June

 We have had a good month of June, we had a great Fathers day, the kids made Ben some cards and we made him a special dinner, and the kids gave him a foot massage:)

He has still been working hard, long days and is getting antsy to go fishing. He set up a pool in the back yard, it is 52 inches deep and 18 feet in diameter. The kids LOVE it, and that is an understatement. We filled it up with the secondary water and it was really cold for a few days, below 70 degrees anyway. We went and bought a solar blanket and that has helped heat it up to 82 degrees and on a 96 degree day, that feels pretty good.

I needed to do something with Alivia's dresser it was in bad way and so with some advice from my sweet neighbor, I painted and glazed it and think it turned out ok for the first one.

I need to do this to our kitchen table and then to our dresser in the family room. Lots of projects out there to keep my summer occupied.

I also have been doing quite of bit of gardening with the flower beds and Ben has spending lots of time out in the garden. We have lots of veggie's growing and doing well.

Kessler is completely potty trained, not more pull ups or anything and will walk in the bathroom and go all by himself. I still think about the diaper days as fast as they came on, it seems they left just as fast. 8 years of diapers is a long time, obviously I didn't think about it much while I was in the midst of it, they grow up so fast....

Above is Kessler's first self portrait and I mean drawing on himself and was very proud of it. 

Vancouver Weekend

 Ben had 3 days off so we packed up the family for a mini vacay. We flew from SLC to Seattle and then drove up to Vancouver. We took the last flight out from Salt Lake to Seattle so we didn't even get to Vancouver until 330am. 

Cooper always has spiderman on the brain even when he is dressed like Peter Parker:)

The next morning we decided to go drive around and see some sights, we stopped by a Zellers...soon to be Target and bought some Canucks hockey gear. 

We then drove down to Rogers Arena, the complex that was hosting the Stanley Cup finals we knew we wanted to get there early because how crazy it was going to get and it was getting crazy.

After our visit to Rogers arena, and talked to some scalpers and ticket prices. (the best we found was row 1 right behind the goalie for 1500.00)  I thought that was a good deal, but yeah 1500.00 is some serious business.

We headed toward the water and had a great time we played in the water looked for starfish, found lots of little crabs under the rocks. It was a really fun afternoon exploring, climbing, running and playing.

Ben couldn't decided if this one was alive or dead?

There were starfish everywhere like this. Most of them were so big you couldn't detach them from the side of the rock.

It is hard to see but there are lots of little crabs running around.

This place was packed.

The one thing that Ben wanted to do besides go to a hockey game was take the ferry across to Victoria. The kids were freaking out with excitement that we were going to drive our car onto a boat. We got there just in time for the 11am departure and enjoyed the sites and all the new things we have never seen on a ferry boat. The kids played at the play area, they looked for whales and only spotted sea otters. 

They went with Ben to the cafeteria and got a snack and a drink.

It was a beautiful day, they weather was nice a little cool. 

This is an other ferry coming from somewhere on Vancouver Island.

I could not get over how still the water was inside this passage.

We went and saw the Capitol of British Columbia.

I loved these trees, they were so amazing.

We walked and walked around, looked at some amazing yachts, ships and walked through the street vendors. Livi got a dream catcher she has wanted one for a really long time and was happy to use her little purse with her Canadian change and buy it. 

Kessler was done. 

Ben also wanted to go find his old house that he lived in when he was in grade 7. (7th grade for the rest of you)

Well this wasn't as easy as it could have been and his memory or lack there of. We originally started looking for a street that started with a W. I kept telling him, call Gina, she will know....so he thought wasatch, wakara, and so on, and finally we got the GPS to work and found the street and found the house.

Ben also saw the park he used to walk to, the bridge he used to fish off of. It was really fun for him.

We also took a drive to a popular park. It was an amazing park, I took take pictures there all day long.

There were peacocks everywhere and most of them were doing there peacock sound, at one point Kessler was plugging his ears, because he was nervous with all the noise.

The peacock below was trying to impress a little lady and was doing this amazing dance and shuffling around and shuffling his feathers. It was AMAZING!!

Just a side not with some of the photos, I only brought one lens with me, that is not very wide, so some of the pics do not do justice to the amazing scenery......for example this tree. (and Ben's old house above)

This was probably one of the oldest tree's I have seen in a long time. It was big, amazing and beautiful.

We were trying to decide what ferry to take back, we decided to take one back at sunset and I am so glad we did, we have some amazing pictures from it......

We had so much fun, can't wait to go back for a family reunion in July!!!

Update-Baby Addilyn

 This update is a little out of order but I will start with we were flying in from Seattle and my Mom sent me a text saying to call her asap as soon as we landed.

She told me that she had something to tell me that I might be upset and asked if I wanted to know right then.

I said yes, and she told me that my sister Jennifer was pregnant and was in labor and that she would be having a baby that night or in the morning.

I was stunned, I had no idea she was pregnant, (nor did anyone else)she decided not to tell anyone for her own personal reasons.

People have asked ...why didn't you know, couldn't you tell....well I knew she had gained weight but I had gained weight and wasn't pregnant...

I will say though, I knew something was up, I didn't know what and didn't know how hard I wanted to press her for the information I knew was there. 

A little back story that makes this a miracle baby for her. 

Jennifer had a very traumatic thing happen to her when she was a child (13yrs old) that resulted in a pregnancy and with the advice of church leaders, parents and her choice she gave that baby up for adoption.

She since then has never been able to get pregnant again, which I can't even imagine how hard that would be.

 Jennifer's doctor put her on a medicine to help her PCOS and help shed a little weight, which contributed to her getting pregnant.

I am in pure love, with this sweet daughter of our Heavenly Father. She is precious, sweet and a gift to my sister that she has wanted for 25 years.

There is a lot to work through still, she is still emotional about everything and how it all played out.

But we still stare at Addilyn and love her more and more everyday.

 Jennifer does have a hard road ahead of her, but she has been given challenges before that she has overcome and made things better for herself and her kids. I am so happy for her, I am happy to have met sweet Addilyn and the opportunity that I can be a part of her life.

Update part-one

 Bauer was playing in the kitchen with a ladder a few weeks ago, and we told him not to do what he was doing with the ladder that it would slip out from underneath him and he would get hurt. So while we were in the other room he did his trick again and the ladder slipped out from underneath him and he gave himself a pretty good fat lip, not to mention a nice cut on the inside of his lip. A visit to the Doctors office, no stitches thank goodness.

 Kessler and Bauer are really the only two that like to play sports. They have enjoyed when it is warm outside to occasionally play street hockey.

 It had been a really long time since I did any overnights to Jackson Hole, I was lucky enough to be able to pick on up off of our trade board....It was so awesome that morning there had to be 100 or more Bison, and I snapped a pic with my camera on my phone, so fun.