Oh Yeah, We Went to See Balloons

While taking pictures at this year's Balloon Fiesta, I realized that pictures (especially the ones I take) just don't do the event justice. And at nearly that moment, the battery in our camera died. Both Jordan and I thought the previous night that we should put in a back-up charged battery, but we didn't. Here are some pictures though. So as amazing as you may think this is, in reality, it's so much more so. We were so lucky to have Jordan's sister and her family with us this year - they can tell you how cool it is!

The special shapes balloon glow. We tried to go on Thursday night, but it was cancelled, we made it to Friday night's.

This is the pre-ascension glow and the Dawn Patrol. A few balloons launch while it's still dark to test out the weather conditions.

See! We were there!

Playing Pretend

The boys got hooked on the TV show Wipeout over the summer. They started creating Wipeout courses using the couch cushions and whatever else he could get away with. Jonah especially was very into this and was always wanting me to come to Wipeout school, where he would show me how to go through the course (which included elements such as the shak-alator and the motivator) and then have me do the course. Luckily, we seemed to have passed through this phase without any major injuries, there's always next summer, I guess.





After Balloon Fiesta, the boys started playing balloon fiesta. Skyler created some VIP tags for us and they put on a balloon glow and a fireworks show. I never saw the glow, but the fireworks show consisted of them throwing all the k'nex straight up the air (a few at a time) with a random paper airplane thrown in for good measure. Essentially, things I would never allow under normal circumstances, but since they cleaned it all up without complaint, it wasn't too bad.







And a round of applause from Oliver



Yup, he approves. What's not to like about flying toys?

Last Week and the Week Before

We made these lovely Halloween candle things, but had no candles that would fit in the jars, so I put flashlights in instead.

Skyler was convinced that this craft was too easy - therefore he didn't like it. I gave him a few ideas to make it more "advanced" (cutting shapes from the tissue paper or cutting out the words), but he still didn't approve. I asked if he had any idea, but he snapped at me saying that it was my craft, so I should tell him what to do. So, for those of you keeping score, he had no desire to do what I was telling him to do, but apparently still felt it was my responsibility to magically come up with a Skyler-approved idea. I ignored him and he happily participated, eventually.

Jonah's just took a very long time to dry.

This is Jonah's monster. Its name is Jonah because Jonah made it. Though according to that logic, it should be named Alison.

This is so blurry, but it still shows the pure joy that this felt-covered quart jar brings to Jonah.

Oliver finally gets a chance to explore the catalog in peace.

Sometimes it's just easier to let them keep playing while I clean up all their toys.

Balloon Chasing

Two Sundays ago, Jordan took the older two to chase down a hot-air balloon. They were lucky enough to catch two as they were landing and help them pack up. Later that week, the younger two and I helped one pack up as well. On Friday, while Jordan's sister and her family were visiting, we hit the jackpot. A balloon landed in a neighborhood south of us and the nicest pilot ever made sure all the kids got to help with every aspect of packing up that balloon. He was actually the pilot of one the balloons that Jordan chased when he went out with the boys.

Getting all the air out of the envelope (the fabric part of the balloon)

They are holding the envelope while it's being loaded up into its bag

Here you can see the kids holding up one end of the envelope while the other end is being placed into its bag.

Sitting on the bag to get all the excess air out

The kids are trying to hoist the 350 lb. envelope into the truck

At The Library

Ollie loves books, so he likes to stand up by the little carts that house the board books and pull them out and throw them on the ground. I'm pretty sure he prefers throwing books to actually looking at them.

Jonah always insists on collecting leaves outside while I get Oliver out of the car. He says they are for his leaf collection and he dutifully puts them right next to the front door of the library near the recycle bin in the entryway room for safekeeping until we leave. Then he picks them up, and takes them to the backyard when we get home. Therefore somewhere in our backyard is a massive pile of leaves.

Skyler loves finding books about things. He used to always ask the library to help him find a book about a certain topic (and normally he did this without me knowing - I was always surprised by his bravery!). Two times ago, I showed him how to look things up on the computer. Last time, he wanted to do it by himself. After a bit of coaxing, I convinced him to at least let me help him spell balloons correctly (I actually then typed in 'hot-air balloon' for him, since that yielded better results). He was able to find the book all by himself for the most part. The first time he didn't write down the entire call number down, so while he was in the correct spot, he didn't believe me when I pointed out the book to him since it didn't exactly match what he had written down.

Things Heard Around Our House

Last week we had the missionaries over for dinner. Skyler must have signed something at some point because one of the missionaries asked him if he knew sign language. Skyler told them that he is learning it at school. He then proceeded to tell us all that the sign for the letter 'p' is a crazy one because it's like two legs walking with a penis in the middle". The missionaries got a kick out of that one for sure and hopefully now have a super fab mission story to tell (preferably not in their homecoming talk). Not to be outdone, Jonah later announced, "why is the missionaries not going to their house yet?". They had apparently worn out their welcome.

This morning, we were making Halloween pictures and I decided to make the kids a Halloween countdown calendar. Skyler asked if it would be like our Christmas one that tells about the Christmas story (each day you add a new thing to the nativity scene, also we have one where each day Mary and Joseph go one step closer to Bethlehem). He wanted it to tell the story of the first Halloween. I told him that there really isn't a first Halloween. He told me he must have been thinking of Easter. Oh, yeah, I can see how he'd get those two holidays confused.

Oliver Gets Eaten By a Dinosaur

I pretty much love this picture. I tried hard to get only Oliver in focus, but by the time I had everything right, the photo op was gone.

This was from our trip to the "dinosaur museum" (not our trip back in time to when the T-Rex roamed the earth), which is actually a natural history and science museum, but they have dinosaurs, so it's the dinosaur museum.

And look, there was a snake!

I love how the kids who aren't touching the snake look the happiest.

There was an exhibit about the history of computers. At the end of it, visitors could film themselves using a webcam, and it would go up the big screen as part of a montage of recent visitors' movies. You were supposed to answer a specific question (but clearly you could do anything you wanted) and that question was something to the effect of "would you want a computer implanted in a part of your body?". Jonah's video went something like this:

Jordan: Jonah, would you want a computer implanted in a part of your body?
Jonah: Yes
Jordan: Why?
Jonah: Because I like that
Jordan: Where would you want it?
Jonah; In my bum

He elaborated on that a bit, but I don't remember exactly what he said.

Hey Look! Pictures!

We had one last summer hurrah in Pagosa Springs, CO over Labor Day weekend. It was great and fun and wonderful. The boys spent lots of time playing in the river, we hiked up to two different waterfalls, and we hung out at the house watching movies.

Look at the camera, Jonah!

We discovered that Oliver really loves potato chips. And he loves throwing rocks into the water. And he doesn't like to sleep on a couch cushion in the closet. Remember how I said it was a great and fun and wonderful trip? Well, we forgot Ollie's pack n play, which really wasn't so great and fun and wonderful. The closet was large, so we put a couch cushion in there for him to sleep on. He wasn't amused. The first night he was up for three hours in the middle of the night, the second night was much better, but he did end up in our bed for an hour or so in the morning.






I didn't take swimsuits for the kids because I was under the impression that it would be really cold. The place we stayed at is Jordan's boss's house and his brother was there the week before we were and informed us (via Jordan's boss) that the morning temps were right around 40 degrees. Turns out there's just a thermometer that appeared to be permanently stuck at 40 degrees and it wasn't nearly that cold! The lack of swimsuits didn't deter the kids at all - we just switched them into dry clothes as soon as they were done playing.

Our young mountain climber extraordinaire (there's new pictures on that post, by the way) can most definitely climb, but apparently has much trouble balancing once he gets to the top. He took a little tumble and for a while I thought his rock climbing days were over, but later that day, he seemed to be brave again (which is good and bad!)

Ollie at 15 Months

Here's what the little guy is up to lately:

He loves to climb. He's pretty much part mountain goat.

He likes to push buttons on remote controls, the TV, the computer and phones. He especially loves playing with Jordan's iPod. He is always pulling something up to his ear as if it were a phone.

He doesn't walk on his own yet, but he will walk while pushing something.

He says "da" a whole lot more than he says "mom". He has started using the sign for "more" as a sign for "I want".

He can climb up and down the stairs.

He can eat pretty well with a spoon or a fork.

He likes to play with balls, cars, dinosaurs, and books

He has finally started to gain weight and at 15 months old, he was 19.5 lbs.

He likes to play peek-a-boo.

First Day of First Grade

Skyler started first grade last week.  He wasn't looking forward to it at all, after the first day he told me that he liked his teacher and he seemed happy with his classmates, but he still told me he didn't want to go back. There have been no fights in the mornings though, so I guess there wasn't too much truth to that statement. Today was day 4 and he finally said that he likes it. Hopefully he keeps liking it!

Here's the obligatory first day picture, even though he is not holding a cutesy sign stating that he is in first grade. I'm sure that makes me a horrible mom, or a least a bad historian.

Game Night

Skyler invented a game for us to play tonight. Normally this is quite troubling as his games usually involve really difficult rules that are only understood by him and therefore cater to him winning. Tonight's game was simple (other than the fact that we all had to use the same color lego as our playing piece - that way we wouldn't argue over what color we had) and mainly involved sharing either your favorite thing or the favorite thing of another family member depending on what space you landed on. We learned that Jonah's favorite things are the computer, playing, and eating (but only eating cheese sandwiches) and that Skyler thinks my favorite thing is doing the dishes. When asked "My Dad likes it when I" Jonah said, "watch shows on TV".

This Weekend

Once upon a time, I used to blog nearly everyday. Seriously, I did. This was back in the days of one child. This is not something I credit to the fact that I had more time on my hands two kids ago, but rather to the fact that everything Skyler did was new and wonderful and amazing. Now, nothing really seems all that new or exciting or amazing. Heck, my kids all look the same and wear all the same clothes so even some of the pictures don't even seem new. I like reading those old blog entries because even though it was all so normal and mundane at the time, it was a different normal and mundane than I experience now. Which means that all too soon we will be living an even different normal and mundane. When I think in those terms, it really makes me want to record a lot of the everyday things. All that said, here's a few things we did on the first full weekend in August, 2010.

On Friday night, we went swimming so Skyler and Jonah could show off their mad swimming skillz. Skyler went down the slide all by himself - hooray for him not being too scared! Jordan and I both proved to each other that we could pass the BSA swim test.

On Saturday, after grocery trips and chores, we dropped the kids off at friend's house so Jordan and I could go out on a date. We ran a few errands and then went to the zoo. It's amazing how much ground you can cover at the zoo with no kids in tow. Upon learning that was where we went, Jonah told us that the zoo isn't for dates, it's for moms and dads to take kids. Jordan's parents stopped by our house on their way through town and took us to dinner in honor of Jordan's birthday.

On Sunday Skyler decided he wanted to ride his bike with no training wheels, so Jordan took them off. After whining and crying over I'm not quite sure what, he calmed down and we drove over to a park so he could practice on some grass. He did such a good job, I'll admit it was much better than I thought he would do!

That was the weekend, now on to the last full week before school starts.

Swimming Lessons

On Friday, Skyler and Jonah finished up two weeks of swimming lessons. Skyler went from not wanting to put his head under the water to swimming on his own.

Jonah also was able to do a little bit of swimming on his own, but his biggest accomplishment was floating on his back, something he was very nervous about for awhile.

Jonah's teacher was a girl from our ward. A girl who he did not recognize unless she wore her hat! One day she didn't and I think he thought she was a different person. He said the swim teacher with a hat was nicer, so I'm glad she wore her hat every other day!

On both Fridays, the kids got to go down the water slide at the end of the lesson. Jonah was super excited about this. Well, they both were actually, but Skyler was also a bit scared. On Wednesday of the first week, he told me he wanted to go down the slide, so after his lesson was over we went over there. He decided he didn't want to do it. On Friday, he would only go if his teacher slid down with him on his lap. A week later, he went down all by himself and would swim over to the side after the teacher "caught" him. He wouldn't go down until he was sure she was ready for him though.

Jonah never needed a teacher to go down with him and he was even going down head first after awhile.

Skyler with his teacher Josh, who called him "homeboy". Skyler thought that was pretty cool.