Stowellzone

Birthday’s when your old aren’t as fun as they used to be.  This is my last birthday before I hit the big 30!! I really can’t believe that!  Jeremy was super sweet and had great plans to make me breakfast in bed, but I couldn’t sleep and was up and moving around well before they ever thought I would be.  He did make me breakfast though!  My mom and dad came up and watched the kids so we could go to Harry Potter!!  We were excited, I love the books and movies and was excited to see the last one.  It was really good!  Then they took us out for dinner, Chinese, cause that is all I crave lately.  I wanted a new frying pan and a food processor so that’s what they are getting me and Jeremy and the kids gave me a gift certificate to a scrapbooking store that I love!  He also went and got me the best ice cream cake ever!!   It was a great day!

 

Wow, I can’t believe my little baby boy is 5!!  It seems just like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital!  Since we’ve had such a busy summer, I thought maybe we could just do a family party this year, but he really wanted a friend party so we did both.  We had some family come up on his birthday (which was a Sunday) for his favorite, hamburgers!  When I asked what he wanted, he first said mac and cheese, but we talked him into hamburgers! For his cake this year, I made a little character from Mine Craft, his favorite computer game.  If you talk to him at all, he is bound to mention this game to you!  You just build stuff in the game and it is really pixelated and old school looking, so when I made the cake, I sprayed frosting on with a stencil to make it look a little pixelated.  My mom’s reactions was “is that it?” because it looks kind of dumb, but it looks just like the monster called a Creeper in the game and even Kinley shouted out what it was when she saw it!  Mason absolutely loved it and said it was the best part of his birthday!

Opening some presents

He did a good job blowing out his candles!

The next day we took him and Kinley to see Cars 2 in the theater.  He loves going to the “big screen” as he calls it and was excited!  It was Kinley’s first time to the theater, but she did a good job and they both loved the movie!

Then we headed home to get ready for his friends party!  Jeremy had the day off because he went to a conference the Saturday before and they gave him a comp day on Monday, perfect timing!  We had a water party in our backyard with a pool, a slip n slide, a fun sprinkler and of course they had the play set to play on.  Also, when we got the playset, they gave us a fun helicopter toy for free and we just never had time to put it together.  My mom had mentioned to my dad that I was kind of sad we didn’t have it for the party so when they were up here for Mason’s birthday, my dad, Roger, and Jer put it together!  I’m so glad they did cause the kids loved it!!  I invited a few kids from our ward and some of his friends from Utah County, we were so glad they some of them could make it!  I was so afraid the kids were going to be bored and then we overheard one of them tell Mason that “this is the best birthday party EVER!”  That made us feel a little better!!

I made some cupcakes for this party and I told them to just find a spot on the grass to eat, but they all went down to the play set on the picnic table, it was so cute!

Except Kinley, she hung out with us!

Opening presents!

Before the kids went home, we did a pinata…it was different one because you didn’t hit it, the kids each pulled a string and one of them opened it up and made the candy fall out!  It was a hit!

This is our neighbor, Aspen, Mason plays with her little sister Raven everyday and so she is also hanging out and watching them a lot!  She is awesome and makes my life easier…just look at her holding all the strings up cause the kids were so antsy to grab them!

It was cloudy all day and I was really praying for no rain since I didn’t know what I’d do with all those kids inside my house!  Luckily the weather held and as soon as parents starting showing up to get their kids, it started sprinkling!  It was great party and Mason was happy!  It made me really glad I let him talk me into doing a friend party, too!

 

We had a great 4th of July, as usual, we went down to Delta for the celebrations!  The 4th was on a Monday this year, but we went down on Saturday because I was going to a little get-to-together with some of my high school friends.  It’s amazing how you can go so long without seeing people, but then when you’re together, it’s just like it was yesterday!  I love these girls sooo much and we had a great time just hanging out, talking, eating, reminiscing, and blabbering about our kids!

We spent the weekend mostly in Lynndyl and this is what the boys did most of the time.

Jeremy found this game called Mine Craft and thought it looked fun for Mason, so he taught him how to play…little did he know, that he was creating a monster!  He LOVES it and wants to play it all the time!  Jer also introduced it to Ethan (sorry Kay and Roger!) and he has the same addiction.  So when they were down there, Jeremy apparently felt bad that Mason was just watching Ethan play so they set up his laptop on that little stool and Mason was in heaven.  We’ve really had to limit the time he plays this game because if let him, he’d play it all day, every day!

On Sunday, we went down to hang out with my parents for a bit, so they filled up their little pool and kids had a blast playing!

They love playing with my mom’s exercise ball and when we were out there, I was just snapping away some pictures and this happened.

It probably didn’t feel very good, but my dad and I were laughing so hard that she decided it was funny and just went on playing.  She did a good job trying to catch it though!

We painted Kinley’s toes and fingernails red for the 4th, she thought that was pretty cool!  She really does a good job holding still and letting them dry.  My mom was nice enough to paint my toes too, since it’s getting hard to reach them…we won’t mention how interesting that was!!!  Haha!

Jeremy got up early the next morning to go take pictures of the cheerleaders while we got ready for the parade.  The weather was PERFECT!!  It was overcast the whole time so we weren’t just sitting there melting in the sun, but it never rained.  It was perfect parade weather.  The kids, of course, had a great time getting candy.

Kinley was a little overwhelmed from all the people and was pretty clingy.  Good thing her grandparents love her and helped her get her candy!

The biggest bonus about my mom being the cheerleader adviser on the 4th is that the cheerleaders throw us gobs of candy!  After the parade, we went to the park for a little bit then did our traditional stop at Leo’s for some good ole Delta food!!  Because Jer had to work the next day, we decided no derby for us this year and just headed home.  We ended up doing some fireworks with our neighbors, but we didn’t take any pictures!!  We love our neighbors!!

 

After an incredibly busy spring, Mason’s sports have come to an end.  We were ok with T-ball ending, he had fun, but we as parents were ok when it was done.  The coach and the other parents were a little different and not quite as fun as his soccer group.  Here’s some pics of his last game.  He sure is cute!

He enjoyed playing, diving all over the ground for balls, and running around with the kids!  Now, soccer we were sad to see come to an end.  Mason (and us as well) really liked his coach and made some good friends on the team that he loved running around with every weekend.  The season went out with the bang though, the association was actually so impressed with their little team, they invited them to play at a Utah Real Soccer game half time!!  We were so excited!!  We only got 2 tickets (one for Mason and a parent) but we called both our parents and of course they had to come up and watch so we bought us all tickets and went to the game.  The game was actually pretty fun, it was cool to see a professional team play.  Mason thought the big field was pretty cool and liked being down on that big field.  Before the game, a whole bunch of teams got to go out on the field.  I got some “great” pictures with our little camera.  Jeremy was down just outside the field with the nice one.

We were pretty sure he was looking for us or Jer, but he never saw us, even though we were all shouting to him!

When he got off the field, back to Jer.

Each team got to bring out 2 coaches on the field.  Jeremy acted like the 2nd coach so he could grab some great pictures!  I’ve mentioned before that Mason isn’t the most aggressive player, but he got better through out the season and even scored a few goals (no need to mention they were ALL for the other team, but we didn’t care, we were just happy he scored!) so when he was out there playing on that big field  and in front of all those people and he scored a goal, his little cheering section went crazy!  (again, no need to mention it was the wrong net)  Normally there’s only 3-4 kids from each team on the field at a time and only for a few minutes before they switch, but the whole team played the whole time and just ran like crazy!

Game’s Over!!  Look at those pink cheeks, he was pretty tired, he played hard!

It was such a great experience and he had a great time out, we are so glad he got that opportunity! And here’s a few pictures of cute Kinley during the game!

Chillin with Grandma and Grandpa before the game, with her sunglasses on

And lovin’ her snow cone!  She also ate a pound of nacho’s, which was so weird for her, she never eats anything!  We all couldn’t stop laughing at how she was just downing them!

To our house, not our family yet!!  We had been wanting to get something fun for the kids for awhile to play with the backyard, so when Jeremy’s parents offered to buy them a playset for their birthdays (and I added in Christmas) this year, we were so excited!!  We went looking and found one that we loved.  We could either pay them $500 to come and put it together for us or we could attempt it ourselves.  We decided to have a big family party weekend and have both parents come up and spend the weekend building.   The store warned us that it takes 2 of their guys who do this all the time around 8 hours to do it, but, in the words of my father “that just means we can do it 6!!”…hmm, famous last words.  I think we all knew it would take awhile, but we figured with power tools, an air compressor, and 3 men it shouldn’t be too hard.  25 working hours later….we all agreed that if we ever had to do it again, we would pay the $500!!

In progress

Mom did a great job babysitting!  Mason and Ethan entertained themselves by playing on the computer the entire time and my mom followed Kinley around, in and out of the house, up and down stairs, taking her shopping, spoiling her!  Kay ended up sick so she didn’t come up and spent my time, organizing the next steps for the guys and ordering them around!

The worst part was probably all the leveling they had to do.  Our backyard isn’t exactly flat, I guess that’s the problem with living on a mountain, so they had to do a lot of digging and leveling and building up.  And that was after we changed our minds several times about where to put it!  I’m so happy we have it though, the kids absolutely love it and spend sooo much time out there playing!!

 

On June 8th, Jer and I had our 10 year anniversary!!  I know, you are all asking, “10 years, that’s a big one, what fun things did you do?”  We took a family trip to Provo for our 2nd ultrasound then picked up Chinese food on the way home…fun huh!!  We are hoping one day to go to The Melting Pot for dinner since I’ve always wanted to go there, but since I’m writing this in August and we haven’t been, we may do it on our 11 year anniversary!!  No pictures, but I wanted to make the day!