Saturday, July 26, 2014

Pioneer Day

First, just a couple random pictures...

 I know I say this a lot, but I'm impressed with Meili's drawing ability. This is her latest picture of our family. I really just get excited about the improvements she makes. 
 I gave Grant an oreo... I think he's a fan.
 Now, on to Pioneer Day...
We went fishing in the morning.

 It's mandatory that everyone catch at least one fish.






 I literally put my pole in the water four times and caught three fish. However, I caught the fish that the other fish eat for lunch, and I was fishing in the kiddie pool-which significantly ups the odds.

After fishing we went to the festivities in Bountiful.


As I mentioned in my last post, Grant was awesome to take a nice long nap in his stroller almost the whole time.




Then we went to the splash pad by my sister's house. 


 Yes, as all kids do, the girls thought it was awesome to sit right on top of the water.
 My sister, my mom, and I talked about how much we wished we had brought our swimming suits, because, hello, splash pads are awesome.

 The Cheetos were a hit all the way around.

 "Ladies. eat your hearts out..."

Three things I love... Holidays, summer, and family. 

Bear Lake

In keeping with tradition, we spent the weekend of the 18th, 19th, and 20th with my roommate from college, Hope, and her family in Bear Lake. In the past we've always gone camping, but this year, the only weekend that was a possibility was also a weekend that Josh had planned an overnight with his Young Men. He said that we should just go camping anyway, and take the two kids with me alone the first night, and then he would meet us up there. Me camping alone with two kids, one of whom doesn't sleep through the night? Uh, no. But then he mentioned something about staying in a cabin instead. Yes, I can do that by myself with two kids. Well, everything turned out kind of perfect for me, because we ended up borrowing a cabin in Bear Lake, from Josh's friend, Jonny's, grandparents. Then Josh didn't have enough Young Men going on his campout, so they decided to postpone it, which meant he could with me the whole time. Yea! 
 Luckily Meili drew us this map so we wouldn't get lost. (Okay, say what you want about the "map" itself, but I think she did an awesome job on the red jeep.)

I'm bummed that I didn't get any pictures in the cabin itself because everything just turned out so nice-about pretty much the whole weekend. We got there Friday night, ate dinner, played a game after the kids went to bed. It sounds like just about no one slept well that night. (Luckily, Saturday night turned out better.) Then on Saturday we spent a lot of the day on the beach at Bear Lake.




 I complain enough about Grant not sleeping at night, that I think I just need to say how awesome he is the other 23 hours of the day (because when he does wake up at night, he's awake for maybe ten minutes and then he falls right back to sleep-so he's really on my bad list a total of like an hour a day. I still don't like my sleep interrupted though.) He was fun at the beach until he got tired, then he took a nice long nap in the car (with the door and windows open.) And he slept long enough that we could eat lunch, and I could play with Meili etc.) And he's like that most of the time-will take good naps in his stroller, or car seat. So he's rarely unmanageable. And he gets cuter everyday! 




 Meili was so excited about her sand toys, that's about all she talked about from the time we bought them on Thursday, to the time we actually played with them on Saturday. However, when all was said and done, she said her favorite part of the beach was the mud fight that she and I had. I guess she's been waiting to throw mud at me for a long time.




Meili had fun with her friends, and I had fun just relaxing and having a pretty laid back little getaway. On Sunday, we had to get back early so Meili could give her talk in primary. This was it...
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
When I am eight years old, I will follow Jesus' example, and be baptized.
After I am baptized, I will receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and be confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I had to stop her once, but besides that, she had the whole thing memorized, and she colored pictures that went along with it.

Until next year Hansen family...

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

June/July

These pictures are totally out of order, and I don't even care. I'm not even going to try to fix it, because I thought, "I'll do a post really fast while Grant's taking a nap." Well, an hour and a half later, and 3 cartoons for Meili, and I'm still working on it. So here is the mess of pictures from the last month. (Many of which I stole from others-thank you Facebook.)

Last weekend, the 11th and 12th of July, my family had the annual Doyle Lewis Family Reunion in my uncle's backyard in Wellsville. After the weekend, Meili might be willing to move in there. He has miniature horses, go karts, a little sleigh for the horses to pull, a little pool, other animals-pretty much everything it takes to keep Meili happy.


 It's funny, because my aunt took several pictures that look pretty much exactly like this-Meili just hovering, waiting for her chance to get to the horses.

 Totally random... I loved what the sidewalk chalk did to Meili's pants.
 They also had a sidewalk sale in Logan. I decided to take Meili on her bike, and Grant in the stroller. Then we stopped for snowcones. Yummy!
 I'm trying to remember to at least document that Grant exists in our lives. It's pretty hard to forget to take pictures of Meili at this point, but Grant isn't quite as vocal.
 Sadly, as far as quality goes, it's getting harder and harder to tell which pictures Meili takes and which ones I take.
 See. Out of order. A couple more pictures from the family reunion.

 My sister-in-law, Sara, and I took advantage of the free day at the Treehouse Museum.


 This is when Meili was refusing to leave, and said "This is my home!" She's holding a stuffed animal horse. I seriously couldn't believe how many exhibits she was able to find horses.
 See, this is me insisting on documenting, and Grant saying, "But I don't want to be documented!"
 We're trying our best to maintain some kind of control of our weed-infested garden. And, we're just about done with all the peas. The tomatoes and beans have started. 
 My biggest incentive for growing a garden was to get Meili more excited about eating vegetables, and so far it has totally worked. She loved picking and eating the peas.

These pictures are of Independence Day.

Josh tried for years to get me excited about the celebrations in Honeyville, and now he has me totally converted (although I do still require a "real" parade at some point during the month of July), and this year, he screwed it all up. (Well not all...) The weekend before the 4th, he informed me that his work had put together a softball team for the Perry City Independence Day celebration which meant playing several games that week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and who knows how many games on the 4th. The tournament was held on the 4th and it was a single game elimination. He promised me that his team wasn't going to be very good, so the most games they would play in was one that day. I was frustrated because I wanted to go to the fireworks at Romney Stadium on Thursday, but he would be playing, and I didn't want to be left with both kids all day on the 4th. 

Moral of the story: everything worked out just fine and it wasn't the usual celebration that I'm used to, but we had a lot of fun throughout the week.

I ran the 5k the morning of the 4th, and just have to mention that I (ahem) took first in my age group. Ha Ha! There were 3 (yes 3) people in my age group, and even then, my time was 28 minutes. I love it because that's actually one of my slower times, I haven't been running lately, and my only goal was to run the whole thing. But, hey, a first place is a first place! And my reward? Honey! Just what we needed!

Josh's family also decided to have a float in the Honeyville parade. They do this regularly, but this year they actually put effort and some forethought into the float.

It was the honey business that sponsored the float, so there were a couple bees, a couple beekeepers, some hives, and LOTS of candy!




 Meili got fireworks painted on her face.

 ...and always loves the 4th of July festivities.


 Last year, she loved the live fish pond, and had no fear, but this year, some of her mother set in, and as soon as one of the fish touched her leg, she was done. No matter how much Daddy tried to force the issue.

 These pictures are from the 3rd when we went to Josh's softball game in Perry. Also, as follow-up, remember how Josh's team wasn't very good, and they would play, at most, one game on the 4th. Yeah, they played 3 and lost in the championship. They didn't win, but I was super impressed, and Josh missed some of the 4th celebration, but he was there for the most important stuff.

 I told Meili we were going to do her hair like fireworks. That's exactly what it looks like right?


 Meili found some friends to run around with, Grant slept, and I just relaxed and took it all in.


 ...And a couple more random pictures from the 4th. This is my niece Andrea, holding my nephew Brayden, who is 2 weeks younger than Grant. They're in a race to see who can grow the biggest the fastest.

The cute baby lounging in the car is, sadly, not mine. 

As far as Grant, he is getting cuter and cuter everyday. He laughs, and flirts, and tries to suck on any face that gets near him. I won't be able to call him sweet forever, but that is the best word I can think of right now. We have yet to feed him anything that he won't eat. We're still working on sleeping through the night, but he did figure out rolling in the last couple of weeks, and already looks like he's pretty determined to crawl (not soon, but sooner than I thought he would.)

At his 6-month appointment, he weighed 20 lbs 10 oz. (Mind you, Meili was 20 pounds at 18 months.) which is the 92nd percentile, he's 28 inches long-92% and his head is 95%. At least he is well proportioned.

And I AM DONE.