August 2018

I think I forgot to mention in the July post that Coen potty trained while we were in St. George! Brent just kept taking him to the bathroom every 15 minutes or so and then we would all give him high-fives and cheer for him. He did so well and even stayed dry at night! Coen really likes things to be clean and neat, so I think this played to his advantage at potty-training so early (2 1/2 years).

Ava loves playing make believe with me. One day were were playing and I was pretending to be a needy customer. She served me my drink and then sat down, kind of exhausted. I knocked over my cup and said to her, "uh oh I spilled my juice." She sat there looking at me, and then said, "Pretend you didn't." It made me laugh so much the way she solved that problem.

She looked so cute this day that we were playing restaurant.

While we were playing she all of a sudden told me I had to pack up my lunch and leave her restaurant because the bad guys were coming. I love her imagination. I took a little video:

Mailing a birthday card to her best friend in Eugene

A tea party at Grandma Hansen's with cousins

We went to the farm again at Thanksgiving Point and met Emily and her girls there.

It's always so much fun to see Em! We have so much talk about and it's fun having kids around the same ages.

Brent spent the day in Provo and hung out with Brother Rojas

We got back to Grandma Tammy's and had some play time with Natalie and her girls as they were sleeping over.

Brent had us each choose a short we would like to share with the others and we watched all sorts of cartoon shorts. After, we had an impromptu pillow fight. It was so funny and none of the kids got hurt, miraculously! I think this was one of the kids' favorite memories from the summer. Here's a video:

In the morning we had pancakes

and then went to Home Depot and did a craft. Natalie likes to do this the first Saturday of each month.

Back to Grandma's for a water day! Even Brent and I joined in the fun with a water balloon fight.

 We told the kids to hold their water balloons and protect them like babies. Coen's slipped out of his hands right before this picture was taken and he was a little bit devastated. Luckily we had more!

Matching boys

Playing the Headbands game.

Cute cousins! Natalie told them to strike a pose for the picture and they both immediately had a ton of poses to do.

Tammy sent this to me from one day when she was babysitting me. At first I didn't even recognize the kids!

Just our little family went to dinner at Grandma and Kay's. We had fun talking, and this is the only picture I got!

Lucy came over to try a sleepover again since the last time didn't work out. Grandma took them to the pool and the dollar store and they had so much fun playing all day! For dinner we got Chick Fil-A.

The next day my mom took them to the zoo while I worked.

Lucy was a good helper with the kids.

We went to Emily's for dinner one evening and the kids had so much fun playing.

We're missing baby Maddie from this picture but it's fun to see how our families and friendship has grown through the years!

After dinner we met the Cowleys at the fair. The kids enjoyed the little petting zoo:

And Grandpa paid for pony rides for all the kids. Ava loved that this one had a rainbow mane:

Brent and I went on a temple date to the Provo temple. We had never been there before and it's so beautiful!

We went to see my old apartment I used to live in and it was so strange standing there with all the memories, 12 years later.

Grandma and Grandpa Cowley took the kids to the Big Horn BBQ down where we had gone camping and they had so much fun. In the evening we went to a Cowley party at the Sandy pool. It was kind of late, as you can tell by Coen yawning in this picture!

Cher came to my parent's house on Sunday to say bye to us. Ava got to do her long-awaited play, "Fairy Tale Forest" which turned into Cinderella, as narrated by Brent. It was so funny.

We wanted a picture together and I think it was Sam that took this one.

Coen wanted a try and this is how his picture turned out. We laughed so hard because it looks like my head is photo shopped on a gumbo body.

We went to say bye to Grandma Dot and Kay and the kids got to ride her escalator chair. We sang songs to Grandma Dot as she was already in her bed and it was the sweetest thing. Coen wanted to keep singing and singing to her.

Sam slept over and was a good sport about playing doctor with the kids.

On Monday morning we finished cleaning and then it was time to go back to Utah! We gave them chocolate suckers to ease the pain of leaving ;)

We stayed the night in Boise with the Turnbulls and we went swimming in their neighborhood pool.

The next day we drove back to Eugene through Bend. We stopped at the last Blockbuster in existence in Bend.

We had packed the car really full for our trip back since we always accumulate stuff. When we were in Eugene we decided to stop at Costco and get some food. The problem was we didn't really have anywhere to put it so we looked like this:

We timed our trip back so that we got back into town just in time for Ava's swim class. She really enjoyed going for 3 weeks and improved.

Here's a little video from Ava's swim class. Each of the kids were supposed to jump in to their teacher. Instead of just jumping straight in though, Ava did a 360 jump, which I caught on video:

When we got back Coen was excited to see his boy dress up clothes. As you can tell from the picture, we had some moody children:

Brent took the kids to the park quite a bit since they have free lunch and activities all of the week days. A lot of the moms from the ward met there every day and Brent was good to join in with the other moms while I was home working, most days. I did take them a few times myself on my days off.

I went blackberry picking with my friend just in a field by her house. Blackberries grow wild all over here! They were so juicy and yummy.

Pictures from a park day where they had a slip n' slide!

I love the way Coen talks right now and I wanted to take a video to remember. Here's a couple:

We all went to the dentist and Ava was much braver this time than last. She sat in my lap and got her teeth cleaned this time! Coen wasn't quite as brave but he did let them brush his teeth at least?

Our little drama queen:

Her tantrums got so bad in the few weeks before school started. I'm not sure if she was stressed/bored, or missing all the attention from Utah? She can be so difficult sometimes and it's really challenging figuring out how to raise her and teach her.

We went to Primary Camp for one day, about 45 minutes away from our house. It was at some property owned by the Church and it's beautiful:

More park fun:

Coen and his little friend loved playing at the park together.

Brent did a lot of home projects since he didn't have school. He fixed up my office and took off the shelving on my desk so that I can now see out my window. He rearranged the kids' room and fixed up our yard. He also organized our garage with shelving and boxes we bought from Costco:

One afternoon we were at Home Depot looking at flooring for our downstairs and Coen was in the craziest hyper mood I've ever seen. I tried to take a video.

About 5 minutes after this, he completely fell asleep on my shoulder.
I worked a lot since I was so busy with 401k audits and Brent had the time off. But I did take some nice days off to be with the kids and enjoy them.

Coen with me at Ava's swimming lessons. He cracks me up in this little backpack.

We learned the hard way that you can't have a potty-trained boy in a crib. Our first morning back he stood up and called for us and we took our sweet time going to get him. By the time we got to him, he had peed his PJs and started crying. Oops. Parent fail. So Brent turned his crib into a toddler bed and now that is much better!

Ava was invited to her friend's house for a princess dress up party. She planned what she was going to wear like 3 days in advance, and had laid out her clothes, shoes, and accessories ahead of time.

The mom sent me these pictures from the party.

Kiss the Frog on the Lips game:

Dress up dancing party:

We went on a hike on Saturday in the Willamette National Forrest, about 45 minutes from our house. I just googled easy hikes near our house and we tried out this one! It was so gorgeous.

All the trees were mossy.

So beautiful and peaceful. Ava was not very happy to be in pictures this day, but it's still a pretty shot!

Eating a picnic lunch on the steps of the trail.

Spiderman Coen

Laura had her baby on August 28. It was so fun to facetime and see the precious little girl!

We went to a back to school night at Ava's school and met all of the kindergarten teachers. Ava was a bit nervous to go and told me, "I think I'm going to bring my chewing necklace." As we entered the school, she was gnawing on her necklace, but then she relaxed once she got to do a little treasure hunt in the classroom.

 Coen really likes this backpack/leash. He looks so cute with it haha!

Coen regressed a bit in his potty training and had like 8 accidents this week. Here he is helping cleaning up his pee on the carpet.

When we were getting ready to go to our friend's house, Coen got into my concealer. It was ALL over and we were already late. So I snapped a picture because I was hoping it would be funny later.

We had a cookout at our friend's beautiful backyard. They have about 5 acres and the kids had fun playing.

That was our busy August! Lots of work and lots of playing in two states!