It's always fun to see school pictures come home and to see how they turn out and what kind of smile the boys make that day. I can't describe how thick Kaleb's hair is in words, it's hard to cut and the amount of volume he can get is crazy. He needs a haircut desperately (especially since these were taken in Sept.) but he's begging me not to cut it. I think we'll have to try to compromise somewhere because we have family pictures coming up and his hair is getting crazy.
Olivia turned 2! She's such an active and loving little girl. I still call her my baby girl but she's growing up. My parents and sister came over to give her some presents and she loved it.
Minnie is her favorite and as she started unwrapping her present and saw it was a stuffed Minnie she stopped and screamed Minnie and started shaking. She couldn't believe it.
October 4, 2014
She also loved this Little Mermaid Little People toy because when you pushed down on Sebastian it plays music.
She also got a sleeping beauty dress-up dress that sings and lights up that she wore. She likes pushing the button and dancing to the music.
Matt was up at the cabin since he spent the night before up there but we drove back down since the boys had stuff going on the next day. So that night the kids and I packed up and headed to the cabin to spend the night there. I also took Olivia's presents up there so she could open them with Matt there but it was so late when we finally got up there and she fell asleep on the way so we put her to bed so she opened them the next day.
It was fun spending the night and listening to conference on the radio on Sunday. Kaleb's favorite thing to do at the cabin is read. He always has a new book. I always wonder what his teacher thinks when looking at his reading calendar when there are days that say 240 minutes read that day.
October 5, 2014
After conference we headed over to the Smith-Morehouse reservoir to explore and let the kids throw rocks. Olivia loved it and the boys had fun finding fishing gear and trying to put together a line they could try to fish with.
As we were leaving I was trying to take a picture of Olivia and she started playing peek-a-boo with me.
I know pictures don't do the scenery justice but I had to try. I just think we live in such a beautiful place and I'm grateful I get to admire it.
After that we headed down to Salt Lake for Sunday dinner and to celebrate Olivia's birthday. She loves chocolate cake the most and is obsessed with Frozen so I had bought the Frozen figure set to put on her cake. You can't go wrong with Costco's chocolate cake.
As we started singing to her she became really shy and tried hiding. She didn't like all of the attention.
She tried blowing out the candle but she always blows up her face not out so her brother's eventually had to help her blow it out.
She opened a couple more presents and ate some cake. I think she had a fun birthday weekend and she loves playing with her new toys.
Saturday the 11th we had friends coming up to the cabin for tinfoil dinner's and s'mores. Unfortunately we have the worst luck for getting together (this was already the 2nd attempt) and due to car problems, etc. it didn't end up happening so we put our dinner's in the fire and had a fun evening with the 5 of us.
I love how well the boys play together when they're at the cabin.
October 11, 2014
Ashton helped dad cook the dinners.
Ashton wanted in on our picture.
By this weekend all of the leaves around the cabin had turned yellow and were dropping off of the trees.
Olivia had been playing in a tub of water that's on an adjacent lot to ours that's for the animals to drink. I told her no and she didn't like that I wouldn't let her play in the water so she threw a huge fit on the ground but since you can't see her face we'll pretend she's rolling around in the leaves and enjoying it! :)
We went on a walk to a couple of different streets we hadn't been down and there was an amazing sunset that night.
I also made sure to get a picture of the open loft area since we added a queen bed up there the weekend before.
On October 14th Olivia had to get work done at the dentist and they put her under. The poor girl had the hardest time trying to wake up from the anesthesia. She just wanted to sleep. She was so out of it but she knew where she was. She kept saying "fishy" since the dentists office has a Nemo/sea theme and kept telling the hygienist "bye-bye" because we kept telling her she needed to wake up if she wanted to leave. Even though she couldn't keep her eyes open once she held up her fingers to tell us how old she was they let us leave. The next 4 hours were an adventure. She couldn't hold her head up and would just flop everywhere so I had to hold her to keep her from hurting herself. She kept trying to get down and walk or crawl but couldn't and would just fall back into my arms. I let her lay on her tummy to play with toys but even then her head would drop and she would smack her face on something. So it was an exhausting 4 hours until nap time and after her nap she was back to her normal, awake self.
The weekend of the 18th was the first weekend since we bought the cabin that we didn't end up going up there at all. The boys went out shooting on Saturday morning with dad and brother and they loved it. Ashton loved finding old bullets and targets as much as actually shooting the guns. The boys really want to go again so I'm sure they'll make another trip to Tooele soon.
October 18, 2014
While the boys went shooting Olivia and I took a quick drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon to take her 2 year old pictures. I wasn't sure where to go but found a good area with a bunch of granite rocks on the side of the road. An unexpected benefit was that I would put her on a rock and she couldn't just run away. She's so active so getting a picture with her holding still is hard to get but having her "stuck" on a rock helped.
After about 10 minutes we stopped for a sucker break.
If you know me well you know that 90% of my kids clothes are from thrift stores. Everyone kept asking where I got her coat from and other than Olivia's skirt that was $5 at Wal-Mart everything else was from Goodwill including the boots.
She was a good sport to let me take so many pictures but after 20 minutes she was done so headed back to the car and I took her to McDonald's to eat and play. Although without her brother's she wasn't sure about where the slide was so she just kept climbing up and down the stairs and never made it to the slide.
My aunt and uncle invited us over to carve pumpkins with them. We had pizza and then carved our pumpkins. The boys carved both sides of their pumpkins and I guess I never got a finished picture of Kaleb's pumpkin. His had a moon with wolves on one side and a robot face on the other. Ashton's had a grim reaper on one side and a skeleton head on the other.
October 22, 2014
I attempted without a template to carve Minnie for Olivia. At least she knew who it was so that's all that matters. While we were carving Matt went upstairs and cooked the pumpkin seeds since he had never done that before. We had a lot of fun.
The kids had their last swimming lesson the next day and they were excited because that meant they let them go down the big slide at the end. Because they were going down the slide the little ones had to get on life jackets but usually during lessons they don't wear them. Matt loved doing swimming lessons with Olivia and she always was excited to go.
October 23, 2014
To celebrate my aunts birthday my mom and sister and I took her to Olive Garden. It was fun going with just us girls and Olivia really enjoyed dipping her bread stick in soup and sucking it off.
October 24, 2014
The next day we had gravel being delivered to the cabin at 8:00am so we decided rather than getting up really early we would stay the night so we were already up there. Matt wanted us to try a restaurant he had been to with work in Park City called Billy Blanco's so we ate dinner there on our way up. The boys loved the car/garage theme and the food was good too.
The next morning it was cold and even though everything looks dead it still looked pretty with the morning sun hitting the trees.
We had eggs and muffins for breakfast before they came with the gravel.
Kaleb's typical "I can't just smile" pictures.
My uncle came at 8am too and helped us ALL day with spreading the gravel. My grandpa, aunt and her niece Tifani came up for lunch and even helped us too. Right after the dump truck unloaded the gravel I knew we would need more so we called to have another one brought up. They're in Oakley so only 15 minutes away. We were able to get most of the first truckload spread before the next load came at 11am. So 28 tons of gravel and 7 hours later we no longer have a mud issue. We spread it around the sides of the cabin and around the fire pit too. It was so hard to shovel the gravel since it was bigger rocks so your shovel would just stop when you hit it. We were a little sore the next day. :)
That evening my parents and sister came up for dinner and to sit by the fire.
My brother found this AT-AT at a garage sale and bought it for the boys. They brought their container of Star War's guys and ships to bring to the apartment the next day to play with it. They didn't have school and they spent all day playing together.
October 27, 2014
Olivia was sitting on my lap and she took off her socks and started picking out the lint between her toes. She then put it by her nose, I thought to smell it, and I told her it was gross. She then ate it. I took a picture to send to Matt to let him know what she just did. She tried to do it again and I didn't let her. Although yesterday when I saw her doing it again I didn't stop her, instead I took video of it.
October 29, 2014
Matt and I took Halloween off of work since I was helping with Ashton's class party. The morning started with their school parade. Olivia was Snow White this year. I found her dress on clearance at the Disney Store when she was just a baby and saved it for this Halloween. The kids always walk so fast in the parade that I get a couple of blurry pictures every year. Not sure why I still try year after year. So I just go to their class to take pictures.
October 31, 2014
Kaleb, since February, really wanted to be a red Halo guy which is only made in adult sizes so we had to pin up some of the extra fabric to make it work but worked out pretty well.
Olivia helped me take the supplies to Ashton's class for their party and then left with dad.
The kids were so cute. I was in charge of a cookie decorating station and the kids loaded their cookies with every sprinkle and candy they could. This kid wanted me to take his picture.
Ashton was an army guy and here he was playing bingo during his party.
After cleaning up Ashton's class party I went to get Kaleb's costume and they were just finishing their last game where they had to unwrap a candy bar with utensils.
Then I met up with Matt and Olivia at Goodwill where he showed me this pictures. They had stopped at Big 5 and he said Olivia ran over to these fishing poles right away because of the princesses. I don't think she realized she was dressed like the princess on the package.
Olivia LOVES her binky (something we need to wean her off of soon) and if she doesn't have enough hands she'll put it under her chin to hold it while she does other things but this day she found a new spot to put it. I kept looking for her binky thinking she dropped it on the floor and laughed when I finally saw she put it down the front of her dress.
We then went to the Amber Restaurant (one of our favorites) to grab breakfast/lunch since we hadn't eaten anything. The waitress' kept bringing Olivia candy and she loved it.
The boys were so excited to go trick-or-treating.
There was a really pretty sunset that night right before they left.
Kaleb and his friend Thomas let Ashton tag along for awhile until my cousin's came over with their kids and then he went out with them and Olivia. They all came back with a good amount of candy and Olivia had the most. Matt said she would try to go into the houses when they opened the door, which makes sense since that's usually what you do when you go to someones house and she also would take a big handful of candy instead of just one. She knows what she's doing!
