Too Fast!!!

Our little LeiLei is growing up way to fast! She's barely 3 months and today she sat unassisted. I was playing with her upstairs and she felt really sturdy while she was sitting. I let go and sure enough she sat for a good 30 seconds before falling over. I thought it was a fluke so tried again and again and she kept sitting there looking around so proud.


Tavita has finally started saying his name today, or should I say singing it. I was calling him inside and he comes up drumming on a make shift drum singing, "Vita, Vita, Vita." I asked him, "Who are you singing about." He got a big grin and said, "ME!!!"

We had a busy day today. Primary activity in the morning, BYUH alumni fundraiser in the afternoon and stake picnic in the evening. The boys had an absolute blast at the picnic. They had some inflatable slides there and we barely saw them for the whole 2 hours we were there.
Kalei staying cool at the picnic

My boys!

Sister Beasley!!!

Our neighbor two doors down from us is the best neighbor anyone could ever ask for. She has a constant watch on the neighborhood and always knows when you stand in need of something. Over the two years we've been here the boys have adopted her as a third grandma. It's the perfect situation because her grandsons are far away and their grandmas a far away. They fill each others voids. We have spent many a days on her front lawn while the boys play with her two awesome dogs Jet and Jaro and pull daring stunts like riding down her driveway on the snowboard her son converted into a skateboard. A day is not complete without a visit to her house to say hi to the dogs and grab a hug and a treat from Rachel. We rarely have them sitting with us at church because their usually one row up with her. One time we were at the park and she came walking through to find Brayden pouting under a tree because he was hungry and we had forgotten snacks. Next thing we know she came pedaling back on her bike with a bag of snacks for him to enjoy. Needless to say the boys LOVE Rachel or "Beebees" as Tavita has deemed her.
Yesterday was her birthday and the boys spent a good chunk of time making a cute little card for her. Brayden drew a picture of her and glued two lips next to the drawing. He told me, "These are my lips and these are Sister Beasley's becuase I'm giving her a big kiss for her birthday." They also traced their hands on the back since that's their little thing they do each week in church. We went to go drop the card and some goodies off at her house but much to the boys dismay she was gone. They kept going out and checking throughout the day. Tavita decided to protest and sat on the curb just staring down the road in hopes she would come. Brayden soon joined in and were out there for quite some time. Who knows how long they would've waited if we hadn't called them in. They were so sad they were going to miss her birthday as they got ready for bed. Suddenly Tavita started running "Beebees home, Beebees home." He and Brayden went tearing out the door and were there before she even had the chance to get out of the car. After a big birthday hug the boys went of to bed happy and content. With family being so far away I'm so grateful to have such awesome neighbors!

Growing Old!

Apparently Brayden is thinking really long and hard about this whole growing up thing. He's taking it largely in stride; he loves going to preschool and is always excited to go, he's decided it's time to start riding his big boy bike and has even learned how to put on his own helmet, always willing to help with his siblings cause "he's old now". However, there seems to be a few things about growing up he doesn't like.
The other day he was doing something and commenting on how old he's getting. I replied, "Yeah you sure are getting big but don't grow up too fast because I still want you to be my little boy." We got into a discussion about how when kids grow up they move out etc etc. A few days later he came to me talking about how big he's getting then replied with, "Don't worry Mom, when you make me move out I won't live far away. Probably at the Mcilmoils (a family that live around the corner, Brayden LOVES their 15 year old) because they have a lot of cool Wolverine stuff."
Then he was talking to my mom awhile back and said, "Grandma, I'm getting so old! Pretty soon I'm going to be as old as you and Grandpa."
Lastly, yesterday on the way home from preschool he asked, "Mom, when I grow up can I still call Grandma." The poor boy has already written himself off as being in the sunset of his life and is worried he's not going to be able to enjoy anything he enjoys now.
Then we have Tavita who has decided the whole growing up thing is overrated and is clinging to his babyhood by refusing to talk. Often he doesn't string more than two or three words together and they're very much "toddler language" where only those that spend a lot of time with him can understand him. We ask him to pray or to repeat a word he just laughs and says, "NO". The frustrating thing is we know he can talk. He'll randomly bust out nice clear sentences. Like yesterday Janessa asked why he goes through underwear so fast and he replied, "It's Brayden's fault." He's said other bigger sentences that I can't think of now but I'm at a total loss as to how to get him willing to talk!

Preschool and Pirates

Today was Brayden's first day of preschool and he LOVED IT!!! I had hummed and hawed for a while trying to decide if I should but him in or just teach him at home (trying to save some $$$) but decided to bite the bullet and go for it so he could get the social interaction as well as learn proper behavior in classroom setting. I'm so glad I did it! As we were driving to school I was trying to get a feel for his thoughts on the whole thing.
M:"Brayden what are you most excited about preschool?"
B:"Sharing my pirate gun" (they were supposed to bring their favorite toy for show and tell"
M: "Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. Is there anything you're nervous about?"
B: "Mom, I'm just so glad to be going to preschool."
Nough Said!
I thought preschool ended 20 minutes earlier then it did so I got to catch a few glimpses of what was going on. As I pulled up it was outside play time and since it was the 1st day of school they got to ride the animal train around the neighborhood. Brayden had seen it during the open house and was so excited for the chance to ride it!
We are looking forward to a fun and exciting year with Ms. Katie. She seems so nice and Brayden already really likes her.



Arrrgh Matey!
So the old dollar theaters by us shut down and for over a year they had been advertising a new resturant "Pirate Island Pizza". It was initially supposed to open in Spring but kept getting pushed back. Everytime we'd drive past (it's in the same parking lot as Costco so we drove by often) Brayden would ask when it was going to open. Well, at last the wait is over!!! It finally opened a few days ago so we decided to check it out with our good friends the Bradshaws. All I can say is WOW. I now see why it took so long, never would've guessed it was an old movie theater. The boys were in awe and could hardly sit still. Our pirate waiter even kept up the pirate voice the whole time (which in all honesty got a little old after awhile but the boys loved it!) The pizza was amazing, the other food so so, we'll stick to the pizza from now on. The aracade was a glorified Chuck E Cheese style but WAY more expensive. Luckily they had a pirate ship playground that the boys prefered over the games! They're already talking about a return trip.





p.s. Tavita "said" his first prayer tonight! This kid is so stubborn, we ask him to pray and he laughs and says no. Tonight he at least mumbled out something that resembled "Heveanly Father".

Inspired

Okay Staci, after reading your post on how important jounaling is you've inspired me to try and post daily, even if I don' thav time to get pictures and everything else up and going. Junior was really good at writing in his journal while we were dating at it really is so fun to go back and read how our relationship developed, I however didn't write once! I look at my kids and see how fast they are growing. Whenever they do/say something funny/memorable I always think, "Oh I'll never forget that", but the truth of it is that we do forget. So my renewed resolution is to record at least something. For starters, here's a catch up of the past month, we've been BUSY! Ith the remodel and refinance done, we're trying really hard to take a lot of family outings before the weather is too cold to do so. Here's a reacap of what we've done.

Unfortuantely I've forgotten my camera for some of the things like our hike to Battle Creek Falls (Brayden got his first wasp sting but was so excited for the hike that he insisted we still go and he hiked the whole way without a complaint) and our trip to the new Lindon Aquatic Park (Brayden discovered how to "swim" underwater and refused to use floaties and Tavita kept trying to sneak into the "bubbles" (hot tub) even though he was underage)

Fathers and Sons
First weekend of August. The boys LOVE this campout and still remembered much of it from last year. They were packed first thing Friday morning and spent all day carrying around their backpacks and wearing sunglasses until Junior got home. They had a lot of fun roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, playing with friends, shooting bb guns, playing in the woods and creek.





Tavita is Potty Trained!!!
Because he's not much of a talker and always so active I thought Tavita would be a tough one to potty train. I was wrong!!! It was like one day he just got sick of wearing diapers and was potty-trained in a week. He rarely even has accidents at nights!
He's such a half pint but refuses to use his little toilet. However, he gets scared he's going to fall in when he's sitting on a big toilet. He came up with quite the solution an basically LAYS on the toilet. Let's just say he's got to go Mommy's way when he's on a public toilet.
However, when he's playing spiderman, he feels the need to use the toilet like spiderman. Just don't look too closely for unpleasant images in the toilet!


Little "Lei Lei"
Kalei is getting bigger and bigger. I can't believe she's already 3 months!!! She is a very talkative and smiley baby. I love that you just need to look at her and you're rewarded with a giant smile. It's so fun to coo at her becuase she starts squealing louder and louder. She however GREATLY dislikes yelling. If her brothers start screaming and crying, rest assured she'll join in. It stops them pretty quickly because they feel so bad about scaring her.
One of my favorite things about her, SHE SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT!!! Last night she slept from 8:30 until 6 am. I didn't get that lesiure with the boys until they were about 18 months!



Spaceship "Frankie"
You've heard about the Challenger and Apollo 13 but the true unsung hero is Spaceship Frankie! Brayden's latest thing when he goes to bed everynight is to ask what our plans for the following day are. He asked me one night and honestly I had no idea what we were going to do the next day so I thoughtlessly replied, "Flying to the moon." Boy did the questions fly.
"How are we going to get there?"
"A space ship of course."

"But we don't have one."
"We'll build one?"

"What about food, we're going to starve"
"Don't worry, the moon is made of cheese, we'll have plenty to eat."

"But Mom, I can't go that long without going shi shi (pee)."
"I'll make sure the spaceship has a toilet."

The questions went on and on and on. I went to bed not thinking too much of it. At 6am Brayden came into the room wearing his "hard hat" (a firemans hat) kicking me out of bed.
"Mom, hurry, hurry! We have so much to do today. Let's build the spaceship in the front yard cause if we blast off inside we'll put a whole in the roof and theres too many trees in the backyard."
So, off to the front yard we went and Spaceship Frankie was created with all the conviences of earth included!



Living Room Campout!
Last weekend Junior took the 11 year-old scouts on a campout. The boys were bummed they didn't get to go so we had a campout in the living room. We constructed a giant fort, ate dinner in there, our neighbor provided fresh popped popcorn and movies, we played with flying baloons and had a great night! The campout didn't last through the night though. At about 1am I snuck upstairs so I could be closer to Kalei in case she woke up. Brayden noticed I was gon about 2am but was too tired to figure his way out of the fort and started crying. I got him and brought him upstairs but then he was worried about Tavita being downstiars all alone. So the campout was moved to my bed. Despite lack of sleep, we had fun!



Remote control cars = a little boys dream.
So my parents had a 2 hour lay over at the beginning of the month in Salt Lake. We met up with them and went to breakfast at McDonalds. While with them Brayden recieved some Wolverine Claws (something he's wanted for a long time but the ones in stores are these giant hard plastic things, Grandma was awesome and made some) And Tavita landed himself a remote control car. Then Brayden got one from a friend for his birthday. Needless to say their new favorite pastime is racing their cars. At one point Tavita was running away from his own car around and around in circles. Obviously he hasn't quite mastered the concept enough to know if he just lifted his hands off the control, the car would've stopped chasing him!



Summer Fun!
One of the boys all time favorite activities is washing the car. Their favorite part...washing the roof. They love climbing on the top when their done they use the windshield as a slide down. I remember doing this as a kid and it makes me laugh when my boys do the same exact thing!
In the picture of Tavita with cotton candy on his head, we had bought some at a Pioneer Day celebration. He took some off, stared at if for awhile trying to figure out what it was, got a huge smile on his face and stuck it on his head. Apparently it looks like bubbles from a bath!
I've said it once, I'll say it a million times, summer is by far my FAVORITE time of year. But lets be honest, all the sun and fun can be exhausting at times. I find my boys sleeping in some of the funniest places during the summer.











Our Garden
This was the first year we've attempted a garden and have had a pretty good turnout. We've gotten tomatoes, cilantro, bell peppers, jalepeno, green chilis, cucumber, zuccini and have celery growing, don't know if it'll turn edible or not apparently is next to impossible to grow here in Utah. The boys love going into the garden each day and collecting the bounty. At times Brayden feels the need to dress like a farmer so he can milk the cows as well. Apparently this requires some grass between the teeth!



Discovery Park
They have a great park up in Pleasant Grove that is every kids dream. It's a giant wooden fort that goes on forever with all sorts of different activities. The kids could last for hours, despite all the things that are unique to this park, Tavita's favorite was still the "wee" (swing). While the boys played, Kalei played with this facinating new discovery of hers, her tounge!





Dinosaur Museum
There's a palce called Thanksgiving Point that has all sorts of different things to do. One of which, and the boys favorite, is a giant dinosaur museum. Every Tuesday in August the admission is only $2. My good friend Tracey and I braved the HUGE crowds and took our kids. It was chaos but the boys had fun. They loved being able to dig for dinosaur bones.





Dance Party
Brayden and Tavita know how to GET DOWN!!! They have entertained many a crowds with their moves. If we ever need a break, on goes the music and they bust it out. And yes, sometimes we do dance around naked, hence the reason there are no pictures of me on here :-)!!!




Okay, if you're half as exhuasted from reading this as I am from typing it then I'm sorry. Here's the Shum family signing off until next time!