camping and the 4th

Here are just a few pictures i thought you might enjoy:

The neighbor is doing a new retaining wall... and it has been lots of fun to watch them work. They leave the backhoe parked on the street at night.

Little Jared relaxing in his chair, this was his first camping trip, and did really well!

Sarah and Ryan riding the bike down the driveway:

Time for a bath!!

Jared's One!

This post is a couple of weeks late.. but on June 8th our little boy turned one. it is hard to believe he is getting so big! He still isn't walking but he can pretty much get where he wants by crawling and climbing. I expect him to walk on the 4th of July, because he sat up on Christmas, and crawled on Easter. We had a fun time opening gifts and eating our frog cupcakes.

The kids mostly celebrated by jumping on the trampoline, and we had a good time.

Here is all the kids. As a side note, the shirt that Ryan is wearing, used to be Clark's, only he wore it in kindergarten.

Some of you wanted to see some pictures of our new house. I still haven't taken very many but here is a picture of Ryan and Sarah's rooms:

Happy 40th!!

My big sister turned 40 in May, and to celebrate me and my sisters and parents went to NYC for the long weekend. We had a lot of fun, and it was nice to get away for a few days. Thanks to Clark for taking care of the kids. Thanks to dad for all the meals and plays and hotel, and thanks to Stephanie for turning 40!!! Here are a few pictures from our trip:

On the subway to the statue of liberty:

The whole family inside the crown at the statue of liberty:

My parents and Stephanie outside:


Our walk through central park:

Sisters at central park:

Dinner at carniege deli:

We had a chance to go to the Manhattan Temple. Here is the angel moroni:

Us at Little Italy:

We had a great trip! We also saw three great plays: Memphis, In the Heights, and South Pacific. I got home on Tuesday and I am still worn out!!

March/April photos

We have had a fun couple of months. We have our house just about how we want it and all unpacked finally.... now it's time to tackle the yard. The first thing to go up is the fence!

Here is my Jared at 10 months: he learned to crawl Easter Sunday and has since learned to go up the stairs, and play in the toilet, and pull up to everything. I forgot how busy they get!

This was just a cute picture of him playing in the sink:

There are the boys outside one afternoon:

Ryan got a new bike: he blew out two of the three tires on his old tricycle so it was time for a new bike: he loves that it is red "just like dad's".

At our new house he have a jetted tub and the kids wanted to take a bubble bath. I over estimated the power of the bubbles as you can see from this picture... but they had a blast.

Little Skiiers

Here is a picture that clark emailed me from a couple of weeks ago. He took the kids up skiing at Sundance, and of course they had a blast! Ryan is a lot more sure of himself and can go a lot faster than Sarah, but they both have a lot of fun.

Sarah is 5!!!

Miss Sarah turned five on Sunday. I can't believe how big she is getting. We had a fun time celebrating her birthday. She had a family party and then her cousin spent the night. Then, more proof that she is getting older, Monday I took her to her kindergarten screening.

She wanted a princess ice cream cake:

Here are all the kids: (a rare photo where they are at least all looking)

This is just to show that our baby is getting so big. He will be 9 months next week!

we're moving in!!

I wrote the following post about two weeks ago, and we closed on our house today.... so here is the story:

So, as many of you know, clark and I have been looking for a new house for over two years now. We had one under contract and we got cold feet, and backed out, then we quit looking for a while because we had Jared. Then we had another one under contract, that all the forces in the universe were against, and that fell through. Needless to say, we had gotten frustrated with the whole process (especially because I know exactly what kind of house i want, a two story, four bedroom house). So anyway, we decided to start asking people if they were wanting to sell their homes to us. You would be surprised some of the answers we got, but at one house, that I particularly liked the outside of..... the people had been talking a half hour before about calling and listing their house that next week! we were so excited. So to make a long story a little shorter, we looked at the house , offered on it (saved all the real estate fees), had it under contract on the 1st of Feb. Then, on the 3rd of Feb. our current house hit the MLS listing at 8:00 in the morning. Two people looked at it that morning, and it was sold by 1:15 for almost our asking price! Clark and I are just thrilled with how nicely this whole thing worked out. To make matters even better people on both ends wanted to close fast, so it looks like this whole thing will be done this month!! The timing is unbelievably perfect, because i have to register sarah for kindergarten this month, and we will be living it the school that i have been wanting her to go too. Anyway, everyone told us when it's meant to be. . . .things will go smooth, and we feel so blessed to have everything working out so well. We are sad to be leaving our house though. It has been the perfect house, we just out grew it. It is hard to believe when we moved in six years ago, it was just Clark and I. We are excited to start organizing everything in our new house.

As a side note our school district has a FREE preschool program that i got sarah enrolled in at the beginning of the month and she loves it! So she goes there 4 days a week for three hours a day. I was glad she got accepted because our school district does all day kindergarten, which i am not thrilled about, but i thought it would be a lot for her to go from being with me all day every day, to being gone every day. Anyway, we have been busy!

This is the kids last Sunday before church