Father Son Campout

A couple of weeks ago, Scott and Alan got to go on their first of many father-son campouts!  Alan was thrilled beyond measure to get to go camping with his dad.  While James probably would have loved it too, we decided that it might be best for him to go next year. They got a little bit of a late start and arrived right before the Priesthood commemoration fireside.  By the time that was over, and they had dinner, Alan was asking to go to sleep.  Pretty sure that has never happened. :)  He had a blast and says that his favorite parts of the campout were sleeping in the tent and roasting marshmallows.

Trying his hand at canoeing

Father and Son at the Camp Collier sign

And I understand there was some frisbee played, which probably made both boys pretty happy.

The Garden

We have a massively huge backyard.  And we decided we ought to try to use some of that space to plant a garden.  We are very inexperienced gardeners, and it has been quite the process to try and get one in!  It turns out they are a lot of work!!  We figure that this is a learning year, and even if nothing grows, we will know a little better what we're doing next year. :)  

We tried to start seeds in egg cartons indoors before we could plant outdoors.  All in all, a huge waste of time!  I was constantly moving the seeds from window to window, trying to have them get enough sun, and when it was time to plant there wasn't much more than 2 leaves on all of the plants.  I figured the tomatoes and peppers would never produce fruit at this rate, so I went and bought some plants from Home Depot.  I think we will do this from now on.  But the boys had fun planting at least.

We have all sorts of wildlife that love our backyard and an especially hungry groundhog that lives under our shed.  Our few attempts at some squash plants got totally eaten by him last year, and we decided that if we were going to have a garden we needed a fence.  A friend from the ward let us come over and gave us some tips!  We decided to start small and made two raised beds this year and then just rototilled up a longer patch of ground in the back.  Originally we were going to have the fence be a little shorter and have some of the fencing lay flat on the ground (to dissuade the groundhog), but it seemed to hard and we just tried it this way this year.  We have not come up with a good "gate" solution.  Any ideas??  We are just opening and closing the wire on the corner post right now...and it seems to work ok. Not sure if that will be a good idea for the whole summer or not.

We planted beans, peas, and squash from seed.

I'm not sure how well spaced they are. :)

But that's ok.  The boys loved helping.

And then we planted some of the plants in the raised beds. 

And that is that!  We'll see if we get anything this year.  It has been a lot of work, a lot of learning, and a lot of fun so far!

Joy School Graduation

Well, this year has officially flown by!  It seems like just yesterday when we were gearing up for Joy School, and now it is over!  We have had a wonderful year and the kids have absolutely loved it.  It has been so much fun to work with the other moms and have some structure for the kids.  Sadly one of our friends is moving away, so we'll have to see whether or not we can make it work again for next year.  But this year, at least, has been a great success and a lot of fun!

The kids performed 4 songs for their families that night.  They did a great job.

Here are a couple of videos... one of Alan's "interview" and another of one of the song performances...

They took the graduation very seriously.

And were pretty proud of themselves.

I made these graduation caps and candy leis for the kids.

Additionally they got a certificate and "report card"

And we are so proud of our joy school graduate. :)

NJ Memorial Day Weekend

We got to go down to my parent's house for Memorial Day weekend this year, and had a blast.  It was a nice little break and so fun to be able to spend time with family.  It was so cold at the beginning of the weekend, but warmed up nicely toward the end.  Here are a few pictures that we snapped over the weekend!

At Uncle Evan's baseball game.  So fun... and sooooo cold!

James loved the baseball too.

Here is Evan at the plate

My parents had worked hard to get the pool all ready and warmed up for us.

Despite the fact that it was a little chilly, Evan, Alan and Grandpa all got to go for a good swim.

James mostly napped during swimming time and was content to watch when he woke up.  Which was great, because it was just a little too cold for mama to get in with him. :)

Scott got this photo.  One of the cutest ever, in my opinion.

He was super excited to play baseball with his uncles.

We also got to play some ladderball.  Not the greatest pic, but it was a ton of fun!

And the boys LOVE swinging.  I love Alan's face here.

And Jamesy's face here. :)

One of the best things about Memorial Day in NJ is the Medford Parade.  Love this pic of Alan and Uncle Evan waiting for the parade to come.

James loved to wave at the cars and trucks.

And eat lollipops.

My dad drove my grandpa's '54 Chevy in the parade as usual.  Here are the boys running to jump in for the ride.

I didn't get very good pics.  They were all dark.  But here's Alan, as you can't see him in this next one.

And here is the much better picture taken by Brother Hawkins.

And here we are standing by my grandpa's grave.

All in all a very fun memorial day weekend.  The boys were great, we didn't have traffic, and we had a blast. Thanks Mom and Dad for having us and hopefully we make it down there again to do some swimming in warmer weather soon!

Tax Refund

So we've been in our house a year now.  Crazy!  We've learned lots of new stuff, and have been kept very busy by the whole adventure of home ownership.  I still have boxes to unpack and sooooo many things that we said we would do when we moved in that have not been touched.  But with all of the hard work comes some nice payoffs as well.  Most notably, our taxes looked pretty good this year with the interest deductions!  And allowed us to use some of our tax refund on something that would make home ownership a little easier.  While we were both excited, I think Scott was super excited for this purchase.

It has been wonderful so far.  It has taken a job that used to take about 4 hours (usually over several days) and instead made it a less than an hour after work job.  Which of course give us more time to do other home improvement projects. :)

Quick California Weekend

So I finally found my camera and am determined to get back in the blogging action. :)

On the 17th, I flew out for a very quick trip to California for Anne's wedding.  I can't believe it's been just shy of 10 years since we roomed together as freshman at BYU!  We've roomed together until I got engaged and got to see each other a lot when she was living here in Boston as well.  It was great to be able to be there at her sealing.  Scott held down the fort here for a couple of days and the boys had a lot of fun with their daddy.

It was also awesome to be able to spend a little time with Steph.  Despite the fact that I was there less than 36 hours, and was throwing up half of the time, we still had a lot of fun.  Mucho thanks to her for driving me everywhere and putting up with my issues. :)  Here are a couple pics from the wedding/reception.

Congrats Anne!

What to Wear

Just some randoms...

Alan and Daddy just happened to both put on the same shirt one morning, so we snapped a pic. :)  Actually the same thing happened at joy school yesterday with Alan and his friend.  Gotta love byu t-shirts!

These are the outfits the boys were supposed to wear on Easter.  But as we were sick etc, that never happened.

So I took a couple pics a few weeks later

And most of them were squinty and not looking

But they're still pretty cute.

We had the theme of "imagination" at joy school and the kids got to dress up and pretend to be whatever they wanted!

From surfer dude

To princess bride

To cowboy.

And of course, James wanted in on the action too. :)

And now I can't find my camera... so we will have to figure out something there soon... :(