Climbing mountains and hanging with Olympians

My amazing wife Laura watched our children the other day so I could go on a hike I have been wanting to do. We ended up taking a detour to a lake and to play with Mountain Goats and baby Mountain Goats (mountain kids) total it was about 23 miles and went from 7500 to almost 12000 feet but we did it in a record 8 hours.

The saddle before the summit, after the clouds cleared you could see Provo and Utah lake on one side and Heber valley on the other.







Views from the second highest peak in Utah.












Elijah being not so Impressed by Steve Holcomb's gold medal for bobsled.














Laura and Elijah practicing for the Olympics.

















Elijah and mogul skier Shanon Barkhe she was so nice to give Elijah her medals. Too bad he lost them.

At the puhl

At least thats how elijah says it, pool; puhl. It works. Elijah LOVES to swim and play in the water. His favorite is walking around in chest deep water by himself. My favorite is sitting on the sidelines working on my burn-tan. Though I did enjoy helping elijah float around by himself!

Evie liked hanging out with her new hot pants.

We put a hiatus on potty training but elijah still enjoys his froggy potty. He brought it out and proceeded to put it on the couch, climb onto the couch, and sit on the potty and watch tv.
Elijah took it upon himself to get his own bath today. He hopped in after Tony got out.


Splash Zooone.





Slide.

Tony went off the high dive

More sleepy adventures

So speaking of sleeping....


This morning, Elijah was sleeping in our bed *siiigh* and he woke up before I did and proceeded to do his thing around the house, at one point I half woke up and saw him playing on the nightstand so I rolled over. I know, mother of the year, right? After awhile, I wake up to silence. Ahh, peaceful. Wait a second. Too peaceful. Wheres elijah?

I ran out to the living room to find the sliding door half open and no elijah. He figured out how to open the door. I grabbed Evie and ran outside to find a police car parked across the street so I start rushing over to him. Maybe it was the greasy messed up bed hair or the fact that I was wearing pajamas and no shoes that tipped him off, but he saw me coming and asked, Are you missing a child?

YESSSSSSs sss. He asked me what he was wearing and I manage to eek out "he.. space ships ..on pants... Superman shirt... he pajamas..." Elijah was sitting in the back of the cop car, buckled up and playing. PLAYING. The officer said he was just havin a time in the backseat. Someone had called after they saw elijah out by himself and the police officer had picked up elijah about 30 mins ago. 30 mins! How long had he even been outside I dont know. After giving some info, he got elijah out of his car and walked him home with me.

Its a funny story now, but I am so glad he wasnt hit by a car, or kidnapped, or wandered away so far that they had to take to him to the police station, get bit by a dog, scratched by a cat, stepped in something, the list goes on.

A funny part though is that when the officer tried to get him out of the car, Elijah ran to the other side of the car, and after walking around to the other side, elijah ran back to the other side. Eventually, he just asked, Is it ok if I just grab him out? Also, when elijah saw we were coming back inside, he sat down in the driveway and started yelling. Hmm, maybe this isnt my child.... just kidding I didnt say that, too busy whimpering and crying.

But anyways, heres how the afternoon went.

Elijah sleeping adventures

While drinking,
In family pictures,
After fireworks,

On a road trip,And after swimming,

Colorado via minivan

So this past weekend, we went on a long anticipated road trip to the greater Denver area for the main event of Kristin and Erik getting hitched! We were very excited to go, though not looking forward to the road trip. With two small children, I dont much look forward to taking them anywhere, its a lot to handle and generally requires many hands. However they surprised both me and tony by practically being angels. The only way it could have gone any better is if elijah had slept the whole time, which evie practically did. Elijah did sleep for awhile both ways, throw in some movies and McD's playplaces for running around, and we made it there and back with minimal whining and/or crying.
The wedding was beautiful and so was the couple. It was at a lovely church where the sun magically shone down onto Kristin and Erik while the ceremony was going on.

Afterwards, everyone had quite a time at the reception where the food was great and the dancing... even better.





Elijah loved using the fancy glasses to drink water. If only they had apple juice... We were most looking forward to seeing the fam! It was so fun passing Evie around and watching Elijah play with everyone.
Kelly and Evie
Sid and Elijah
Tony and his Crew, aiden and elijah.
Morgan and Elijah on the dance floorGrandpa Earley and the kiddos. Side note; Elijah slept through the ENTIRE ceremony. It was like magic. Evie slept too. A gift from God that they made absolutely no disruption. Gift. From. God.


Wendy and Evie and a guy in a purple shirt.

Playing with Tristan and Uncle Terry!

Our Independence week in pictures and videos.

Whats more american than baseball?


Snuggles.
Cute baby.



Fireworks.

Stealing a little girls scooter.

Sword play

Too much sword play I s'pose.
Cuuute.


Swimmin'

He just misses us I guess

Lately Elijah has been having a hard time sleeping at night. For awhile he did pretty well, waking up once a night and sometimes even sleeping through the night. But for the past week or two, he has been waking up like three times a night, it feels like ten, and he wont go back to sleep in his crib unless we lay with him on the couch and watch his bedtime music cartoon until he falls back asleep. Or if we are super tired or nothing else is working, we have to bring him to our bed.

NOOOoooOOO! I am ok with little baby elijah having a little R and R in the big bed, but when he reached about 15 months, I was adamant about Elijah sleeping in his own crib all night and I reclaimed my bed, all three feet of my half of the bed, no more little person pushing me to the edge, giving me six inches of space to sleep on.

So Tony asked me to wait until he has a day off to enforce the 'sleep in your own crib' rule so that the inevitable crying we will have to endure will come on a night that Tony can at least sleep in a little bit in the morning. So prepare yourself, neighbors, tonight elijah is undergoing my no picking up out of the crib during sleepy time rule.

Now that that is established, I must tell about how he fell asleep in the car on the way home from Cara and Will's bbq the other night. Elijah was tired and being fussy. Normally, he's pretty good about just falling asleep in his car seat, no hubub about it. But on this ride, Tony was trying to keep him quiet so he reached his hand back and elijah grabbed it and instantly went quiet. After a min his eyes were closed. How cuuuute, I thought, elijah just wanted to hold Tonys hand. But what was really funny is that twice tony took his hand away and elijah would start crying! sleep crying! so tony quickly put his hand back and he would stop crying. It was adorable to say the least. Eventually elijah was asleep enough so that tony could take his hand back.

Sweet Ride

We bought a miiiniivannn we bought a miiinivaann. Yeah, i am super excited about it. I highly recommend it to EVERYONE. Well, at least everyone with children, otherwise its a lot of wasted space. But to those WITH children, oohh it is heaven. No breaking your back with leaning over to buckle/unbuckle the kids, no door to swing out and worry about hitting the car next to you with it whilst unbuckling children. It. Is. Awesome.

We werent really planning on buying it so suddenly. We had been looking online for awhile, trying to see what we could afford and trying to find the best one for our money. We were planning on having the volvo sold so we could do a good down payment. However, the first night we went out looking, we went to one place that had a promising sounding Ford Freestar. Lowish miles, good price, but when we got to the place it was one of those sketchy dealerships where they probably get the cars at auction then just pretty em up a little. And the van had 120000 miles. Not the 50k they had advertised online. Ok, see ya.

So we went to an actual reputable dealership in the same area I had gotten my car, which is and has been awesome. We had someone take us around, show us some minivans, but really the only one in our price range was the one I saw online. A Chevy Venture. 2003. 89k. The miles were a bit higher than we wanted but the price was just too good to pass up. It was on sale for two grand less than what they had priced it at! And it was the last day of the sale! So we decided to jump on it. Doing all the paperwork, the guy noticed that the dealership was actually LOSING 800 bucks by selling it at this price!

Anyways, we love it, Elijah loves it, and Evie could care less, but I like to think she likes it.
We have promptly cleaned out the volvo and posted it for sale. Someone is coming to look at it soon and we have a few emails about it too.
Yay!

Anybody want to buy a 98 Volvo?