Brooklyn's 4th B-Day

Wow, we've been busy! Carson's finally walking, all over the place I must add, and Brooklyn turned 4 years old. She was crying because she's nervous about starting pre-school soon but once we started bringing out presents for her to open the tears went away. She had a great birthday and really appreciated everyone who came to her party!

Through Brooklyn's Eyes

We got Brooklyn one of those "kid proof" Fisher-Price digital cameras for her birthday because we thought it would be fun to see the world from her perspective, and it has been. Sure the pictures are pretty random and a little shaky but she's had a blast all day taking them and it's been fun to see what she deems to be "picture worthy." Check out her pics in the slide show in the lower portion of the blog!

Our Adopted Families / 4th of July / Farm Country / Goodbye Saturn

Okay, it's been a couple of week's since our last post and quite a few things have happened, so I'm just doing 1 massive blog entry to catch us up. Enjoy!

Our Adopted Families

In the spring we tore out a bunch of old, dead lilac bushes in our backyard and made a massive wood pile behind my dad's utility trailer that he let's us borrow, with the full intent of using that trailer to haul the pile off the following weekend. Well, it started to rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and rain and well, you get the picture. For 2-3 weekends in a row it rained and I couldn't haul the pile off. Then we noticed something, some Quail had laid a nest in the wood pile and we knew if I tore it out, their nest would die. Yeah, I'm a softy for small birds I guess. So we left the wood pile until their eggs hatched.

Well, they hatched! It was a lot of fun to see the 2 parents and their 13 babies running around our backyard. We kept trying to get good glimpses of them, but they stayed pretty well hidden for the most part. Then 1 Saturday morning we could hear them chirping loudly by Brooklyn's window. I thought it was a great chance to get some pics of them so I krept outside with my camera and tried to get close. Most of them ran off immediately when they saw me, but the mother lingered. I wondered why she was hanging around and then I heard tiny chirps coming from one of our window wells, 2 of her babies had fallen in. I walked up to the window well and the mother ran off into the nearby bushes. I saw the 2 babies and climbed in to save them. They were soooo soft! I picked them up, set them on the ground and their mother took care of the rest. She started calling and they immediately ran away.

Since then another Quail family has joined our Quail clan so we have 2 families, 1 with 4 chicks and our original family now with only 5 chicks. It's sad to realize how many of them have died (most likely from cats) but I guess that's to be expected. It's still been a lot of fun to watch them grow.

Oh, and they still occupy the wood pile so I'm still stuck and have no idea when I'll be able to get rid of it.







4th of July

Our 4th of July was pretty simple. We wanted to spend it together as a family and do things that I remember doing when I was a kid, so we got up early and took Brooklyn and Carson to the hot air balloon festival in Provo. They LOVED it! Brooklyn was scared of the loud hot air blowers (notice that her ears are plugged in every picture...) but for the most part she had a good time. We did a McDonald's for breakfast picnic in the park and watch the balloons, it's a fun way to spend the morning on the 4th.

After that we did a Quarnberg Family water park in our backyard with the kids. It was hilarious watching Brooklyn try to do the slip and slide. Below's a short video of Brooklyn's slip and slide techniques.

Farm Country

We took the kids to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point last weekend. It was pretty fun. Here are some pics with some Brendon-ized captions under each one.

Ewwwwww cow snot!





Ahhh cute, mommy Dooder date!






I wonder how hard it would be to install 1 of these in our house????



A cute rodeo princess!



Ooooo, what a cute water bucket! (The kid is pretty cute too I guess).

Goodbye Saturn

Well, tonight marks the end of an era. Our Saturn is gone. :(

This car has been part of every step of mine and Britney's relationship so it's hard to part ways with it. (I know it's just a car, but come on people, memories are worth something!!!). We spent 3 hours talking in it after our 1st date. We drove this car to Disneyland right before we got pregnant with Brooklyn. It's the car we took Brooklyn home from the hospital in, and it's the car that got me to and from the U of U while I got my degree. It's also the car that saw Britney through school at Snow College, carried her around Cedar City when she lived there and brought her to 1-800 CONTACTS where we met. It killed her to sale it.

It's been a great car, and a great blessing! We really didn't want to take on a car payment, but driving everyday from Springville to Draper was starting to wear it out so we figured it was time to get something newer. We got a great deal on a brand new Hyundai Elantra and it was too good of a deal to pass up. So now we have a brand new car, with a brand new car payment, and a big void in the memory department. That's how life works though, things move on, people move on and new memories are made. So here's to the Saturn, thank you for the memories! And here's to our Elantra, please help us make some good ones in the future!