24th of July!

We had a very fun and exciting 24th of July. We decided to have the local members of the family down for dinner at our house (Nana, Papa, Awa, and Jedd). We had bbq'd pork steak, watermelon, and rolls. It was yummy! My Dad gets us the best meat ever and we were all licking our lips (and almost our plates) by the time dinner was done.

Doesn't this look delicious?


As you can see, we are all chowing down happily and even having seconds!


After dinner, we did some fireworks that we had bought for the kids. It was nothing like the BIG SHOW Uncle Bubby did on the 4th, but the kids were happy. Hailey was a little bit afraid of the sparklers at first, so Jedd was nice enough to help her out.


It wasn't long until she got brave enough to try on her own and after that, didn't want any help from anyone!


Zach had so much fun running around, spinning his sparkler to make a circle, and writing his name. He's grown so much, seems like not that long ago he was the one afraid of the fireworks!


Yes, they loved that they could do the sparklers all by themselves.


After that we lit off a few of the other fireworks we had, Tate and I even made it outside to enjoy the sight. Unfortunately, my camera is simple and doesn't take great pictures in the dark, so although Awa and Jedd took some great ones, they were all too dark to post. But my thanks to them for taking the pictures of the fireworks, I really appreciate it!

We had a wonderful day and so much fun with all of you here! Thanks for coming down and spending the afternoon and evening with us!

He Looks Just Like Baby Jesus

Bath time for Tate at our house is a big event. Not only do I have to try and control a squirmy, wiggly 7 week old who's slippery when wet, I have a 7 and 4 year old just bent on "helping" in any way they think they can. I've resorting to bathing him in the sink lately since everyone can see and I have better control of Tate as well as the other two - it's a lot harder bending over the bathtub.

The other day as I was drying Tate off with his baby towel on the counter, Zach looked at me and said "Mom, Tate look just like baby Jesus!" I didn't understand exactly what he was saying until I realized that all swaddled up in his hooded towel, he looked like baby Jesus lying in the manger all swaddled up. He's seen Tate swaddled in blankets, but I think the hood made all the difference. I thought it was such a cute comment, so I wanted to get it recorded on the blog so I didn't forget. Here are some pictures of our bathed and towel swaddled little boy.






Too cute!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

That's right. Summer wouldn't be summer without Zach playing baseball. Since Tate has been so little and it's been so hot, I wasn't able to make it to many of his games (in fact, I only went to the last one). That wasn't from lack of effort though, he kept choosing his Dad to go with him instead of me (one of us always had to stay home with the baby), but that was ok. He's turning into such a Daddy's boy and always wants Dad to go to stuff like that. I figure it was bound to happen, he's been a Mommy's boy since he was born, so I had my turn.

Anyway, he's loved playing baseball this year. He was in the coach pitch league and had so much fun with it! His team was the Red Lightning and his two coaches were great!

Here are some pictures of him playing this year - these are thanks to my Dad who, with my Mom, came to quite a few games and actually had his camera to take pictures - thanks Dad!

Here are some crappy pics I took of the team pictures they took - pictures of pictures never turn out great - I'm obviously not a great photographer, but they were cute and thought I'd post them too!


Sorry about the glare - these were the best I could do!


Here's Zach getting ready for the game.


On deck, next up to hit!


Hitting the ball - it always went really far!


Running to first.


On 1st base.


Here he is out in the field - this is the pitchers position, even though the kids don't pitch, they have a position right near the pitchers mound.


And playing first base.


Some great action shots - way to go Dad on the pictures - thanks for taking them!

Yes, it was a fun summer of baseball. Next up Zach decided he wants to play flag football instead of soccer this fall. That should be really fun, I can't wait!

Boating and the Beach

The company that Jeremiah works for has a big summer party every year at Yuba Lake down past Nephi. The boss brings his boat complete with tube, water skiis, and a big yellow banana for everyone to ride.

We weren't sure whether we were going to make it this year with a 6 week old, but Jeremiah's boss, Tod, talked us into it and make his air conditioned trailer available for me to feed the baby. So Friday morning, we headed down to Yuba Lake for a fun day. Once we got there, the kids headed off to the water and I had to call them back to get some sunblock on. After that, they played for a few minutes on the beach until the boat was launched and pulled up to the beach. Our daring kids decided they wanted to ride the yellow banana with Tod's kids (both of which were really close in age to our kids). So while I stayed on shore with the baby, Jeremiah went on the boat with the kids.

Here the are just heading out - Hailey is 2nd and Zach is 3rd on the banana.


I couldn't see it, but Jeremiah said they all fell off at some point - accidentally since Tod wasn't trying to flip them. Miraculously, both of our kids did great and didn't complain or cry - unlike Tod's kids who screamed the whole time they were in the water. I found this funny since his kids have been on the boat and tube hundreds of times and our kids hadn't ever been on a boat or anything like that.

When they got back, it was time for lunch, so while the grown-ups fixed hamburgers and brats, the kids played on the banana - still tied to the boat.




After lunch and some more play with the banana, some other people took a turn out on the boat and we stayed on the beach to play. Unfortunately, I spent most of this time in the trailer feeding the baby, so I didn't get many pictures, but here's one of Hailey - she had so much fun digging in the sand.


Zach spent most of this time just floating in the water with the life vest on. I wish I had gotten a picture of this, but didn't.

After being there for about 6 hours, the baby decided he was done with being outside and so we headed home. It sure was a fun day and the kids are already talking about going on the yellow banana next year!

Toothless Times Two!

Although alot of my posts lately have been centered around Tate, other exciting things are happening for our family. One of those things was Zach losing more teeth. Yes, notice I said "teeth." He lost two of his bottom front teeth quite a while ago and we've been wondering when the top ones were going to go. Well, after what seemed like forever, he finally lost one of the top ones - the one on the left when looking at him.


After that one dropped out, the other one began to become very loose and got to the point where it was hanging on by just one side - giving him a sort of hillbilly look with only 1 tooth in front that had dropped down quite a bit. We went 3 days with it looking like that and I just couldn't stand it anymore. So I talked him into pulling it out - it must have been hanging on by just a thread of gum because after only two tries, (one of which was so light, I wouldn't even call it a pull) Zach pulled it out. Now he looks like he needs to sing the song "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth)."


So now we have an extremely "toothless" boy around our house and every once in a while you can hear him slurring the letter "s" in some of his words - too cute.

Probably the best part about this whole thing is that the Tooth Fairy came to visit Zach 2 times in less than a week - how do you think he feels about that?


That's right, he's ecstatic - two dollars in a week - not bad. Hailey has decided that she wants in on that action and has run around the last few days telling us that she has loose teeth that are about to fall out any minute. We try to tell her that she has a few years still, but she's determined it will be much sooner. I decided to keep an eye on her in case she decides to take matters into her own hands and get rid of some teeth before they're ready. So far so good, but you never know with her!

Three Kids

You always hear people say that the hardest part in parenting is going from two kids to three and that if you can do three kids, you can do anything. I've always wondered about that saying until I actually had three kids. Although I'm sure that most of it has to do with the fact that we're still adjusting to our new little member of the family, I can see that three is going to be drastically different than two. Most of that realization comes when I'm somewhere other than home - like the store or the doctor's office and just getting across the parking lot is a chore with only 2 hands and 3 people to manage (other than myself). But although I can forsee a lot of "fun" down the road when Tate gets older, I have to admit that I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't imagine how we ever got along without Tate in our family. He's brought all of us so much joy and happiness! So here's to three kids - may they bring us much more joy in the future! (Remind me that I said this when I'm tearing my hair out in a couple of years will you???)

Newborn Pictures

I'm realizing that I left out a post in between the last couple I did. One very important one was to post some newborn pictures that my very talented sister-in-law Holli took back in June. She is quite the photographer, she had so many fun backdrops and props to use and it was really fun seeing all of her cute ideas. I'm SO happy with the pictures she took. This is quite the feat considering that Tate pretty much screamed the whole time. She was extremely patient and even did 2 different sessions in the same day in order to try and get pictures of Tate when he was in a better mood. We weren't very successful in getting his mood just right, but the pictures turned out darling anyway.

Here are some of my favorites:

I love this one because he's almost smiling - that's about as close as we got during the photo session.


I love this little metal basket - he looked so cute all tucked up inside of it.


This is probably my favorite of the whole session because it's close up and with the backgroud, you can really see his beautiful dark blue eyes.


Holli also had this cute little brown knit hat and it looked so darling on Tate. We were able to snap a few pics of him in it while asleep - look at that chubby face!



Yes, I have a darling little baby and I love all the fun pictures we got of him. Much thanks to my gifted sister-in-law Holli and all the time and effort she put into getting these precious pictures!