Summer Adventures 2009

I am playing a little catch up here. I have pathetically been working on this one post for a couple sad months now. Wow! I have so much to post and my hope is to catch up and keep up. I cannot tell you how many blog posts of everybody's I avoid because of my own guilt on keeping up with my own. I also have more computer time due to Brian's new job that keeps him occupied most of the day. Details on that will come later. For now, lets focus on what kept us busy during our summer.

A trip to Lake Powell:




Many of trips to the pool:

Loads of shopping anywhere and everywhere:



A baseball season:

Races:








Celebration of Freedom:






Canyon Parties:


Bug Hunting:

Welcoming home my brothers from their missions:





The classic Lagoon:



Getting educated and graduated:

Never in my wildest dreams....

Hey Everybody, It's A Guest Post on Robyn's Blog By Brian!!!

I have to say, the last five years have been unbelievably cool. I would have never guessed that my life would turn out this way ten years ago.

I get these sudden rushes of happiness to think about what has happened in my life since I met Robyn. Every day I think about how much joy my life has in it because of her and my boys. This is what's it's ALL ABOUT :-) It's the little things that bring about the most happiness.

I want to spend all my time with them. The last six months, since I've been doing a lot of work from home, have been totally rad because I could wake up and know that I could be with them all day - we're working on getting it back to that.

Even with our humble beginnings, and not having all the luxuries that would be great to have, I'm still the happiest I've ever been. It shows to me that it really is the simple stuff. Hearing Teagan laugh, seeing the many awesome little faces he pulls, watching Hayden jump off the stair, or run around healthy and strong, having a LOVING, beautiful wife to hang out with, loving family and good friends are HUGE blessings, what more can you ask for, you know?

Of course there's always problems you're trying to solve, things you're trying to make work and other crap you're dealing with. Certain parts of life suck sometimes, it wouldn't be life without it, but it's trivial to sit and dwell on it when you've got so much to look forward to and so many people that want to see you do well. I was reading this book yesterday and it had this part about how dwelling on negative crap just makes it worse in your mind and the best thing to do is take some form of action. Alright, I'm officially rambling on now... I better stop :)

I just never in my wildest dreams thought that life would turn out this way and I'm grateful to Heavenly Father for all my joy and blessings.

Teagan's 7 month pictures

Teagan got his first tooth on his 6 month birthday but I forgot to blog about it-I think. It was really weird because both of my kids got the exact same tooth on their exact 6 month birthday! Although some think I may be crazy, I thought that was pretty cool. He got just one more tooth between month 6 and 7. I am not sure if I can remember how much he weighed but if I find it, it will replace this previous phrase! That's what you get when you post things late! Here are some of my favorite pictures from his 7 month batch:

Such a sweet face

Sporting his awesome fohawk (not sure how you are supposed to spell that)

Giving himself "bones"
Baby blue eyes
We usually try and get a picture with Gavinator. I usually take Gavin's monthly picture the same time I take Teagan's. Teagan loves his friend! I'm sure the feeling will become more mutual but for now, Gavin is more partial toward Hayden.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

We have had the chance to attend the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house twice. The first time was for Daybreak residence only and Brian had to work so I loaded up the kids and went solo. Hayden was sooo excited. I didn't know a 3 year old could be so excited for something like this. As soon as we parked and I was getting the kids out of the car, I could hear a song playing. I don't consider myself someone who gets "touched" easily, but when I saw the temple, my kids, and heard the song, I was amazed by the spirit I felt. While we were walking around inside the temple Hayden started to sing "I love to see the Temple" pretty loud. He had some people chuckling. It was so cute to watch him and hear the things he said. I enjoyed explaining things to him and was so glad he got to see what it looked like on the inside. I was very disappointed to learn I had missed out on the whole lunch afterward. I just headed to my car and went home. I didn't know anything about it until everyone started raving about how good it was. He

The second time we went with Steve and Kacey and her brother and sister in law. We lost them inside so it just ended up being the four of us. Teagan fell asleep and I was happy to have Brian there to carry him through. Pretty sure the time before, there were times I was holding both kiddos. Exhausting!

Hayden loves to see Temples lit up at night and is just learning the names of all the local ones. He does call the Oquirrh Temple the "Ogre" temple. I'm glad he went inside so he didn't think it was a place a ton of Shreks just ran a muck. One night he kept confusing Jordan River and Oquirrh so we took him to a spot where he could see Jordan River, Oquirrh, and Draper. It's been fun to have him retain so much of what we teach him.

Here are my several attempts to take a decent picture of my boys:

And finally someone offered to take a picture of all three of us:

Not fantastic but it will have to do right?The night all of us were able to go. It's nice to have a husband every once in awhile. I looked absolutely fabulous since I was given 5 minutes notice to go.

We enjoy being able to see it outside Hayden's window at night (master bedroom doesn't have such scenic views). It will be nice to have the temple so close, but mainly, I love the purpose Temples provide.

Head Obsession

Hayden plays so cute with his brother and I've never had to worry about leaving him alone with Teagan. However, I have on a number of occasions, found him with various things on his head. Here is how I have found him a couple of times:

The first thing is just a little baby toy of Teagan's. What can I say, after lots of practice, this kid has amazing balance!Yeeha Cowboy!

A kitchen bowl and Hayden with his fireman hat.
GO UTES! Now, if I had found a BYU helmet on him, I would have worried and that would have been terms to never leave Hayden alone with him again! Phew, good thing we don't own one of those! Teagan actually got upset when I tried to remove this from his head. Guess he is used to this.