Friday, January 31, 2014

A Joyful June

 Happy 36th Birthday
Dad blowing out his candles on his cheesecake.  Birthdays are a lot different once we get older.  It's usually a dinner out on the town and a movie if we're lucky but we sure love this guy and love to celebrate his life.

The three loves of my life!

 Splash Pad
This will only be the first of many outings to the splash pad in Highland.  Even though it is always insanely crowded, the girls have fun and it gets us out doing something different.
 Two cute girls.
 Getting ready to go but had to catch a few smiles before we could depart.
 Taytum love walking up and down the river and jumping off the rocks.  She gets into a pattern and that is what she will do the whole time we are there.
 She doesn't usually care to much for the fountain area where the water shoots up from the ground but here she was finally brave enough to play in it for a little bit.
 Stomping on the sprayers.  Kylee is also enjoying the fun but I'm always holding her or helping her walk so it's hard to snap pictures of her.
 Sprinklers!
Over the summer we used Grandpa's sprinklers a lot to stay cool.
 Playing in the spray.
 Kylee didn't join in today and chose to nap outside while we played.
 Just having a bunch of fun.
 Cheese!
 Random June Pictures
Notice I was able to get a little pony tail in today.  
 Just a funny picture of my kylee.

A Magnificent May

 Mother's day
I don't know what I would do without these two greatest joys that have come into my life.  They keep me on my toes and am certainly blessed that they call me "mom."  I love their smiles and their morning cuddles.  They are growing up way to fast, I wish they could stay this age forever.

Every May, around Mother's Day I am able to get together with my mom and sisters and we have an outing.  We take turns being the host.  This is year was mom's turn and she had planned on taking us to Lagoon.  However it was raining hard that day so she took us to the crafty store in town and let us pick a project that we could paint and take home.  We spent hours there and I have to say we are all pretty talented and took home some great decor to add to the house.
 Katie and I working on our master pieces.
 The finished products.
 Mom did this fancy USA sign.
 Angela did this cute hanger thingy and had an object for each season.
 Katie did the "Home" sign where the "o" is interchangeable for each holiday.
 I also did the Home sign.
 Sneak Preview:
Our home will be completed in September and I've decided to dedicate a whole post to the building of our new home instead of month by month pictures.  This picture is when they broke ground in May.  So exciting to finally get our dream home started and here's to the many decisions we will be making this point forward.
 Memorial Day Weekend
We headed off to the Boulder for a weekend of fun.  Here's the moon that was full and bright coming up over the mountain.
 Just chilling, while we get the tent set up.
 Taytum and Dad getting the stakes dug into the ground.
 Katie and family graced us with their presence and the cousins sure had a lot of fun playing together.  Katie also had a fancy new trailer that they had to test out.  Kylee (10 months)  and Tate (5 months) hanging out in the trailer.
 Just playing.
 My little Tayter-bugs.
 Two best buddies.  These two play really well together.
 Campfire hot dogs.
 Gotta love the dirty faces and multiple day's worth of dirt on faces and hands when you go camping.
 Kylee-bugs
 Kennedy
 Jacey - warrior princess.  
 A cutie patutie playing outdoors.
 Going for a walk.
 We love camping!

10 Years!
I just completed my tenth year of Kindergarten and it will be my last.  It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be to say good bye.  I will miss Kindergarten.  I will miss my co-workers and the associations I had in the school system.  I will miss seeing those cute faces telling me hello in the hallways.  I will miss it but I am also excited to be accomplishing a life long dream to have a preschool in my home for that is the plan for the upcoming school year.  And of course we will miss Megan!  She started tending Taytum when she was only 6 weeks old and then took on Kylee and we really became great friends and she really loved my kids and took real good care of them.  We will miss Abby and Aydree as well.  They were in my Kindergarten class and now in the 5th grade.  Thanks Megan for everything you have done for me and my family.
 Megan!
 Random May Pictures
Playing outside and enjoying the sunshine.  Kylee was busy eating dandelions when I took this picture.
 Asleep in the Love Sac.
 Matching PJ's they got from Aunt Annette.  So cute.
 Scrunchy face!!  I just love eating those cheeks.
 We got to go see my niece's  Preschool Graduation program. Emree is so cute and did such a great job.

Monday, December 30, 2013

April Adventures

 Moving Day!
We put our house up for sale in November of 2012 and it finally sold to a company that is going to flip it for a rental.  Though we had been packing bit by bit while we waited for it to sell, we had a bunch to do.  It also so happened to be my Spring Break at school so this is what I got to do for my week off.
Always interesting to pack with little ones underfoot but they did pretty well and lets just say they watched way too much TV this week but we were able to get a lot done.  Grandma and Grandpa were a big help as always and watched them a lot for us as well.
 Precious Cargo: Handle with Care
 What a mess.
 Despite all the madness, I found Taytum reading Kylee a book as we went back and forth hauling things out of the house.  Such a good big sister.
 Not a good picture, but we had to get a picture of the "SOLD" sign. It was incredibly windy and we didn't stay out to capture a good shot.  We packed, cleaned, and moved in with Ma and Pa Paxman all within a week so you can imagine the whirlwind kind of week we had.  Though we insisted several times that we would be happy in the basement of the Paxman's home we did not win this battle and they so graciously moved downstairs so that we could have the whole top of the house.  I can't even express how grateful I am for these incredible in-laws and we couldn't have done it without them.
 BOSTON!!
The quick move was all worth it because we got to check off one of our bucket list items.  We always wanted to go to Boston and watch a Red Sox game and we did!  Kyle had to go there for work so he flew out Monday and did business stuff and I flew out on Thursday. We spent the rest of the weekend exploring Boston. We didn't do much Thursday except go to an excellent fish restaurant, The Legal Sea Food Test Kitchen, provided by one of Kyle's business acquaintances. First thing Friday, we toured Fenway Park and learned a lot of interesting facts about the ball park.
 This was in the gift shop where we had to get a few souvenirs.

 The "Green Monstah".  
 So fun!
 Standing by the Green Monster seats.

 We were with a bunch of foreign exchange students and they loved this Mickey statue and had to wait forever to get our turn with Mickey.
 Notice that Boston is at the top of their league which later, due to our presence of course, they won the World Series this year.  
 At the end of the tour, this old man showed us two past World Series rings from 2004 and 2007.
 Last part of the tour was reading and learning the history of the team and all the memorabilia they had about The Boston Red Sox. It was heaven!
 Prudential Building
The next stop was going to the top of the Prudential Building to see the view that showed all of Boston.
 You could see everything in every direction. Looking towards MIT, where bombers were captured.
The airport, notice the plan landing.


MIT and Cambridge
 Fenway!  Can you tell we love the Red Sox yet.
 A church just outside the Prudential Building.
 Museum of Fine Arts
We practically ran through this museum because we didn't have much time and had to get to the ball park but we snapped a few pictures as we went.  There was so much that I'm sure we missed but we did what we could. There were a ton of Colonial Period artifacts from the founding fathers.




 A quick stop at a street vendor for a polish dog.
Game Time!
Yawkey Way, the street with all the vendors and how you entered Fenway park, and boy was it full of people coming from all directions to watch the game.
 We can hardly believe we are about to see a game in person.
 A dream come true, especially for Kyle who has been a Red Sox fan since he was playing t-ball. We had great seats about 20 rows up on the 3rd base side.
 Ellsbury at the the plate.
 Dustin Pedroia, one of our favorite players.
 and of course Big Papi.
It was a good night and they won with a few home runs, one by Papi and 2 by David Ross.
 It got quite chilly once the sun went down.  These tickets were given to us by one of Kyle's work suppliers so we decided to get tickets for the next night.  For whatever reason, I didn't take pictures of the second game but they won and we had such a great time.  It had been awhile since we had done anything like this, just the two of us so though it was a quick weekend trip it was so worth it.
 Saturday morning we headed of to the Aquarium and Historical tour.  We traveled a lot on the subway system while we were there and it was quite handy.  It used a color system as to what train you had to get on or transfer to so it was pretty convenient since we didn't have a car.  Later that evening, after the Red Sox game, it was so wall to wall people in that underground station it was claustrophobic and was amazing how many people you could fit in a train.
 We were a bit early to the Aquarium so we watched the boats and ships on the Marina. 

 Just some of the cool fish and water creatures at the Aquarium. 

 We got the see the seal show and it was pretty funny.



 I finally touched a sting ray.  I've been to the Aquarium in SLC but they always swam to low for me to be able to touch them so this was fun.

 After the Aquarium we went to Harvard. This plaza that had a bunch of food trucks.  We decided on lobster sandwiches so we stood in this line for FOREVER!  It was pretty good.
 It was Arts Festival or something so this plaza was full of entertainers and students everywhere.
 Museum of Natural History on Harvard campus.
 Amethyst, my birthstone.
 Though we didn't go on an official tour we walked along the Freedom Trail by following the "red brick road" that took us to many of the historical sites like this graveyard,  This may be a long lost relative with the Peck name from Kyle's Mom's side.  Interesting.

 The tombstone of Paul Revere.  Benjamin Franklin was also buried here.
 We were there just a week after the bombing at the Boston Marathon so the streets were full of banners of the Boston Strong motto. Even on the statue of Paul Revere. It was great experience to see the resilience of these people and how they pulled together at such a difficult time.
 We made it to several sites including the North Church and it would have been nice to be able to stay there longer.  Hopefully we will get back there sometime soon.  Ma and Pa Pike helped us out by tending the little ones while we were away and we met them at a motel just outside of where the airport was.  This was the longest we had left Kylee bug and I had  my Boston hat on when I saw her and she acted like she didn't know me but when I took it off, she got the biggest smile.  We had a great trip and we could have stayed longer but we still missed our girls.
 Random April Pictures
Taytum with her princess sweater thingy.
 Another sleeping Kylee pictures.
 Cookies, Yum!
 I found her asleep one day with every stuffed animal she owned on the bed with her.
 Happy Baby.