Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!
Having a kid at Halloween time is great! We took Kaden around the block trick or treating and he loved it (or we loved getting all the candy he he he -- please note who is carrying the bag ).


This is Kaden and our neighbor Jamison.

Here is Kaden with his eyes focused on the bowl of candy Rob was holding.




Here is my little mouse holding his very own pumpkin from his uncle Noel's garden.
Happy Halloween everyone.

Busy Busy Busy!!!

Yea, the back yard has grass too!!! I am so happy it is done. It was a ton of work. Rob and I felt like pioneers, sent to Lehi, and we needed to sow and till our family farm. We would just rake and rake and rake all the top soil until our bodies just ached. Our ground was SOOOOOOO rocky it took forever to smooth it out. It was crazy.
Rob's great family and some of our neighbors came and helped us lay down sod last Friday evening and Saturday morning.

Kaden loved being in the dirt. He would crawl all over and when we weren't looking he would pull out his binky and eat the dirt. I think I carried him into the sink about 10 times over the past few weeks to rinse his mouth out.

Anytime Rob would dig a hole for a sprinkler head Kaden would wiggle his little bum down into the hole.

We found a fuzzy caterpillar. It is on the end of the shovel. We watched it crawl across the entire yard. It was pretty fast, a lot faster than I would have expected.

Kaden has been quite the character lately. He walks, tries to talk, and loves to tease. He always pulls Rob and my shirts up and tickles our stomachs and says "tikatikatika." He also grabs things from us and runs across the room then turns back and gives a "can't catch me" look.

Here are some pics from a night a few days ago when he was being really silly.

Also, he loves to crawl into his toy bucket. (same idea as crawling into the sprinkler holes...he loves it). I discovered him inside of it for the first time last week. I about laughed my head off.

Well, there is our happening for the past few weeks. I am excited to move my focus toward other activities rather than settling the territory of Lehi!

Green Grass At Last!

We have been super busy this past week and a half. Rob, his bother, and his Dad installed the sprinkling system last Thursday-Saturday. We were planning on taking a week to get dirt, level it out, install the sprinkler heads, and have the yard hydroseeded. INSTEAD... we found out that our homeowners association doesn't allow hydroseed in the front yard and we would have to buy sod instead. Can you say $$$$$$. We found a place that had sod on super good sale until Wednesday. So instead of taking our time and getting the yard ready, we pulled a yard marathon. On Monday we had our dirt delivered while we were at work. Tuesday morning we had a guy come with a bobcat and spread it out. Tuesday afternoon we started to install the sprinkler heads and it took us until 11:00 at night! (yea, we are sprinkler rookies!). All day Wednesday we spent raking our dirt out as flat as we could and digging trenches to fix our rain gutter pipes that weren't buried very good. Good thing it rained all day Wednesday because that made our job a lot easier. Mud is great to rake and dig...yea right! We had Rob's great family come and help us lay sod on Wednesday night. Rob and I then worked well into the night adjusting the sprinkler heads so they sprayed the grass instead of the street. Well, again we are sprinkler rookies so we finally gave up and watered the rest with the hose because it was too dark to see. We then went to work all day Thursday and spent Thursday night finishing adjusting the sprinkler heads. I am way sad because I missed dinner and a movie with all my girl friends on Thursday night. Friday and Saturday were spent installing more sprinkler heads and making more adjustments to where they spray. I am pretty sure if we didn't have a 14 month old to take care of while trying to do the yard at the same time things would go a lot faster, but that's OK, we sure love him! All I can say is we are exhausted. The bad part is that was only the front yard!

Also, Kaden has finally learned how to walk. He has been taking a few steps here and there for the past 1-2 months, but today everything finally clicked. He can walk about 10 - 15 steps before falling. He is 14 months and we were begining to wonder if he would ever walk. By the looks of the pictures you can see he is really steady :)

So I had to include this picture because I thought it was so cute. Kaden keeps getting the swiffer duster out of the cupboard. I finally put a clean refill cloth on it had just let him play with it. The poor boy obviously doesn't have any toys and has to play with cleaning supplies. Poor Kaden!

Also...Happy Birthday Rob! We celebrated with some cake with our neighbors, but that was pretty much it. I feel bad we didn't do anything, but we were sooooo busy. Anyways...Happy B-day Rob!

Post O' Nothing Much!

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. I don't think we have been up to much since I have no new pictures on my camera. We did go up to Logan over Labor day weekend so Rob could go dove hunting with his Dad and Brother. They were pretty successful with hunting the doves, but Rob's pride and joy was the skunk he shot. He said it was a little to close for comfort, so he shot it, but afterwards he regretted it because it stunk for what seemed like miles.
We also bought a new car (that is probably what has been taking up all of our free time...I hate car hunting!). We decided we needed something a little bigger for house and yard stuff, so we bought a GMC Envoy. Hopefully it turns out to be a good car for us!

Lagoon Day!

We took Kaden to Lagoon last week. There were a few rides he could go which made it really fun. He tried cotton candy for the first time. He reached in his mouth to see what it was that he was eating, and amazingly...it was gone. He was so confused??

Kaden with his cousin Brielle.

Kaden and his cousin Cooper.

Kaden and his cousin Delany.

I was a little nervous with him on the rides because he is quite the Great Houdini when it comes to escaping. No matter how hard I tighten the shopping cart seat belts, he always finds a way to escape. Luckily he had older cousins who could hold him on all the kiddie rides. We had a great time.

Kaden and his cousin Brielle are on the left and cousin Boston on the right.

While I was at Lagoon I got to thinking about some fond memories I have of Lagoon.

1. Before the freeway was re-done there were green posts on the side of the road that started about 5 minutes before the Lagoon exit. My tummy would always get really excited when I would see those posts.

2. I always felt bad for the sad looking sheep that lived underneath the white roller coaster...couldn't they have found a better home for them?

3. I loved the flying carpet ride. I was sad when they got rid of that.

4. I loved getting the old fashioned pictures with my friends in Pioneer village.

5. Stake Lagoon day was the best. I remember that being the highlight of my summer as a kid.

6. My favorite childhood memory was feeling like I was still riding rides when I was in my bed after a long day at Lagoon.

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on August 8th. We started off the day with a morning hike to Stewart falls up Provo canyon. It was about 2 miles with only a slight incline which is the perfect difficulty level for me.

Kaden fell asleep on the hike down. It was so cute to see him sleeping the the backpack.
Here is another one of Kaden sleeping and holding onto Rob's shirt for dear life. He had a death grip to Rob the whole time he was sleeping. It was funny.

Our anniversary celebration pretty much ended there because I got sick and threw up when we got to the waterfall. I spent the rest of the day/night in bed. It was a pretty bad deal..not only for me, but for all the people who hiked to the waterfall that day were greeted by a large pile of vomit!

One Year Older and Wiser Too...Happy Birthday Kaden!!!!

Kaden had his first birthday on July 27th. We celebrated with a family party last Saturday. I think Kaden had a blast. He loves all of his presents. Thanks everyone for coming!

I put my Food Network Ultimate Cake Challenge skills to the test. Lets just say I have a little practicing to do.

We let Kaden have the baseball cake all to himself. It was so funny. At first he looked at me with curious eyes wondering why on earth I was letting him put his hands in his food. But after a few hesitant seconds, he dug right in. We had to give him a sippy of milk to wash all the cake down, then we finally had to cut him off (He was looking a little nauseated!). As you can see below, he ate about half of the cake (or at least mushed half of the cake!).

Here he is in his whole birthday outfit. I can't get him to wear a bib on a daily basis, so I don't know what I was thinking when I put this birthday bib on him. He ripped it off as fast as he could so this was the only pic I got with the whole outfit.

Opening presents was serious business. He wanted time to enjoy each toy before opening another one.

On his real Birthday Rob and I took him to Texas Roadhouse for a little saddle-riding birthday fun.

The waitress probably thought we were crazy when we told her we wanted them to sing to our 1 year old. Kaden loved the attention and will probably expect singing and ice cream everytime we eat out from now on.
We ended the day with Kaden's favorite activity...swinging! It was a great birthday and I am sure he will have fond memories of it. Ha Ha Ha!

Family Vacation to Denver

We just got back from our first family vacation. I bought Rob tickets to the Braves game in Denver for his graduation so we decided we would stay a few extra days and make a trip of it. We drove to Denver, which took about 9 hours. Kaden was really good and slept a lot of the way. While in Denver we went to 2 Braves vs. Rockies baseball games, the Denver Zoo, and the swimming pool. Our hotel was on the same street as a mile long outdoor mall which was really fun. There were restaurants and stores everywhere.
Here are pictures of the zoo. Kaden liked the animals. He would laugh and clap. It was cute.

Here are some pictures of the baseball games. Kaden's favorite part was eating hotdogs, pretzels, nachos, and frozen lemonade. Rob won't admit to this, but I am pretty sure Kaden didn't care one bit about the game.

Here is the pool at our hotel. The sun was warm, but the water was pretty chilly!

We absolutely wore Kaden right out. After swimming we put him in the bath to rinse him off and he literally fell asleep in the tub.