As Brigham said, "This is the Place!"

In what has become another annual tradition for us, we took in This is the Place Heritage Park Monday with Grandma Sarah.  Here are some of our adventures.  First, two sisters...

Doing some laundry.  The girls would appreciate it a lot more if they knew how to do laundry now...

Learning how to milk a cow using pioneer toys.

Here are the girls with Grandma, watching the loom.

Kadence and Tayah loved the animals.  Here they are petting a goat, but their favorite was...

...riding the ponies!

Now, as parents, we enjoyed this part: a little school discipline!  Kadence took a turn first in the corner,

followed by our red-head (heaven knows there's times we wish we could employ this!).

Blackmail photo for later on!

Doing some learning!

One of the girls' favorite parts was simply riding the train.  Fun times with Grandma Sarah!  The girls also loved the huge snow cone she bought them!

A family shot on a ship that "brought" the European pioneers over here to Utah.  What fun we have together!

Panning for gold!

And lastly, a shot of Stockton being a little unsure of the mini train ride.  All in all, just a fantastic day!!

Voice of the Spirit

Voice of the Spirit

Here is yet another amazing Mormon Message sent out by the Church. This discusses the importance and power of the Holy Ghost and how it can help us go through life's ups and downs. I can tell you that it makes the ultimate difference for my family and me. We could not be more grateful.

Taking Time to Smell the Roses

We took our children for an amazing afternoon adventure to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  What a beautiful, relaxing place to spend a few hours.  It is really a remarkable place and we're lucky to have it!  I'll just add a montage of photos with just some brief descriptions.  Here are the girls "on stage!"

Our beautiful girls in front of some water lillies (and tons of fish you can't see here). 

Stockton and I are extremely lucky to have our three women in our lives!

Our terrific three-year old Tayah trying to teeter-totter (alliteration is great)...

"I don't want to work.  I just want to bang on the drums all day..."

In front of the waterfalls.

No offense to these gorgeous sprawling hills, but our princesses are prettier!

And our prince is adorable...

My girls and me, admiring a very Japanese-like koi pond...

So many fun things to see and do.  Kadence and Tayah in a beautiful setting. 

They were pretty stoked to be in the Secret Garden (a recent favorite book). 

We have loved several mini excursions this summer, trying to do something along these lines each week or so.  We have a few things left on our list these final waning weeks of summer.  If we learned anything in these gardens, we need to step back from the constant busyness of life (and our last few weeks have been hectic)and take time to smell the roses!

Parenting: Touching the Hearts of Our Youth

Parenting: Touching the Hearts of Our Youth

Sorry we've not posted in two weeks...we were on a family vacation for one of those weeks. We'll catch up, we promise!

We all certainly have our moments as parents, moments where we are at our wit's end. That's when messages like this really are needed. As I watched this today, I was filled with an overwhelming love for my children. The role parents and grandparents play is beyond comparison and it's one to be taken seriously. I am so utterly thankful to be a father and for three beautiful children I love with all my heart. While we have times where the crying, the diapers, the tough nights, and the fiery red-headed fits, they are far outweighed by the hugs, the kisses, the dances, the giggling, and the toothy baby grins. Kadence, Tayah, and Stockton are our joys.

Please share this with others (click on the link above)!

July Nuts and Bolts

Highlights for July 2010


• Elizabeth participated in a Relief Society service project, helping prepare kindergarten kits for the local elementary school.

• Stockton gets his nine-month shots and handles them fairly well (better than Kadence who was sad her baby brother was crying!). 10% percentile for weight and 60% for height…very different from his sisters. Tayah also had her three-year appointment. Both children are healthy and we’re thrilled Tayah does not have the same umbilical hernia Kadence did.

• We made a quick trip down to St. George for our nephew Cash’s baptism. It was great visiting with family, playing, and swimming.

• It was kind of nice to celebrate Independence Day on Sunday. Our young men put the flags up and the neighborhood looked beautiful. We celebrated the next day by attending the Provo parade followed by a family dinner at Dad and Donna’s.

• Elizabeth helped with some nice Young Women activities as they prepared for girls camp. I helped at one where our youth were given a special family history lesson.

• Stockton decided the crawling was okay, at least for four or five paces. Army crawl is still his preferred mode of transportation. He has experienced a lot of new foods. Gotta love babies’ reactions, especially when it’s not a flavor they favor!

• We celebrated our sixth anniversary by attending our ward picnic in the afternoon and dinner and a Jon Schmidt concert. Schmidt is a remarkable pianist whose become a family favorite (every pianist is Jon Schmidt according to our girls!). Thanks to some advanced work, Jon actually dedicated the closing song to Elizabeth from me, “Love Story meets Viva La Vida.” It was a night to remember!

• Pioneer Day weekend was wonderful together. We had a family hike, took the girls to a movie (How to Train your Dragon), and watched the parade on television. Always grateful on this day.

• We also went to a very entertaining Peter Breinholt concert. What a great performer.

• Kadence attended a fun Primary water activity. She and Tayah also earned a pool party from the Springville Library. They love their weekly story time, two to three trips to Seven Peaks each week, and play dates with friends.

• Life is simply wonderful!

Barn Country and More Girlisms

It's been yet another busy, but fun week for us!  After work Tuesday, we headed up to Thanksgiving Point to visit the Barn Country.  We had a great time, hot weather notwithstanding!  Here's the proof:

Here are the girls getting up close and personal with a bovine beauty.

Stockton just proving to the world that there's not a cuter baby on it!

Hard to be intimidated by these mug shots!

Prison looks like it's pretty fun (better than working at Dunder Mifflin)!

Our prisoners escaped and headed right over to the dance hall!

He's got us wrapped around his little finger!

Tayah riding a horse "by her own self!"

Our princess riding her noble steed.

Not quite a John Deere, but it'll have to do!

Enjoying riding the wagon!

A father could not ask for cuter, sweeter girls!

We also were blessed to go up to girls camp for bishopric night, bringing dinner up to the YW and leaders.  We visited, played games, and attended a fireside where our remarkable stake presidency shared some poignant thoughts with our girls.  The ward testimony meeting was amazing.  We are so proud of our YW and both Elizabeth and I are grateful for callings that allow us to serve them!

For posterity:

Kadence: "Mommy, do you want some Sprinkles?" (meaning Pringles)

Tayah: "I can't wait to go to Lagoon and ride the roan keisters!" (roller coasters)

Tayah: "Is this a deview?" (previews before watching a DVD)

Mommy (playing "I'm thinking of" in the car to keep the girls awake): "I'm thinking of a place where there are lots of people and lots of fun things to do..."

Tayah: "Is it Home Depot?"

A time for "firsts"

The things to write about have been piling up, and the more they pile up, the more overwhelming it is to think about writing them down. Well today is a new day, and I will not do anything else until I finish this post! We've had a bunch of firsts-mainly with Stockton-here at our house the last little while. Stockton had his first haircut! We knew it was definitely time for a haircut when his hair hung down to the bottom of his ears (mind you, it was scraggly and we kind of tucked it behind his ears so it wasn't so obvious). I attempted to do it while David was at work-in fact, I don't think I even told him I was going to do it that day. It was quite the challenge as I let Stockton sit on the floor and I attempted to cut the back. The back was all I managed to get done because he loved the clippers and kept wanting to see them, so he was moving all over the place trying to get a better look, and I felt like I was trying to "chase" him with the clippers. The next day I tackled the top and finished. About 2 weeks later, I decided it wasn't short enough (I used a 6 on the back/bottom and an 8 guard on the top originally). I was afraid the first time of cutting it too short and even though I cut off about 1 1/2 inches all around, there was still more to be cut. So again, while David was at work, we attempted it in the bathroom this time, still on the floor and went a little shorter. I have to admit, it turned out pretty cute-nothing fancy, but he looks so different. I'm glad it wasn't traumatic for him-he had a blast!

Stockton also started crawling this past week. He's been scooting/army crawling on his belly for almost 3 months now, but never showed interest in crawling until the last 2 weeks. He would crawl about 3-4 times and then drop back down on his belly-I guess he thought that way was faster. The last couple of days we've caught him crawling 4 or 5 feet. His preferred method is still the army crawl on his belly, but at least he now knows he can do it.

On the 23rd of July Stockton pulled himself up to a standing position for the first time. We went in to get him up from his nap and there he was, standing up in his crib-that meant we had to lower his crib mattress. Now, he will grab onto anything to pull himself up and he's starting to move a little bit along the furniture.

Last weekend I took the kids up to Pocatello to visit my sister's family. David had some things going on at home, so we left him here and drove up there Saturday afternoon. We were able to be there when they blessed Alyssa in church and we had a lot of great food and lots of fun visiting. The girls loved playing with their cousins, staying up late, seeing Granny and Gramps, going to the park, and even loved going to class with their cousins at church (although it took a few minutes for Kadence to be okay with that since it was a different teacher and music leader than she was used to since we weren't in Springville). We left after lunch on Monday to come back home, and I had to practically drag them out to the car. They kept telling me they wanted to stay there forever. We all missed David and wanted to be home, but the girls loved playing with their cousins and didn't want that part to end. Thanks Marc & Marie for a fun weekend. They did great on the drive home-they were so tuckered out from late nights and playing at the park before the drive that Stockton slept 95% of the way home and the girls both took about an hour nap and Willy Wonka entertained them the rest of the way home. It was a great weekend. It was too bad I forgot the camera (I have a really bad habit of that).