Giant Pumpkin Regatta Festival

Every year around the man-made lake we live around, they have a giant pumpkin regatta festival. What is that you ask? It is a great Fall Festival held around halloween with lots of games and events including free face painting, pumpkin painting, a ballon man, a clown show, live music, and some food! But the biggest event is the Giant Pumpkin Races in the lake! The local growers gut out their ginormous pumpkins, dress up in costume, sit in them, and row through a course in the lake! It is a lot of fun to watch and we had a great time! It was so nice just to walk out of our apartment and take a very short walk and we were there at the festival! Even if we are not living here next year, I think we will be back to visit and watch the giant pumpkin races again!

Here's some random pictures of Bear later that day... I just thought they were cute

Pumpkin Patch '09!

We found a GREAT pumpkin patch less than 3 miles away from our place this year! Jackson had a lot of fun.... Baron was mad the first 1/2 hour we were there because we had to wake him up after a 5 min. nap to be able to go and get back in time for the Duck Football game.... hence all the grumpy faces from him in the photos. After awhile, he brightened up though! The day was filled with hay rides, pony rides, petting zoos, a corn maze, a slide, and it ended with some apple cider and cider donuts. Mmmmmm..... so yummy :) And even though it was raining all week, it was a beautiful day, resulting in lots of great pictures!

Baby Bear... or should I say Baby Monkey Update

It's been a while since I've done an update on the little guy. He is 10 months now!! At his 9 month Dr. appointment he had finally gone down in weight percentile to 60% (as opposed to 95% + that he has always been in the past) and he was in the 81st percentil for height and 88 percentile for head circumfrince. That's what crawling around at lightning speeds and walking around the furniture will do for you.... if only that worked for me! Anyways, Bear is sure A LOT of fun to have around. He is always in a great mood, loves to giggle at anything his brother does( and i mean full-on belly giggle), is still a great eater and has been loving real food as of late-probably due to the fact that he was 5 whole teeth now! Baron sleeps about 12 hours straight every night, recently learned to stand-up in the middle of the room without using any furniture, has been WALKING about 10-15 or so steps between John & I or from the TV all the way to the couch, and he is my little monkey climber! Seriously, this kid LOVES to climb and will use anything ( boxes, pillows, containers, big toys, his brother, etc. ) to get to higher levels. He is a master at going up stairs, but no so much at coming down (he accidentally fell down some the other day! yikes! Thank goodness he is ok!) Also, Bear has one little curl right in the middle of the back of his head which I think will be joined by more curls when the rest of his hair finally grows out. He loves to clap for himself when he walks or does anything new, and JUST 2 WEEKS AGO, HE SAID HIS FIRST WORD..... which was BALL of course.... just like his brother. They are both ALL BOY. He loves to pick up a ball, say it like 5 times and then chuck it... which is something else he loves to do... chuck everything. Along with throwing things, he also loves to wrestle and has been known to take down a fellow crawler or 2 at church and during story time at the library -which always makes the other kids cry, which in turn confuses him, because he is just playing and thinks it is great fun! I have to admit that I think its pretty funny.

Well that's about it! We sure love our Baby Bear!!

Conference Weekend in Glide

We spent Conference weekend with the Grahams out in the country in good ole' Glide..... away from city life.... and it was GREAT! So relaxing, and lots of fun! We watched some football, helped decorate for Glide's homecoming dance, watched some pretty bad high school soccer, jumped in the freezing cold pool in the rain (in our wetsuits and booties), went for some walks, took some pictures, ate lots of yummy food (cinnamon roles,conference casserole, homemade berry frozen yogurt for example), and of course, cuddled on the couch and watched some wonderful conference talks! There's nothing like listening to the prophet and apostles speak to lift you up and get you motivated to work harder and re-prioritize. We had a lot of fun over the weekend and had a hard time leaving because we just didn't want to go back to our busy, stressful life. Thanks Gale, Sue and Heather (and Jackson would like to add Maggie and the kitties) for a great weekend!

Our attempts at a family picture with 2 little boys doesn't always go as planned, but we got some fun shots in the process

John loves to try to capture me on camera, which I hate because it usually turns out very badly, but this time I think he actual caught some ok pictures

STRESSED, but here's some pictures!

I apologize to anyone I haven't answered e-mails to or commented on their blog or facebook, etc. I have found that trying to work 40 hours a week while still taking care of your 2 kids under the age of 3 and keeping a tiny apartment that houses 4 people clean is VERY hard to do, and very stressful. I almost envy those moms that get to drop their kids off before work and not have to worry about them til they pick them up at the end of the work day.... almost. I still am very grateful to be able to be home and experience all the giggles and new steps in the kids life, but boy has it been hard trying to do it all. Managing will definitely be worth the free rent + salary until we get some medical bills paid, but I am not so sure how much longer we will be doing this after that. SO, until then, don't expect too many blog updates... I will try hard, especially for the grandparents, but try to cut me some slack if I lag. To make it easier on myself, I think I will just post pictures we have taken and save some time by not always writing a huge long explanation, like so:

Crab Water

Don't worry, we are still here! Life has been CRAZY busy to say the least. We are still working on unpacking and finding a place for all of our stuff in this much smaller apartment while also dealing with John's busy season at work and me getting use to the new managing job... doesn't help that the previous manager left everything a mess! Anyways, just thought I'd post a real quick update and say that after Sept. 15th things should start slowing down for us, hopefully, and I will start posting more often then! In the meantime, here are some pictures I took the other day of Jackson playing outside in the water fountain that is really close to where we live- our apartments we manage surround this little man-made lake and there is a fun water fountain to play in. Jackson calls it the crab water because it has all these hoses that shoot up and into the middle, which to him looks like a crab I guess. Anyways, here they are:

Bass Lake

We had a great time on our trip to Bass Lake! It was a ton of fun to be all together with my family, thanks to the Silver Baron (my grandpa's nickname) and we were sad to head home at the end of the trip. The boys did really well in the car, mostly because we rented a new explorer that was really nice and spacious... it was worth every penny to rent it for the drive since we had a ways to go and way too much stuff to bring! Anyways, we spent the week riding, as Jackson would say, "fast boats!", did lots of swimming, enjoyed the 80 degree water of the lake, rode the sea doo's a lot one day (those are my favorite!!), went tubing, rode on the 6 man banana and stayed up way too late playing games and laughing so hard my stomach hurt! It was a blast! Oh, and John tried wakeboarding for the first time ever and got up and went practically half way around the lake! I was so proud of him... hopefully my knee will be a lot stronger next time because it was so hard just watching and not being able to ski or wakeboard myself. We took a ton of pictures, so be prepared to see a lot!

the only picture i got of John- before he stood up.... I was really nervous about getting the camera wet so I didn't bring it out on the ski boat much

we tried to get Jackson to go on the tube with us....

he wasn't too happy about that

But he sure was happy as long as he was driving the boat or simple just riding on it, going fast!

My mom & Baron.... he wasn't too happy about the life jacket

Dinner at Ducy's on the lake

we kept trying to get pictures of all the grandkids, but soon figured out that it is impossible to get 4 kids all under the age of 3 to be happy and all looking at the camera at once... we still tried multiple times though :)

We will forever miss you shiny blue explorer... thanks for all the good road trip memories. Oh how i wish you weren't so expensive!!