Mr. NO COSTUME

Johnny has been Mr. No Costume for Halloween 2 years in a row. He just doesn't like to dress up, not even as a shepard for the Christmas Nativity.

This week I was in the attic and pulled out this costume Kyla wore for Halloween when she was one. Ky put it on and they played "chickie" for awhile then, SHOCKER, Johnny put it on. I took a couple pictures knowing this would be a once in a life time thing. Then he surprised me again by wearing it all day and then to bed!

Here is our cute Chickie Johnny Boy!

Fresh from the bath, Johnny put the costume right back on.

And here he is the next morning, reading Leo stories, as a chicken...

He Stands!

Leo is taking his sweet time with this whole being mobile thing, which is fine with me, most days... While in Utah I was telling my brother about how "ok" I am with it, and he said, just keep telling yourself that... :) The thing is, once Leo is walking it is all over, he will be off and running and I may never see my baby again. ;)

So yesterday in the bath Leo decided he would stand... and stand... and stand! He was so cute! If I said "show me standing, Leo." He would do it and then look so proud of himself and of course we all had to clap, Leo included. I didn't take any pictures due to the location... :) We did get him to show us the new trick later, in his jamies.

Way to go LEO!

Not sure where or when he learned to pull this face when the camera comes out... I love it!



More of the official "CHEESE" face... And you can see his fangs in this one. We have a little vampire baby, he has two teeth on bottom and two on top... the top two happen to be the fangs, not the front two. :)

Ky took these last two pictures, she does a pretty good job!

UTAH!

We went to Utah the end of July for a week with family. Beave had a work trip and not enough vacation time left so we drove up without him and he came later. The kids did so great on the drive, we took our time and stopped A LOT! The long drive was worth it when we got to spend a week with Grandma, Grandpa and cousins! All of my family was in Utah except my sister, Jess. We missed her! It was great to be with everyone else though! I have a brother in Michigan, Jess in Kansas and another brother in Colorado, then with me in Arizona we don't all get together very often. Good thing 2 sisters and a brother are already in Utah and didn't have to drive... :)

Cousins and ice cream; Boo, Ky and Bella.

Leo has a new trick, you ask him; "What does a cow say?" and Leo says "MOOOOO!" Sometimes he says moo for other things too, like asking for food... :)

I just love those big blue eyes!

Grandpa and Leo.

Grandma as a pioneer. We had family night and grandma told us a pioneer story of one of our ancestors. She dressed up and everything, the kids loved it.

Bounce House Blast from the Past!

I got together with some friends from high school, that's right the famed CHICAS! It was great to see those girls! Funny how no matter how long its been, we can pick right back up, like we still see each other every day.

Isabella and Ky, they are about 6 months apart and have a ton of fun together!

Johnny dude thought the bounce houses were AWESOME!

We didn't get any pics of us, just our kids...

The place we went to was Jumpin' Jacks and Tara and her husband happen to own it... it was tons of fun and a great place to take the kiddies, Thanks Tara!

The Olivers

We made a few field trips and had some fun times while we were all together.

We went to Temple Square one day.

Brothers.

View of the temple from the conference center roof.

Most of the family.

The kids turned Grandma's back yard into their own private water park: Slip n' slides, water balloons, kiddie pool, and water guns.

Uncle Matt showed them all up with his super long slip n' slide!

Devon contemplating whether or not it would be a good idea to get Grandpa with the water gun...

BBQ/Birthday Party.

The Birthday boys. Steve and my brother, Keith have the same b-day. They were both excited about the picture... really.

Too old. You are too old when you can't get up out of your chair to blow out your candles.

The princess table. Ky was in heaven, she had tons of girl cousins to play with all week!!

South Willow Canyon.

I have lots of great memories of going to the canyon for picnics. We tried to relive the glory days with a big old picnic one day.

Ring around the rosie girls.

It was so great to be with family, we can't wait until we can see them again!

TIRED!

At the end of our week at Grandma and Grandpa Oliver's we were all worn out!

Glassy eyed Leo.

He just moved to a big boy car seat right before our trip. Sad to say he was happier in the infant seat... quite the opposite of our other two kids.

Johnny caught some bug and it went to his lungs... it has been over a year since he has had to use a nebulizer, and we got out of the habit of taking it with us when we travel, lucky for us, my brother had one we could borrow. John was so good about "making his face into a fish face!"

Kyla was so upset about leaving Grandma's and cousins she cried and cried. Then she fell asleep before we even got out of the driveway, her sleep deprivation might have attributed to her DRAMA!! It is things like that, that make me really wish we could live closer to our families!

Oh and the bucket, it is a puke bucket, she was so upset, she insisted she was going to throw up... I'm really glad she fell asleep before she convinced her body to go through with it... :)

Hangin' with the Seamons'

We spent a day with our Seamons' cousins while in Utah. We had a fun filled day, but I didn't take any pictures until we were all getting ready to leave...

Amy and Brad

Mindy and Jeff




Brian and Jeanne




Beave and Millie




Spencer and Natalie... One of Beave's best friends from high school.

Thanks for the fun day everyone!

Fort Seamons

We moved the crib to clean out from under it: three binkies, two legos, a block and three puzzle pieces. When we moved it we created a little corner that looked just like "an awesome little fort."

With the help of a few blankets and some tape, we built our fort. We even used our cloud blanket for the roof so it would look like the sky!

Just the right size for three little ones and a few toys and books. Ky asked if we could keep it forever, does "until bedtime" count as forever to a 4 year old?! :)

Silliness.

So if the wise man built his house on the rock and the foolish man built his house on the sand what kind of woman builds her house out of blankets?!

Johnny's Prayers

John started saying his own prayers recently. It is really sweet, he prays for everyone in the family, usually multiple times.

"Please bless my mommy, Amelia.

Bless me for my little baby, Leo.

Bless my sister, Kyla.

Please bless my daddy, Steve.

Bless my daddy's brother, Johnny Boy."

He says he is a brother, not a son. Funny thing is Steve's brother is John... he goes by his middle name, Brian. So Brian gets extra prayers from Johnny everyday!

Yesterday, Steve was gone on a work trip and when John prayed, I asked him to remember to pray for Dad to be safe.

"Please bless my Dad, Steve, on his trip that he won't fall and break his whole body."

Funny, SWEET boy!

Monsoons!

FINALLY! We have been reading a book called, Come on Rain, for a couple weeks, and have been thinking come on rain for a couple weeks too...

It is a late start to our monsoon season this year but I think they are finally here! We had a great rain storm today. Johnny and Kyla wanted to put on their swim suits and swim in the rain... I talked them into jumping in the puddles in their rain boots.

John dude.

Ky and some of our mountain flowers. Can't wait for all the new flowers the rain will bring!

PARADE!

Leo refused to wear his hat... I think I always had a hat with a strap for Johnny, might be time for one of those for Leo.

Front row seats.

Kyla's stylin' 4th of July gear.

Philmore. Johnny picked out all the cars that looked like Lightning and his friends, the army jeeps were "half of Sarge."

Leo looks like such a big kid!



Steve's new job, how can he not with a name like that?! We are thankful for these firefighters, they saved our town and mountain last month!

Yep, there he is... CHEWY!

Resident Florist

Miss Kyla is all about flowers! Today we got a flower catalog in the mail and after looking at it for quite some time she told me she would like all the flowers in the book... ALL the flowers! I thought of her Grandma's they both have beautiful yards FULL of flowers! We try to get our mountain desert yard to be full of flowers, it is a bit of a struggle with limited water, and our friend the gopher who eats all the bulbs we plant and has now moved onto eating entire plants, roots and all... (cover your ears) stinkin' gopher!

And then there is our little florist who just can't resist a beautiful flower, it has to be picked and loved and shown to mom... We have been having this dilemma for years, I love that she wants to pick me flowers but I really would like some of them to stay in the yard and be pretty there. So we have FINALLY found a solution. Kyla can pick all the flowers she wants, if she brings them in and puts them in a vase of water AND doesn't pick more until those are done blooming. This is our second flower arrangement by the up and coming Miss Kyla's Flowers. It seems to be doing the trick!

Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July!!
We had a great weekend full of fun and sun... here are the highlights.

Parade Saturday morning in Flagstaff. We had front row seats, thanks to Mari who can get to a parade before it starts... we actually did make it there this year before it started but we still would not have gotten the great spot without Mari saving us a spot!

I think I mentioned last year, Flag lets EVERYONE into the parade. We were happy to see our unique favorite, the Star Wars Guild. It makes for a long parade, we left an hour and half into it.

(We took TWO cameras to the parade and left them BOTH in the car! We borrowed Mari's, I'll share some pics when I get them.)

Slip n' slide and water balloons. Saturday was hot enough to play in the water, so Steve pulled out the new slip n' slide. Ky and John wouldn't actually slide, they just ran through the little spray of water. Steve showed them up, he is a champion slider! We had water balloons too, two very unique things about our "water fight." #1 No one threw a balloon at anyone... they just threw them on the ground and thought it was cool to see them break. :) #2 We picked up the broken balloons... I guess Steve has "NEVER" picked up the balloon pieces before... :)

(Please try to ignore our "grass" it is a work in progress...)

BBQ. Saturday night we had some friends over for a BBQ. Steve went all American and got Carne Ranchera. It was great.

Fireworks! We LOVE fireworks!! Flag didn't have any this year due to the HOT DRY conditions. So we drove to Page for their fireworks. They were perfect.

I love the looks on Leo and Johnny's faces!

Johnny and his buddy, they were so cute at the fireworks!

Johnny celebrating with the finale.

I did say this was just the highlights right?!

Ok fine the whole story is that the camp ground was full when we got there so we ended up camping on the beach, not bad but noisy. AND then Kyla got sick. Sickie pukie on her brothers, in the car and in the tent. We pitched our tent at 11 pm, after the fireworks, and took it down at 1 am, 2 hours later. The second round of pukes in the tent which covered Johnny and his sleeping bag was the last straw, we packed it up and drove home. Ky had a bucket but you really can't blame a super tired 4 year old when she doesn't hit the bucket. So at 1 am Steve and I were trying to figure out what to do with a tent full of ickie blankets and sleeping bags. It was one of those things that we had to laugh at, if not I think I would have cried. We came up with this ingenious idea, I say inspiration.

It's our air mattress. It just looked like a nice big present, unfortunately this was not a pleasant one to open... It did the job though, the smell and slime were contained.

I have to give a BIG thanks to Steve who did most of the clean up duty, he came running out of the tent every couple minutes trying to keep himself from losing it too, but he made it. THANKS Beave! Plus he drove home in the middle of the night, getting here at 3:30 am, bright side, no traffic. :) So Page fireworks make the highlight list for the fireworks, for Steve's strong stomach, and for our heaven sent sense of humor.

Monday Movie. After a few hours of sleep and a few more hours of clean up, we went to see Toy Story 3! It was such a fun movie! I was nervous, my kids are such scardy cats and I had heard it was pretty intense, and it was, but they made it through. Kyla covered her eyes and hung onto Dad and Johnny spit at the screen. Thanks Mari and Amanda. No really, thanks, those two taught him to stick your tongue out and blow raspberries at the scary guys on the Disneyland rides, and it has stuck with John. So funny!

Miss Kyla showing off her "fireworks" accessory. This was Monday and she still looked a little green.

It was a great Fourth of July weekend! We love having Steve home from work, we can't get enough time with him!

We are so grateful for the amazing country we live in, the freedoms we have, and the people who have sacrificed so much for us.