Father's Day

This post is dedicated to my husband, Mike. The top ten unforgettable DAD moments for him (in my perspective) told through pictures, in no specific order (except for the number 1, because lets face it, that is #1!):

10. Teaching

9. Making sure that his boys get a good haircut

8. Passing on his love of Halloween and the fun we can have!

7. Taking his boys to experience new things
6. Playing on the floor with his boys

5. Just being plain silly


4. Being there when his boys get hurt or are sad
3. Passing his love of good food and cooking on to his boys
2. Making sure to cherish every moment with these two precious boys, Kimball and Brandon

1. Witnessing the birth of two precious boys...

Brandon
And Kimball

Mike, you are such a wonderful father and I love you so much more with every day, every time you hold our babies that love just grows. Thanks for showing your immense love for them and me with your hard work and dedication, your perseverance through all that comes your way in life, no matter how hard! Happy Father's Day, I hope that you enjoyed our celebrations we had this weekend, which also continued into Monday with the AWESOME steak we had for dinner followed by the beautiful hike and the warm campfire with the gooey smores. WE LOVE YOU!

To laugh and love is to live!

The title of the post explains these pictures more than adaquately!

It is a beautiful blessing to be a part of a family where there is so much love, who am I to be so blessed from on high?

Summer Festivities

The summer would not be complete without swimming...

Cold Watermelon...
Silly moments...
Smiles and laughter...
scraped knees and climbing trees...

Friendly Neighbors...

We have been looking into moving to a new apartment with 3 bedrooms, but there are really only 2 things holding us back. First of all, we can't find a good deal for a 3 bedroom but mostly we are becoming good friends with our neighbors, Chad and Amy Baker. They are a young couple like us, and they have 2 boys Braxton (2 weeks younger than Kimball) and Quentin (3 months older than Brandon). They love the outdoors and are just fun people to be around. I have some caught some cute moments on the camera of our kids playing together, and one of the two big kids (Mike and Chad) playing on some old skateboards. Last weekend while they were playing on the skateboards we decided to pack the kids in their strollers and everyone just take a stroll down the street and grab icecream at Farr's. Random? Of course, but that is how some of the best memories in life are made right? We also had an enjoyable time out in front of our apartments the other evening at a Dutch Oven Cookout. We won't be in these apartments forever, but while we are here so close to the Bakers, we'll try to enjoy it!

Braxton comes to our door often...

Brandon is wondering who this new guy is?
Riding along...
On your marks, get set, GO!
I was watching the boys during Chad and Amy's garage sale and the boys were fascinated with the train...

Raining Fish?

Well, it hasn't been exactly raining fish, but if we caught fish as much as it has rained this month, we'd save money on groceries! Mike took this picture of the sun breaking through the rain clouds that as of late have been our seemingly constant companions.

Here is another weather picture that I snapped as we were fishing at Eagle Rock, just down from American Falls Dam. We bought our fishing licenses and went fishing at the beginning of June, to kick off the summer festivities!
Our trip was complete with lots of snakes, we saw 4 in our short time by the river.
So we haven't caught anything yet, but we have only gone on 2 fishing trips as a family, and Mike ventured off on his own today for some fishing time over near Blackfoot after he finished tutoring a student in Math. We intend to catch some fish soon... actually to be quite honest, Mike will probably be the one to catch the fish because I admit to having very limited fishing skills, sadly enough!
Here are 2 more pics, Mike hooking a worm and Kimball chowing down on some snacks while Mom and Dad fish.
Any suggestions for good fishing grounds in Southeast Idaho? We'll take em...

Memorial Day Weekend

Last weekend was wonderful! Most of you have probably already seen these pictures on family websites or facebook, but oh well! We started last Saturday the 23rd celebrating Kirsten and Trevor's wedding. Natalie, my cousin, babysat the boys while Mike and I attended the sealing ceremony. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of their special day. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with Corey and Daymi and their children. Here are the two babes, Abby and Brandon.

Here are the other crazy cousins playing at the table, enjoying strawberries dipped in sugar.
We stayed the night and the next morning enjoyed the Sabbath with their family. We attended the blessing of Karlie Hoffman at 1:00. She was absolutely adorable in her dress and the blessing was beautiful. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of that either, we left early after the Sacrament was passed. Here is a picture from that evening, we had a chilly and rainy cookout in the rain. Despite the rain, we had a blast eating hotdogs around a warm campfire!!
When we got back to Corey's house, we roasted marshmallows for s'mores around their grill. I love this pic of Mike, the flaming marshmallow stick I put in front of the camera is AWESOME!
I tried to recreate the moment.... but it didn't work!
My brother enjoying his first s'more...
Daymi is laughing at her nephew, Miguelito...
On Memorial Day, we visited five gravesites, my Uncle Jim, Grandpa Ben, Uncle Steve, Cousin Scott, and Mor-mor (grandma in Norwegian). 
Kimball is pictured by his namesakes gravesite (Kimball Benjamin).
We were at the grave sites of my Grandpa and Uncle Jim and met a relative, our Great-Aunt Jean Young! We snapped this picture, and as you can guess my mom was SO excited to hear that we had met her.



Later that day we had a picnic, and I snapped this cute pic of the kids lounging on the camping chairs in the front yard, CUTE!
Thanks so much for the fun weekend and for your hospitality Corey and Daymi!!!

Crocheting and Making Baby Food

Heaven bless my mother, for she passed the love of crocheting down to me. Although I am not as advanced in this art as she, it is still a joy to create something beautiful out of a ball of yarn. Blankets have been the only projects that I have dabbled in, unfortunately. I just finished this baby blanket for my friend Angie Hoffman's little baby girl, Karlie. She is going to be blessed this weekend in Rexburg and luckily I finally have it finished. 

My other project that I have worked on this week is making baby food. I just thought I would share how much I save by making my own. So I bought this 32 oz. bag of frozen peas at Walmart for $1.94. After cooking the peas on the stovetop, I pureed them in my blender, adding some of the cooking water in to get the desired consistency. I strained the peas and then separated them into ice cube trays and froze them. From that one bag I got 33 pea cubes, and each cube is about 1 oz. or 1 serving for a young baby (for an older baby 2 cubes would be a serving). 

The price per ounce to make homemade peas is $0.06 and the price per ounce for Gerber peas is approximately $0.38. If a baby were to eat one ounce of homemade peas for a whole year it would cost $21.90 and it would cost about $138.70 if he ate one ounce of Gerber peas for a year. Anyways, I took some pics of the process of making baby food...
It may take some time but you same TONS of money when you make it yourself! When I first started making baby food for Kimball in 2007, I got the best information off of this website: www.wholesomebabyfood.com. Well, what are everyone's plans for the holiday weekend? Our family is going to be chilling in Rexburg all weekend, and we are even going camping! I'm excited...

Birthday Celebration #2

I just quickly wanted to share a few photos from my Grandpa Moore's BIG BIRTHDAY BASH!! We had so much fun this past Saturday at their house celebrating his birthday with all who came. I even got to play the violin for him, his and Grandma's favorite song, "Can I Have This Dance?" Enjoy the pics, sorry I don't have a lot of time to tell more, Brandon just started crying...

Starting Solid food!

We started Brandon on solids last week, and he wasn't sure about it at first, but now loves it. We start on peas tomorrow, we'll see how it goes... Here are two pics from his first time eating cereal. Kimball wanted in on the fun. In the second one, he looks like he is about to hurl, kinda funny looking!

For the most part, Kimball does really well with Brandon, but now that Brandon is interested in everything that Kimball does (interested in his toys) we have to keep a close eye on them when they are near one another. 
I wish I had a picture of myself as a little baby eating my toes... that would be great! He randomly sucks on his feet and Kimball gets a kick out of it.