Last Days of Summer

Any day I get to see one of these two, it's a great day. Seeing both of them at the same time? Best day ever. 

Leslie blessed her new baby, so we went down for the event. And then made Jeff take pictures of us. Holding hands.

I had the itch to get Eli signed up for some sort of something. I have this desire for my kids to have some sort of hobby or activity that they love and can grow and learn how to work hard and see the fruits of their hard work through improvement. I don't care what the heck that hobby or activity is, but I want SOMETHING. I started looking around. I was on the verge of signing Eli up for karate, but my heart wasn't totally in it and it was much more of a financial commitment than the last minute parkour class I found through a Groupon deal. We got a slamming deal for 2 months' worth of parkour, so I signed both boys up to see if it was something we could dive into full force. 

Their class is at a gymnastics gym and we've loved it! Parkour is basically the art of flipping off walls and rolling all over the floor, basically impersonating Spider Man, so they seem to be enjoying themselves. 

The first week we went, the gym was filled with a bunch of teenage boys practicing gymnastics. They were awesome! I always thought gymnastics was more for girls, but there wasn't a single girl in the gym. I think gymnastics might be just the thing I was looking for. We might just have to give it a try after our parkour class is over. 

We spent one evening at Pineview with some friends. We enjoyed bumming rides off the boats and jet skis other people brought when the best we had to offer was...

This inflatable boat that ended up being a total bust. 

One afternoon Eli started picking flowers for me. It melted my heart. 

My heart melted even more when his younger brothers saw his example and also began picking bouquets for their mother. Sweet boys!

We made one more trip into the mountains for a campfire before summer was over. 

I love seeing my boys explore nature. 

We'll end with a cute picture of Lincoln just because!

Times My Kids Were Weird

I was tempted to title this "Times My Kids Were Weird Part I" because I'm sure this is the first of many posts to come of this sort. Because part of what makes kids so stinkin' adorable is the fact that they are -- there's no better word to describe it -- downright weird sometimes.  Here are a few of my favorite weird kid moments from the summer.

The week before school started, Eli experienced a moment of anxiety as he realized he hadn't quite been practicing those reading keys his kindergarten teacher had encouraged him to study all summer the way he maybe should have been. As I suggested it might be a good idea to review a few of them, he took my advice and spent an afternoon cramming for what he deemed to be any first day of first grade prep. He dutifully wrote down every word he knew how to spell followed by all the numbers he had the patience to write out. Then he proudly put his work in his backpack, eager to show his teacher his self assigned last day of summer cram-work. 

Lincoln has discovered the joy of putting things on his head. Including headbands, goggles, and every once in a while, his favorite, a bra. 

Lincoln and Carson spent an afternoon in the stocks. 

Don't be mistaken. Half of that brown beard is dirt. Apparently tastes just as good as the chocolate half though. 

We went up to the mountains for a campfire one night. Eli never willingly stops long enough for me to take a picture of him, so I happily whipped out the camera when he shouted, "Hey, take a picture of me doing this, Mom!" and then stood like so:

Meanwhile, Carson was proudly donning not just socks and sandals, but socks and flip flops for the excursion. 

Here's another cool pose Eli was willing to have me document. 

Lincoln's favorite way to spend the afternoon:

Lincoln is one of those quiet terrors. He sneaks around silently ripping the house apart or quietly attempting to cause some sort of accidental self infliction. One morning I had to blow dry my hair, but Lincoln was running amuck, so I threw him in the empty bath with his clothes on and a few toys, just to contain him long enough for me to get my hair dry. When I got him out, he still insisted I wrap him up in a towel which made me chuckle. 

Eli is the king of make-shift toys. Eli has spent days carrying around screws, magnets, my chap stick, pretty much any knick knack he can get his hands on that isn't his, he's eager to play with it long enough to become its assumed owner. This is the day he became the assumed new owner of his dad's measuring tape and refused to put it down long enough for a picture. 

I don't often find humor in my kids' food scraps, but I did find Carson's discarded toast laughable one morning. He knows where the good stuff is. 

I had to let the toast incident slide because Carson is a boy who knows his food and knows what he wants! He can't waste stomach space on crispy toast edges when he's got 3 lunches to down a few hours later! All the boys have different preferred foods, so I'm usually ripping the whole fridge out every afternoon for lunch. Carson will see what I scoop for Lincoln and insist he needs that. Then sees what I scoop out for Eli and demands a taste of that too. By the end of lunch, he tends to have 2-3 bowls to each of the other boys' 1. He's fun to cook for because he's my most adventurous eater, but sometimes he gets a little demanding with his lunch requests.

Now let's not pretend the kids are the only ones allowed to be weird sometimes. Every once in a while they may peek their heads outside of their rooms after I've put them to bed and find me downing chocolate covered strawberries while binge watching episodes of The Bachelor, so we've all got our thing. 

Stay weird, kids.

Summer Nights

Besides leaving a neighborhood filled with great people, we were also sad to leave a neighborhood that was flat and conducive to bike riding. 

One of my favorite ways to spend a summer evening at our new place is to bike over to the church parking lot for a nice, flat racetrack where the boys can practice their pedaling. 

On Mondays, we've enjoyed a few Family Home Evenings out back on our trampoline.

I'm determined to keep my parents' lawn looking pristine. I keep joking with neighbors that we have to keep the lawn nice because that's what everyone sees, and people could tattle to my parents if they see the lawn take a turn for the worse, where the inside of the house would be a little harder for them to spy on and report back to my parents. I'm hoping if we keep up a nice appearance on the outside, people will assume we're taking care of the inside too and report only good things back to the landlords.

Jeff and I both enjoy mowing the lawn, so we often battle over who gets the job every week. My parents left us their lawn mower, and we had a lawn mower from our other house, so it's not uncommon to see us both out there, each with a lawn mower, team working our way through the grass trimming.

I can't say I've ever held a baby and been in dress clothes while I've mowed the lawn though, so Jeff definitely has me beat on that one!

My sister and I are trying to take full advantage of our close proximity. We decided to do a date night swap once a month which has been a fun little thing for all parties involved to look forward to. 

Our first date night was spent at The Cheesecake Factory downtown which happened to be right next to where Jeff would be starting his new job a few days after. It was fun to spend the evening on his new stomping grounds and to take a little peek at his new building.

Jeff was ready for a change with his job, and we figured now that we were closer to Salt Lake, we had a great opportunity to explore a lot of different job options that would allow a change for Jeff and a better commute than if he were to stay at his old job. He found a job at Zions fairly quickly, felt good about it, and has enjoyed the change!

I was looking through old blog posts last week and found this little gem. Looks like Jeff is following in Eli's footsteps.

We kept joking that we didn't know what to do without any kid buffers keeping us busy.

I kept obsessively touching Jeff because I wasn't use to having a free hand, let alone 2 free hands!

When August rolled around, we planned our second month's date night on our anniversary. We went mini golfing. 

Then we went to a food truck park where we got some flame licked pizza. 

Then we grabbed a cookie on our way back to the kids. I was on a quest to find as many 8s as I could on our date because we were celebrating 8 years since 8-8-08. 

It's been so fun to spend some summer evenings sneaking away on dates. 

Getting Settled

Here we document our first official Sunday in our new ward with the infamous front porch shot. 

The boys were looking dashing for their big day. 

Unpacking has been a slow process. My goal was just to unpack one box a day. We've finally cleared everything out of the boxes, including any stray children. 

In fact, we're feeling so settled that Jeff and I have even found the time to start up our Friday night date nights again. For our first date night in our new place, we watched an instructional Youtube video about how to draw the little lizard from Tangled. 

Eli and Carson found our drawings in the morning and flipped out. They get a little jealous whenever Jeff and I talk about our date nights, or whenever they find evidence that we did something fun while they were asleep. I thought it would be fun to let them watch the video and give it a try, not expecting anything too recognizable to come from their sketches. 

Eli shocked me! He did such a good job! I was so impressed with how well he followed the instructions. I love the mouth area and smile especially, and the tail wrapped around the branch really impressed me! I'll have to have him take a few Youtube drawing classes more often!

Other Eli drawings include Eli's reminders after our FHE lesson on The Word of Wisdom. We encouraged the boys to draw all the fruits and vegetables they could think of so we could hang it on the fridge to remind us to eat good food. Eli finished up his drawing and then, unprovoked, drew a no smoking sign to help remind us not to smoke. Word of Wisdom lesson = success!

We are also settled enough to have signed up for a city summer class with cousins. 

By the time our 3-week course was through, I was wishing I had signed them up for another class to keep us going all summer long. It was such a fun way to spend our mornings...

Until certain little people would get bored and find themselves in unfortunate situations. 

Getting into unfortunate situations is kind of Lincoln's life theme right now though. 

He is at a developmental milestone where his mobility has surpassed his logic so I spend the majority of my day rescuing him from window sills, table edges, or dangling from the edge of the trampoline. He'll get himself perched somewhere and then helplessly call out, "Stuck! Stuck!" Until help arrives. 

And if there's chocolate worth climbing for. You can bet he's there, but this time patiently saying "Please. Please." Until help arrives. 

The only time I can ensure Lincoln is safe is when he's belted into the high chair. But then nothing around him is safe because he's got a 20-foot splash zone. If he doesn't like something on his tray, his method of rejection is to windshield wiper his entire tray with his arm until all the tray's contents are scattered about him on the floor. The damage is done in a swift and abrupt manner and he pays no mind to the damage his blueberry smoothie will cause once violently swiped onto the floor. 

Just as quickly as he can clear his tray, he can swipe a seat. He is the king of opportunity. He never gets heavily involved in playing with toys. He prefers to people watch. He'll wait for Carson to get up for a drink of water at breakfast to slime into his seat for an extra bite of pancake...

Or he hops into my headphones whenever I get up to go to the bathroom. He's like an alligator. He quietly and seemingly innocently lurks until the just the right opportunity arrives to which he quickly strikes.

I've been bad at documenting the funny things the kids have said. Here's a good Eli quote I don't want to forget. My parents were talking to Eli and asking him how old he is. Then they said, "Eli! You're going to be 8 soon. What happens when you're 8?!?"

Expecting to hear him reply, "I'll get baptized," they were a little surprised when he instead responded, "I will get the Holy Ghost."

We were all impressed with his answer and laughed at his thoughtful reply. He asked us what was so funny to which my dad said, "Nothing. That was just a good answer."

Then Eli matter-of-factly said, "Actually Grandpa, it's the correct answer." 

He has since surprised us during Family Home Evening as Jeff and I will thoughtfully try to prepare lessons that will apply to the kids that they may not have learned yet. I wasn't sure the boys knew the Joseph Smith story, so I chose that for my lesson one Monday. I was two words into the story when Eli said, "Oh. I know this story." and proceeded to give a more detailed version of the restoration of the church than I was prepared to give. The same thing happened a few weeks later with the story of the 10 lepers. 

He's such a spiritual giant and surprises me every day with his desire to do good and his innate love of the gospel. He's such a great example to me. 

One day we were all packed up to go to the library, fed, went to the bathroom, had found all of our library books, shoes on, headed out the door before I realized I had no idea where my library card was and I had no idea where to look for it in the mess of the house still being a little unsettled from the move. 

I was mumbling to myself in annoyance as I rummaged through bags in the garage to try to find the card. Eli politely came over to me and said, "Mom. I know something we can do to help find your library card." My pride got the best of me and I nearly cringed as I knew exactly what he was going to say. I was too flustered to want to have a teaching opportunity on prayer in this frantic moment that I was trying to get out the door. Plus a little part of me was worried maybe a prayer to find the card wouldn't work and then I'd have to explain why prayers aren't always answered on top of trying to find the card and get out the door. 

I bit my tongue, swallowed my pride, and decided to have a little faith that a little prayer might be answered. And what a great opportunity THAT would be if we DID happen to find the card with he help of a prayer. Eli, Carson, Lincoln and I gathered in a circle in the garage as Eli sweetly offered a prayer requesting that we could find the library card. 

I took a deep breath. Willed myself to have faith we would actually find the card. Within seconds of the prayer being over, I instantly remembered where the bag was that ha my card in it. And it was definitely in a spot I never would have checked in my frantic rummaging. It was a faith building experience for me because I got to see Eli's strong example of child-like trust in the Lord, and I just hope that experience has planted a seed that Eli's faith can continue to grow on. 

I am seriously so impressed with Eli. He reminds me every day that we are all born with the light of Christ. The things he knows to be true haven't necessarily been taught to him, but he just oozes goodness and has such a desire to follow what's right (on most days :) ).