First things first

This picture is of Austin swimming or floating with his cousins Whitnee (back) and Shelbee (front)

You will have to be patient with me because this blogging is a first for me!

the last few weeks have been nuts around here. First we (me and Nathan) were able to take the kids to Lake Powell for a week! Vacations with small children are more work than just staying home I have decided! We luckily have a houseboat that we stay on however having a two year old boy who seems to be a little accident prone (to say the least) in an area surrounded by water proves to be a challenge. We had no more than been on the houseboat for ten minutes when "Bubba" decided to "share" his Binky with the fishies! He was pretty upset when they didn't give it back. Try explaining that to a hysterical child at 2am! Bubba loves Lake Powell though. Really what's not to love. He gets to play all day long with his cousins, eat snacks and capri suns all day long, get dirty all day and play in the water whenever he wants. It's a guys dreams come true! He got to go fishin' with Dad and Grandpa on Grandpa's fishing boat! We got Bubba a "Cars" fishing pole so that he could fish with Dad and a very mean cat fish decided one night to steal it off the back of the houseboat! We have lost a few fishing poles that way!

So I've got to tell you the funniest thing that I have ever seen at Lake Powell and I've seen a lot there over the years. So if you can picture this; Nathan, Dan, Matt, KaLee and myself are all in the fishing boat one night and we are cruising around looking for just the right place to fish when Matt points to a little stream area that cuts through a small sandy island and says "I saw a boat go through there this morning so lets cut through there" so Nathan who is driving the boat with the little trolling motor that hangs off the front of a fishing boat decides to take Matt's suggestion and uses the short cut. Needless to say that half way through this little short cut the boat gets stuck. When I say stuck, I don't mean that we his a rock or anything like that I mean that we literally beached the boat in what turned out to be about 12 inches or water at most! I have honestly never done that before and I can't say that I knew you could do that! So here we are stuck in the middle of a small passage way. Nathan and the other men decided to get out of the boat and see if the water gets any deeper ahead of us so that we can push the boat forward and get unstuck. They discovered that it doesn't so our only choice is to TURN THE BOAT AROUND by hand and go back the way we came. During this escapade Matt and I looked over at the beach and noticed what looked like Aborigines! Matt and I (not trying to be rude) both said "hey look it's the locals!" Everyone else looked over and I'm not kidding, we all about fell over laughing because it was such an odd thing to see. Well as we looked harder we realized that they were not Aborigine people but in fact 5 boys about 12-14 years old that had found black mud and had rolled in it from head to toe! It was absolutely hilarious! So needless to say we all had to get out of the boat and turn it around and push it out of the sand barge that we had gotten stuck on. This had to have been one of the single most funniest nights I have ever spent at Powell!

these pictures are of Austin and his pet fish Nemo that Whitnee caught for him. We put it in a bucket for a while then we let Nemo go back home to his mommy!

This is the first horse that he rode, there were more to follow.

So my mother and I recently decided to take Bubba and Paisley to the Utah State Fair! I love the fair, it always manages to make me feel better about myself. I know that sounds mean but it's true!

So the minute that we got there Bubba decides that he needs to ride the horsies! Mind you he's only two! So we go over to the Horsies and he runs over to one and tried to jump on it himself! The guy that does the pony rides chased him down just in time so that he didn't get stepped on by the next pony in line. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time and money riding horsies that day.

Here's Bubba with the goat that he wanted to ride!

He also tried to ride a goat! He loves animals and he's not particularly afraid of much so I really have to keep an eye on him. He thinks that all animals should be ridden and kissed!

Our family at Paityn's Blessing

Now the most recent fun time that my family had was Paisley's blessing! Paityn was born this past July so it's been fun adjusting to having a baby girl.

We decided to bless her this past weekend with just our family and friends. I have to say that this is the way to go. So much less stressful! We had the blessing at the church and the party followed at the pavilion next to the church so there was very little cleanup to be done and I didn't have to worry about having 50 people at my house and like 20 kids running around! We had a good time and shared a meal with friends and family some of which we hadn't seen in a while!

Bubba and Paisley sitting on the couch