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?

Almost forgot

Chubs.

Pirates and potty training

Maybe we have high hopes or maybe we are too clever for our own good, but we decided to introduce the concept of 'peepee or poop' in the potty. So far it seems far too early for elijah to grasp the concept since he has peed on the floor about six times and counting and in the potty zero times and going strong. But he seems to like just sitting on it for a few mins at a time so thats a start.Its his froggy potty.
Last week, we went to the Special Care Nursery reunion! Lots of kids were running around and there was all the free ice cream I could get my hands on, but the highlight of the evening was definitely the face painting.


Arrr.

This past weekend, Julie and Mark came out to utah! We had so much fun hanging out with them and swimming at their hotel and forcing husbands to play cards.
We had fun hitting up all the Diners Driveins and Dives picks while they were here and had a day of fun at the olympic park, but it is only now I realize that I didnt take any pictures except of elijah at the pool. We love you guys and will hopefully see you again soon

videos from the trip

as promised.