Catch-up: summer fun in Utah

My little Mason turned 11 months today...he's growing up so fast.

Mason loves, loves, loves playing in the water. Family picture at Cherry Hill. This was the best shot out of 10 tries! We had some fun times with the Berretts at the Oakridge pool. Samuel wearing Papa Tom's hat. Samuel snuggling with grandma Suzy on the lazy river.Samuel loves making animal noises so it was so fun to take him to the zoo and watch his excitement when he saw the animals in person. You can't go to the Hogle zoo without riding the train! Mason with Joe's parents, Suzy and Tom.
The highlight of the day for Mason was the Merry Go Round. He absolutely loved it...too bad I happened to sit on the only animal that didn't move. We were too cheap to pay for another round, but luckily Mason didn't care. I think his expression in this picture is so funny.
Samuel on the other hand certainly did care. He was sitting on his favorite animal and did not want to leave. He was content to watch the Merry-go-Round, so we let him be for 30 minutes. We waited until the crowd died down before we finally braved the full-on-out tantrum.
Well we are finally on our way to Texas tommorrow, yay!!! After 6 weeks on hold in Utah, we can finally get our 'post-graduation' lives started. On Thursday, Joe and his dad flew to Milwaukee to get our stuff, and made it to Kellar,Texas by Saturday night. They had a delay due to a tire blowing out on the car trailer. Fun stuff...glad I'm responsible for flying the kids down! Many thanks to Tom and Suzy for opening your home to myself and our 2 busy, busy boys. I really appreciate your help these past weeks and I am certainly going to miss it once I'm on my own during the days again:( I will especially miss the wonderful company and watching you both interact with these babies in ways that only grandparents can. Thank you so much for everything! This move is so happy and so sad at the same time. For those of you that live by family, please always remember how truly lucky you are!! Well, hope everyone's summers are going well and I will see ya in Texas!!

Hanging out in Utah

Here's a happy Mason ready for church...spike and all! Well, so far we have been living in Bountiful, UT with Joe's parents for 5 weeks. We finally closed on our house this past Thursday and will be on our way to Dallas next weekend...hooray!! I am excited to move on to the next stage of our life, but even more excited to see my wonderful husband again. So while we've waited, in the mean time lots have been happening.

(1) Both boys took turns with a virus (we think) where they had really high fevers for a couple of days. Samuel even made it up to 104. It was pretty funny trying to guess what it was..."maybe it was the pool water?", "his gums are inflamed, it must be teething", "his stool was a little loose, it must be a cold or virus" When it was Mason's turn, we blamed the fever on a virus.

(2) I've been able to spend some time with some great friends. Below is a picture of my get-together with Kristin and Rebekah...my good friends that I grew up with in Kissimmee, FL. It's hard to believe how much has changed since our Young Women days. After chatting for a while, we decided to herd our children to a nearby park...a process that took us nearly a half hour! The great photographer that I am, the picture ended up blurry and I cut off Hallie. Sorry! This is the best shot too! Below is a picture of Sienna and Mason waiting for their burritos at Chipotle. Katie and I met for lunch and these two were so patient while we slowly ate our lunch over a 2 hour period! Thank goodness for fruit puffs and yogurt melts!
This is the aftermath of our lunch. In addition to snacks, the babies also liked to play with straws and napkins. This extended our lunch another 30 minutes.
(3) Samuel has just about discovered every nook and cranny in grandma and grandpa's house. Toys entertain him for only so long, so we've had to be creative in keeping Samuel busy to divert him away from: the toilets, toiletpaper, the bathroom in general, all the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, the formal living room, climbing bookshelves, and again Samuel in a bathroom is very bad news. So back to being creative. One of Samuel's favorite things to do is help me with laundry. He loves putting clothes in the dryer. Once he runs out of clothes, than he'll put anything he else he can find into the dryer. Well, even that can become old news, so in the video Samuel has moved on to the next step with the dryer.

(4) Finally, some exciting news for our family, Mason has finally started to crawl!! At 10 months, I was concerned that he was never going to figure it out. The next video is for: my parents who ask me EVERY time I talk to them "Is Mason crawling yet?", my nieces Bella and Lilly who devoted a lot of time into helping Mason crawl, and my poor husband who was bummed that he missed this moment.

(5) We have been going non-stop since we've been here and luckily time has gone fast, since I am beginning to miss Joe. Ha, Ha, just kidding...I've missed you the whole time and I can't wait to see you. I was planning on posting more pictures, but I am way too tired. Stay tuned for pictures at Cherry Hill...the greatest funspot you'll ever know.