A trip to the Dinosaur museum

Yesterday we took a trip to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum with Grandma Cardon, Mia and Mallory. It was a great time. Gavin kept hoping that at some point he would see the real dinosaurs, so I think that some of it was lost on him. I was a lot more impressed than I thought I would be. There were a lot of great exhibits, and though we didn't have much time to read up on anything with the super excited kids, they really had quite a collection of fossils and bones. I would recommend it to anyone that hasn't been and ever thought that those things were exciting as a kid.

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

Gavin's new favorite song to sing while playing and wandering around the house...

I had to catch him sitting still in the bath to get a video of it. He has always loved this song, but with the new previews for the movie, he seems to have it stuck in his head most of the time. And almost everyday when Caleb comes home and asks Gavin what we did today he says, "We din't do anything!" I guess we have to get out to see the movie with him soon.

Sledding Fun x

On Saturday, Caleb's lab had a sledding party at Sugarhouse Park. It turned out to be almost 40 degrees that day and with the out of control amount of snow that we have had this winter, it was a great sledding day. Henry lasted a few minutes outside and his first ever sledding run before getting in his seat and passing out for a nice long afternoon nap. Gavin, on the other hand had a great time and insisted on going down the hill by himself, over and over. We started out sending him from halfway down until he kept begging just to go from the top. What a thrill seeker, I wonder where he gets that.

Here are the boys as I pulled them from the car to the sledding hill we went on.

Henry's only sledding run. He was about ready to go to sleep here.We are certainly sick of the snow and ready for it to stop coming, but since the end is no where in sight... If you can't beat 'em, Join 'em.

January Fun

Aside from smashing up the house, we have been trying to find some other ways to stay busy.

Here is Gavin on the merry-go-round at the mall, which he is quite obsessed with whenever we go there. I finally caved and let him ride.

Henry was looking quite guilty in this picture because of course he just came over to these toys to dump them out and knock them over before moving on to something else. Nothing like getting caught in the act. Nothing makes me more anxious for spring than Henry's energy level.When I was at work one night, Caleb caught Gavin and Henry working hard together to load an entire box of teddy grahams into the back of one of their dump trucks. Atleast, they were hiding away in the corner together and not fighting over the truck and snacks.
So Gavin is my little helper around the house. He has always enjoyed helping with cleaning and dishes and laundry. I guess he just likes things to be organized, as much as I do. The other day he came across my sports bra in the laundry pile that he was "folding" and asked what it was. When I told him it was a bra to wear for running, he said to himself "Oh, to make you go faster." When I came back from putting a few things away, I found him trying to figure out how to get the thing on. I helped him straighten out his arms in it and then he proceded to run around the house. Of course, convinced that it made him go faster than ever. We won't point out that he has it on backwards, I am sure that is because it is more manly. We'll just say that those are his running shorts that he was hanging around the house in as well. I love a good blakcmail picture... He'll do whatever it takes to help him run faster.

I guess this is why we love people more than things

So when I was a freshman in high school, I spent several months in an advanced pottery class making a 2 foot tall vase out of clay. My very inspiring art teacher decided to enter it in our high school conference art show, where about 10 school go to compete and show their art. I won a best in show award, much to my surprise, and was asked to display the pot in several different art shows around the state. It was pretty exciting for my 14 year old self, and my aunt wrote an article in the county newspaper about it (since all of the small towns that we lived around weren't big enough to each have a newspaper of their own there was one for the county).

This is a poor scan of the old newspaper clipping. I am sure you are all wondering what could actually possess me to put this old picture up on my blog.... Well...
I have kept this pot with me where ever I went. In college it survived 2 dorm rooms, 2 apartments, and one house. Since I left college and got married, we have lived in 3 different places and have had the pot in our living room most of the time. In our duplex it sits next to the fireplace, or at least it did.

Yesterday when I was coming out of the kitchen, I heard a loud thud and a crash and I knew what had happened. My little Henry, had climbed over the pillow barricade that I use to keep him out of the corner of the room where the heater vent and the vase both are, and had proceed to use his brute strength to tip the heavy and otherwise sturdy vase to the ground. As you can probably guess, I knew before I entered the room what had happened, and what I would see when I got over there. It is safe to say that I was pretty upset and distressed about my art work of 14 years prior being bashed. And there is no salvaging it, aside from the large chunks that broke off in several places, there were also a lot of small pieces missing.

After having a good little sad cry for my once cherished possession, I came back in to find Henry oblivious and continuing to dump out toys and knock books of the shelf. He gave me a big happy smile and just laughed at his destructive little self.
How could a person stay mad at such a cute little face? Not to mention the fact that any sad pouting is lost on a 10 month old.

So, I would like to request a moment of silence for a lost work of art, from all of you that were dedicated to read my whole sad story.

In my own defense, I don't think that I have strong attachment to many worldly possessions, But I guess I just needed a reminder... After it is all said and done, I can't take a vase with me anyway. However, I can take my strong, crazy and happy little Henry into the eternities.

Grandpa Cardon knows best

Before the cold weather storms started, Caleb worked really hard for a few days to put up rain gutters on the back of the house, since we were told by a structural inspector that it would help the settling of our old house to direct the water away. Well, shortly after that we were visiting Grandpa Cardon in Lindon and Caleb told him about putting up the gutters. Grandpa could not have disagreed more with the engineer and proceeded to share with us his strong dislike for rain gutters. He then told us a story about the year that he added them to his house in Logan and then spent the winter being disgusted at the fact that they just froze up and caused his whole house to have icicles all winter.

After we got back from New Mexico, Caleb and Gavin were outside messing around and when behind the house to find a nice surprise. They climbed the tree and broke down some of their treasures, and brought them around to show me. Gavin was a bit more excited to see the result of the new rain gutters than Caleb was, but Grandpa had warned us. So I guess in the future, we will have to ask him advice before some of our home improvement projects.

Gavin has now made it his job to point out all of the houses with icicles as we drive around town.

Exciting Developments

You might be wondering why my 10-month old with his sippie cup can be seen under the title exciting developments. Well, it is because just yesterday, Henry finally decided to start drinking out of his cup. That's right, finally. We started offering him the cup at 6 months, and waited for him to start drinking from it by about 7 months like Gavin did. However, Henry is determined to prove the differences between him and his brother, and by 7 months he was pretty much just an expert at pitching the cup across the dining room. He actually even broke one from throwing it so much. So, we just kept giving him one every day or so, sometimes adding the most sugary beverages that we could find to coax him into using it, but he was not to be bribed. Yesterday he was having a snack and I came out of the kitchen to find him chugging away on the cup and when I congratulated him he just got a huge smile, like "Mom, Can you believe that there is something for me to drink in here? Wow!" It was pretty funny, and we are all pretty excited about it. I never thought that these stages of eating and drinking could be so great.

Holly Jolly Christmas

We spent our Christmas in New Mexico with all of the Marshall Family this year. It was a great time and the first time that we have all been together in several years. I have 4 siblings and there are now 11 total grandkids, so it was perfect to be around all the excitement of Christmas. We didn't love the drive that much, but we made it there and back safely (with only one incident of a dead battery on the way home), so we are always grateful for that.

We had a new family picture taken to show the updated clan, and boy was that just as fun as pictures always are.

The most fun was trying to get a picture of the grandkids though. Alaina is the oldest at 15 and Sara is 6 months and the youngest, so there was quite a range of age and personality. This was the shot that we chose because you could actually see all of the kids, and really it was just hilarious. As in all occasions of photo taking, there were some tears shed.

One poor guy sits alone...
And the cute people who started the whole crazy thing... don't they look good? This was there first professional photograph since sometime which we think was in the 80s.
We had a good Christmas and Gavin has been lonely for Nana and Vatti and "all the kids" at their house.

Our little Family

So, as you can tell we got our family pictures taken a few weeks ago. Our first ones as a family of 4. It was the first time in a long time that Caleb was involved in our photo studio experience, and he now can understand why it is so stressful for me. Luckily, we are all just naturally cute, ;-) so we were able to get a good picture, despite the poor efforts of the photographer. In 15 minutes, she took 7 photos, that's right- 7. And it is not like they don't want to waste film or something from a different decade. So out of those 7, half had someone, usually a kid, tipping over or making a weird face. So really we got 2, where you could see us... The one next to our profile, and this one...

And then 2 where you can't really see our faces, but you can assume that it is us...

Of course, this really just makes me anxious for the boys birthday pictures next year and how well those always go. Oh well, I guess I would have to actually pay someone decent money if I wanted and easy and flawless photo experience, or I would just have to not have kids, and neither of those are going to happen. So for now, we just have to love what we can get.

Merry Christmas

We actually decorated our tree and put up decoration right after Thanksgiving, but life tends to be out of order, so why should the blog be any different.

Here is Gavin getting ready to hang his ornament on the tree. He was Mom's big helper with decorating.

This is how Dad and Henry chose to help from one side of the couch, and Rachel on the other... though Rachel was far more supportive about decorating that the two guys on the couch with her.

Since the holiday seems to bring with it a lot of treats.... this picture had to be shared for all the kids who eat too much candy. This box was a gift from our friend Nicole. I opened and gave a piece to Gavin and put it away to go and read some mail. When I was done I realized that it had been really quite so I called Gavin who just made a grunting sound to let me know he was in the kitchen. Turns out that his mouth was so full of chocolate that he couldn't open it to speak. This is what I found and all I could do was laugh.

Put 'em to work

So we went to Lowes the other day in preparation for the coming snow store. We needed a new snow shovel because I broke the other one during the last storm. (Not, of course, that I am saying that I have super human strength or anything- but it was our neighbors, who are famous for collecting junk and anything that they can salvage off the side of the street, or actually in the street sometimes, so I don't think it had much life left in it.) Anyway, while we were there, Gavin spotted this....

Since you can see that my couch is behind him, I obviously bought it. But who wouldn't? What a great idea. I mean, why should Caleb and I have to take care of clearing all the snow when there is someone living here who truely enjoys cold and nasty weather, and add to that a tiny sized and ergonimically correct snow shovel.... I say "Put 'em to work!"

So when we woke up on Saturday with once again, about 5 more inches of very wet and heavy snow, you can guess who was ready to get "dressed on" (as we say at our house) and head straight out to shovel the sidewalk and the driveway. Look at him go-

What a worker. I wanted to take some video, but of course I got the response, "I can't right now Mom, I'm too busy. I have to go to work." Luckily, since he still seems to be figuring out the effeciency of the tool, Dad also came out to help and throw some snowballs. We are certainly in for some trouble if we keeping getting this kind of snow all winter, but my sidewalk and driveway will be clear.