Happy Birthday Brigham!!

Brigham's birthday was last Saturday. He is 3 now, though we're having a hard time convincing him of it. For a while there he was still convinced he was two. Then, when Nonna asked him how old he was on his birthday he told her he was four. The other day he told me he was five. So, I think we've confused him. But, the past two days he seems to be getting it.

Brigham wanted waffles for breakfast.


Here's the cake I made him. (pretty much the same as Rebekah's but different colors)

Another cake difference-I made it two colored with three layers.
(I got the idea from my friend, Teresa)



I thought this was funny, the gift bag was almost as big as he was.

He had a great day, he loved all the attention. The children are still singing the happy birthday song to each other at random times, which is delighting to hear. They're turning into quite the little singers. :)

Vacation for a wedding

We spent 10 days on the road and are sure glad to be home again. We made a lot of stops and visited with a lot of people. The main reason for our trip was for my sister, Tasha's wedding. She got married on the 1st of September.

Here are a few pictures of the children we took before the wedding.

Brigham was asked to be the ring bearer. He did a great job for how tired he was.

Tasha was beautiful all dressed in her wedding attire.

This road trip went a little better than the last as far as the children being in their car seats. They were a little more used to the idea of sitting in their seats all day, and therefore new what to expect when we talked about it ahead of time. They still got fussy from time to time, but that's to be expected with toddlers.

It was sure nice to visit with all the family and friends, though! Thanks to all of you who housed and fed us. :)

Rebekah's Birthday!

Rebekah's birthday was on August 26th. We had a great day, celebrating with her. We started out with some birthday crowns.

Followed by one of her favorite breakfasts- hot cereal. (That girl can eat almost as much hot cereal as I can!)


I made this cake for her the night before. I'm not very good, but I'm learning.



We played all day and got ready for her party in the afternoon. Her birthday party was after dinner. We sang, ate cake and ice cream and she got to open a few presents.




Our gift to her was a toddler bed.

She was very excited!

Making donuts

Last week we decided to make donuts with the children. It ended up being an all day thing and we had to cook most of them after the children were asleep, but they did get to taste the first batch before we put them down. They really enjoyed getting their hands on the dough and helping to shape it.

Hyrum even got in on the fun and played with the flour on the floor.

Helping with dishes

The children love to help with the dishes- any house work for that matter. It always takes longer when they help- and a lot more work on my part, but they learn lots and it's a great way to spend time with them and get something done at the same time.

Hyrum climbed right into the dish washer on his own one night while I was doing the dishes. He was so proud of himself.

Picture update

Things have been moving along at a fairly normal pace the past few weeks, so I thought I'd just put up a few recent pictures.The children all like to climb on Timothy or myself at the same time. We sure love them! The mattress you can see in the back ground is the "jumping place." We put it on the floor in the living room and that's where the children can jump and jump without getting into any trouble. (They love to jump - on couches, beds, chairs, etc. - so we had to provide a constructive place to get their need to jump met.)A family in our ward at church were able to get sealed in the temple a few weeks ago, so we decided to take the two hour drive up to the temple to view the sealing and take the children to see the temple. They're not able to go in, but we had some nice youth from our ward watch them outside while we went in. The children loved the temple and are looking forward to going back when we can have them sealed to us forever!
Our sweet boys!

We are waiting on a decision from the judge about Hyurm's legal case - his birth-mother's rights. I guess the judge has 30 days to decide, so we wait. We're are hoping and praying that the birth-mother's right will be terminated and that she doesn't decide to petition the decision. But, we'll see how it all goes.

The children are learning and growing like crazy! We are so proud of them and amazed at how fast time flies. They've already been with us for six months and have grown and changed so much in that amount of time.
Hyrum trying out pasta. He just loves to eat table food, but still enjoys the baby food too. You may not believe this, but Hyrum, who is only 9 months, is trying to talk. He says things all the time that amaze us. He's been saying, "Mom" and "Dada" consistently for about 5 or 6 weeks now. He also says, "All done," "baba" (bottle), "Hyrum," "Beta" (Becka), and "ca-ker" (cracker). And he repeats us when we talk - he's repeated, "I love," "poo-poo," "diaper cover," "thank you," and "bye-bye". He is amazing! He's also doing the army crawl really well now. He can get whereever he wants to go in the house now- except where there are baby gates. :) He's also started pulling himself up to a standing position now too.



Miss Rebekah is learning and growing well too. She's talking like crazy and we can understand most of what she says. She's communicating regularly in two to three word sentences, but she has said a six- or seven-word sentence - I can't remember what it was, though. She runs and walks well without tripping nearly as much as she used to. She's learned how to jump with both of her feet off the ground and loves jumping on the "jumping place" now. Her hair is growing lots too. This picture was taken just after her last hair cut. I'm keeping it short until the hair on the top of her head is as long as the rest. She's just about ready to start growing it out - as long as I can keep up with her curls.

Brigham is at a stage where he isn't learning and growing quite as fast as his younger siblings, but he's still progressing nicely. He notices everything. He likes to play with the other daycare children that come over - especially the 5- and 8-year old because he wants to be like them - but he also likes playing with the two-year olds that come over. He loves church and asks almost everyday if we can go to church on Sunday. He's learning to pray and just today I caught him kneeling down outside saying his own little prayer aloud - it was so cute!

We've had a great six months with these chidlren - and here's to another 16-18 years with them!!

Family Travels

Things have been a bit crazy in our family the past three weeks. The first week we spent a lot of time trying to plan and prepare for our family vacation. The second week we were on our vacation. And the third week we spent trying to unpack and get caught up on laundry and housework. We realized that planning a trip with three little ones takes a lot more work than it did for just the two of us.

On Tuesday morning we loaded the children into our packed van and took a 10 hour drive to get to Timothy's parent's house. The children had never been on a road trip before and fussed a lot, but we managed to make it.

We mostly just played and visited at their house on Wednesday and Thursday. It was sure nice to see Gram-Gram, Grandpa, and Aunt Brindy. Uncle Ben also showed up on Thursday evening. Grandpa and Uncle Ben hadn't met the children before then, so it was nice for them to meet.

Wednesday night we went to see the city fireworks. We were worried that the children would be scared from the loud noises, but they weren't- they loved watching the fireworks, even Hyrum was engrossed in the show.

Friday morning we packed the children in the van again and took off for another long drive to Lava Hot Springs. My family was meeting there for a family reunion. It was great to see my family again, and have them meet some more of their aunts, uncles, and cousins.My family: Brigham, Andrew, Katherine, Rebekah, Timothy, Chase ( hiding behind me), Jessica holding Hyrum, Marjie, Jason, Mom (Konnie), Tasha, Brett, in front of Tasha and Brett is Kaitlyn and Faith.

We rented a tube and life jackets for Brigham and Rebekah and floated down the river. On our first trip we took a spill in one of the rapids, but we managed to keep the children safe and get back on our tube with the help of my sister, Katherine, and her husband, Andrew. Brigham loved riding the river, but Rebekah didn't. Hyrum spent some time with Grandma the first trip we took and with Aunt Katherine the second trip. Timothy and Brigham also went a third time. These pictures are small, but we're in there.

That night we camped together and had a great time. Brigham and Rebekah got to try their first roasted marshmallows and got covered in sticky white stuff. It got really windy before dinner, and after dinner it rained pretty hard. Luckily our tent stayed mostly dry and didn't blow away. This was the children's first time camping too (as far as we know.) They seemed to really enjoy it.

Saturday was the 4th of July and we traveled back to Timothy's parents and celebrated with them. We had a barbecue at Uncle Eric's (Timothy's brother) and Aunt Deserae's house which was nice, then we took the children to the park across the street from their house.

Hyrum enjoying the sand

Sunday we took the children to church with Gram Gram and Grandpa, but they weren't feeling too well and all had runny noses so we didn't want them in the nursery. We took them home after the first hour and got them down for naps. It was a peaceful day as we visited with family.

Monday we started the 10 hour trek back home. (It's only supposed to take 8 1/2 hours, but with children everything takes longer.) We made it back safe with no big incidents for which we are grateful.

Timothy and I learned a lot on this trip as it was our first with our three children. We learned that it pays to be prepared, we learned patience as the children screamed because they were sick of car seats, and we learned a little more about planning things to take longer when accompanied by little ones. It was a good experience for us all, and we hope our family appreciated seeing us, because we sure enjoyed seeing them.