June 2016

Pax lost his first tooth!  It seemed like it was loose forever.  He was excited when it finally came out!

I signed the boys up for swim lessons for 2 weeks at the rec center.  They both liked it, but I feel like there wasn't a whole lot of progression.

Then Paxton had another 2 weeks of swim lessons at a private pool with an awesome teacher.  He is swimming pretty great now!  And look, he is going off the diving board and loving it!  The first couple times off he didn't really like it, but his teacher doesn't take no for an answer.  After going off a few times he finally decided that he liked it and goes off the ones at the rec center pool now that are a little higher up.  It's been so fun to watch him progress to see him excited that he can swim on his own now.

Graham started the summer out with every time I asked him to put his face in the water saying, "I can't do that".  So finally one day (this was after swim lessons was over) at the pool I decided I would be the mean mom and make him go under water.  I scooped him under twice, he cried.  I told him, "good job, we can try it again later".  Well then we were in the shallow end and he was just playing in the water when all the sudden he comes up to me and says, "Mom, Mom!  I went under water!"  I asked him to show me and sure enough, he did it!  I was so proud of him and he was so proud of himself that he kept doing it over and over and over again to the point that I was telling him to take a break and breathe.  As weeks went on he started kicking his legs and pushing off from the side and swimming to me about 4-6 feet!

I am so impressed with these kids and their progress they have made this summer!  It's been so fun to go to the pool lots this summer!

Graham loves to help!  My mom spoiled me growing up by always making homemade jam and now that's all I want.  I'll use store bought if I have to, but I prefer not to.  And now Paxton has caught on to that.  I made him a peanut butter and jam sandwich with store bought jam and he noticed with the first bite and said he didn't like it.  So soon after I found myself (and Graham) making some strawberry jam.  Yum!

Paxton graduated from Kindergarten!  This is him and his teacher Mrs. Walters, he loves her!  She was a great teacher!  They put on a cute program singing many songs and he even had his own line he had to say, "And we were still SUPER hungry to learn!"  He did so great and said it with such enthusiasm.  I sure am proud of this kid and all he has learned.

 

Field Day

The last week of school was full of fun.  One of the days was field day at the school where they  had blow up jump houses, water games and more.  At the end of the day the Murray Firemen came and sprayed their fire hose.  The kids got soaked!  Paxton was loving it!  

Liberty Park

We are so excited that my sister Erika and Ben moved back from Logan and now they are living downtown near Liberty Park.  So we went and hung out with her one day and walked to the park and had a picnic.

Graham was hooked on his superman cape that day.  It was pretty cute to see him "flying" around.

T-ball

I signed Paxton up for t-ball this year even though he was old enough to do coach pitch.  I just figured that he has never done t-ball and he's not that athletic, it doesn't come naturally (at least not yet).  It was a good choice, he fit right it and he LOVED it!  He said he is ready for coach pitch next!  Here he is with his buddy Milo that is a year younger than him.  Pax was great at hitting the ball, we just need to work on his outfield skills.

Silver Lake
We invited my cousin Kristi and her 3 kids to join us on a walk around Silver Lake.  We ended up taking a trail off the path and hiked up the mountain a ways.  The kids actually enjoyed it, we had minimal complaining.  It was so beautiful up there and the weather was a little chilly when we got there, but once we got moving it was perfect!

Paxton and Maya are such a good buddies!  I'm so glad they get along so well!

Lucy and Lincoln for a few days
My sister and her husband went to Hawaii (again) so we got to have Lucy and Lincoln for a couple of days.  It was a little crazy at times, but we had a lot of fun with them!  We planned fun things to do almost the whole week and had a cousin week.

We went to the Zoo.  Sandee and Jake came too!

We went on a bike ride.  Barely fit these 3 cuties in the trailer.  Luckily there were no hills to go up.

Aunt Erika came swimming with us.  I couldn't have done it without her!

We went and hung out at the park.  Played t=ball, swings, slides, bikes and more.

I came home from the grocery store to this.  Rem is such a good Dad!

And of course, cousin bath time!  They had so much fun in the tub and were just laughing at each other.

Happy Father's Day
I found this awesome shirt online, it was perfect for Remi and the boys loved it too!  Paxton and Graham sure are lucky to have a dad that likes to play with them.  We even got him Lego's for father's day so he could build more things with them.

We first went to the Sorenson's for dinner (I forgot to take pictures) and then we went to my house for dessert.

We sure are lucky to have such wonderful examples of the dads in our lives.  I sure love them!

Mini golf
Paxton trying to learn the game of mini golf.  It was super hot so we didn't last very long.

Seven Peaks

We had fun at Seven Peaks with my brother, his wife and Jake.  We went after 4:00 and although it warm outside, the water was a little too cold.  I could see wanting to be in it if it was super hot outside.  My boys did swim for a little bit.  We tried to do the hot tub, but it was too crowded and Graham was too young to get in.  So we did the wave pool, it was a tad bit warmer.  We will definitely have to come back when it's warmer.

I did get to go down a slide twice with my brother on a double tube, it was a blast!  Unfortunately my kids won't go down the slides with me (yet).

Happy Birthday Daddy!
We celebrated Remi's 32nd birthday.  We let him open his birthday presents that morning and made him breakfast.  Then later that day I took him out to dinner and a movie which he knew about, but I surprised him by inviting one of his best friends and a couple of his brothers and their wives came.  We got his favorite, Italian food, at Johnny Carinos and then went and saw Central Intelligence, it was hilarious!

May 2016

Putting together his puzzle he got for his birthday.  I just sat in the chair and talked him through it, he did the rest himself.  Sometimes I had to help him push the pieces together.

Zoo day

The boys each got birthday money from grandpa and grandma (we hadn't spent Paxton's yet) so we took the to Toys R Us to pick out their own toys. 

Pax chose a talking Yoda and a talking Rocket Raccoon. 

Graham chose some Elmo bath toys and Star Wars guys. 

The kids have been anxious to play in the sprinkler. It was a little windy this day, but I couldn't resist when Graham came running out of his room with his swimsuit on backwards.  

Graham's birthday party at The Fun Center

We invited cousins to come celebrate Graham's birthday.  Graham had so much fun!  

He wanted to ride the bull and he held on for dear life! We ended up taking him off because he was getting scared that he would fall. 

Riding bikes, scooters, bounce houses, jungle gym and meeting Super Heroes and Star Wars characters made this party a blast!

Swimming

The next day we got to go to their cousin, Tyson's birthday party at the pool.

Graham turns 3!!!

Some things about Graham...

27 lbs 10th percentile

35 1/4" 10th percentile

We always say I love you, so it surprised me when Graham came up to me one morning and said, "I like you Mom" while hugging my legs. And then he'd run off, stop, run back and do it again. It was adorable.

 "These make me fast!" (His gym shorts for some reason he thinks they make him fast). 

"You are not a girl, you are mom!"

 Loves to do anything his brother is doing. Likes to tease Paxton. Total momma's boy! Cries if his dad says no or if he gets put on timeout. Has tons of energy and is always on the go!

He woke up to lots of balloons coming in his room.  

His birthday was on Mother's day this year, so we shared our day.

The boys surprised me with these flowers after church and later that week Rem even planted them for me after I showed him where I wanted them.  

My mom is one of my best friends!  She is such an amazing example, I love her so much!

We took my mom out to dinner to celebrate her birthday.  I love this picture of her and these cute grand kids!

We have a big mirror at the end of our hallway and every once in a while I will catch the boys checking themselves out doing different things.  They crack me up!

Our vacation to St. George and Vegas

Rem had a work conference in Vegas to go to so the kids and I decided to tag along and make a vacation out of it.  I was a little nervous to be alone with 2 kids in Vegas where I don't know the city at all, but it turned out great and we had a blast!  I could have stayed a couple more days to do the things we didn't get to.  There was surprisingly a lot to do in Vegas with the kids.  Next time though I would try to avoid walking the strip much at all, at least long distances.

We also spent a couple days before and after Vegas in St. George.

We did some hiking.

Vegas

We got there on a Saturday night, so we basically checked into our hotel and ate a late dinner on the strip.  We got to stay at the Mandalay Bay, it was beautiful!

The next day, Sunday, I took the boys to church.  We just went to sacrament meeting.  Then it was lunch time.  I didn't plan ahead and make lunches so we had to find somewhere to buy food.  I found a place called Church's Chicken.  I said to Pax, "Wouldn't that be funny if we ate there and then we could tell dad that we went to 2 church's that day?!"  He agreed so we went through the drive through and took our food to the nearest park where we spent the next couple hours.  Afterwards we drove to the temple and walked around the temple grounds, it was beautiful!  Rem got out of his conference each day around 5:00 so we got back in time to meet up with him and go to dinner.  I was proud of myself for venturing out with the kids.  Rem is always with me on vacations and doing all the navigating and such so it made me a little nervous to do it on my own, but I did it!

We walked the strip to the Bellagio fountains one day.  The fountains were fun to watch, walking the strip was not so fun especially with the kids.  It was a lot longer walk than we thought and I had to watch out for porn to try and block it from Paxton's view.  Unfortunately I was not able to block it all from his view and we had to have a little conversation about it.  I didn't go into any details, I'm not sure that he even understood what he was seeing, so I didn't make a huge deal of it.  He hasn't said anything about it since so that's good!

I took them to the Mandalay Bay aquarium one day, it was pretty cool!  The worker even pulled out a horseshoe crab for them to touch because poor Graham's arms were too short to touch them at bottom of the water.

 

They got certificates and I let them each pick out something from the gift shop.  They both got sharks, we were there for quite some time trying to figure what they wanted to buy.  But I was not in a rush to go anywhere, so I didn't mind.

We went to this really cute park at the Town Square Mall just before the strip.  It had a lot of pretend play stuff there and the kids loved it!  I could've gone back another day with swimsuits because it had a splash pad.

Tired of walking.  This was definitely a vacation of lots of walking!

We went to the Hershey store and got free chocolate kisses and to m&m world and bought lots of different kinds of m&m's.

We went to one show, Tournament of Kings.  The kids LOVED it!  I was feeling sick so Graham ate more of my dinner than I did.  It was a fun show, I just hard time getting into it.  I'm glad the boys enjoyed it.

Then the next afternoon we headed back to St. George.  We took the kids to see Angry Birds.  It was a lot better than I expected it to be.

The next day we met up with one of my good friends that now lives in St. George and we took our kids swimming at their neighborhood pool.

We had a really fun vacation and it was great that Rem's work paid for most of it!

Paxton and some of his classmates (Bella, Jaiden, Eli) at their schools Fit and Fun Run.  Graham and I joined them for the mile they had to go.

My mom and sisters/in-law and I had a much needed girls weekend in Park City.  It was the best!  We went to dinner, stayed at a nice hotel, went hot tubing, played games and the next day went and did the Alpine slide and coaster and went shopping at the outlets.  It was great!

 

Daddy let Graham help do some painting his room.

This was at The Discovery Gateway.  We got to go for Paxton's end of the school year field trip.  He sure had fun being there with all of his friends from school.  Graham loved it too!