Stowellzone

May 28, 2010

Jer’s Birthday, Easter, T-Ball and Snowbird

Filed under: Easter,Family,Holidays,Mason,McKinley,Vactions — brittney @ 7:45 pm

What?! I know, I’m updating our blog.  So much for my “new post every week” promise! :)   Oh well, I’ll keep trying.  Well, I’ll start off with the best news of all, we sold our Springville house!  Yes, we are now the proud owners of only one home instead to 2!  While it was a little stressful with a few months of 2 house payments, we learned a lot about budgeting and what we can “really” live without.  I became a coupon fanatic and am now kicking myself at how much money  I could have saved on groceries over the years.  I worked a few extra shifts at work, it just so happened that there were a lot of needs right when we needed them (I work as a secretary on-call in Labor and Delivery for those who don’t know) and that was really helpful.  The hardest thing of all was not buying anything for the new house.  We told ourselves, even if we had a little extra money at the end of the month, no buying anything that wasn’t necessary.  It worked out that we lived in our Springville house just long enough to quailfy for the the upgrading house tax credit so with the house sold and that check finally arriving we are happily spending away!  We bought some much needed new couches, a water softener (never have I seen such harder water than what we have here) some organizers from Ikea for the kids millions of toys, and a few other things.  We have been working on trying to bring our yard back to life, the house sat empty for over a year so the lawn is struggling, but I think by the end of the summer, it will be all green again.

Ok, so Jeremy turned 31 on April 8!  We had a fun day just hanging out, we were still waiting on the sale to go through so we didn’t do much except spend the day together as a family which is always wonderful!  I did make sure and at least get him a cake and a little gift from the kids (a strawberry plant and we planted and it promptly got several inches of snow on it and died quickly lol)

We went to Kanab for Easter and had a wonderful time.  The weather was perfect and the kids had a great time playing outside all the time.  Aunt Denise came up and it’s always great to visit with her and Grandma!  We, of course, decorated eggs (after McKinley went to bed of course, that would have been HUGE mess).

Went up in the mountains and dutch ovened (best food EVER!!) and had a little Easter egg hunt.

And got some super cute pictures!

Then the Easter Bunny visited!  He found LOTS of good deals this year and went a little overboard but oh well!

Then we went on another egg hunt to find all the eggs the Easter bunny had left!

Isn’t he such a good big brother, helping his sister?

Then we flew a kit Great Grandma had given Mason for Easter!

It was a great time, although we really missed the rest of our family that couldn’t be there!

Mason started T-Ball this year!  It is so fun to watch him and rather interesting to see 3-4 year old kids play T-Ball.  He does a pretty good job hitting and throwing the ball.

One of the parents are usually out on the field with them all the time cause they just run off if not, LOL!  I designed a scrapbooking kit to go with his colors cause they were so bright!  Here’s a page I made with it.  We have a lot of pictures so many more to come.

And finally, we just got back from a great little vacation to Snowbird!  Jeremy’s parents have a time share up there every year around Memorial Day and we got to go spend a few days up there relaxing and swimming.  But before we went, we had to attract some illnesses.  The day before we were supposed to go, Mason got pink eye (fun stuff).  I took him to the Dr. at the first sign on an infection and we started drops right away and  luckily it never got bad at all.  We only had to delay our trip for 1 day before he was doing good enough to go.  McKinley never really got it, but we started her on drops anyway, just in case.  But besides that and the fact that the cold they both had traveled to their lungs and me and Jer got LOTS of sleep with them both coughing all night (lol) we all had a great time.  Mason wanted to go swimming so bad so the first night we got there, we went right to the pool.  It’s outdoors, but the water is sooo warm, it’s like sitting in a hot bath.  Here’s the kids getting ready to go down.  We couldn’t get them looking at us at the same time and McKinley just kept playing peek a boo so Mason was looking at her lol.

And then we woke up to this

Apparently, while we were sleeping, Snowbird got about 8 inches of snow!  But by the afternoon the snow was moved off the sides of the pool so we went swimming again!  Because school was still in, there was nobody there and we had the pool to ourselves for over an hour before some other kids came in.  Usually we are there after school is out and it’s pretty packed but we were lucky this year.  We thought maybe the snow scared people away, but the next day it was pretty warm and no one was still there.

Boys being silly

I love how you can see the steam pouring off the water.  It looks cold but it was really so nice.  The sun was shining and it was only cold if you were standing in the snow…or if you’re walking back to your room, walk under a tree and a huge pile of snow falls from the tree at that moment and lands on top of you. (McKinley and I can tell you that that is cold!)

On our way home we stopped at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.  It was pretty fun, but the kids were kinda worn out so we’ll have to go back another time when they are feeling better.  But we got there in time to see the penguins being fed and they LOVED that!

Mason didn’t want to touch the sting rays, but me and McKinley did!

They loved looking at all the fish

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And jelly fish!

Alright, now you’re pretty caught up!  I hate doing these long posts, I really should just post more! :)

October 30, 2009

Back to blogging

Filed under: Family,Vactions — admin @ 9:34 pm

Ok, so I have been horrible about keeping up on this and am now making a new commitment to post something at least once a week, even if I have no picture!   Part of the reason for this blog is to help me remember our memories and I’m not doing very good, so starting now, new commitment!! :P   As of now, I’m going to give everyone a quick update on our family with only a few pictures and then links to our photo album if you want to see more. :)

To start off, Jeremy and I are doing great!  Jeremy has been working in Salt Lake for the last 4 years and commuting over an hour each way and has recently been transferred to Riverton, which is closer but still about 40 minutes away.  He is still working for the Church and loving his job and so to make it easier on our family and have him home more often we have decided to make a big move.  We love our house and neighborhood in Springville, but we love seeing Jeremy more so we are moving closer to his work!  It has been really hard on me to make this decision because I love our house (we have put so much work into finishing the basement) and I love the neighborhood and Springville and being a little closer to our parents and close to my friends, but after much deliberating and much praying we know this the best decision for our family and it is what we are supposed to do!  So for the last few months we have house hunting and have finally found a fabulous home with an incredible yard that our kids can actually go out and play in!  We are so excited and will hopefully be in our new house around the first of December.  Our new house is less than 10 minutes away from Jeremy’s work!  It has almost everything we wanted in a house and are really happy about it!  Now let’s just hope the neighborhood and ward come close to this one!! :D

Mason is now three and is going to a really great preschool.  I am still up in the air what to do about this one, lol, I don’t really want to drive 40 minutes each way to take him to preschool but I love this one because he has school during one half and then gymnastics during the other half and he LOVES it!  The best part is that when he comes home, he’s worn out!!!!  Who knew he could actually get worn out?  Here’s a picture of his first day of school.

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He had several great birthday parties!  We can’t believe he is 3 already, time just flies by.  He is still very active and always has tons of energy.  He is quite the chatter box and is always talking, even if no one is listening!  He still loves cars, trucks, and trains and his new favorite thing is computer games (go figure with Jer as a dad!)  He is really good on the computer and it is amazing to me how quickly he picks things up.  He also loves to read books and have them read to him so luckily he has a Grandma that works at a school and is always buying him fun books.  He says the funniest things all the time and I’m going to be better about writing them down so that we can always remember them!  We are a little nervous about he will adjust to the move.  He loves going out of the house and doing stuff, but is always grateful to come home so we know there will be a little bit of an adjustment.  He also loves going to Church here so not only will he be going to a new church with new kids, but soon after he will be a Sunbeam and leaving nursery where there’s lots of toys and activities…which may be one the biggest reasons he loves going to Church lol!!  If you are really interested in seeing what he’s been up to lately, you can click on the link below to see his birthday parties, him playing, whatever you want lol! But here is ones of our newer pictures of him.

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http://stowell.smugmug.com/Personal/Mason

McKinley just turned 11 months yesterday!  Man, she is growing up so fast!!  She is a little spit fire, too!  She already has soo much personality!  She is definitely a mama’s girl, but she sure loves when her dad comes home from work!  She has been crawling since early 5 months so we expected her to be walking by 9 but she is now just starting to get cruising.  I never thought I’d actually say this, but we are ready for her to walk.  She has been crawling for so long that it really feels like she should be walking already!!  I’ll probably regret this statement!!  She is such a determined baby and if she ever really wants something then it is almost impossible to stop her.  She is also such a drama queen already!  She already knows that falling apart will more than likely result in someone picking her up and she knows that flashing that cute smile will get everyone’s attention pretty quick.  She is very friendly as long as someone she knows is holding her, but as long as she is safe, she does all she can to get people to look at her and smile at her!!  Oh, this is why I was so afraid of having a girl!!  But we love her so much, she is so fun and such a happy little girl.  She is also just a loving baby!  She hugs everything she can get her hands on, be it a person, a stuffed animal, a remote, a phone…whatever!  I love it! Mason, still to his day, is not a cuddler!  Here is a recent cute picture of her.  Yes, I know there is no bow on her head but she refuses to wear them right now and pulls them off the second they are on and cannot be distracted from it even for a picture.  Maybe soon she’ll finally have enough hair on her head that I can make something stay in there!

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Her current words right now are mama (of course), dada and bogee!!  Poor Bogee, she loves him soo much and just always wants to show him!  Mason and her have so much fun together, they wrestle, which scares anyone watching because we’re so afraid he’ll hurt her, but she just laughs and laughs and lunges on him for more!!  It’s so fun to see how much they love each other and how much Mason already looks out for her.  Here are some really cute pictures of them in their Halloween jammies!

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I’m just a sucker for pajamas, I spend as much on them as I probably do their actual clothes that people see.  I bought McKinley’s in Park City when I went there with some friends for a girls weekend.  We didn’t think I’d be able to go because McKinley was still refusing to take a bottle (we just finally gave up and went to a cup for her) but Jeremy was great and just took care of kids while I was gone and they were so good for him and it was soooo good for me!!!  I am still working at the hospital but I’m only on call so I just work every now and then.  It’s nice, I still get to get out of the house and do something besides being a mom (which I love, but it’s nice to think about something else once in a while) but I’m not working all the time and still sleeping most nights. :)

Ok, enough catching up, on to some pictures!

We went to Arizona the first of September to surprise my grandma for her birthday and stopped in Vegas for the night on they way.  It was a long day and the kids were pretty tired, but we had to stop at the M&M factory!

Here we are suprising Grandma!  No one called her on her birthday to make the surprise even better!  She was shocked to see us all there and it was a fun weekend.

This is an attmept at getting a picture of all the great-grandkids with them…hahaha!

We had a great time at the Elk hunt this year, we took two trailers up to give us some more room and it worked great.  The kids had a blast playing in the mountains.  There are a ton of great pictures from the hunt, but here are a few and then if your dying to see more, you can click on the link below to check them out. :)

http://stowell.smugmug.com/Personal/Hunting/Elk-Hunt-2009/9767857_7y6i3#662047791_WmPPj

Alright, I think that was pretty good!  I’ll be back soon with Halloween pictures and some other stuff!!

Mason

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McKinley

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Austin

Coming Soon.

It's working.... I am growing bigger like daddy and grandpa. -- Mason
 Looking at his reflection in the window while eating dinner.

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