Like Father, Like Son...

This is the scene in our front yard every time Matt mows the lawn:

He's his daddy little shadow.

Such a hard worker!!

My friend Anne...

When I was in elementary school, my best friend was Anne. She lived just a couple blocks away and we would hang out almost daily. We were in love with New Kids on the Block (who wasn't at that age), and would watch a video that Anne had recorded off TV of one of their concert's as often as we could. When we were in fifth grade, her family moved to California. We've gotten together a couple of times since then, with the most recent being just a few weeks ago. How fun that we both have 2 kids now, and they had a fun afternoon together as we were catching up.

Here is me and Anne!

Here's our babies Vanessa and Kate.

Here's the four of them, Vanessa, Kate, Tanner, and Lorien. It think it's so funny that this was as much cooperation as I was getting from the kids until I mentioned that we would have popsicles after I got one good picture.

Man, how a little thing can make such a BIG difference!

Dinosaur Museum...

Several weeks ago, we went to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum.  This is one of Tanner's favorite activities.  We went with some friends in our ward and had a great time. Here are some pictures from the fun day!

Whatever is on Addie's hand must be quite interesting!

Tanner's smile, whenever he is busy doing something and doesn't want to smile, cracks me up.  So fake!  LOL!

Kate loved the fossil discovery section!

Cheese!!

Annie!  Proof that Andrew was in the dirt.  =)

You know it was a fun day when this happens on the drive home!

Garden Party!

On Friday, I had the privilege of going to a Garden Party at Thanksgiving Point with some of my good friends. We had such a wonderful time. The food was AMAZING!! We all dressed up and wore hats and summer skirts to celebrate the last few days of summer. It was such a lovely evening. I love these girls and loved the time we were able to sped together.

Here's the whole group.

Table 1:

Table 2:

Here's Thanksgiving Point's executive chef who prepared our lovely meal. He came out to tell us what was what on our 6 course meal!

The oh-so-yummy menu:

The MOST amazing raspberry lemonade I have ever had. There were real raspberries in it. YUM!

The meal. There was a shrimp crostini pre-appetizer (didn't even know there was such a thing as a pre-appetizer!), a Mango Caprese salad, Tomato Basil Soup, an apple and candied pecan salad, a steak and chicken main course, and Creme Brulee. We were stuffed with some of the most delicious foods we had ever tasted. Wow!!

Me and my good friend Bekah, our incredibly thoughtful hostess. Thanks so much Bekah, this was so much fun! We'll have to make an end of summer garden party a tradition.

Sprinklers!!

Kids always love playing in the sprinklers. As Kate tried it out for the first time, you can see the hesitation on her face...

...but decided she loved it!

Tanner wanted to join in the fun as well. Nothing like running around in your underwear!

Crawling over the sprinklers.

Cool!

One more time (again and again)!

Enjoying some bubbles from Grandpa while playing in the sprinklers, what a fun, sticky, mess!  =)

Tapio really enjoyed watching.

Happy Grandparent's Day!!!

So today is Grandparents day!! Always falls on the first Sunday after Labor Day, just found that out a couple of days ago. Since my parents live in Texas, I thought I would put some pictures up on the blog of their adorable grandkids for them to enjoy. And since my Dad is big on celebrating the week of the holiday, it is going to be grandparent's week here on our blog and I will be posting something everyday this week!!

Tanner and Kate are so lucky to have you as their grandparents. You are both so loving and thoughtful. The kids love you so much!! I asked them what they loved about you and this is what they had to say:

Tanner loves his Grandma because she is fun to take walks with and play with Tapio.

Tanner loves his Grandpa because he loves to play with him, go on walks with him, and he always takes him to the zoo.

Kate loves her Grandma because she always brings fun new books to read.

Kate loves her Grandpa because he is so fun to be around.

We love you!! Enjoy the week of posts. You'll get LOTS of pictures this week. It gives me a good excuse to get all caught up anyway. =)

Pet Snake...

Last night we were playing outside and Tanner caught a snake!!


To say he was excited would be a HUGE understatement. He was ready to adopt the poor thing and make him his pet.




His sister, however did NOT feel the same way. And when Tanner tried to show her how cool the snake was, she was terrified of it. Tanner could sense that, and like a normal big brother tried to put it on her head. Luckily mom was there to save her. =)


I think this sequence of pictures are so funny. You have Kate standing as far away as she can, with her hands behind her back, but close enough to see what Tanner is making such a fuss about. And then you can see her get up the courage to come get a closer look, even hold the snake! She is one brave girl. Then you have the ultimate stare down where Kate isn't quite sure what to think. Then she tries to hold it with both hands and as soon as it wiggles in her fingers, she's out of there. (the last picture is of her holding the snake out to drop it, we didn't catch her dropping it on film, unfortunately, but you get the general idea).


Tanner thought he would try to see if Daddy would be afraid of the snake. Luckily I made my point clear that he shouldn't even try to put it on mommy.


Fun times with the snake!! Luckily Tanner was very willing to put the snake back in the garden when we told him his snake family would miss him if we kept him. It sure made for a fun evening though, and Tanner is sure he'll come back to visit. =)

Silly Kate...

I am absolutely enamored by our little girl's personality. Everyday she finds a way to make me laugh. Here are a couple of pictures recently that show her cute, silly personality.

Trying Tanner's goggles on. She has to try everything that Tanner does, he wears goggle, so does she, naturally.


Kate's new favorite seat. Two days last week, when Tanner would go out in the garage, Kate would follow and climb into her stroller. She even climbed up with her snack one of the days. "Walk," is all she'd say when I would find her. This girl knows what she wants and knows how to get it. =)


Kate discovered she could climb up into the bottom shelf of our pantry. She thought it was such a great seat until she realized that she couldn't sit up on the bottom shelf. She didn't like that too much. Can you tell this girls is into climbing, on everything!


This picture cracks me up. Tanner was at preschool and Kate was helping me fold the laundry. At one point I heard her giggling and turned around to see that she had put Tanner's underpants on her head and thought it was absolutely hilarious!! So we went outside to snap a couple of pictures.


She is such a ham for the camera. When I say, "Say cheese," she puts her hands on her checks and does such a big cheeser grin. Love this girl!


She's even good at making us laugh when she's sleeping. The crazy sleeping positions this girls comes up with are in sane!

Crazy Bed-head...

A normal looking head of hair, right?

Not even close! Crazy bed-head at it's finest!!

Millions of Peaches...

When you have three


of these...


You get a TON of these...


Then you get to learn how to do this:


Jam anyone?