Camping

Our kids had their very first experience camping. Brandon and I have camped quite a few times at all of my family reunions over the years but we haven't had a camping one since we've had kids. We decided to borrow a tent and sleeping bags and stuff and try it out. The kids LOVED it! They were so excited about it before they even really knew what it was.

Kristen gave the kids rides in this fun wagon.

The kids all had so much fun carrying around their own little flashlights. Brandon took them walking in the dark over to some trees and later they kept asking to go back to the "pooky fowest" (spooky forest),

Mckinley had to bring her notebook along to "draw pictures of everything in this world." She loves to draw more than anything and lately has been really into bringing notebooks around and drawing the fun things she does. She has some serious artistic talent!

And a picture of me and Bran since we never post them. Or take them.

The kids stayed up late even though they didn't have naps that day.

But eventually they conked out in the tent and did really well sleeping all night. Mckinley randomly woke up in the middle of the night crying and when Brandon went over to help her she was saying Where's my dad??? And he was saying I am Dad! She had no memory of it in the morning. Ha ha ha.

Kallie was completely sideways not on her pillow at all.

It's always so great to catch up with my cousins and the kids just love being outside in nature doing anything fun.

Mckinley busily drawing away in her notebook.

Such a great memory! I think we will start to slowly get our own camping gear and I hope we have a lot more camping trips in the future.

Randoms

We have had a good September so far. Mckinley isn't loving Kindergarten as much as I thought she would. She complains that it's boring, takes too long, and that she gets hot and sweaty (from recess I think). I know it will pick up for her soon though when they get more into reading and stuff.

The twins are still in a very weird transition out of naps. We have soooo many pictures of them sleeping in weird places. They crash wherever. And always super late in the afternoon (see the clock?). It has made for lots of late nights. We have to tell them to go back in their bedroom 10 times a night sometimes. We just ordered a new bedroom set for Mckinley (that came today, woohoo!!) so she will move downstairs and the twins will each have their own room upstairs, which we are hoping helps. I just wish they could be done with naps. There is no way to get them to go down for a nap at a normal nap time, like 1:00 but they rarely make it through an entire day without crashing.

Mckinley is super into posing. Has been for awhile now. She always wants me to take her picture and is always posing. I love it!

Brandon hiked all the way up Timp in the middle of the night one night in August with three of his brothers. It took a lot longer than he thought but he had a great time.

Brandon took the kids to a Bees game up in Salt Lake. I stayed home throwing up with a super weird 12-hour flu that I am soooo glad no one else in my family caught. I was really sad to miss it.

I love this picture of Kallie sleeping wearing Mckinley's shoes and a diaper, and surrounded by stuffed animals. I love my kids so much!

Mckinley is in Kindergarten!

This sweet little thing started Kindergarten. She goes to Vineyard Elementary, right by our house. We carpool with her friend Savannah so they come and pick her up in the mornings and I get the girls from school at noon. Her teacher is Mrs. Brown and we have heard a lot of great things about her.

Saying goodbye to my house. My parents built this house when I was a baby, and 33 years later it is up for sale and they have moved to a newer house by the Timpanogos Temple. I'm sad that they won't be as close to me but I'm so happy they will have less house and yard to maintain.

Tyler and Kallie, while still proving to be quite the challenging children, are playing together a lot. Like all the time. They are always together. It's so cute. Except when they are fighting. Or crying or whining. Which seems to be most of the time.

Mckinley and Brynlee randomly wearing the same outfit. This has happened quite a few times throughout their lives. Cute cousins!

Last Friday after school we went to the Manila pond and we had the whole place to ourselves. We absolutely love it there!

Tyler and Kallie keep falling asleep and taking late naps, which makes for late nights that are so exhausting mentally and physically for all of us. This was supposed to be our golden summer with kids that are old enough to be somewhat independent, no babies or pregnancies to deal with. But Tyler and Kallie have still been so challenging and it is flat out wearing us out! Mostly me. Brandon is our rock.

Life is good. It's hard to blog a lot, but for some reason I haven't even been taking very many pictures lately so it's not like there is a lot to blog anyway. But we are excited to see Mckinley learn and grow in school this year and we continue to have hope that the twins will get easier one day.

Summer Fun

Mckinley's teacher asked her to come back for the last day of summer school, even though she didn't go to summer school. And of course she had a blast being back there again.

This is Tyler and Kallie when they should have been napping. They have been soooooo hard to get down for naps so I decided to give up on naps and I was actually quite happy about the freedom it gave me to be able to do whatever we wanted the whole day but now it is backfiring and they end up crashing for a late nap every single day. Which ruins bedtime every single day. As if it wasn't already awful before. It is just such a mess right now.

We had a lot of fun while Brandon's sister Tara was in town, including a fun swimming day at Scera Pool.

I made a summer bucket list awhile ago and then pretty much forgot about it. I decided I wanted to do a few things on it. This was supposed to be our really fun awesome summer since our kids are getting older and our babies that should have been born in February/June weren't ever born. But then we moved and that was chaotic and the twins are still the biggest handful ever so it wasn't as glorious as I thought. But we still decided to at least check a few things off the bucket list, one of which was hiking the Y.

Brandon invited his family and it was so much fun with a lot of people.

Tyler and Kallie were pretty much carried the whole way up and down, which was annoying, but we all eventually made it.

Mckinley whined quite a bit about the hiking, which I expected. It felt good to touch the Y though and the kids think it is cool to see it on the mountain and know that they climbed up and touched it.

We have the best neighborhood ever! We absolutely love it here. Every year on the 24th of July some of our neighbors host a cul-de-sac of fire and it's super fun. Lots of food and fun and fireworks. We love it!

My brother Todd was in town for 2 days and we had a lot of fun with them while they were here. We went swimming at the Lehi pool because it was super windy that day so we needed to swim indoors.

Then we had a really fun picnic dinner at Bonneville Park. The twins were just getting the hang of their little scooters we opened a few days before.

Since I haven't done an ounce of decorating in our new house, this spot works great for time out. Lol.

We have been to the Manila Pond a few times this year. The kids always love it.

I never put the kids down for naps anymore and this is usually where they crash.

All ready for Church one Sunday.

Mckinley loves playing with her cute friend Kenzey. These girls have been friends since birth. I can't believe they are about to start Kindergarten in a few weeks! It's so weird watching your kids grow up.

Cabin Trip

Right after the 4th of July Brandon's entire extended family went to Canada for a big reunion. We backed out last minute because the twins are so hard to handle and we just didn't think the trip made sense for our family. I'm so sad we missed it and I really would have loved to see his grandparents, but we will just add it to the very long list of sacrifices we have made since we had twins.

The week after we were supposed to go to Canada we went on a short trip to the cabin. It was so fun. The kids loved it. My mom rented two 4-wheelers and we had a blast riding around on them.

Tyler wanted to hold the fish one of his cousins caught.

We were able to go out on the lake for the first time in a paddle boat. It was pretty windy that day so it was hard to get around out on the water but it was fun anyway.

I love that my kids are making memories just like I did when I was their age.