Turning 32 and getting ready for our only summer trip

This year my birthday was on a Sunday. So Brandon made me an omelet for breakfast and the boys put up the streamers. 

Those flowers in the background were from my Dad to both me and my Mom. 

The boys did a great job with the streamers. They did it all by themselves while Brandon made me breakfast. Pretty great if you ask me. 

Then it was business as usual. We went for our morning walk, the boys played downstairs and we had church at home. Later we opened up my presents which were: lounge chairs, chocolates and a shirt that says, "Boy Mom surrounded by lots of balls" with all different kinds of balls underneath the writing. It is pretty funny!! Then the boys sand to me and I flew out candles on my ice cream from cold stone. It was a pretty good day!!

The boys domino affect set ups. 

On our walk. 

Brandon putting together my lounge chairs with the help of Kayden. haha 

I felt loved and it was a good day. I am now 32 and getting older by the minute! haha 

The rest of the month was spent getting ready for our St. George trip for the reunion and watching Kayden and the boys play. 

Kayden decided that he wanted to climb up onto the pool table. What a little skunk!! 

I was finally able to lay out and get some color on my white legs before the reunion. We were not sure if the reunion was going to happen in St. George or even at all. Brandon's Dad had just gone through back surgery and we were all thinking that maybe we would just go to Idaho and spend time all together. However, Mike and Lee called us and told us that they though St. George would be better. So it became official again, we were going to be heading to St. George. Once we were officially going to St. George I knew I needed to get a little bit of a tan since we would be basically in our swim suits the whole week. haha 

Kayden has become very inthralled with electronics. Emmett was playing on the ipad and he would look at it and try to touch it. Then he would look at Emmett and gab to him like he knew what he was talking about. It was pretty cute!! 

Then one morning when I took the kids out for a jog one of our neighbors called Emmett back as we were passing his house. We turned back around and he asked where Emmett's noise makers on his bike were. I told him that he lost them because they were just taped on. He then pulled out a ton of clothes pins and a deck of cards and helped Emmett attach the card to his bike. He then gave Emmett all of the clothes pins and the deck of cards to use when they broke. Emmett was thrilled!! 

It was so nice of him to do that for Emmett. I didn't even know that neighbor. Emmett must have talked to him a couple of times riding his bike past his house or something. It was super sweet of him. 

We also tried to get the boys back into reading their scriptures again. This time instead of having them read individually their big scriptures we are having them read the cartoon like living scriptures book together. So they sit together and read which is really cute to hear. 

We got to enjoy a couple afternoon rain showers too which is also nice. 

Another thing that we do quite a few times is go to the "dirt hill" as my boys call it. It is a mound of dirt that was made from digging out a bunch of basements for houses. Some how a little path was made on this dirt and it became a bike path that kids seemed to go on and ride their biked around. Kind of like dirt biking! The boys would beg us to go over there. So when I had been super busy with chores around the house I would decide to take them and let them have some fun away from the house. 

They loved doing it. Until they got hurt and then they didn't love it anymore. haha 

Another afternoon shower. 

It started pouring one afternoon and the kids thought it was so fun to run in the rain. 

Then of course they had to race these foam letters down the gutter that was now filled with water. haha who needs boats when you having floating letters. 

I even let Kayden enjoy the water for just a minute. haha He didn't get much time in the water because I didn't want him splashing it like crazy and drinking some by accident. That would not be good water. haha

Kayden enjoys scripture time with his brothers too. haha

I bought this sticker tree on Amazon. It has a bunch of different pieces to it that you have to stick up to make a big tree full of leaves. I thought it would be a fun idea for a "Faith" tree. So as the boys read their scriptures they get to put another branch or leaves on the tree. So eventually it will be a full tree on our wall. The boys were pretty excited to do this and to see it get bigger! 

Then the day before leaving to St. George it rained again. After a day full of cleaning, packing and laundry I finally sat in the garage while Kayden played and let the boys run out in the rain storm. They had a blast! It was raining pretty hard for a little while. So they got soaked! 

Oh ya.. did I mention that the temperature outside dropped like 20 degrees with that little afternoon storm? haha So naturally the boys were freezing after it stopped raining and they were not running in it anymore. haha 

Surprise visit from Papa and Gigi

As we got closer to the end of July my parents were getting close to closing on their house. I kept telling my Mom to let me know when they needed us to do a walk through for the house or to let us know what we needed to do for them since they were closing on the house so far from where they live right now. It wasn't until a week before they were closing on their house that their realtor told them when the walk through was supposed to be. They were not being very flexible with it either. Supposedly the only times they could do the walk through was on a Wednesday at 1:30. I was not sure how that was all going to work because I would have to take all the boys with me and we were only aloud to have 1 person at the walk through and their realtor. So I was thinking I would have to leave the kids in the car with a movie on or hope that Kayden was napping at home and have the boys watch a movie at home while I was gone and just hope that Kayden slept the whole time I was gone. I figured I would just have to make it work. It was not going to be easy, but, I would make it work. My Dad called me a few times in the next couple of days as we tried to figure out a better time to do the walk through. Nothing seemed to be working out so the plan was to do it that Wednesday at 1:30. My parents were in Utah at the time and they were driving home that Tuesday. So as they were driving home they called me and asked if it would be ok if they just came to our house and stayed for a couple of days. That way they could do the walk through themselves so I wouldn't have to stress about it. We told them they were more than welcome to come to our house instead of driving home. So they turned around and headed our way! I was excited to have them coming back to our house again. Plus I didn't have to worry about the kids and doing the walk through. The other plus was they were able to get their closing changed to that Friday instead of the following Monday.  

Just having fun hanging out in our backyard! We didn't tell the kids that Papa and Gigi were coming again. We figured we would keep it a surprise! 

Kayden is getting more curious. He climbed through the chair in the kitchen. I thought he was going to get stuck but he actually made it through. 

We also had our computer crash on us! It just malfunctioned one afternoon while Wyatt was doing a math game on the computer. Pretty annoying!!

Oh ya and then there is Kayden again!! haha He likes to take all of the carnation breakfast drink packets out of the box and then sometimes he puts most of them back. haha 

A little more backyard pool time!! 

While Papa was off doing the walk through we let the kids watch a movie downstairs. Even Kayden enjoyed some of the movie. haha He laid there for like 2 minutes and then was off getting into whatever he wasn't supposed to. Or going over to Gigi to sneak up on her computer. haha 

My mom also gave this little sloth to Kayden. It was going to be for Ryan for her birthday but Ryan already had one so she let Kayden have it. Kayden LOVED it!!! It was so cute to watch him snuggle up to it. 

So sweet with his little sloth! 

We also went out for a jog with Gigi.

And stopped to run through the sprinklers.

The kids had so much fun running through the sprinklers. Then I took Kayden out of the stroller and ran through with him and he loved it too. Until I had to put him back in his stroller and then he was super upset! haha

Then Emmett wanted to run and had Gigi ride his bike! haha 

Gigi is such a good sport! haha 

Ya.... Ethan did his sun screen. haha I think he did a little bit too much!! 

Friday morning July 24th my parents officially closed on their Colorado home! They were officially going to be living near us in Colorado!! We are so excited!!! 

My parents were excited but I think a little stunned that it was actually happening. It is a really big move for them and it just happened so fast. Although, everything that needed to happen just went so smoothly that it really did seem like it was meant to be. It all just fell into place. Even though it is a big move for them we are excited to have them so close to us. We have only been trying to convince them to move here for the past 5 years. haha 

Oh and we are under contract on this lot!! It is in wild wing and is 1.4 acres. It too is a little overwhelming!! haha Exciting and overwhelming. I have asked Brandon like 5 times if we can afford it without feeling tight financially and he has crunched the numbers and said that we can totally do it. So we put in an offer and are under contract. We wont be building on it for probably 2-3 years but at least it will be ours and we can build our dream home eventually and have some more space. I still can't believe it is happening!! 

Another happy boy with his sloth!! 

After my parents closed on their house we picked up Chick-Fil-A for dinner and ate at their house! We figured it would be fun to eat there because it was now Officially theirs and what better way to celebrate it being official than eating some dinner at the house and talking about their plans for furniture and other things. 

It was fun and the kid had fun running around in their basement. It was really just fun knowing that they are going to be living there in the near future!! 

After closing on their house Friday and celebrating they left Saturday early morning to get back to their house in California. Then we were back to normal life. Kayden it getting so big and is loving trying to be one of the big boys. He likes to run after them and will just laugh and laugh. 

Kayden also pushed Emmett around on the lightning McQueen in the front yard. Emmett was so surprised that Kayden was actually pushing him and Kayden was having a blast doing so.

Then after a hot week it rained the day my parents left. We have not gotten much rain this summer. It has been a hot summer which is a bummer because we didn't get to go to the pool as often as we normally do. So it just made it seem even hotter not being able to go swim anytime we wanted to. Anyways, the week became more exciting with my parents coming out again. We played games with them at night and some more corn hole and talked about them moving. It was fun and I can't believe they are actually going to be moving out here. The next step was selling their house in California! Pretty awesome!!