... Can you tell which kid is mine?

This picture seriously cracks me up, but I promise Gavin wasn't knocking kids down for the ball. This little guy was just trying so hard, but the soccer ball came up well above his knee, and I think he was almost tripping on his shorts.

I am sure there will be plenty more action shots and videos to come. There are 7 more games coming up. One thing I have to love about Gav, is that even though he was the only one to score the entire game, he came home and told Caleb that his team lost since Lime was such a fast team. And even though, his own team kept inadvertently blocking his kicks by just being in front of the ball half the time, he didn't even notice and just had a great time. It's going to be fun to watch.
(In my defense, the games are played in the field house, so the pictures are a bit blurry from the weird lighting.)

The Invisible Ghost

The conversation
Gavin, "Dad, can you help us prepare. We need some strong tape."
Dad- "Um, Sure. What are we preparing for?"
Gavin- "To catch the invisible ghost. He is hiding in your closet. He tried to choke me."
Enter duct tape, knight helmets, and small flashlights. Ready...
That invisible ghost had better watch out.

Happy 5th Birthday Gavin!

Somehow yesterday my tiny little guy turned 5. He is pretty impressed with himself for being so old. We celebrated over a couple of days with a few little friends and he was even able to take treats to preschool. When I was combing his hair this morning I asked him how my little baby could possibly be 5. He just pointed out that he hasn't been a little baby for a long long time. :-) Geesch, when did that happen?

He once fit in the diaper bag for a trip to the coast when we forgot a carrier for him.

He is sporting a nice black eye in honor of the big day, caused by a collision with a preschool friend's head. I think it helps him to look more mature.

We went to soccer orientation last night for the Pre-K league that he is going to play in. It was funny to hear the usual "And how old are you?" with the innocent tone that we know from years of experience means that they are wondering why I signed my huge kid up for a Pre-K league. Luckily, he doesn't know the difference, and likes to brag about his 45.5 inches, and insists that I remeasure him almost weekly to see if there has been a change.

Spring Snowman

Grandma Cardon visited in February and gave the boys a snowman kit to help them construct a snowman... what followed was a super dry month. Last week we finally got some very wet March snow in sufficient quantities, so Caleb came home early on a Friday and helped the boys make the snowman.

Then they had a snowball fight. Henry kept getting snow in the face, so he had no problem attacking Gavin while he was on the ground.I thought this was funny since Gavin was bragging to Caleb about what a huge awesome snowball he had, right before he got hit with a big one from Henry.

A few projects- over a few months

So last fall I did a few projects for Christmas presents that I didn't want to post and give away the surprise. Since I just finished a couple of new projects this week, I thought it would be ok to post several in one. I am feeling a bit cocky about how some of these turned out, and finally I don't have anything waiting to get done. Which really just makes me want to head back to Wood Connection and continue to keep them in business by picking out something new to work on. :-)

For my mom's house

For my sister's house

The rest are for my house... this was just a little project that we hung on the boys' bedroom door this year.A little late for the season it was intended, but let's face it, I was too nauseous to think about projects for a while.
This one is for the boys to display more of their work and their cool magnets.

Spiderman Birthday Party

For his birthday Henry asked for a spider-man party. He went on to say that the party should have bootiful gold earrings for mom, and gold blankets and a spider-man cake. While we didn't come through with all the gold accessories, we did try to stick to a Spider-Man theme for some parts of the party. When we asked him what we should have for dinner, he just said that he didn't want any dinner... the same thing he says about half the nights of the week. So we had pizza. And he at least ate bread sticks and the blue icing off the cake. I think he had a great day, and he did shout "Yippee!" a lot, so that must mean he agrees with me.

The first thing we did was take the boys swimming. We had a pool all to ourselves in the building where Anne lives (the girl I work with). It was warm and the boys loved it and even took a short soak in the "hot pool" after the swim.

We had a great little party with all of the local Cardons, which always make a nice addition to our own excited children.

Henry got lots of helping playing with his new toys, and Uncle Brennan even helped assemble the new lego airplane.
I can still hardly believe that he is 3 years old, but he certainly keeps me on my toes everyday. Its crazy how he already knows so much that Gavin was just figuring out at his age. He is a fabulous second kid and keeps us laughing.

And now we know... and at least a few of us are happy

This morning we took a family trip to the Maternal Diagnostics Center. Both boys woke up early with an ultrasound on the mind. We got in quick and got to look at what will soon be our newest addition. Isn't he handsome?
That's right- He. Cardon Boy #3 on the way. The tech started looking around and taking the boring measurements of my insides that she needed, and Gavin kept saying, "Is that the penis?" every time she she would stop to measure something. She was laughing a lot at this, so when she started to look at the baby, she went straight for the view that would answer Gavin's question. Then she announced proudly, "And there is your boy." And Gavin was dead silent, and Henry said, "I thought I said I wanted a girl." I just laughed. She even went back and checked at the end to make sure that she hadn't made a mistake. Both boys had been pretty adamant, since we told them about the baby, that they had wanted a sister. Though Caleb and I both agreed that we would be quite surprised if it wasn't a boy. I have also had to have several talks with Gavin and his friend Lexi about how happy we will be even if it isn't the sister he is hoping for.
Despite that minor set back in his day, Gavin was really impressive at the ultrasound and kept picking out and naming the body parts of the screen when I thought he wouldn't be able to tell what anything was. It was really fun. And this little guy looks healthy and is measuring exactly to his due date... July 17.

Happy Birthday Henry!

Today my little boy turns 3. He went from sweet sleepy and easy going baby, to crazy, independent, throw caution to the wind toddler. He keeps us guessing every day, and we usually enjoy watching his crazy antics.

This morning when Henry came in to wake me up telling us all about the "Happy Birthday stuff" that was in the living room and on his door. I asked him if he was finally 3, and he just said, "No Mom, I am 14." Since I didn't understand him, I said, "You're 18?" And he started laughing, "No Mom, I'm not 18, I'm just 14." Gee, I can't believe I made that mistake.
My tiny little teenager.

Happy Valentines Day 2010

I really have the best Valentines any girl could ask for. Aren't they handsome?

We had a great little celebration with our fancy pink sodas, heart-shaped pizza, and pink desserts. The pizzas all turned out fabulous, and about half way through dinner Gavin said, "If we eat all of this, we will get so fat that people will think we are pregnant." :-) At least he didn't say, people will just think that we are fat.

"Well Mom, you didn't get a baby."

At my last appointment with my doctor, I took the boys along because I knew it would be a short appointment. Gavin is totally in to learning about the baby and wanted to hear the heartbeat. Since Gavin was going it didn't make sense to set up a playdate for Henry, so he had to come along too. They were great. Talking to the nurse and just having a good time. Gavin was, of course thrilled to hear the heartbeat, and was showing all his charm as he talked about the baby. Henry just hung out and mentioned that he was hungry a few times. When the doctor left and I sat down on the chairs where the boys were sitting to get their coats on, Henry just looked and me and said, "Well Mom, you didn't get a baby." Not sure how easily we will be convincing him to come to the boring ol' appointments again, when we won't actually be leaving with a baby for a while.

Not Papa's hat

Grandma and Papa came to Utah for a visit, and brought a couple of things with them. The day that they were staying at our house, Gavin jumped up on the couch and knocked something onto the floor. (what I saw was plaid fabric) And I said, "Gavin, don't knock Papa's stuff on the floor like that. Please pick it up." Then I walked out of the room. I heard Gavin and Grandma laughing at me, and when I came back Gavin had on a super cute hat and of course told me, "Mooom, these aren't Papa's hats!"

Don't know what I was thinking, but they sure are cute in them.

Gavin made us set up various poses for him in the hat.