Jacob's Lego house and Peyton's 1st pool adventure! June 22 and 23

Jacob was so proud of his lego house and asked daddy to take a picture of it.

My mom, "Nana Paula" gave me some money to go get Peyton a suit at Target. I had tried to find her one earlier this summer, and even before summer but they were all 12 months and larger. Well, Connie, a lady in our ward lives across the street from my mom and she came over to swim with us and her baby is just about a month younger than Peyton. He had on a cute swim shirt and shorts, she said she found them at Target just a few days before and they had just restocked them and they had girls too. So, my mom gave me the money and I went right then and there. Unfortunately all they had in the shirt style were bigger sizes, I went ahead and got her this suit so she didn't have to go naked! So, if you're wondering,"Why the bikini?" That's the story! I figure that while she's still in diapers it's really not that big a deal.
She would not look up she was so fascinated by the fabric.
The water was very cold, I didn't think she'd like it but she did!
Peyton is such a happy baby and really enjoys being near her brothers where she can see and hear them playing.
Nana gave her water from a cup for the first time and she did great.

June 21 YW overnighter and Babysitting Swap

Because we are now having Stake girls camp every year, we thought it would be a good idea to have an overnighter just with the girls from our ward. This way they could bond a little more with one another. The McCauley's were so nice to let us use their cabin and we all had a great time. Tyler gave a devotional on pitching you tents towards the temple and it was great and he enjoyed teaching his old Seminary kids again. After that we began a huge time consuming project by gluing pictures of the temple on these boards with grooves in them and then pouring poly eurothane on them (I'm sure I spelled that wrong!) and every few minutes running a popsicle stick in the grooves for over an hour. They turned out great though and looked like tiles! The next morning the girls, and Tyler and Matt and I all helped to rake pine needles around the cabin for a little service project and to say thank you for letting us use your cabin! All the girls ended up being the kind that get carsick, so I gave up my front seat and I ended up puking on the side of the road on the way home!


The Schafers are some very good friends of ours. They have 3 boys and twin boy and girl that are 6 weeks younger than Peyton. Noah, pictured below with Ben is just 1 week younger than Ben. The older 2 boys are pretty close in age to Micah and Jacob too. Anyway, we have been doing a babysitting swap with them because out kid situation is similar and our kids get along so well. We just found out that they are moving in August to Bakersfield! I am really very sad about this and plan on keeping in touch. She told me today that she would come back to town to go see Twilight with me when it comes out, so I'm going to hold her to it!
Me and my baby girl.
Peyton and Joshua holding hands, aren't they so cute?!
They kept studying each other. We will really miss you Schafers!!!

Hanford Train Trip June 18

Every year, every June to be exact, we take a train to Hanford with Play Pals, our playgroup. It is always so much fun. We ride the carousel and the old fashioned fire truck and we get ice cream at Superior Dairy, they have the best ice cream I have ever had. Anyway, this year was even better because it wasn't as hot. We are usually pretty miserable because of the heat, but this year it wasn't bad at all. Some of our group had already had lunch, so when people were starting to head over to the dairy we had not yet eaten lunch. I figured that we could get our ice cream and then have lunch and eat it right after, well, to make a long story short, everyone wanted to stay at the dairy and eat their ice cream, so we did too! Yes, we had ice cream for lunch. Micah asked me twice, "So, you mean we can eat our ice cream now?!" It was great, they give you so much that we were more than full for the rest of the afternoon. While we were there Peyton had a blowout poopy diaper in the stroller, uggh! On the flip side, Ben told me he had to pee! This was when he first started letting me know when he had to go! If you know Hanford, you probably know about all the sulfer in their water. Do you know what sulfer smells like? Well, let me tell you this. When we were finished using the bathroom and Ben was at the sink washing his hands he told me he got poo poo on him. Well, he just thought he did because of how the water was smelling from the faucet, it is disgusting!

Jacob, Benjamin and Micah on the way to Hanford.
Peyton's 1st Train ride!!!
Ben likes to do this face for pictures all the time lately.
I am rarely in pictures, so I took one myself! Me and Peyton.
I love the faces Jacob makes when he is doing things! Thanks Angie! (She is the one in the back that took care of all the details, she even brought bubbles and balls and little gift bags for the kids to keep them happy!)

Peyton's 1st Carousel ride!
Benji on the carousel, we must have all ridden this a dozen or more times, and it's very fast, I got pretty dizzy.
Micah and his friend Joseph.
This is Ben on the firetruck. He was trying to get everyone to wave at him. Micah rung the bell whenever we saw someone on the street.
Enjoying ice cream at Superior Dairy, we really got way too much! I divided it up into smaller cups, next time I need to take a picture of the size of one single serving, it's about 3 scoops, big scoops!
Micah, Jacob and Joseph, going home.

$7 Monday Madness-June 16

Wow! For each &7 ticket we bought to the Grizzlies Baseball game we also got a free pass to The Island water park, a free hot dog and soda, and a free chili dog from Wiener Shnitzel! Can't beat that! It was one of the best family nights we have ever had. We spent the drive to the stadium singing primary songs and having a simple lesson, the kids all had fun, even Peyton was having a blast! We sat behind the players from the opposing team, the ones that were getting ready to go up to bat, Micah hung out right behind them and one of the players gave him a ball. Jacob cohersed Ben into asking for one, so Ben got one too! Jake felt pretty jipped but didn't have the guts to go ask for one himself, we also discouraged it because our family had already scored 2 balls. Anyway, he ended up asking the guy to autograph his program, it was pretty cute.

Ok, this was a few days before the ball game, but he looked so cute I had to throw it in somewhere. Nana Byn and Papa Ron got him a bunch of spiderman swim stuff for his birthday, it went nicely with the pool Nana Paula and Papa Larry got him.

Mmm, hot dogs and Baseball, it doesn't get much better than that.
Micah and his very own Soda, they were thrilled that they got their own.
This is where Micah hung out most of the game.
Peyton being her goofy self, no not really, she's just got a tongue thing going on lately.
Me and my babies!
My first child and I, No I'm kidding, I love this guy!!! And yes, that would be Peyton under Micah's hat.
Jacob getting the autograph of.....some guy.

New Obsession

Ok, I promise I will be working on and posting more blogs soon. We have been doing things and having some fun and of course getting pictures of most of it! I have been spending most of my computer time, ok, well, all of my computer time downloading digital scrapbooking stuff. I now have way more than I need and I really need to get to actually using it. I just got a little compulsion I guess. So, if you are into digital scrapbooking I suggest you take a look at my links, just be careful not to obsess! There are so many more sites that are great too that I have not linked, but my favorites are there. So, expect some new posts in the next few days, I hope I still have readers out there!!!

Pasadena, yes, more

Our last day of vacation brought us to the Huntington Library and Botanical gardens. There was so much at this place, if you ever are able, go. There were acres and acres of beautiful gardens and water fountains, there were greenhouses full of exotic plants, a bible from the 15th century. So much, it was amazing, we took over 100 pictures and this blog was kind of stressing me out, so, I'm not going to even try to pick my favorite pics, I'm just going to haphazardly put some up!

Just one of the many beautiful fountains.

It was very hot that day!


Check out that background! I know, those boys are so cute too!
That leaf is even bigger than I am!!!!!!!!
The boys really didn't want to leave until they caught a lizard, thanks daddy for catching one! That thing thrashed around like his life depended on it, I wish we would have gotten video of it.

Zoobilation

Mine is probably the only zoobilation blog you will see Orange Explosion in! Just 2 days following Jacob's field trip too the zoo we were back again for a zoo members only event. It was there in the parking lot that we spotted this beauty...


Of course, you may know that the zoo is in a pretty "Ghetto" area, so this really isn't all that surprising, I just had to get a picture of it.
feeding the giraffes, my favorite thing to do at the zoo


Zoobilation was pretty fun. We missed going to a few of the behind the scenes things we could have seen (animal hospital and reptile house) but we did go into the elephants area, very cool. Ben peed in the toilet while we were there too, that was a bonus (I am so sick of potty training!)