whitney eating

We finally captured Whitney's hilarious eating noises on video. She sure is enthusiastic about good food! She happens to be eating an orange julius, but she honestly makes these same noises at every meal! And Kate says it's making her "more colder".

important happenings

Here's a few more things I need to catch up on!

My mom came to bring Katrina back to BYU and we got to hang out for a couple of days! THe girls LOVED reading stories with her, pretending they were dogs in the front yard, hiding under the "star blanket", and sitting on the front porch observing nature, pictured here. It was a fun time!

Katelyn started "preschool"-- I'm doing a co-op preschool just once a week with a few friends. She LOVES it of course! And she lives her Lightning McQueen backpack. Anyone want to guess what she wants to be for Halloween?
We went "campfiring"-as Katelyn calls it-up the canyon. The girls loved "rock climbing".
and we enjoyed Eric's roaring fire.
My sister Allison and her family were in town for a few days! Katelyn and Natalie had a "sleepover".
The girls jumping around during halftime of the BYU game. Thanks Kendra and Jeremy for hosting!
Katelyn playing "gotcha" with Natalie, she wasn't enjoying it so much!
It's been a great summer.....

I LOVE having a garden!!

We're nearing the end of our growing season and we are constantly harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers (which Katelyn is convinced are spelled with a Q, obviously) and WAY more zucchini than we can ever use. I already have 10 cups of it shredded in my freezer for more zucchini bread than I'll make in a year! I just wanted to pay tribute to our garden with a couple of pictures.

We have gotten five tiny cantaloupes! And about that many little bell peppers.

Whitney is a cucumber fan, yay!! And I've converted her to the dark side, or the "fry sauce" side as Eric would say, by getting her to love cucumbers dipped in Thousand Island dressing.
We got ten apples on our little apple tree! We've been picking them a little early because we just couldn't wait, and they're pretty good!
We already can't wait for next year!

more laughs from lately

The other day I was making dinner and Katelyn came up from the toy room looking like this and said "look mom, I'm an indian!" She's finally decided she likes to dress up.

Whitney is OBSESSED with carrying around as many of these bear beanie babies (and other similarly-sized stuffed animals) as she possibly can at once. She's constantly dropping one or more of them and calling for help because she can't pick up more than three at a time by herself usually. This picture shows her with 4, I think her record is 6. And she's ALWAYS smiling while she has them! It's so funny.
The other day Kate called to me: "I found an I !!!" And I came to find this awesome i made by the sun. Very cool.

things that have made us laugh lately

Last night at dinner Katelyn ate a tiny piece of broccoli and then said "I'm a broccoli eating, tree eating machine! (laughs) just kidding! I'm just kidding me. (laughs some more)"

Katelyn at a playground up on the mountain: "I can see the WHOLE VALLEY from here!!"

After the sad, sad BYU game on Saturday, we stopped at a Maverick RedBox to get a movie, something funny to hopefully get us out of our depressed state. A car parked next to us and a guy wearing a BYU shirt got out, went in, and came back out with a 6-pack of beer! Maybe he needed a different way to rebound after the loss? :) Eric's like "that's something you don't see everyday."

My sister Allison and her family were here last week, and one night we had dinner with them and Katrina. We asked Katelyn to say the prayer and she started, but a couple of seconds later, Allison's 2-year-old daughter Natalie started her own prayer too! So while the rest of us were silently laughing, they prayed simultaneously out loud until Natalie finished her prayer. And then Katelyn kept right on going, unphased, and said "we're thankful for" a couple more things and then closed her prayer. So we told them both what a great job they had done.

date

So now that we're a private blog I'm finally posting again! We've been trying to go on one date a month (plus the temple). So last month we went to a Real Salt Lake game! It was fun and exciting and we got GREAT seats for only 10 bucks, thanks 101.9 (radio station)!! And thanks Katrina for babysitting!

More posts to come, but I just spent an hour typing in 78 emails of people to invite, I feel so loved to have so many friends and family but I'm DONE on the computer for tonight. :)

still going to

we're still going private, I just want to wait a little longer to let a few more people comment and leave their email before I change it. I couldn't wait any longer to do these next posts though! Thanks for all the responses so far, I love you all!

and the verdict is...

NO CAVITIES!!!! Katelyn had her first dentist visit this week and did GREAT. I was so relieved. We've gotta keep up the good work.

Bear Lake post- finally!

A couple of weeks ago we went to Bear Lake with Eric's family! We all stayed in a sweet cabin and spent a lot of time on the boat. It was so fun and very relaxing. Here are a bunch of pictures of us on the boat.

Eric trying to help me stand up while riding the tube-- he fell off one second after this was taken :)

Whitney fell asleep while we were out on the tube!
Eric thinks he's so cool, I wanted to only go "medium" speed so he was like " oh I can ride with no hands, this is easy" :)
The girls before Whitney fell asleep. Katelyn tolerated the boat, but she would rather be on dry land!
us again
family pic right after we left the marina
brothers :)
Eric and his dad- this is the only picture I have of Brad from this trip- I'm sad I didn't get one of him reading stories to Katelyn several times!
Ryan and Cortnee! The girls and I never actually rode on the boat with them, there's too many of us so we took turns! But I hear Cortnee's a pretty good slalom skier...
Elizabeth and Eric
Whitney went for a little ride!
And again, Kate decided to stay on the boat and snuggle with Dad.
Whitney sleeping again, the boat was a good rocker for her!
We love Eric's sweet farmer's tan in this and the above picture! Nothin' like building a deck to give you one of those!
And here's the big news- I waterskiied for the first time! Woo-hoo! It only took me 4 tries to get up, or maybe 5... but it was really cool and now I can say I did it. Scary, but cool. I think Eric was proud of me too. Since he's such a stud, see below...
Eric likes to do 360's on the knee board, it's a pretty cool trick.
Mary got these pictures of him - she's a good action photographer. :)
This one's my favorite, mid-turn. Cute.

We did do other things besides go out on the boat while we were there! Here we are at the beach:

The girls love sand!!
Kurtis built a sweet sand castle out on an island. :)
We had a fire and made smores!

Whitney loved trying to stick the marshmellow in the fire; Kate just wanted to eat smores, not make them.
Grandma Mary brought lots of CUTE FUN crafts for the girls to do- here is Katelyn making a necklace. She made one for each family member and we all wore them with pride. For one night. It was cute.

Whitney wearing her necklace and taking apart a doorknob hanger she had made.
she's saying "oooh"
We had a couple of delicious famous Bear Lake raspberry shakes! Whitney refused to let me help her eat some and so she made a huge MESS feeding herself.
And the girls loved it that there were bears everywhere!!

riding one

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for such a great trip!!!