Our Little Family 2010

So many great shots to chose from. These are some of my favorites. It is pretty obviously that Caleb and I felt a little silly having our photo taken without kids... but silly in a good way.

Wyatt- 4 Months Old

11/12/10- 4 Months Old
17lbs 8oz
26 inches
He has 2 teeth on the bottom and seems to be working on getting the top ones too... Note- Wyatt does not enjoy teething. He can roll over in both directions and now does it all the time, sometimes getting hung up on his play gym.
Wyatt loves to listen to people talk. He will grin and smile all day long if he thinks you are talking to him... what a third child. And his little laugh is very infectious.

He is pre-sitting.
(a positive way of saying that he can't quite sit up on his own, but he tries).

Eating rice cereal and loving it.

Loves to look around at the world in the walker.
(I know I am a super dangerous parent to still own a walker, but we don't move around it in. Just sit and play with toys, so don't judge me.)

We saw the doctor today, she laid Wyatt down on the table and start to examine him. The whole time he was trying to use his feet to scoot around the table and trying to roll over to his belly. She was pretty much having to wrestle him to even get a chance to check him out. Finally she told me that he is considered a high risk for injury because he is already moving so much. And that we should consider him a risk taker because he has 2 older brothers, and to prepare ourselves to try and keep him from climbing when he starts to pull up and walk... or we will most likely end up in the ER. After this verdict she says, "There is just something about boys and the way they function. So when you consider boys in a group, it is even more true. They are just more likely to take risks when they have other boys to try and keep up with." I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. My only reply was, "Yep, welcome to my life." Luckily she is a woman with a sense of humor, and she just laughed. It is nice that she is preparing me in advance, so maybe I will feel a little more ready for chasing three crazies.

Carmel Disaster

I know most people have the fabulous looking pictures to post of their super yummy carmel apples. Not me. I got all excited to make carmel apples this week, but something went horribly wrong. Not sure exactly what happened, but not only were these apples slightly hideous. They were also nearly impossible to eat. We tried to give our jaws a workout on one, and then after Henry dropped one on the floor and the carmel actually shattered, like glass. We gave up the pretense that these edible and chucked them... not at any windows or breakable object, but in the trash. Not really sure what went wrong... maybe I was in too big of a hurry and heated the carmel to fast. That is just one theory though. Who knows?

We love talent

As you can probably tell- I just got back the the photos from our family "photo shoot" with none other than the fabulous Catie. If you have ever seen Catie's work than you have some idea of how much I love love these photos. Just a little preview in the updates to our bios, but I am looking forward to sharing more with you when I have a little more time. It was actually a really fun and non-stressful photo day for me. (I know, Miracle!) Thanks again Catie!

Elko, NV (aka Middle of No Where)

Last week we took a little trip to Elko, Nevada to visit our friends, Wade and Misty before they move to California. The Petersons' also met us there, so it was a fabulous little CarFinPete runion.
Elko was actually in a pretty little spot, but you have to cross a lot of nothingness to get there. We had a great time catching up and the kids had a lot of fun.
The whole crew- poor little Maggie, totally outnumbered. Good thing she can hold her own.

The men.

The Ladies.

Wade also owns a rickshaw. Caleb pedaled the boys around. They were in heaven.

We stayed up way too late chatting and catching up. Always a good time.

Happy Halloween 2010

We had a Happy Halloween this year.
Wyatt was a super cute skeleton
(though Caleb made fun of me for taking his picture on a snowman blanket).
We loved taking him into the closet to see the bones glow-in-the-dark.

Gavin and Henry were both ninjas this year. Henry is not the biggest joiner when it comes to Halloween, so he ended up just deciding to do whatever Gavin was doing. They were a cute pair.
Plenty of good ninja moves.
Gavin was the red ninja.

Henry was the yellow ninja.

Seriously... so excited. Wyatt also had his first tooth poke through today, while the other two are trying to convince me to let them eat enough candy to rot theirs out.

We went to the school Halloween carnival on Friday. The anticipation was maybe even a little more fun than the actual carnival, but the boys got a taste of Halloween and we supported the school. Gavin and Wyatt got their faces painted.

And we saw some friends and played some games.

This picture cracks me up... I can't figure out how Parker is standing, he and Gav are actually the same height. Some how he looks like he is standing up straight, though the fake muscles don't help the weird view. They have a great time together.

I didn't seem to get any pictures of the actual trick-or-treating and all, but it was a lot of fun, and we got more than enough candy.

Second children must be extra blessed

I was folding laundry the other day and the boys were watching, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs." in the living room. This is what I overheard-
Henry- "What does extinct mean?"
Gavin- "It means dead."
Henry- "Ok."
Gavin- "You know, like how Mom and Dad's grandmas are dead... Well, they are passed away."
Henry- "So dinosaurs are passed away?"
Gavin- "No dinosaurs are extinct. When it is a person, they say passed away. When it is an animal they say extinct."

Pumpkin guts

For some reason, in a house full of boys, I am the only one that is willing to touch the pumpkin guts. We had a great time carving our pumpkins this weekend.

Gavin wanted to help scoop some out, so that he could appear tough. Unfortunately, the smell seemed to be a bit much for him, so he had to cover his nose the whole time.

Wyatt is super thrilled about his first pumpkin carving day.

Our end results were pretty good. Quite festive, in fact.
Henry's jack-o-lantern.

Gavin's glowing goblin.

They loved the lit candles.

Other Saint George Fun

This was our first real visit to Saint George and it really is a beautiful place. Not sure I could handle it in the summer, but it was nice and mild and we soaked it up. We visited the beautiful Snow Canyon. It was so fun climbing around on the petrified dunes and checking out the great views. The kids loved scampering around, and scavenging for cool rocks even though they seemed more obsessed with gravel parking lot than what they found on the hikes.

Henry refused to pose for any group shots because that is just who he is, but he still looks pretty awesome all on his own.

Nothing like beautiful kids in such a beautiful place.

Yep, Wyatt was snoozing away while I was trying not to fall down climbing the rocks.

Our awesome and handsome trail guide with his determined hiking group.

Everyone loves a good cave to climb into, except maybe Claire who was mad that everyone wouldn't give her more of her own space. She and Henry were the slowest walkers on both of our short hikes, but Claire made this one exciting by singing her own rendition of "Happy Birthday" and "We Will Rock You (and Flush You Down the Toilet)" on the walk back. I would always rather hang back with them, if that is the entertainment.

We also had a great little visit to the Saint George LDS Temple. It really is beautiful. We are still trying to figure out how they get it to be so stunningly white. There were a lot of people visiting the temple grounds that evening, so it was a little hard to get great photos, but it was beautiful.

Henry, Claire and Wyatt had fallen asleep in the car on the way over, so we let them rest a bit with Caleb. Mia, Libbie, Mallory and Gavin were great at posing and being happy together. Gavin kept picking out different spots and asking me to take pictures of them. Anytime.

We did lots of hanging out too, and since Caleb finally got a new phone and is now phone-twins with Nathan. There was plenty of obsessing about how cool their phones were. And plenty of nagging from their wives to get off the phone, or please stop watching the fancy GPS while driving. This picture is proof that Caleb was even trying to convince Jaren and Wyatt how cool his phone is. You can see they are more into eating a hat and sucking fists than coveting the phone.

Even though I was quite tired at the end, I really loved this trip. Running in the early morning with Stacy is always a favorite thing when we travel together, and I really got a chance to chat and catch up with the wonderful Cardon girls. The kids are usually busy cramming all the playing that they can into our time together. It was hilarious to watch Jaren get so excited to see Wyatt when we put them on the floor together. He would just squeal and try to dive for him. Always so nice to just hang out with Caleb and take a break from all of the things that make our lives crazy and busy. So grateful for the little moments that make me happy.

We love Zion NP (Part 2)

We headed back to Zion again on our way home, because we are probably a little obsessed. This time we stayed away from the main park and did some wandering on the trail where the Subway hike begins. We probably only went the first mile or so to the overlook ridge that leads you down to the canyon, but it is a beautiful place with lots of trees and some great views.

The boys saw so many people with walking sticks in the park that they had to create their own. They were pretty sad that we wouldn't agree to let them bring their sticks home in the car. What lame parents we are.

We stopped to let Wyatt eat at the overlook and some very formidable clouds rolled in and started to rain giant drops on us. I was trying to hold Wyatt and feed him a bottle while walking on the rocky path. It didn't work very well and we were all starting to get pretty wet, and just like that, the clouds disappeared. I guess we weren't meant to spend much time sitting around enjoying the view.

We also went to a new place that we have never been before, Lava Point Overlook. The drive was a little long, but it was so picturesque that we didn't notice. The colors are so hard to capture, but it was stunning. It was high enough to have changed a lot, although most of the main parts of the park hadn't.
This was a view of Zion that was so different from what we usually see, since we were a lot farther north that we have gone in the past. It was very cool.