Birthday Halabaloo and other adventures

Well, we've had a fun couple of weeks, and as always I've neglected to keep up on posting, I'll try to keep this post as short as I can. I had my birthday on the 24th, and a perk to living in Utah it means that Junior gets the day off of work and there's all sorts of activities going on throughout the weekend. To top it off, my friend Brittany was there for the weekend as well. On the 24th we went to a Pioneer Day Celebration in the park with all sorts of fun activities for the kids. The highlight of that day was the obstacle course. Junior had Tavita and I had Brayden. Brayden tore it up jumping over the fence and through the tires then came time to crawl through the covered wagons, a seemingly easy feat for an almost 3 year-old, however a wrench was thrown into the picture, or should I say a snake. In between the two "wagons" was a big old stuffed snake that couldn't look more fake. Anyway, Brayden was bookin along then suddenly froze in his tracks. He looked at the snake with these huge eyes and dove into the wagon. He sat in there forever with a look of absolute fear and refused to come out for the longest time. I was laughing to hard to do much about the situation. I finally got him out and he quickly made it to the turn around point of the course but on his way back it came time to pass the snake and he once again sought refuge in the wagon and would come out until well after little Tavita and burned through the course. It was an absoulte classic moment, unfortuantely all of us were laughing too hard to capture his face. We also had Brayden's birthday party this past Thursday even though his actual birthday isn't until this Thursday. We invited a few of his friends to join us at the pool (it has slides and all sorts of fun things that spray water)all of which we forgot to take pictures of. Anyway, after the swimmig was done "Captain Brayden" led the other pirates on a treasure hunt through the adjoining park where they found swords, eye patches, hats, tatoos and other pirate loot. After the hunt we had pizza, cake and ice cream, opened presents and had some fierce pirates involved in some killer sword fights. On Friday Junior being the brave man he is took BOTH boys to Father n Sons. They had the time of their lives playing horseshoes and other games, throwing rocks in the creek, exploring and getting DIRTY! I don't know if I've previously mentioned but my brother Ryan is living with us now and has been experiencing the joys of having two energetic little boys in the house. His stuff was constantly being torn into so I told him just to start locking his door, it opens easily with a butter knife. Well the idea worked great for about a week or so but apparently Brayden was quietly observing. Last week Ryan was in changing and Brayden was pounding on the door saying "Uncle Ryan, let me in". Since Ryan was ignoring him Brayden decided to take matters into his own hands, I heard this clinking noise and I come around the corner and there's Brayden, knife in hand, picking the lock. So alas, Ryan once again has no privacy. Luckily he's very patient and the boys love having Uncle around. He has nicknamed Tavita "Stich" claiming he was created soley to destroy. I can't help but to agree with the MANY antics he's constantly pulling. The other day we were all sitting down having dinner and Tavita had escaped upstairs to play. I asked Ryan to go check on him real quick. As he was walking up the stairs he found Tavita standing at the top of the stairs a thing of mayonaise held high above his head (our neighbors had borrowed it and it was sitting on the ledge by the stairs). Ryan tried to stop him but it was too late. Tavita chucked the container down the stairs and it EXPLODED. I wish I got an initial picture but my mind didn't recover from the shock till a few minutes later. The initial scene was this: Tavita at the top of the stairs covered in mayonaise with a look of "uhoh what did I do, I'm definetly in trouble for this one" Ryan part way up the stairs, also covered in mayonaise, completely speachless, and mayonaise splattered everywhere around them. I'm talking all over the stairs, walls, cieling, up over the ledge, all over the carpet the next floor up and to the couch. Luckily we had some kind friends over that helped us with the initial clean up and I spent over 3 hours the next day scrubbing carpet and walls. I kid you not, this boy is into trouble a good 50% of the day, if not more. Often after one of his little antics he takes of running with this mischevious little giggle. Man, I'm in trouble with this one, but he is once cute little monster. Anyway, enough of the novel, I'll let the pics tell the rest.

Daily Joys

Okay, just got off of work and I'm too tired to write any stories. Thought I'd just post some pics of our typical days. I love summer and I especially love kids in the summer. I love them running around with no shirt on, I love their little tan lines, I love watching them splash around in water. There's nothing sweeter than a popsicle grin while swinging on the tire swing.

Why work when I've got this kind of help!

We eat out here almost daily

The day's not complete without an Otterpop

Summer Fun



Brayden and his buddy Carson

I LOVE baby bums!

Ok, so while going through pics I came across this pic and had a random thought. Does anyone see any resemblance, I see it in Brayden and me but with Tavita, I've got nothing.

We're Alive, Just busy!!!

I can't believe it's been 2 months since I last posted. My biggest problem is we've been so busy I don't post because I have way to much to post about and it would be a novel to cover our lives in the past two months. So, I will post little stories here and there. Hopefully two a day we'll see how it goes. Here's a quick summary of what's been going on:
-Thanks to multiple LATE nights (acutally early mornings) from Junior our upstairs (3beds and 2 baths) we are now living upstairs. We still need to finish our master bath but other than that it's looking great.
-We've had my parents, brother and sister, and Junior's parents all in for a visit. Ryan is now living with us and Junior's parents are here for another month. We've been staying busy and loving spending the time with family.
-We took a week long trip up to the Uintas. Loved it!!! absoultely goregeous up there. Junior and the boys got to experience their 1st rodeo.
I'm sure more stories will come as I download pics and what not. Anyway, the boys are at the park with their Nana and Papa and I've got to get on a run. Hopefully I can get the first of the pictures up tonight.

Thoughts from the once pretty mom turned fat

So, Brayden loves to watch mine and Juniors wedding video, especially before bed. Last night after his bath he had about 1/2 hour before bedtime and he asked to watch the video. Here's how the conversation went:
Brayden: "Can I watch Mommy and Daddy's movie?

Me: "You mean the one where we get married?"

Brayden: "Yeah, Mommy you so pretty in there"

Me (Feeling flattered): "Oh, thank-you, do you still think I'm pretty?"

Brayden pauses to contemplate then says: "No, just in the movie, not anymore."
THen as if to make up for things, "But in the movie you sooo beautiful, you just look like Mommy now."

Now keep in mind that earlier that day he was trying on a pair of my pants and he said, "I can't wear them, they're too fat."
And a few nights ago I was laying in bed with him talking about his day and as he was getting tired and starting to drift of he said, "Mommy, go sleep in your bed, you''re too fat for my bed."
He always says these things so sweetly and sincerly. Normally I'd be crushed if someone said these things to me, but I can't stay angry at someone who after saying these things takes my face in his little hands to make sure I'm looking at him and says, "I love you Mommy, you're my best friend." Times like those make up for all his little stinker moments.
Tavita know how to soften me to. He's definetly my headstrong one who has no interest in listening to what I have to say. I get so frustrated with the mischeif he gets into then he turns to me with the full-faced grin that makes his eyes disappear (Reminds me of Grandpa Orme) and his teeth in full show (he also has Grandpa Orme's front teeth, we named him well). When he gives me one of those smiles, my heart just melts and I don't care about the trash strewn around, Brayden's toilet dumped all over the place or anything else he manages to get into.
These two little rascals bring me so much joy.

Mother's Day

So as Mother's Day approached I had immages of me doing a lot of this:

And my angelic children spending the day doing this:

This is just how my day started. My wonderful husband let me sleep in while he made an amazing breakfast of Orange Pecan French Toast (seriously delicious, if you want the recipe let me know). I was awakened to Brayden giving me a card and hug while saying, "You're the best mom!".
However, as time went on mmy perception of my boys was more like this:

And I looked like this:

Here's a few highlights from things that happened in a matter of just over an hour before church:
-Brayden escaped to neighbors
-Tavita refused to take nap and was screaming the whole time
-While trying to calm Tavita he pulled down a picture and shattered the glass
-We heard Brayden say "Look" turned around and his brand new outfit we were going to use for pictures next week was COVERED with nail polish
-I got a half eaten worm (yes a real one) stuck to the bottom of my foot
-Found chewed up apple all over the bed with brown staings from the juice everywhere
-The pictures for my primary lesson wound up crumpled and strewn across the house.
The list goes on and on.
By the time we were finishing dinner at almost 8 at night (a very delicious steak dinner by the way) we were laughing about the whole thing. I just want to thank my boys for reminding me what it really means to be a mom! Hope all you moms had a wonderful mothers day.

Conquering the Elephant

So at the local zoo here (Hogle Zoo) there's this huge fake elephant that makes noises and occasionally sprays out a mist of water. For some reason Brayden is deathly afriad of the thing. You can hear the elephant throughout the majority of the zoo and whenever it starts making a noise, Brayden keeps one eye in the direction of the noise. My parents have a video of Braydens first encounter with the innocent elephant. Brayden has his hands raised above his head, running and screaming for dear life. In his first two visits we've tried everything under the sun to get him to touch the elephant. He'll get close to patting it, then the elephant starts to make noise and he's off again. Funny thing is he has absolutely no fear of the real elephants, he sits there and watches them beat the tar out of their food pinatas and begs to go in there and play with them. However, the fake elephant evokes every fearful emotion in him. This past week we went to the zoo for the 3rd since moving here and after riding the train Brayden begged to go see the elephants, which meant having to walk by the fake elephant. We had my cousin Lori (who is 5)with us and she and Tavita immediately walked up to the thing and started crawling around and under it. Brayden was keeping his usual distance when I tried convincing him to go by Lori and Tavita so we could take a picture. His response was, "No thanks, I'll wait here" and sat down on the bench. We sat Lori and Tavita on the trunk and for some reason Brayden decided that it looked fun enough to overcome his fear and sit with them. He was so proud to have finally touched the elephant but wanted to get down as soon as the picture was taken. Bottom line is, the elephant has been conqured!!!

Happy Birthday Papita!!!

Well it's been forever since I've posted. I need to be better so that way my post aren't always a mile long. So I'm going to skip over these past couple weeks and will keep this as short as possible. Just wanted to dedicate this post to my half-pint Evil Kanevil. Tavita turned one on Friday, this year has flown by and he has kept things busy for us. I often refer to him as our dog beacuase there are times where I feel like I'm raising a puppy rather than a baby. He chews on EVERYTHING, loves shoes, always has trash strewn everywhere, drools like crazy, drinks from the toilet (finally bought toilet locks), eats off the floor (he was sprawled out licking the Wal-Mart floor the other day),and manages to get into everything. He truly has a passion for life. He has never been one to sit and observe. Since he was a newborn he always wanted to be faced out and exploring the world around him. He is one never to back down from a challenge, if he's trying to climb ontop of the couch, the counter, the bed, the changing table, up the slide at the park, or anywhere else most 1-year olds will leave alone he keeps trying no matter how many times he falls until he succeeds. We went to get his 1-year pics done and they asked me if he was okay standing if he had something to hold on to. I just laughed. And sure enough they could hardly get any shots in because he was running around everywhere. But him on a little ledge, he climbed down and ran to the computer, put him in a rocking chair, he climbed out and ran, tried sticking his legs through the back of a chair, got out of that too. Like I said, he's not one to sit around but wants to be out there exploring. You can't talk about Tavita without mentioning his incredible appetite. He eats more than Brayden and I'm not talking baby food: apples, steak, chicken, rice, EVERYTHING!!! Only he's taking after his dad and starting to refuse vegetables. I'm so grateful to have Tavita and all his spunk and character in my life. He keeps me hopping, no need for the gym when he's around, also keeps me laughing. He loves to dance (does the haka), sing, and sword fight (sound and everything included) The local grocery store here gives a free cake for 1-year birthdays and writes Happy Birthday with the childs name included. I told them his name was Tavita, the girl looked at me and repeated what I thought was "Tavita", I nodded, she gave me a funny look and started writing. I sat there thinking, "come on it's not that unusal of a name". With a few flicks of her wrist she was finished, handed me that cake, and I started walking out. I looked down and read, "Happy Birthday Papita" I started cracking up. I would've taken a picture but Brayden was so excited to show Tavita his cake that he flipped it sideways and the writing came off. Nonetheless, I love my little Papita! Here's a little slideshow, since I'm so bad at posting, I have to create these to put all the pics together so my post aren't any longer than they already are. Our camera is slowly breaking so the pics aren't too high of quality