Here it is September and I've hardly written anything for the month of August. It's not that nothing exciting happened... I'll just blame it on summer laziness. We're entitled to slack on some things during the summer, right? And my camera's giving me problems, so I don't have too many pics to post. That's never very fun. We did have a pretty fun month, though.
Every Tuesday during the month of August was "Two-buck Tuesday" at Thanksgiving Point, so the boys and I took advantage of the cheap admission and went a couple different weeks to Farm Country and the Children's Garden. (We were saving the Dinosaur Museum for the last week, but the boys got sick and we weren't able to go.) We went with my friend, Tina, and her boys, and Heather and Cam met up with us both times as well. I'd never been to either until this summer, so it was good to do something different for a change.
Bryan had a couple of exciting firsts last month. He had his first day of preschool (hooray!!) and also started playing on his first little soccer team. As for preschool, he's attending the school he went to last year, which we love, but he's got a new teacher and gets to be in the same class now as his neighbor friend, Anna. So far he's loving it, and I'm loving more one-on-one time w/ Matt while he's gone. :) Soccer has also been a lot of fun. He LOVES having a coach and playing on a team, and he gets so excited every time he scores a goal. He's a great little team player and is also learning how to be a good sport. :) Maybe David will have his dream come true of having a star soccer player in the family after all! (Soccer pics still to come...)
David and I spent much of our free time these last several weeks looking for a new car. We decided we wanted to get an SUV, so we visited dealerships all over Utah and Salt Lake county trying to find something that would work for us. I'll write a different post about our search and what we ended up with, but for now I'll just say I'm glad we don't have to be looking anymore! It took up way too much of my time since I tend to obsess over things...
Something else I've been obsessing over the last several weeks has been food storage and emergency preparedness. We're finally at a point where I can really start building up our supply of food, but it's been quite overwhelming trying to figure out the best way to do it. I've made several trips to Costco and have been able to get a lot of what I feel we need for our 3-month supply, but I still feel like I've got a long way to go before our year-suppy is where it should be. I did get our 72-hour kits updated, though, so that was good. And I finally bought a wheat grinder! One thing at a time, I guess.
David's been busy with work, as expected. He's been an agent for two whole months now, and he loves it! He just told me a few minutes ago how much he enjoys being a part of State Farm. He's been able to accomplish many of the goals he set for himself, which is great, but he's always wishing he could do better. As crazy as it's been, he's been home more than I'd hoped for and does a good job at putting family first. I'm proud of him and so grateful for all he does!
As for Matt and Ari, they're both just growing up so fast! Matt's talking up a storm now, and I love to hear what's going to come out of his mouth next. I'll have to keep better track of funny things he says... He loves playing with Bryan and the two of them are good little buddies. They're either playing Star Wars and chasing each other w/ their light sabers, or they're playing cars and tractors and riding around on their choo-choo-train. Matty's close to being potty-trained, and it sure helps having Bryan as the big-brother example. The two of them continue to have crazy hour in their room at bedtime, but I've decided I'd rather put up with that than have them in separate rooms. They're good together.
Ari continues to be as sweet as they come! She's 4 1/2 months now and smiles all the time. She doesn't make too many sounds, so when she does coo or giggle it's especially cute. She's just about sleeping through the night, which is SO nice for me. Matt didn't drop his night-time feeding until he was 9 or 10 months old, so she's doing much better than I'd hoped for. She seems like she's getting really big, but really she's a little bit small for her age - about the 30th percentile for weight and 50th for height. She's got a fair amount of fuzz on her head now and I'm afraid to say she's begun drooling. Hopefully she won't be as bad as Matt and Bryan... She loves blowing bubbles as well. We just got out her jumperoo (I was suprised she was big enough already) and that seems to be fun for her. It's cute to see her show more and more interest in her toys and the things around her. She continues to be such a joy in our lives!
There's nothing cuter than a baby's bum, especially when it's covered w/ a cute cloth diaper. :) These aren't the cloth diapers from 20 years ago - these are SOOO much better. It's basically built like a disposable diaper, but of course you wash it and use it again. I've been wanting to try cloth diapers for a long time, ever since my old friend, Rebecca, started using them with her babies. For me it's not so much to be environmentally friendly as it is to keep my baby safe from the chemicals (dioxin) that they put in disposables these days. It also seems like a great way to be more self reliant.
These last few weeks Bryan has had the chance to play soccer on a little city league here in Springville. He's been waiting for a long time to be able to play on a "real team," so this has been pretty exciting for him! So far he's done a great job, and he's learning a lot about what it takes to play on a team. It's all pretty low key - they don't have goalies or anything - so it's mostly a big pack of kids chasing the ball and trying to get it into their goal. This last game Bryan did really well - he scored six or seven goals! (It helped that the kids on the other team were actually his same size!) Each time he threw his arms in the air in victory. So cute. :)
After the show Matt and I hung out at the base of the huge ski runs while David and Bryan went on the alpine slide, which they both really liked. They liked it so much, in fact, that we decided to try out the alpine slides at the Park City Mountain resort as well. David took Matt while Bryan and I played mini-golf. Unfortunately it started raining, so we hurried to our hotel where we'd reserved a suite for the night. The rain stopped long enough for us to go swimming, and then we spent the rest of the evening watching the amazing BYU/Oklahoma game (BYU won 14-13) - go Cougars!! The boys ran around in their underwear chanting "B-Y-U! B-Y-U!" and David and I had not-so-great Chinese takeout. It was still a lot of fun, though.
The next day was Sunday and we had to return home for church, but we felt like we hadn't had enough time to do all the things we'd wanted to do. So Monday we headed back up, this time w/ Jazmin, Landin, Javi and Jose. I got to go on the slides this time, and David took to the boys on the alpine coaster as well. (They preferred the coaster to the slides - much faster, apparently.) The weather was perfect and the mountains were gorgeous, so it was a great way to finish off our long weekend.
I'm glad we live so close to such a fun place. It turned out to be a pretty good getaway after all!
