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! :)

March 9, 2010

Playing in the Snow and the Park!

Filed under: Uncategorized — brittney @ 11:25 pm

Our weather in northern Utah has been rather odd this year.  Most of the snow storms have hit the south, although we’ve gotten a good amount this year too!  McKinley got a really cute snow suit for Christmas and there wasn’t another good snow storm for her to actually be able get some use out of it until a few weeks ago.  We were so glad because it is just so cute and we were afraid she wasn’t going to even be able to wear it.  Although we were quite relieved when we put it on and it drowned her, so maybe it will fit next year too.  She was pretty unsure of the snow at first, she just stood there and wouldn’t walk on it.  Then I picked her up and put her in the middle of the grass, but then she still just stood still.  But by the end she was sitting in it and playing.  Here are some cute pictures of her and Mason!

Mason got a little snow shovel, he loves helping Jeremy outside, whether it’s mowing the lawn or shoveling the snow!  Then McKinley thought she needed to help, too!

Then all the sudden, last weekend, it was pretty nice outside!  So we took advantage of it and took the kids to their first park in Herriman.  Now, Herriman has about 100 parks, pretty much one on every corner, so we definitely had several close ones to choose from.  They are building one about a block away from us, too!!

Again, McKinley was unsure of the rubber ground, it took her a long time before she would walk on it, but again, but the end she was running all over the place.  Both kids loved the new slides!

We put the camera away before we put McKinley on the swings, then we regretted it.  She was laughing so hard, it was so cute!  Mason has never liked the swings, even when he was little, but she loved them!  I think we will be spending a lot of time at the parks this summer!

February 19, 2010

McKinley’s Birthday

Filed under: Uncategorized — brittney @ 4:36 am

Ok, so McKinley turned one clear back on November 29, so I’m a little late posting these but oh well. She had a fun birthday, I went back and forth a lot on whether to have her party down in Delta or at our house. Her birthday was just a few days before we moved, so our old house was starting to look bare and the new house just had a few boxes in it. But in end, it was just easier to have it in Springville, so in the pictures, shelves and cupboards are empty, but oh well, it was fun to have one more party there!! Even though it was such a crazy time, I still made sure and made her a cake! I have made all 3 of Mason’s, so I HAD to make hers!! I wasn’t sure what to do for her, because she wasn’t crazy about anything like Mason was with balls (his was a soccer ball).  I knew I just wanted it girly, so this is what I came up with:

And here is her enjoying the cake

She got lots of fun presents but the best by far was her laughing baby.  She was so excited, she wouldn’t put it down and she was just laughing and taking it to every person in the room and showing them over and over!!  Here’s  a little video.  There are some other video’s there too.

It was a nice day, we ate pizza and salad, opened presents, than ate some cake!  I still can’t believe she’s one!!

January 25, 2010

Welcome to our new blog!!!

Filed under: Christmas,Family,Holidays — brittney @ 4:23 am

Hi everyone, well I did NOT keep my promise of weekly posts!!  I do have a good excuse though, lol, we moved and then Jeremy has been redoing our blog!!  I love the new look, although it’s not finished yet because I’m going to make it look all cute, but Jer is trying to figure out an easy way for me to do that so that will come in a bit.  We designed it all from scratch, from the pictures on top to the drop down menu’s…isn’t Jer just so talented!!!  I would just tell him what I wanted and he’d figure out a way to do it.  It’s not quite finished, but this program is MUCH easier for me to use to we wanted to get it up!!  One of our favorite things are the quotes at the top.  Mason says the funniest things lately and this is a good way to record them.  We have a few of them up there right now, just some good ones that we remember, but I’m sure more with follow.  You can click on the “another quote” button to see a different one.


Well, we are loving our new house!!!!  We live in a nice little cul-de-sac so hardly any traffic, up on a mountain so there are incredible views, a HUGE backyard with most of it finished but still lots not done for us to play with, a beautiful home with lots of room and less than TEN minutes away from Jeremy’s work!!  We are LOVING that part!  Here’s a little look of the front of it, with our awesome realtor Jared (don’t mind the moving van and garage full of boxes or all the weeds, this is the only picture I have of the front of it LOL).

Cute huh!  The neighbors seem really nice far and so does our new ward.  Mason has 22 kids his age, so 2 Sunbeam classes with 11 kids each!!  At first, I thought “oh I feel sorry for those teachers, with all those kids just out of Nursery”  Dumb thought because then I got called to be Mason’s teacher!!  Oh well, he’s happy about it.  Jeremy is still calling free and will probably remain so until McKinley is 18 months.



Here’s a quick catch up on Christmas.  It was my family’s year for Christmas so they came up and we spent our first Christmas in our new house!  Mason was so fun this year, he really started getting the Santa thing.  We made some cookies for Santa and left the reindeer some carrots and the very first thing he did Christmas morning was look over the stair railing and see if the cookies were gone (not the see if there were presents) and shouted, “Oh, he ate them all, Santa ate all the cookies!!”  It was pretty fun.  This year Santa brought the kids a wagon to share and Mason a hot wheels race track and McKinley a Learn and Play dog that we can hook up to the computer and program it with her name, favorite foods, animals, colors…it is the coolest toy ever and she loves it!  She is so obsessed with dogs anyway, it was perfect toy for her!  Here’s some pictures of Christmas morning.

(checking for the empty plate of cookies then really making sure they were all gone and reading Santa’s note)

Oh, they are fun!  Jeremy’s parents came up a little later and we all had a big Christmas dinner dinner together (by big, I mean us, my parents, Jer’s parents, and Derek and Ash).  It was really fun and just a really good Christmas.  Christmas Eve we went the Jeremy’s family Christmas party in Lynndyl.  It’s always a good time with lots of good food and people.  We took a big family picture at the end.

Then a few days after Christmas we went back down to Lynndyl to spend some time with Jer’s family.  We played games, ate more food and just talked and laughed.  We got to visit with Kelli and Tom quite a bit and that was nice since they live so far away.  Jeremy got lots of cute pictures of their little Morgan!

Then we came back up here for New Years Eve.  My mom turn the big 50 this year so we all went to Temple Square to see the lights, then out to dinner.

Ok, that’s enough for now…although I just realized I haven’t posted about McKinley’s 1st birthday yet!!  Maybe tomorrow, I’m tired!!  Hope you all enjoy the new blog!!

November 7, 2009

Halloween Pictures

Filed under: Halloween,Holidays,Mason,McKinley — brittney @ 10:02 pm

Here are some picture of our little devil and angel!  Although I kinda think they should both have been devils!!  I’ll be back with more pictures of them trick or treating after Jer gets them processed, but I had to get my post for the week in!!

Jeremy & Brittney

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Mason

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McKinley

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Dogs don't bite Grandpa because he would cry. -- Mason
 Mason rambling while looking at the neighbors dog. (Age 3)

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