July 2019

Swimming
Sandee, Erika and I and our kids got to go swimming at my Aunt Heather's new pool.  It was so nice and the temperature was perfect for the babies.  It was so nice that Harper even fell asleep in the pool.  The lids had a blast and it was nice being there just us and not at a public pool.



4th of July
My neighbor, Annie and I walked our kids down the street to the Murray parade.  We had them sit right on the street because we didn't bring any chairs.  This was my kids first big parade other than the one we were in a couple years back.  They had fun grabbing candy and little toys.  Rem refused to come to the parade because he doesn't like crowds, but it really wasn't that bad especially because we could walk there.



Later that day our friends, the Suprises came with us out to my parents house in Bluffdale.  We went over to the park for a bit and then back to their house for a BBQ and fireworks.  Trevor and Erika and their families were there also.  It was a little rainy that day, but it calmed enough that we could still enjoy the day and do fireworks.


Harper got to wear her onesie we bought when we announced that we were pregnant.


Harper and Jo hanging out, holding hands.


We did lots of glow sticks during fireworks.

Harper 4 months old
12.5 lbs
23.5"









Graham and his friends
Zoey is Graham's best friend that lives next door.  They play pretty much every single day.  Jasmine lives the next house down and sometimes comes to play.  We keep saying we need to find some boys for Graham to play with because he's surrounded by girls all the time, but he does get along with them.  They love playing in the hammocks in our backyard.



Camping at the Palisades
Our friends and nextdoor neighbors, the Suprises' invited us to go camping with them in Manti.  We just went for 2 nights and it was perfect!  We had a great spot right by the water so each day we set up on the beach and played in the water most of the day.  We brought some float tubes and they had a bunch of fun boats, tubes and kayaks.  We had so much fun with them and Harper did so great.  I can't wait until we go back again!







Graham's gymnastics
Graham has been in gymnastics for about 6 months or so and is loving it.  He goes twice a week so I usually just drop him off, but every once in a while I will stay and watch.  It's fun to watch him and see how he's learned some new things.



24th of July neighborhood breakfast
We are not in the Meadows ward anymore so we didn't really receive an invite to this breakfast, but it is a neighborhood breakfast and we are still in the neighborhood so we went and it was good to see people from the other side of the neighborhood.





Sunday Stroll
One Sunday we took the kids up to Silver Lake to go for a walk.  It was nice to get outside together and go up the mountains to enjoy the cooler weather.  It was a busy day at the lake and there were lots of bugs, but we still had a good time.  Harper didn't really have anywhere to put her arm so it looked like she was pointing most of the time and the boys thought it'd be funny to copy her and point as well.



Happy Birthday GG!
My Grandma was turning 90 years old!  She loves visits at the care center she lives at so we made sure to visit her the week of her birthday.  The kids made her some cards and we couldn't find Grahams before we left so we told her we would mail it to her and she was excited about that because she never gets mail.



An evening in the Park
We met up with Ben, Erika and Jo at Liberty Park.  We picked up some dinner on our way and ate at the park and then set up some hammocks and a blanket and hung out for a bit.  It was a fun summer night.





Boating
Jamie and Dan bought a boat!  They were super nice to invite us to come with them to Utah Lake.  This was my kids first time being on a boat, they had so much fun!  They had a big tube that we all took turns on, I hadn't done that in a long time, it was super fun!  My kids were a bit nervous about it and Paxton ended up liking it more than Graham.  Dan kept telling us that he has never flipped anyone off the tube even when trying.  Well he finally succeeded and flipped Jamie, Paxton and Lucy.  Lucy was in tears but then got over it and we were saying how awesome it was.  I even got it on video!  Pax thought it was pretty cool.   Harper looked so cute in her hot pink life jacket and she did really well in it, she even took naps in it.  We had a great time and can't wait to go again!






Apricot Picking
We like to go pick apricots at Grandmas house.  Graham will just eat them straight off the tree and lots of them!  We took home about 2 small buckets full so I pureed them and made fruit leather.  I definitely need more practice because it didn't turn out super great.  But the part that did turn out was yummy!  Graham loves to help with this sort of thing and he will eat anything that is picked from Grandpa's garden.





The Aquarium
We spent some time at the aquarium with cousins.  Paxton was so cute with Harper and kept lifting her out of the stroller to make sure she could see the fish and more.

June 2019

Harper's Blessing Day
We invited both our families and some close friends to our family cabin for Harper's blessing.  It was a beautiful day to be up in the mountains for this special day.  Harper was surrounded by people that love her.  She wore a beautiful new dress that was given to her from her Great Grandma Moss, she wore a bracelet from her cousin Lucy Tervort and she wore some white shoes from her cousin Lucy Sorenson.  Her dad gave her beautiful blessing from her Heavenly Father that brought the spirit into the room.  She was very calm during the blessing and I was told that she just looked around at all the men.  We then had a dinner with everyone and Harper got passed around, everyone wanting tot take a turn to hold her.

I'm so grateful for this family of mine and for this special day to all be together.  I'm grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who is mindful of us and wants us to be happy.  I am especially grateful for Harper Jade and the joy she brings to us.  I am grateful for the power of the priesthood and the blessings our Heavenly Father has for us and I am grateful to have a husband who holds that priesthood and gave our daughter a beautiful blessing.






My dad being silly when we asked him to take our picture.

Summertime friends
I love that my kids have friends that live right next door and I love it when they get creative and play outside.  This is one of those days and they had a big box to play with!


Summer Rainstorm
Rem dared the boys to go run out into the pouring rain with him.  Graham was hesitant at first, but eventually followed them.  They had a blast!  Rem dared Paxton to lay in the gutter of rushing water and he did it.  They definitely followed with showers.



Last Day of School
The kids had fun on their last day with water slides, bounce houses, snow cones, face tattoos and more.  I came near the end of the party to see the fire hose spray down and they had come early so I missed it.  Paxton was soaking wet with his buddies and Graham didn't go near it, he was just playing on the playground.





After school we went over to the neighbors house that has an end of the school year party every year with a big blow up water slide, games, a hot tub, trampoline and lots of treats.  The moms sit in the shade and chat while the kids play.  It's a good time for everyone.

Harper is 3 months old
Harper is an easy to please baby the majority of the time.  She smiles at everyone and makes cute noises trying to get our attention.  She is ticklish on her sides, but she just arches her back, no laughing yet.  She does well with tummy time but she usually rolls over quickly to her back, not because she doesn't like being on her tummy but because she know how to roll.  She likes staring at her monkey and bunny when laying on her play mat.  She is nursing every 2-3 hours. She is sleeping 11-12 hours at night, but when we were on vacation at the Ranch I expected her sleep to be worse, but it was better... 14-15 hours at night!  I had to keep checking on her to make sure she was still alive.



Paxton was loud in the house and woke up his sister so we made him sit with her and he put her right back to sleep.  Such a good brother.





















This little girl has become quit the thumb sucker.  She will still take her binkie when going down for a nap or to bed, but it's pretty short lived.  She sure does find that thumb a lot!  It is pretty dang cute, I just worry about how to take it away when she gets older.

Swimming Lessons
Paxton didn't want to do swim lessons this year because he says he already knows how to swim.  Which he does, but I want him to finish all the levels so he's super confident and good at it.  He ended up loving it and was mad that I didn't sign him up for 2 sessions like I did Graham.

Pax loves doing flips off the diving board.


Graham was making me laugh how he was placing his hands for his knee dive.  But I was proud of him for being the first one in his class to actually be able to dive in head first instead of belly flop it, which most kids do.  His teacher said, "one thing I love about Graham is that he is willing to try anything"!

The Ranch
We were so lucky to be able to go to the Ranch this summer!  It's always booked up a year or so in advance so I was surprised one day when checking on the calendar that a week had opened up so I called my parents right away and they decided to jump on it!  We definitely had to pay way more this year with going at prime time and not owning it anymore.  But it is our most favorite place to go, so we were so grateful my parents treated us all to a nice vacation!

To fill up all the rooms my aunt Debbie came with her whole family and a couple friends and each of my siblings and parents got to invite someone and my grandma came also.  We brought our friends, the Coons.  They came up in the fall with us, but we had a great time with them so we brought them again!

It was definitely a different vacation this year with having a 3 month old there, but it was so great!  I loved having her there and taking her swimming and on utv rides, going for walks and more.  Although she slept a lot which meant hanging around the lodge for me, but at least I got to play lots of card games!








Father's day was at the Ranch this year.  I did a horrible job at getting any pictures of Rem and his kiddos on Father's Day, but I did get some of him doing different things with the kids.  I sure am grateful for Rem and all he does for our family.  He is such a great dad to our kids and they all adore him so much!  I've loved watching him become a dad to a little baby girl, he is so sweet with her.

Family Pictures
Jamie took new family pictures for us at the Ranch.





Scouts Day Camp
Paxton had a blast going to Scouts 2 day day camp.  There were a ton of boys this year!  I was bummed I couldn't join him this year, I really do enjoy being with him and watching him interact with his friends.  It was nice of the leaders that went to send me lots of pictures because I don't always get much information out of Paxton, he's not always a big talker.



GG's 80th!
My grandma turned 80 and we threw her a big party with the whole family at my uncle Evan's house.  He has such a nice backyard with a pool and lots of seating and shade.  The kids got to go swimming and we had a yummy BBQ.  We all gave her 80 roses and 80 cans of cherry Dr. Pepper, her favorite.  We all wrote little notes and stuck them on the cans so each time she drank one, she'd have a little note to read.  She is such an awesome and sweet grandma!  I love her so much!






Here's Joelle giving her a rose.  "Will you accept this rose?"  My grandma loves watch The Bachelor tv show, so a bunch of us when handing her roses would tease her and ask her this question.  It made her laugh.

Happy Father's Day
Father's Day was actually at the Ranch, but we were having so much fun that I didn't think to get a picture with my dad and I definitely didn't want to bring his gift all the way there because we already have a ton of crap to bring with us.

I feel so lucky to call this amazing man my dad.  He is the most loving, caring, generous, funny, giving and I could go on... man I know!  He is such a great example to me and I love him so much!


Happy birthday Remington!
We invited Ben and Erika and Brian and Celestte Coons to join us at Top Golf to celebrate Rems birthday.  We ordered dinner there and had a fun time golfing.  Even the babies, Joelle and Harper got to join us!




Paxton's basketball team
Paxton sure loves to play basketball and I sure love to watch him play even though he's not the best one on his team.  I can see that he is learning and is slowly getting better.  It is hard for him to fully learn though when our coaches are volunteer parents that don't really know what they're doing and he had a few really great players on his team so they mainly passed the ball between themselves.  But as long as he is having a good time, that's all that counts!



My mini me
I was going through some old baby pictures of myself and when I saw this one I thought that it looked just like Harper.  She is my mini me and looks more like a Moss baby than a Sorenson baby.  I sure am happy to have my little mini me since Rem got his little mini me with Graham.