Happy fourth!

Blogger keeps putting my pictures out of order. Anyway, we had a great 4th of July!!!! We started off by sleeping on the tramp the night before! Yes that's right, little ole 8 months pregnant me slept on the trampoline!!! It was actually pretty comfortable. Randy headed back in the house around 2 am. Ryker woke up crying around 3:30 am so I took him in and got in my bed. When we woke up, Rayden was the only one still outside! What a trooper.

Randy decided to run the 5k with his sister and brother-in-law. He did pretty good for not really training. I think he ran about an 8 1/2 min. mile. After the run we headed to the parade! We sat in our usual spot with the family! After the parade everyone heads to the park for all the food, games, and entertainment! We didn't stay long because the boys were already exhausted and whining. We had planned to take them swimming at the pool but when we finally went after they had naps, the pool was full to capacity and they weren't letting anyone else in. So, we went to our neighbors we used to live by and swam in their free standing pool for a little bit.

Later on we had a BBQ with our great friends and headed off the the fireworks!!! I love fireworks!!!!

Waiting for the candy!!!!

Ryker pretty much spent the entire parade eating the candy as it got thrown at him! He was in heaven!

Here's our little crowd at the parade! Luckily the sun wasn't beating down hot, but it sure was muggy and humid. I felt like I was in Missouri again!


The boys loved the bouncy slides at the park after the children's parade!!!! Luckily we had them play on Saturday night, instead of on the actual 4th. It was a lot less crowded and cooler weather!!! They practically had the place to themselves!!!!!

Ryker was a little scared at first....but it didn't take long to fall in love!




Every 4th of July, (it's usually the night or two before the big town celebrations) we go to the Children's parade. All the children decorate their bikes and ride down main street and end at the park for popsicles and festivities at the park! Here are the boys with their bikes!


Our new ward that we just moved into does face painting before the parade for the kids. There were so many creative and fun faces!



Ryker celebrated his 3rd b-day this year!!!! He has been watching a lot of trucks videos on You Tube lately and one of his most favorite one to watch is a demonstration of this lady making a firetruck birthday cake. For months he kept telling me that he wanted that cake for his birthday, so I had no choice. He absolutely loved it!!! Grandma and Grandpa ended up coming over to our house on the day of his birthday to bring him his present....a jungle gym! It was actually a very old and rusted one sitting in their backyard that Randy used to play on as a kid. They cleaned it up really good and gave it a good spray paint and hauled it over! The boys absolutely love it!!!! Then we were lucky enough to have some cousins visiting over the weekend for Father's Day so we had a big birthday celebration with the cousins.

Oh I almost forgot.....on Ryker's birthday, Randy got a call from the local radio station saying that Ryker had won a free birthday cake! I guess they announce all the birthdays for the day and draw one person to get a free cake. Ryker won the cake!!! I don't even know how the radio station had all our information or knew it was his birthday because we never sent it to them! Kind of funny.

He was so proud of his Firetruck cake!!!

Here is an updated picture of the garden at grandma's house. We have had tons of food from it already! Cabbage, onions, peas, broccoli, lettuce, radishes. Yummy!!!

I guess it has been a while since Randy rode 100 miles in the Tour de cure in Brigham City. He headed up there with some of his besties from Richfield and they all rode. I stayed at my mom's and ended up going boating with the family. Since Randy had my camera I don't have any pictures of me and my belly in my oh so cute maternity swimsuit! LOL!!! Anyway, he survived the ride without too much trouble! He said he kind of had an off day and wasn't at his best and actually he told me he was way more interested in looking at all the vegetable gardens along the way. What a weird guy! I have never seen someone more addicted to gardening in my life!


What a hottie husband I have!!!!

Goings on.....

Rayden graduated from Kindergarten last month!!! He enjoyed the year so much and just loved his teacher!!! She was such an amazing teacher. I can't believe how much Rayden has grown over the year. He has learned to read really well, and he is a math pro! He is even doing some multiplication! For the end of year program they sang songs and said nursery rhymes. Rayden was dressed as one of the three blind mice! Isn't he so cute!

Ryker wanted me to take his picture too! He is such a little character! He wears his swimsuit everyday, we have four or five that he rotates through. I try to get him to wear normal clothes and he just won't! Maybe he'll be our star swimmer one of these days. Now to just teach him how to swim!

Sorry my camera is the lamest thing around and these pictures are so blurry. Just pretend they are picture perfect! Anyway, my little Ryker is such a big helper!!! He LOVES to help his daddy work outside in the yard. I just hope he still loves to help out when he gets older.

I just love how he is shoveling just like his Daddy!

Another fun thing we've done in the last month was take a little vacation to Sunny St. George. Well I just wish it would've been sunny! It snowed the entire way down there. When we got to St. George it was rainy and cold the whole time! The last day we were there the sun decided to come out, but Randy spent the day on a bike ride with my sister so I just hung out with the kiddos. Randy had a conference down there for work so we decided to tag a long. I was hoping that it could've been a little date weekend with just the two of us but I didn't have a sitter for the kids for three and half days so we just took them with us. It ended up being pretty relaxing and fun.

Of course the kids loved the pool at the hotel! It was partly indoor and outdoor so it was perfect for the cold days. I pretty much just sat at the hot tub with my feet in because swimming isn't exactly the funnest thing to do when you are 7 months pregnant!!!

We just finished our first season of baseball! Rayden played coach pitch this year and he had a lot of fun. I'll have to say, he hit the ball pretty good for not ever really practicing before. He's not exactly the sporty type and is a little bit awkward when it comes to sports. I kind of hope he grows out of it but something tells me that he's just not going to be our family athlete. But you never know, he may surprise us!


I like this picture because it shows all his missing teeth! He's lost six so far and four of them are currently missing. The most recent one he lost was at summer lunch. He was eating an apple wedge and it just fell out. It was totally gross and there was blood all over the place! The poor kids sitting around us had to suffer.

We've also been doing a lot of gardening lately!!!! For those of you who know my hubby, he is a gardening fool! He fell in love with it out in Missouri and I don't think he'll ever be the same again! It has been so hard for him to stay indoors and study when he has gardening on the mind. Luckily this is his last summer of classes because I don't think he'd make it another spring while going to school.

This is a small little garden at our home. We haven't exactly gotten our yard the way we want it in the short time we've lived here so it is a work in progress. Most of the stuff we planted was at his parents house but I wanted to have a few pepper and tomato plants to pick off of at our house. Of course my hubby went crazy and had to plant a few other things as well. Squash, corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, fruit trees, strawberry plants, raspberries. Some of them we won't get to really reap the rewards from for a few years so I told my hubby, NO MOVING!!! We've worked so hard I want to be able eat what we've planted.

This is another garden spot at our house. This spot was supposed to be our fall garden this year because Rand was too busy with school to really plant anything now. Then, his gardening itch got to him and he just had to do some more planting. He actually tried something new in this spot. It's called sister planting (I think) that he learned while we were on vacation in Virginia a few years ago. He planted corn and squash and then once the corn starts to come up a little he'll plant beans next to the corn so it can climb up the corn stalks. The squash is supposed to be the ground cover. We'll see how it turns out!

And this my friends, is the BIG garden that he and his mom have been working on the last few months. They started planting in March and we have already harvested lettuce, radishes, a few small onions, and broccoli! He is pretty pleased with his work so far!


And last of all you get to see the lovely picture of yours truly! This picture was taken a few weeks ago, I think I was around 30 weeks. I'm not really dressed in the most flattering outfit known to man but that's life!


So I have about 8 1/2 weeks left until the due date and I have to say that I'm soooo looking forward to meeting this little baby! Not to mention I'm excited to have my body back!!!!! I can't tell you what an absolute wuss I am when I'm pregnant! Everything thing about it, from the morning sickness, to the sleepless and uncomfortable nights, to the exhaustion! It just all completely wears me out! I love to feel the little kicks throughout the day and wonder just how amazing it is that there is something growing inside my belly! But that is about the only thing I love about it!
I'm still having troubles picking out possible names. I think it's because everything that I like, my husband and children aren't crazy about. Randy pretty much picked the names of our two boys so far and with each one he was so excited about them! Maybe it's because he's been so occupied with school, work, gardening and biking that he hasn't really thought about it much. I just sort of am hoping he'll get excited about the names I really like but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes out!
I still have so much to do to get ready for this little baby but ever since the weather got so hot I'm too exhausted to do much. I guess I'll just have to do a little bit each morning while it's still cool!
I guess that's all for now. Still to come, pictures of Randy's 100 mile bike ride! He had a great time viewing the scenery around Brigham City and actually survived the 100 miles without too much trouble. We'll see how much riding he gets in the rest of the summer. Now that his big ride is over I think he'll be a little bit more relaxed. Now we just have to get through the end of his classes. Only 8 more classes to go!!!!!

Easter Celebrations

So I know this is way late, but here are some of the pictures from our Easter celebrations. We had so much fun with the family going to candy/egg hunts, coloring eggs, making an egg house/furniture, making sugar cookies and eating tons of good food!!! On Saturday before Easter we had a very eventful day! We woke up early and went to Smith's grocery store where they had sections roped off and had tons of candy out for the kids to get. I think we got the most candy there. Ryker's bucket was full to the brim! Then we headed to the Syracuse city hunt with my sis. We were a little late and pulled up just as it was about to start. There were so many people that we couldn't tell where all the different age groups were. We just went to the first section we saw and found out that it was for 0-2 yr. olds. It was perfect for Ryker, but not Rayden who is 6! I felt a little silly for having him pick up eggs so I had him help his brother. They only got about 10 eggs, but they still had fun.
After that, we headed over to my brother's house just a few blocks away and went to a little egg hunt/luncheon at an open house for a new little gym by his house. We got lots of good food and of course the kids got some more candy! I was exhausted by this time and had a major headache but there was still more partying to come.
We headed over to grandma's and started another celebration! We had 9 little boys running around and 2 little girls and we had to keep them busy some how. We had little stations set up where they could dye eggs and decorate them, we had some working on making egg furniture for our egg house, and we had others cutting out sugar cookies. The kids loved it. Then we sent them all outside for yet another egg/candy hunt. It was so much fun!
Hope you enjoy the pictures. They are all in real random order, sorry :)

We decided we needed to keep the boys occupied with something fun to do on one of our days visiting, so we ventured into the city and went to the LDS Church history museum. There is a fun children's activity exhibit where they could build and play with so many things.

Ryker loved the truck! He kept gathering up all the play food from the other room and putting it in the back of the truck. It was fun to watch him but not so fun to put all the food back.

Rayden liked playing in the food section as well. They had puppets and a little pretend garden where they could pull the food out of the garden. This was good practice for the summer because he is going to be helping me and Randy in the garden a lot!

Easter egg hunt #4 for the day. This time at Grandma's house. As if they needed more candy!

Ryker just wanted to eat the candy all day long!

This picture is way out of order but the kids had fun "fishing" at the museum. Too bad the magnets didn't work very good, it was a little difficult. But, it kept them busy for awhile, which is hard to do with these hyper-active little boys!

Our Egg House! The kids had fun cutting out and painting the egg furnituret. They made chairs, couches, tables, and even cushions for the chairs and couch!


Of course Grandma was a big help on cutting out the furniture for the little ones! She's so creative!

Another picture of the egg house. Don't you love the carpet and wall paper? We used old scraps of contact paper and scrapbook paper!

All the colorful eggs! I think altogether the kids dyed about 10 dozen eggs!

Aunt Amy had some fun decorations for the eggs. We turned them into bugs and spiders.


Getting lots of candy at the Smith's candy hunt!

Ryker had fun scooping up his jelly beans in his cousins lego bulldozer! He is such a cutie!

Pain in the Ribs!

Only 26 weeks and already this little baby of mine is jabbing me in the ribs!!! It's gonna be a L-O-N-G summer. Guess who else likes to jab me in the ribs?

RYKER!

He is one little hyper kid who likes to jump all over me and kick me like crazy. I don't know what is worse, baby in or baby out? Yes that's right, Ryker is my little baby! He has found a few old pacifiers around the house and he likes to suck on them, curl up in his blanket, and he even makes little baby noises. He's going to be in for a real shock when he is no longer the baby of the family. I'm actually feeling a little nervous because he can be quite the little mischievous one. I'm worried how he might react when and if jealousy sets in after the baby is born. Anyone have any experience with this? When Ryker was born, Rayden didn't really get jealous. He pretty much just did his own thing most the time and didn't mind much having another sibling around. For some reason I just have this feeling that things are going to be different this time around. I'm hoping that I'm wrong but I'm trying to prepare myself just in case.