AUGUST

For the past three years we have spent most of the month of August in Utah. School is seriously going to cramp our style... We enjoyed our last August in Utah with lots of fun with cousins and friends. I was not as good with the camera this year, only 160 pics of half the things we did...

Leo's first interactive smile, the day Steve left for Scotland.


Dinosaur park with Seamons cousins is a tradition, Johnny loved all the dino's, except the ones inside that looked and sounded a little too real!!


Kyla has a dress she calls her dinosaur park dress, she was distressed when we didn't pack it this year, "What will I wear to the dinosaur park?!" Luckily Grandma bought these matching dresses for Ky and her cousin, Erica, it is the new "dinosaur park dress."


The orange bench bunch. It was so nice to spend time with cousins! This year our Idaho cousins came to grandma's too so we got to spend some time with them, yeah!


Johnny and Kyla love to "chalk." They got really into it this day at grandma's!!





Kyla had been asking to go to the temple and I planned on going to temple square but grandma went to a neighbor's sealing at the Ogden temple so we just tagged along with her. Ky was remembering the Snowflake temple and asked if there would be two fountains and a bridge, like the Snowflake temple, I said no, just one... mom was wrong, there were lots of fountains and a bridge!! The first thing Ky told grandma when she came out was that "Mom was wrong."


We went to visit my Grandma Oliver. She was asleep when we got there and took a minute to wake up, but as soon as she opened her eyes she got a huge smile! She was happy to meet Leo and happy that Kyla would give her lots of "loves."


Lizzy's beautiful Isabelle! She is such a sweet delicate girlie girl, we love her. She and Johnny are a month apart but so different, Johnny is all boy!


Lizzy's neighbor has 5 cats and they spend half their time at Lizzy's house, more if she feeds them. :) Kyla LOVED the kitty's! Poor girl, her mom won't get a pet.



Cute cousins!


Silly girl!


My Grandma Grover with the boys.

giggles!!

We are in Utah playing with cousins and grandmas while Steve is "working" in Scotland. While Steve has been gone Leo has started to smile (in response to us, not just randomly) and then today he whipped this out. He is a wonderful sweet baby, we love him!!! Thanks to Aunt Lizzy we got it recorded.

Kyla and her best bud Jade...

Kyla has had a best best friend all her life, Jade. They are 6 weeks apart and SO much a like! They have had tons of fun this summer...

Swim lessons



Dance class


Silly girls in their matching jamies made by Jade's mom.



We are so glad this family lives here in Flag and are dreading the day Jade's dad will finish school and they will move on...

Funny Johnny

John has had some winners this week, he has kept us laughing.
He is really into Bob the Builder, for awhile he wanted us all to call him Bob. He is over that but still sings the theme song when he plays, "Can we fix it? Yes we can! Bob the Builder, get the job done." So this afternoon he was outside playing with Kyla and I heard him say, "let's get the job done, Kyla." I am not sure what the job was but they got it done...
He and Kyla are always asking for snacks and treats, they are hungry little monsters. The other day John said "Mom, I'm a lot of hungries!" That meant he was really really hungry, not just ordinary hunger.
And speaking of food, in sacrament meeting this week after eating the bread he said "YUM YUM THAT'S GOOD BREAD!!" and yes, he yelled it! The bishopbric have told Steve they watch our kids for entertainment...
He has learned some Jedi mind tricks to get his way, when he asks a question he follows it up with "yes?" He tells you the answer you are suppose to give, no need to think... ok maybe not Jedi but it does work to convince me sometimes. "Mom, can I have a treat? Yes?" Half the time I say yes because I think he is so cute!
He is a cute little boy and I love him lots!

sleeping through the night...

Last night when Leo woke up to eat "in the middle of the night" I checked the clock, I always do, I am not sure why it matters but I like to know what time it is when he wakes up... Anyway, I was SURPRISED to see 5:30 on the clock! He usually wakes up around 3 to eat, another 2 hours is one huge step closer to sleeping through the night. I don't consider 5:30 am to be morning... he has to make it to 6:30 or 7 before I will give him the real sleep through the night title. So even though Johnny was awake all night coughing and in and out of my bed all night I still felt like I got a great nights sleep until.... Steve's alarm went off, I checked the clock, it said 8 am... Steve's alarm goes off at 6 am... my clock was 2 hours ahead!!! What a cruel joke! At that moment of sleepy disappointment I remembered Ky and John playing on my bed the night before and realized they must have changed my clock then. So Leo and I are still on the night shift... we are both ok with it, for now.

Dare Devil Johnny

Yesterday I came out of my room to find Johnny standing in a small tote ready to slid down the stairs. When I asked in my super calm mommy voice what he was doing he informed me he was riding his "gate board" down the stairs. I suggested that might be too dangerous. He told me "Mom, its not dangerous, its FUN!!!" Steve has been waiting for the day our mostly timid Johnny Boy would turn over a new dangeroso leaf, the day may have arrived. I just hope he manages to stay out of the hospital!

Pics of the CUTE kiddos

My latest attempt to capture these beauties in a pic...



Getting all three at once was fun, I was holding Leo with one hand and taking the picture with the other...









Repeat of this pic, it is my favorite! I didn't get any better ones this day.






Johnny is growing up! He lost all his hair in a freak accident... that is what Steve thought when he came home. He asked, "What happened?!" Truth is I gave him a hair cut, that is what happened. :) It is a little shorter than I planned...





Kyla is such a beautiful girl, inside and out!






A new family picture is on the list, we will see if we can get it done before Leo grows out of his "picture outfit"...

Happy Pioneer Day!

Our little Leo! I just love those big eyes!! He is such a sweet baby. We ALL adore him.




I was trying to get some pictures of Leo and Johnny was trying to play with him at the same time. Play is much more important, right?! Oh and Kyla took the picture, I am going to have to get her a camera of her own, she is always asking to take pictures!




We have finally got out rainy season, yeah for monsoons. We love to play in the rain and the flowers love the rain too.




Pretty flowers.




We don't get all the excitement of celebrating the 24th in Utah but we still had some pioneer day fun and festivities. Our stake had a breakfast and crafts. We had told Ky it was a pioneer party so when we got there she was looking for the balloons and cake! My super talented friend made Kyla this little pioneer outfit. Her little girl has a matching one but they were at grandma's for the day so we didn't get pics together. Kyla thought it was the best!

random

Some random things, that is pretty much our life right now, no schedule or any idea of what will actually happen on any given day...

Leo and big brother Johnny.



Kyla and Johnny love to hold Leo... still.



We made a video for grandpa Seamons' b-day last month and never sent it, we talked on the phone instead. It is such a cute one of Johnny though that I am sharing it.



Kyla has been on an extremely aggressive "why" kick lately. The other day she was talking to Steve and asked three quick why questions in a row not waiting for an answer to any of them and followed that up with "Why dad? Why, why, why?!" When I tell her "I don't know" she says "try mom, try to tell me." I try to explain that no matter how hard I try I can't tell her why the person in the car next to us is driving a red car, why they are driving to town, or why the girl is driving not the boy. Sometimes a guess works, "maybe red is their favorite color..." She is a smart girl and I am glad she is so inquisitive, I am also glad when daddy gets home and can share the responsibility of answering her endless questions. :)

Jam Jam

We made strawberry jam today. Nothing too exotic, just freezer jam that takes a half hour. We love it though, especially on Steve's warm homemade bread!! It is a good thing it is quick Kyla and Johnny were drooling the whole time, they could hardly wait. Thankfully Leo did wait, not only will he take a binky but he also tolerates his swing, at least long enough to make dinner etc. What a great kid!

Father's Day

Steve got to celebrate the day by taking Kyla and Johnny to church, by himself... He said it went ok thanks to our friends, Thanks Mari! I managed to get a nap in and dinner made in the 3 hours they were gone. Here is Ky's favorite part... the broccoli. She always asks for it in the store, almost as many times as she asks for treats. Yeah for our good eater!




And here is our copy cat, he isn't really into the veggies but a chance to be silly and copy Kyla can't be passed up. I think he must of got some broccoli down before spitting it out...




I put Kyla's hair in braids for the first time. She thought it was SOOOO cool! We overheard her tell Johnny she couldn't play a game because she wanted to keep her "brains" nice for church... LOL!

More Leo

LEO

Here he is!! One day old and won our hearts already!



Proud Daddy! Or is that a nervous daddy... probably both.



Going home.



"I love baby Leo!"



Doesn't matter what it is as long as it is WITH baby Leo. Look at those brothers, can you say mischief?!!!



Big sister, big helper! Ky has been so great helping with Leo, she loves it!



And again WITH baby Leo.

SURPRISE!!!

So who knew... the flu induces labor...
The punch line is that our beautiful baby boy, Leo Oliver Seamons, was born 3 weeks early on June 10th. Weighing in at 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20.5 inches long.
The long story is that we had the flu at our house, Ky Sunday night then Johnny and I Tuesday night, why do kids always get sick in the middle of the night?! It was a fast working bug, 12 hours of the sickies and then back to normal. Except for those who are 37 weeks pregnant and really dehydrated after 12 hours of fluids going out and none going in... Contractions started around 3 pm, after a half hour of telling myself it wasn't real then another half hour of trying to track down someone to tell me they weren't real I gave in and called my dr., you know what he said... "hospital." The good thing is that Steve had stayed home from work to take care of us so when the word came down he was already there packing bags and calling neighbors to watch the kids. We did have a plan of who to take them to but they are in Colorado this week, didn't think 3 weeks before my due date there would be a problem with that... We got the kids to friends and us to the hospital by 4:30. I was in a bed and hooked to monitors and an IV faster than my flu induced stupor could keep up with. The IV is usually the WORST part of labor for me, crazy I know, but the threat of an IV could be the best birth control for me. But this one was in so fast, I could have kissed the nurse! My dr came to check things out and decided that this was the real thing, baby was coming one way or another. He was concerned I may have to have a C-section because the stress the baby was under. Thankfully the IV fluids did the trick and 5 hours later we had our healthy baby Leo. He came even faster than Johnny. We were all super surprised but very very thankful!
We are home now being taken care of by Steve's parents and are doing great! Kyla and Johnny love the new baby! When we got home Ky ran to the car to greet us and asked, "where's the baby?!" first thing, forget that I hadn't seen her in two days, (also thanks to the flu, no kids allowed in the maternity wing...). At least Johnny had an excited "Mommy!!" and a hug for me before Leo stole his attention. :) When Johnny had his turn to hold Leo he said, "I love baby Leo." It was so cute!! Now he is always checking to see if he is awake, he really wants to play with him, and whenever Leo makes any noise Johnny wants to know what and why. Kyla is being an awesome big sis, she loves to hold him and wants to help take care of him.
I have about a million pictures of Leo, next post I will put some up. He really is a cutie, but then I am biased...

"undone" and back again

So we got our room finished 2 weeks ago, enjoyed it for 4 days, decided to not pass up the free carpet offer we got and took it apart again... It was suppose to be for a day, pull out all the furniture take out the carpet Thursday night and have new carpet Friday morning. Well it rained and I guess you can't lay carpet in the rain. It was kind of bad timing, Friday before Memorial day... They told us they couldn't come until the next Wednesday. UGH!!! The only major problem was that we hadn't planned on this being long term so I stuffed the laundry room full... which meant no access to the washer and dryer... forget that our kitchen had a computer desk in it and the living room was stuffed full, when everyone in the family started to run out of underoos that is when this mommy started to lose it. Wednesday morning came and "the carpet guy" called to say he couldn't come until Friday! I cried, Steve called someone else and the long story short is that we finally got our carpet in Friday night. (crying and calling someone else didn't really speed the process much...) After a Saturday of cleaning we are back to done... again. It is nice to have carpet done and not have that hanging over our heads "to do sometime" and with the extra couple days without carpet, Steve put in the tile for the new door entry and under the fireplace. SO it really is great that it is done but it took a tole on me, which means the whole family had a rough week... :)

Life back to "Normal"

It's DONE!!! Steve finished the construction last Wednesday, we took the rest of the week to get everything clean and put back. I can't tell you how NICE it is to have our house back AND an awesome new room to enjoy. As usual Beave did a great job and the room is wonderful.


This is the basement before... way before. These are pics from Steve's buying of the house. We changed some things along the way but it mostly looked like this until last month. The sliding glass door is gone, three new windows are now in its place. The curtained shelf above the door was taken out a year+ ago and Beave put in an attic storage with a pull down ladder...




2 months ago Beave remodeled our laundry room, he switched out the bifold doors for a pocket door and put in some DEEP shelves for me! During demolition we discovered that at one time this ENTIRE room was the blue of the doors...
The month before that he redid the stairs...




There is now a door where this window and wall heater used to be.




Drum roll please... This is it!! I tried to get the room from every angle, more info and more pictures than most of you will want but I am really excited about it all.




New stairs and laundry room door.





One of my FAVORITE parts about the new room is the toy "room". It has not even been a week but I love it! Johnny's favorite game is "dump 'd out" and he does just that, dumps out all the toys into a big pile! With this set up I am not walking through the "toyses" pile all day long. I still don't love it as we have to clean up all the toys which were never played with other than their brief moment of glory as they were dumped out of their bucket. BUT this makes it so much better.




The toy room even comes with walls for writing on. We got the idea from some friends and Beave had to do it. For the most part the marker has stayed on the walls...
The window we took out to make room for the new door found a home here. I love all the natural light in here now!




And speaking of light, here are the new windows. They are great, we wished they faced the forest though instead of the road...




In case some of you were concerned about the fate of Bucky the Beaver, here is proof that he is doing well. Someone suggested he should find a new home, in the attic or something but don't worry the idea was promptly shot down.




Oh yeah, here is the one thing left to do, before next winter we have to tile behind the fire place. Beave was worn out and I was done with construction so we opted to wait on it.





The new door, I am a big fan of blinds inside the door.




The desk's new home along with coat hooks and shoe bench.




I am really happy about this room being done even though Johnny still calls it the construction... I am extra happy because the rest of the projects for the summer are outside things!!! Oh and "have a baby" moved to the top of the to do list...