Fun in the sun and water

Down where my mom lives is right next to the Colorado River. Of course we had to spend a day down there. We had fun playing in the water. A few days before Jason took Brenna and Makayla to a spot by the river to go play for a few hours. There was a little girl there whose family was down the beach a little way. She kept telling Brenna that there were alligators and sharks and fish that bite in the river. Of course that scared Brenna to death and she wouldn't go in the river. She just sat on the bank and played in the sand. Lucky for that little girl I wasn't there because I would have gotten really upset with her and chewed her and her parents out. So on our next visit to the river we had to spend most of the time convincing Brenna that there was nothing in there that would hurt her. It finally came down to us telling her to go yell at the river and tell all the bad things to go away before she would put a toe in it. My mom has a speed boat that is really noisy. Brenna usually doesn't like anything noisy but she had a blast going in the boat. Once she got over her fears she had lots of fun playing and didn't want to go home.
Ian is looking more and more like his daddy every day. He had a blast playing in the water. I thought he would hate it because he doesn't like water that is cold and he gets very grumpy when he gets too hot. We sat in the river with him and he sat there and played until the big waves came and then he didn't like it....but once they were gone he was fine. He spent most of the time in just a diaper so I think that's why he had fun....he loves being naked. We're in trouble once he learns to take his clothes off...but hopefully that'll be in the middle of winter and he'll get a bit deterred from the cold.

Oatman and the Donkeys

One of the places to visit around here is a town called Oatman. It used to be a mining town. They have donkeys that roam through the town and you can feed them carrots. When we got there we put Ian in the stroller to walk around and immediately one of the donkeys came up to us headed straight for Ian. I think his little fingers and toes looked like a treat cuz everywhere we walked I had to make sure and steer clear of the donkeys with him.

You had to watch your back around them. My mom was standing outside one of the shops and a donkey snuck up behind her and tried to steal her bag of carrots out of her hand. It scared her because she wasn't expecting it. It was pretty funny. They would even try to follow you into the stores if they saw a bag of carrots.....greedy little suckers.

I thought Brenna would think it would be so cool to be able to feed the donkeys but alas...my little scaredy-cat daughter wouldn't go near them, yet she loved petting a giant snake last month. She said she just wanted to watch them.

She did pet one of the baby donkeys...they were cute...as much as a donkey can be cute.

It was fun walking around the little town. All of the buildings were the old type you see in movies and whatnot. A lot of the names of the stores did a play on things with donkeys....this was my favorite.

Brenna's new boyfriend

We are down here at my mom's house in Arizona. It has been a blast so far. We met my mom's boyfriend, Howard, for the first time. Brenna took an immediate liking ot him. She informed us today that he is her boyfriend. She told Nana, "Sorry Charlie, he's my boyfriend now." I'm going to have my hands full with her if she's already stealing boyfriends and she's only 4. She has been having so much.

Ian has really taken a liking to his Nana too. He got to sit on Nana's motorcycle and he thought it was cool. Nana gets to rock him to sleep every night.

Today was a very hot day. I don't know the exact temperature but it was close to 120 degrees. We decided to test the saying that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I think the eggs got cooked a little.

Ian's new haircut

This morning Jason asked me if we should give Ian's hair a trim. I said i guess we can. It's getting long and needs to be trimmed a little since it was starting to get tangles in the back when he sleeps. Now I was thinking of just taking a little bit off and Jason said he put a guide on the razor so it wouldn't cut too much. Then he started cutting Ian's hair and it wasn't just a little bit that was coming off....it was all of it. I almost cried. Jason has been saying for awhile that he wants to give Ian a buzz cut...well...he did. He says it wasn't on purpose but I think it was. I miss Ian's crazy hair that sticks up every which way. Now he looks so much different with it short....plus all of his dark hair is gone. I was hoping he would have brown hair like me but it looks like he's going to be a blonde-haired boy. Give me a week and I'm sure I will be loving his haircut (I hated my haircut when I first chopped it but by the next week I didn't mind it so much) . The upside of this is that with it starting to get hot now he'll stay a little bit cooler. Hopefully his hair will grow back fast so it can't be a little bit longer. It's a good thing he has thick hair or he would look totally bald. i know hat you are thinking...it's only hair...don't be a baby. I do the same thing every time we cut Brenna's hair. I make Jason go because I can't stand to see her long pretty hair get cut. I'll get over it...and I'll have to get used to it considering boys need more haircuts than girls.

4th of July Fun

We had a pretty fun 4th this year. Morgan was doing a mini carnival so I took Brenna and Ian to it. The main thing I wanted to go to was the "Scales and Tails" shows. They show various types of creepy crawlies, snakes, and lizards. Brenna is usually scared of things like this but I wanted her to see them in a good light so she wouldn't freak out so much whenever she sees things like this. During the show they had the little kids sit right in front of the guy, but of course Brenna is a bit of a scaredy cat so she wouldn't sit in front. She thought it was cool when he brought out the big tarantula, she's as scared of spiders, even big hairy ones. She thought it was funny when he put a big black scorpion in his mouth. He brought out a few lizards, a bearded dragon and a monitor lizard. Then the fun began.....he brought out the snakes.

He brought a few pythons that were really cool, but the best was the huge one, I think it was a reticulated python. It took 7 kids and one adult to hold this thing and it wasn't even stretched out.

Afterwards they let the kids come up and pet the snake. I thought my little girl wouldn't even want to get near it but after a little convincing she finally gave it a pat....and she liked it!!! She thought it was so cool that she got to pet the big huge snake. I was so proud of her for overcoming her fear!!!!!!

Then we moved on to more gentle animals and she got to hold a cute little bunny. She loved the bunny...maybe one day when we have our own place she can have a pet bunny. It was a fun way to spend the morning.

We then went home and pigged out on sloppy joes (which I made a homemade sauce for and they were super yummy!!!) took naps, and then got ready to go light off fireworks and watch the city ones.

Ian slept through all the fireworks, but he liked watching them when we were lighting them off.

Brenna overcame her fear of sparklers and had fun playing with them. She had a little spark land on her foot and we told her an ant bit her so that she wouldn't be scared of the sparklers again...she got burnt by one last year and didn't want anything to do with them after so we wanted to avoid that whole situation again.

My aunt came down with my cousin's little boy, Jayden (yes, that's my nephew's name too). He is a cute kid. He was born in October and he is about the same size as Ian, but about 8 pounds heavier, although he doesn't look it. It was my first time seeing him. He looks just like his daddy (my cousin Skyler). Ian liked trying play with him....or maybe he just thought it was another fun thing to try and grab.

If anyone else went to the Morgan fireworks, was it just me or were they a lot shorter and kinda lame this year? I know we're in a recession and they probably didn't have as much funding for the fireworks...but it was still kinda lame. I guess that's because we usually like to watch the people lighting the fireworks scramble when one gets misfired or explodes....very entertaining. Since there weren't as many fireworks we didn't get to that as much. Oh well....it was still a fun day to spend with family.

Handsome Just like My Daddy!!!

I snapped this picture at the birthday party on Saturday. I think it is such a sweet and cute picture of the two leading men in my life. I'm so lucky to have such good looking guys!!!

Happy Birthday Jameson and Tyson!!!

On Saturday we went to a birthday party of some of Brenna's bestest friends (and their parents happen to be some of our best friends too). Their boys are Jameson and Tyson. Jameson is turning 5 and Tyson is turning 4. Whenever they get together with Brenna they all have a hay-day since they're close in age. The boys take turns saying who is going to marry Brenna, which I wouldn't mind because then I know that I will definitely like her in-laws. Jason and Alan, their dad, were in the same mission. Kanani and I have been friends from the day we met up in Logan right before me and Jason got married.

For their party the boys had a swim party. There was a slip and slide and a little pool, plus a hose to squirt the kids. The boys got some super soaker squirt guns for their birthday and thought it was fun to squirt Brenna. Since she didn't have anything, Jason and Alan decided to give Brenna the hose. She has lots of practice of squirting people so she soon went to work on squirting the boys whenever they squirted her. They didn't think it was fun anymore since she could squirt them more and from farther away. It was funny to watch.

This is Tyson. He's such a little sweetheart and definitely going to be such a little flirt.

Brenna is armed and ready with the hose. Anytime we get our hose out she loves to squirt anyone who will let her....especially our dog Harley.

Here is Jameson getting his gun ready....little does he know that Brenna is at the ready too!!

Kanani made the cutest cupcakes. They had little bears surfing on them. She got some teddy grahams and put swimsuits on them using frosting. So cute!!!! (plus they were really yummy!)

Her youngest little boy, Kona, is the same age as Ian. Our due dates were the same day so we figure these two boys are destined to be friends too. He's a cute little happy guy and makes the cutest squealing noises.

Happy birthday boys!!! Brenna has so much fun playing with you. I am so glad we have such great friends and are lucky enough to have all our kids near the same age so they'll always have someone to play with when we get together.