Mike's 1/2 Birthday

This 1/2 birthday we didn't go 1/2 way; we went all out.  Natural-Sugar-Apple- Birthday-Pie with candles and a great birthday activity where we fished, camped, started fires, roasted hot dogs and gazed at the stars.

Happy Halfy Birthday

The little lone fish we caught at Panguitch

I never would have thought I would take 5 1/2 month old twins out camping, but it was worth the risk for Mike and the older kids.  And guess what... they slept through the night, even in a tent!  However, they did NOT like the cold bottle we tried to feed them the next morning and opted to skip breakfast until we could find some warmer water.

This is where the babies chilled while we fished

See the babies in their pack n' play again?  They are such good babies!

Rock Stars came to visit our campsite

The morning after the camp we headed to Duck Creek for a yummy pancake breakfast and fire truck rides.

Adelyn and Michael.  Michael still loves his fireman hat.

Since we didn't catch too many fish at Panguitch, we tried our luck at a kid's fishing canyon close to Cedar City and everyone caught a fish!  Hooray for a summer success!

Teething and Feeding- 6 months old

Today, both of the little boys got their first tooth.  I guess teething is in the genetic code, so the chances of them getting their first tooth on the same day is pretty likely for identicals.  I think it's fun.

In a very light, mocking tone, I hear the voices of several identical-twin-advice-givers-who-have-never-had-twins saying, "Don't let them teethe on the same day, they need to be able to celebrate these milestones individually."

I love that they can share some of these milestones; they obviously don't share a spirit and they will always be completely seperate people, but I think it's pretty sweet that they've been sent together for whatever reason.

They've both started spoon feeding.

Nelson kept reaching over to Braden and giving him pats on his shoulder.

We started Braden a few days before Nelson because he started waking up in the middle of the night for a bottle, and I figured that was the sign.  He had to think about eating from a spoon for a few days, but I think it's because he's very sensitive to the taste of it all.  His favorites are the cereals.  And he's started sleeping through the night again.  Yay!  He started saying DaDa just the other day.  Oh, so adorable.

Braden's first feeding (6/7/11)

Joey loves to help feed the babies, because he has discovered he loves baby food.  Especially the fruits.  He will feed them a bite and say, "oh mom, he left a little on the spoon.  Can I lick it off?"  He proceeds to lick the spoon after feeding each and every bite.

Joey feeding Nelson (and himself).

Nelson seems to enjoy solid foods a lot.  Quite often he whines through the whole feeding because none of us are fast enough for him.  He loves peas and squash, but has eaten everything we've fed him without too much hesitation.  He'll even open his mouth when he's nodding off to sleep.  Nodding off to sleep is rare for this fellow though.  He really seems to enjoy being awake.  He loves to watch the kids, roll around and goo.

Brother's Day

I have tried to be super accomodating this summer to the kids whims and fancies.  Adelyn has a calendar from Oriental Trading that has crazy and unusual holidays in it that we try to celebrate when they sound fun.  We celebrated Donut Day and she planned ahead for weeks for Mother's and Father's day.  The other day she said that it was Brother's Day and that the boys should be able to do anything they want.  I thought that sounded fun and gave my okay.  She was delightful with her brothers and treated them like royalty all day.  She even asked me to take a picture of all the brothers.

I'll admit, she was working so hard to please I was starting to wonder what she was going to expect from all of us on Sisters Day.  I started tearing up a little when I went down to her room and realized there was no sisters day because she had invented the day just for them and had handwritten "Brothers Day" on her calendar.

Lego Maniac

So after looking at some Lego sets and such, Mike opted to buy 3 large lots of legos on ebay.  It was fun to see them keep coming in the mail.  We sorted through them and discovered a billion incredible parts and the opportunity to build just about any set we want.  We just pull the plans from the Internet and start the search for parts.  Mike's first lego project was something from a space set he had as a kid.  He wanted me to take a picture of it.

He asked me to take the picture the day after Michael Jr. had asked me to take a picture of his Lincoln Log Cabin. (like Father like Son)

After all the commotion, I asked Adelyn to take a picture of me with my finished Lego toy too.

If you would like to join us in a Lego party, let us know.

3 on 3- Mother Town Madness

Mike in his BYU/Ute combo uniform.  It is meant to confuse the opponent.

Mike and Gary trapping the opponent

The basketball team sponsored the first Annual three-on-three tournament after the July 4th parade.  Garrick's team let Mike come play as their 4th team member/substitute.  They did really well and got third place.  They ended up playing in the POURING rain.  Needless to say, their littlest fans went home a little early.

4th of July in P-Town

Some of us were in the parade...

Some of us watched the parade...

Some of us fought over the free Frisbee...

Some of us rolled paper towels out of the back of a Yukon...

But all of us ran races.  Michael ran here at the fireman's races, so did Adelyn and Joey.  Mike and I ran the Enoch Freedom Run 10k early that morning.  He beat me by 15 minutes or something tremendous like that.  He's really good.

Giant Bubbles

Just had to say that this was one of my favorite crafts of the season:

One of my all-time favorite Joey pictures

Wildlife Bingo on a Sunday afternoon

 Welcome to neature.

Sea of Blue Flax.  How neat is that?

Deer

Various Evergreen and a Cumulonimbus

Aspen Trees.  You can tell they're aspen trees because of the way that they are.

Yellow-bellied marmot er a rock chuck 

Pronghorn.  I'm no fool.  This is not an antelope.

We didn't actually play bingo, but we did do a little Cedar Breaks trivia in the van with licorice bites.  Yum. 

Where babies come from

Michael: Is that your diaper?
Joey: No, it's one of the babies that mom went and got from the temple.