Flashback Friday

Ryan with his dad. His dad is about Ryan's age in this picture. This is my favorite picture of the two, and one of Ryan's favorite pictures of his dad. We miss you Barry! Four years ago this month.

Congratulations Baby!

I am so pleased to announce that Ryan was just asked to be a part of the FSAE team for Brigham Young this year for his Capstone project. I got the phone call about an hour ago and the professor for this project told me what an amazing husband I have, and he told me that they would be honored to have Ryan on this team. This is a really exciting thing for us and will be a really challenging but rewarding thing for Ryan. I am so proud of you Ryan! I know that you will be an asset to this team! I love you!

Getting it done!

Ryan and I are up to our ears in projects, and we're loving every minute of it. A little while ago I posted a little list of things that I wanted to get done this summer. I am happy to report that we are well on our way!! Here is what we are doing:I should have gotten a before picture, but it just sort of happened. I couldn't take it anymore, this wall was coming out! There is a hutch in the wall, and the back of it goes into our stairway making it very difficult to get down the stairs. The other side of the stairway has a wall that has cupboards in our kitchen, making our kitchen seem so crowded and small. And then there was a closet that sat between the living room and kitchen right in the hall, it also went into the stairway making it smaller. In the picture below you can see that I have taken out most of the hutch to the left, and the closet is on its way out. This is where I ended that night. Ryan had quite the surprise when he got home. Being the supportive husband that he is, the next weekend, he helped me finish it off:

A little push from muscles, and a few from myself, and then a bunch more, and some more hammering, and then a little sawing, and the wall came down...
WALLAH!!! You can see right through to the kitchen! We put boards up so the boys can't fall, but really there is no wall there. Now to figure out how to put everything together. We found out that the far wall is a load bearing wall, so we need to figure a few things out before we can go any further.
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The next project started last weekend. We are putting in a fence. We are putting a large steel gate in the front, and a large wooden fence in the back. Last weekend we put in the posts. They are kind of hard to see in this picture, they are the dark wooded posts standing in front of the white fence:

We also got rid of the lattice-and it opened up our whole back yard. So we finished off that project with the only other thing that we could do...

Yes, we went and found our Barbecue!

my little helper

Lately Paxton has been doing everything that he can think of to help Ryan or myself. He is becoming self sufficient as well. He thinks that he can do everything that any adult can. Which means that lately I have had to pay special extra attention to what Paxton is up to. Here he decided to feed Gauge while I went to answer the phone... Gauge appreciated it!

He feeds himself...

Here he is helping us tear down walls

And yesterday, he even put himself to bed.

What a little man!

Flashback Friday

Ryan JP and Dan May 2001

It's a lot, but it's been awhile

I have to apologize, I have been away from the blogging scene for the longest time yet. I have started training someone at work and I can't seem to get away to get any blogging done. I used to give John and Beth a hard time for not blogging more often but it is really hard when you don't have a place of business where you get paid, to be blogging!

Let me see if I can bring us up to date...

This big man is growing up so fast. We have hit seven months and still going strong. Gauge has 4 teeth coming in all at once at the top of his mouth. He doesn't belly-ache about it at all, but it looks pretty painful. He is sitting up now, sooo close to scooting around and he rolls EVERYWHERE! I didn't ever think that we could have a better child than Paxton was. So mellow and so happy all of the time, but I really think that this child might be better. He is all smiles and lately he makes a lot of noise! Ryan can get him laughing so hard that you have to laugh yourself because his laugh is so funny. He does a million things with his lips too. He can spit any way possible. In fact he gets really excited and when he gets to a point that he can't get any more excited then he is, he lets out a huge, pbpbppbpbp, and vibrates those cute lips. He doesn't stop smiling and he makes me so happy. It doesn't seem to matter how tired or even down I might be at some point, when I walk into a room and Gauge looks up at me and smiles, its all better!

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Paxton is such a good boy. He has turned into my little pal. When you have your kids you get this little window before maybe 3 months old, when you can cuddle with your kid. Mostly because they don't know any better. At about 3 months they start realizing they can move on their own so they start rolling over and feeling the feet and toes and spitting and flexing tummy muscles to get around. After that there isn't a whole lot of cuddling. Thre is way too much going on. It could be the TV, learning to crawl, learning to walk, a new toy...ANYTHING and you just realize that unless they are sick, there isn't going to be a whole lot of snuggling.

Well my friends, that ends! My beautiful 2 and a half year old loves to cuddle with me. He tells me -I love you- all day long. He sits on my lap if I am sitting somewhere, he tries to hug me ALL of the time, he loves me to sing him to sleep and he wants to go to work with me so that he can stay where I am. He treats me like I am so special in his life. I know, duh, I am the mom...but I love that Paxton and I are close! Right now Pax is my big helper. He helps me with Gauge. If I am sleeping from work the night before and I don't hear Gauge starting to get upset, Pax will come and get me. He gets me diapers and he even tries to feed Gauge now. His interests have changed a bit. Forever they were Motorcycles and Fire trucks, which are still cool obviously, but now he is HUGE into horses and Spider-man. Yeah, the kid loves Spider-man. I don't know how either because I have never watched it with him. He just knows that spiderman is cool and because of that, we have Spider-man toys, snacks and now Spider-man band-aids. Horses became one of the top things lately and now he always pretends he is riding a horse, or he is a horse, or of course, that Spider-man is riding a horse...its classic! He still rides his bike by himself, he can swing on a swing himself, but is still learning to pedal the swing, he runs everywhere and another big thing is saying HI to everyone he see's. Even the really strange, I hope he doesn't notice me type of guy out there. He just loves greeting those guys and giving them a chance to come over and talk. Then he tells me every time, mommy I said hi, "Yes Paxton, its always nice to be kind" I reply...

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Here are some pictures of the two boys from the last little bit:

Ryan couldn't believe I put him in this outfit. The sweats were cute, I just couldn't find his shoes fast enough, so I grabbed these...we laughed so hard when we saw this pic!

a Cool Weekend

This weekend we got to try out the pool a bit more, and we did a little bit of sun-bathing in the grass. We already showed off the pool, so here are more of the bathing beauties: (Please no comments on the leg and how it is most obviously reflecting the sun before our eyes)

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Something that Ryan and I were able to do this weekend as well, was see ROYAL BLISS!! It was SO awesome to see them live and I am now feeling as though it is safe to say they are definitely my Favorite band! The boys came with us, and were sooo good! No one else took their kids, but we just haven't figured out the whole babysitter thing yet. We loved having them though, and a few different times Paxton would dance and bob his head to the beat, he had a whole audience himself!

The concert was outdoors, which was super-cool, but it was sooo hot outside! Royal bliss in action

Ryan and Gauge at the concert, sorry its a bad angle.

Flashback Friday

Senior trip with my buddy Tawn. We are the two on the right and we're headed back from Catalina Island on the ferry boat. It was such a fun trip, we conquered the island by bushwacking from one side to the other. We went until we hit a cliff on the other side that overlooked a deserted island. It was such a fun trip!