End of Summer Days

Summer is officially winding down.  Weston starts 1st grade next week.  The weather is still decidedly summery, but the days are getting a little shorter and I am starting to feel ready for school and routine and possibly even Fall.  We have been playing and enjoying our down time. 

Last week we went to the Lehi city pool with Brad and Mel.  It was fun.  I am so lucky to have such wonderfully well behaved kids on outings.  I am also lucky to have Mel and Brad around.  They are so helpful with the kiddos.  We have fun together. 

Since it's summer and I always have all the kids they end up running lots of errands with me.  Davin tried on this Hulk mask at Target one day.  It cracked me up because his angry face really looks like that underneath.  If his skin were green he'd be a dead ringer for the Hulk. 

I bought a Living Social deal awhile back for a Cougar Kids' Club membership and last week we went down to BYU campus to redeem it.  I was kind of stressed out about taking all the kids with me onto campus, but it was just fine and we had fun.  We started at the Student Athlete Building to register and pick up our t-shirt, poster, info packet, and sports ticket vouchers.  Then we drove over to the Marriott Center ticket office to redeem our vouchers for actual football game tickets. 

 

We ended the outing with lunch and ice cream at the Creamery on Ninth.  The kids were so funny and ran upstairs to change into their BYU shirts and hats when I told them we were going to go to campus.  They also were a little confused about what we were going to do.  When we were getting in the car after lunch and heading home Davin got a little upset and said "but Mom I didn't do a cwaft!"  He thought the Cougar Kids' Club was more like the library activities that Weston did this summer.  Weston also kept asking when he was going to the Kids' Club.  I had to explain it just meant that he gets to go to lots of BYU sporting events and activities for free. 

 

We are gearing up for a visit from Grandma Denny and Papa next week and school starting!  Goodbye Summer!

More Cousins and a Date!

Friday after the Henshaw cousins left we got to have more cousin time!  Emilee and her girls were staying in Provo all week with her family, so on Friday morning they met up with us at Thanksgiving Point for some Farm Country fun.  We wandered the farm, had pony rides, fed the animals, took a wagon ride, got rained on intermittently, and played in the farming exhibits.  It was a good time.  They came over afterwards for lunch and we got some time to visit and play.  So glad that they live closer now so we can see them more often!

 
The next Friday I took Weston out on a little date.  We went out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, The Old Spaghetti Factory.  He had earned a free kids meal there from doing lots of reading in Kindergarten, so we used that and had a blast.  There was even a balloon guy wandering around and Weston got a viking helmet and sword! 
 
After dinner I dropped him off at the Provo library for a Lego workshop.  He got to build with tons of Lego's, and even got to experiment with building something that included a motor.  At the end they made a couple of spinning platforms with the motors and then the kids could make spin art.  Weston had a blast and I did some shopping and errands while he was busy with Lego's.

We ended our date night with Weston's favorite treat, frozen yogurt.  He loads on the toppings and can eat more than I can.  :)  I sure love my big kid.  It's so fun to hang out with him.  He talked my ear off the whole way home about an animated How to Train Your Dragon show from Netflix.  I think he really enjoyed getting some one on one time with me and staying up late.  I'll need to carve out some time to take Davin on a date next. 

Henshaw's Visit!

When we got home from the family reunion on Sunday we realized that the air conditioner was not working.  This was a very sad realization since it has been so hot!  It was 89 degrees in the house.  I took a long, cold bath that night and planned to sleep in the basement, but luckily a storm blew in and we opened up all the windows and doors to cool things off. 

It was really annoyingly bad timing though because we were having some very important visitors!  The Henshaw family came to visit for a couple of days!  They extended their trip and came all the way up to Salt Lake to visit with some friends in Willard and spend some extra time with us.  We have never had them visit before and the boys were super excited to have their cousins come and see their house and play with them.

Talia finally warmed up to her cousins after seeing them at the wedding and the family reunion.  She even snuggled up to Mimi for morning cartoons on Tuesday.  :)

They got here late Monday afternoon after a long day of sightseeing at Temple Square and BYU campus.  We relaxed (in the hot house) and Brad and Mel came over for pizza and to hang out.  The kids all slumber partied it up in the basement while the men-folk went to see the new Batman movie and us women-folk got shakes and visited until very late. 

Tuesday morning we hung around the house waiting for the A/C workmen to come and replace our system, but they never showed.  It was annoying, but the kids had a blast playing in the backyard.  We finally gave up on the workers showing up.  We fed everyone lunch then headed out to the dino museum at Thanksgiving Point.  We decided to let the kids to the Jr. Paleo lab where they got to use different techniques to make/work on fossils.  Rachel and Davin did a fossil mold while the big kids prepared a fish fossil using an air scribe tool.  It was a fun souvenir and didn't take too long to do.

 

 

 

I got a call saying the workers were ready to install the new A/C (of course) so Joy took the bigger kids through the museum while I took Talia home to nap while I "supervised" the A/C workers.  It worked out ok and the house was finally pleasant again when everyone got home!  That night we had a BBQ and watched some comedy. 

Wednesday morning the Henshaw's loaded up and headed home.  We were sad to see them go and hope they will come back again someday.  The boys are still saying how much they miss their cousins, although Davin says he does not want to sleep in the basement again.  :) Thanks for the fun visit Henshaw's!

Olson Family Reunion 2012

Every 3 years the whole Olson side of the family does a family reunion.  That means my paternal grandparents and all of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren attend.  This year we actually had every single member of the family there.  It was so much fun!  I am so grateful that we have these reunions to stay in touch with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and make memories together.  I love that our kids know each other and that we all get along so well.

Putting together a family reunion is a lot of work, but it is well worth the effort!  This year the Olson reunion was held at the Pinewoods Resort in Duck Creek, Utah.  We all drove in on Thursday.  It was about a 4 hour drive for us.  We stayed in a big cabin/house with my parents and two of my sisters and their husbands.  We each had our own rooms and bathrooms and it was nice having our own space.  Thursday night the family had a group dinner hosted by the Williamson family.  After I put the kids to bed at the house I went back up to their area to visit.  Unfortunately we couldn't have a fire in the pit due to the weather conditions and the many wildfires catching in Utah, but we still managed to hang out there around the fire pit until pretty late.  I love visiting with my cousins!

On Friday we had breakfast together at the house.  Grandpa made his delicious pancakes.  After breakfast a big group of us headed out on a hike to Cascade Falls.  It was a little steeper and longer than I had bargained for with Talia, but it was absolutely beautiful.  I'm glad that we made the trek.

 

 

 

 That afternoon we relaxed and visited.  Talia napped and I helped my mom get ready for the family chocolate tasting event that night.  After everyone had dinner we gathered at our big cabin for a chocolate tasting.  There were over a dozen different types/brands of milk chocolate to taste and rate.  By the time I finished I was actually sick of eating chocolate!  :)  We tallied up the results and determined that the Olson family's favorite chocolate was Dove milk chocolate, with Milka and See's coming in at 2nd and 3rd place.  We stayed up way too late Friday night with my siblings watching videos and chatting, but it was super fun.

Saturday was a pretty chill day.  We all gathered after breakfast for our group picture, which was actually pretty painless.  :)  We thought about going to Duck Creek Pond to explore with the kids afterwards, but it started raining right after we finished pictures, so we ended up just kicking around the resort.  The kids played on the playground and together in the cabin while the adults visited and cooked.  There were horseshoes, trackball, badminton, bubbles, and Frisbees to entertain us.  We worked on a family puzzle and played an extended game of Yahtzee too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 That night we had a family dinner, dessert contest, and games at the pavilion of the resort.  I made my famous chocolate chip cookies for the dessert contest and won a prize! (ok, fine, everyone won a prize, but still)  My favorite was my dad's raspberry chocolate chunk homemade ice cream.  I think I had 3 bowls.  I claimed the second two were for the baby.  Anyway, my mom had a couple fun group games planned that involved wrapping each other in duck tape and throwing paper balls at each other.  There were also lots of fun prizes that kept everyone entertained for the rest of the evening.

 

 

 

 Sunday we had breakfast together again and then packed up and went our separate ways headed for home.  It was such a wonderful reunion and I am already looking forward to our next one in 2015! 

The lovebirds who started it all.

You've Had A Birthday!

It's been awhile and we've been busy!  First we had a birthday in the house.  Ian turned 31!  We celebrated low key style.  I made his favorite kind of cake and he opened his present.  I still feel weird only giving one present, but when your hubby like expensive toys it sometimes happens.  We gave him a sweet new remote that controls all of our devices and has a color touch screen.  I'm still a little too intimidated by it to use it, but it is pretty cool.

 

 

Ian had to work on his actual birthday, but when we got home we all went out to dinner together.  We ended up eating at Olive Garden.  It was yummy and the boys were surprisingly good eaters.  I sure am glad that Ian was born and that we were able to meet and fall in love and create our family.  He's pretty much the most important thing that has ever happened to me.  Love you babe!  That night we went home and finished packing up for the Olson Family Reunion!  Definitely more on that to come.

Not Much

It's been a week since my last post and it feels like hardly anything has been going on.  I got to take all 3 kids with me to my doctor's appointment last week and to the lab since it was also my gestational diabetes screening.  That was fun.  Then I got the results that my sugars were high and my iron was low, so yesterday I spent most of my day hanging out at the St. Mark's Women's Center lab doing the 3 hour glucose screening.  Luckily Mel and Brad had the day off and watched the kids for me.

On Saturday I got to take Ian on a fun date for his birthday.  We got massages then ate delicious Indian food at Bombay House.  After dinner we wandered around City Creek for a little while and then ended the evening with a movie at the Broadway Theater.  It was a super fun night.  I sure love that man of mine!

Not sure why there is only a picture of me though.  

 

Weston has been asking to make Oobleck (or Magic Mud if you grew up calling it that like I did) for FHE for weeks now and I kept forgetting to buy cornstarch.  I finally remembered, so that was what we did together last night as our FHE activity.  The boys thought it was completely awesome.  The boys got it everywhere and I remembered why I don't do science-type things with them.  I don't like cleaning up the mess.   :)  I guess I have to let it go sometimes though so they can do fun stuff. 

Randomness: Today in the car on the way home from our errands we were speculating on where Ian was going to pick to go out to dinner tomorrow night for his actual birthday and Weston said he hoped he would pick The Old Spaghetti Factory "because that's my favorite fancy restaurant."  It's about as fancy as he's ever been to.  Davin said that Taco Bell is his favorite restaurant and he thought Dad was going to pick Taco Bell for sure.  It was just a funny conversation and made me laugh.

3rd Trimester

I know this post is mostly going to be a pregnancy update, which is a little boring, so I'll combo it with the fun outing we did yesterday to the Highland Splash Park.  This week has been super hot.  We hunkered down inside all day on Monday and we needed an outing on Tuesday.  I thought it would be more fun for the boys if they had friends to play with and since my neighbor just had her baby 2 weeks ago it might be nice for her to have the boys out of the house, so we brought the neighbor boys with us.  It ended up being a great outing to bring them to.  We loaded up the van and drove the 10 minutes out to Highland. 

We got there pretty early so we managed to get a spot on the grass in the shade.  I'm glad I brought chairs for me and Talia because the grass was pretty soaked.  The splash park is fun though and the boys ran around and played in it the entire 2 hours.  Talia enjoyed the fountain and wandering through the river, but took a lot of breaks too.  She was tired by the end.  I think the boys could have stayed there all day if I had brought more food.  :) I really am so thankful that Weston and Davin have such good neighbors next door to be buddies with.  They play nicely and have fun together those goofy boys. 

I haven't blogged much about this pregnancy, especially lately.  I have been too busy and feeling really good.  Seriously, ever since my morning sickness faded I haven't even hardly felt pregnant.  It's been great.  Since we have been back from our California trip though that has all changed. 

Pardon me while I whine a bit.  I feel like the baby doubled in size overnight when we got back.  I can now feel lots of flips, hard kicks, etc. from baby (which is mostly fun).  I have also had heartburn and optic migraines in the last couple weeks.  I'm up 3 times a night to pee again and my clothes are all getting redundant and uncomfortable. 

Me today at 28ish weeks.  I seriously want to live in this outfit for the rest of my pregnancy! So comfy!

 

I was especially sad about the optic migraine I came down with yesterday afternoon.  It was the worst one I've ever had.  The last ones I've had made my vision go weird and left me with a slight headache after they passed, which happened within an hour.  This one hit me hard.  Even once my vision was back to normal the headache part was brutal.  I got lucky in that Talia was napping when I first felt it, so I was able to lay down for a bit.  I thought I was feeling better when she woke up, but an hour later it was worse than ever.  Ian came home a bit early and took over.  He saved my life. 

I closed the curtains and just whimpered on my bed until I fell asleep for an hour.  When I woke up Ian came in and told me the kids were all fed and bathed, Talia was in bed, and the boys were ready for bed in 5 minutes.  He had to go back to work.  Poor guy.  I so very very much appreciated his help last night though.  I got the boys into bed then went downstairs and ate some crackers and sipped a Dr. Pepper with my Tylenol and continued to lay down and rest.  I'm feeling better today, but I can still feel the headache lingering and it's still actually painful if I cough or bend over.  Here's hoping that was a rare occurrence!

I do feel like this pregnancy, and this summer, have been been flying by!  Tomorrow I go in for my 28 week check up and my glucose screening.  Next week is Ian's birthday and the Olson Family reunion.  July will be over before I know it.  I'm not sure I'm ready, but that's ok.  I guarantee by the last few weeks I will be so ready for this baby to arrive.  Just not quite yet.  :)