All about Alan

As you can tell this blog is all about Alan. Alan has pretty good language skills so he keeps us laughing with some of the things he come up with.
Funny Phrases:

"Are you happy?" - He asks this dozens of times a day, usually when I am starting to show my frustration. He will keep asking it until he gets the answer he wants (that I am happy)


"Of course.." He says this phrase a lot. "Of course I want to talk to daddy on the phone" or "of course I want to go outside".


"Didja know Jesus turned on the rain?" - we were driving in the car and it started raining and he just said that out of the blue.


Reed: You sure love your momma, huh?
Alan: Yeah, she's my favorite.


When we were all together with Reed's family this happened. Alan wanted a sucker so he asked me for one and I said "no". So then he asked Reed and he said the same thing. Then he went around the circle and asked all of his aunts and uncles and his grandma and grandpa for a sucker. All of them said no. Then he walked back over to Grandma, who was holding Conner, and said "I want to ask Conner for a sucker. He'll say yes."


This happened when I had been gone for the girl's weekend for a couple of days and Reed and Alan were sitting at the table at home. Alan was making a grocery list.
Alan: "Milk, what else? Water, what else? Mommy, what else?"
Reed: "Do you think we are going to pick Mommy up at the store?"
Alan: "Yes."


The pictures below are a good example of him saying "Of course!" I tried to take his picture and he covered his face and wouldn't put his hands down so I said fine and started to walk away. Alan lowered his hands and yelled "Oh course I want my picture taken!" The tone of his voice suggested that that should have been obvious.

Alan loves to swim. He is my little fish. He doesn't have much fear of the water so we have to be careful but I love how he is so daring in the water.

Alan loves his brother. He can usually get Conner to smile big and he will go find him toys when he is fussy. He is a little rough with him so we still have to watch him carefully. I think Alan is having a hard time waiting for someone he can wrestle with, because he keeps trying it with Conner. Luckily Conner usually doesn't mind (but I do).

All about Conner

This blog is all about Conner. Most of the pictures are from the girls weekend so he is about 3 months old in the pictures. Conner is more snuggly than Alan was as a baby.

Conner had just finished eating and he was making this face, even though he was asleep.

Conner, future Olympic skier

Conner is a VERY smiley, happy baby. Most of the time.

Unfortunately the girl's weekend kind of threw him off his sleeping schedule. When we got home he decided he needed to be nursed to sleep every time he woke up at night (3 times a night or every 2 or 3 hours). I wasn't impressed. So we started to put him in his bed when he was drowsy, but still awake. He was so mad! He screamed for a good portion of the first night and he is still waking up a few times a night but he just cries for a little bit and then he goes back to sleep. It will be nice when he sleeps for longer at night. Below is a picture of 4 month old Conner. I think he looks like he is pondering/dreaming of ways to keep his parents awake at night.

Conner's first swim

In August we went down to Denver and stayed in a hotel while we picked some people up at the airport. The hotel had a swimming pool so we took the boys swimming and it was Conner's first time. He seemed to enjoy it, although the water was a little cold. He played in the water for 10 or 15 minutes and then he fell asleep on some towels on the pool deck.

Alan had a lot of fun. Reed threw him up in the air and he landed in the water a couple of times. It was a lot of fun.

Storm

Today we decided to clean out the garage so we put everything in the driveway and set off a bug bomb. Around 4 o clock I opened up the garage to air it out and I noticed that there were some VERY dark clouds on the horizon. I went inside and when I looked outside 15 minutes later it was much closer. So Reed and I hurried outside and started putting our stuff back in the garage. We just finished when the storm hit and what a storm it was - high winds, heavy rain, lightning, and thunder. The tornado sirens even started going although we didn't hear them until the end of the storm because the wind was howling. Our power went out at the beginning of the storm and didn't come on again until 8:30 this evening. After the storm we started looking around at the damage. A block away a tree had fallen across the road.A block a way, a tree fell on some power lines so the lines were just hanging there next to the power poles. Our backyard even took some damage. A tree in our neighbor's yard fell across the fence into our yard (in the background of the picture below you can see our neighbors dragging it out of our yard). Also the big tree next to our house lost a few branches - luckily none of them hit our power lines. We have a lot of clean up to do tomorrow.

Camping in the basement

A couple weeks ago we decided to go camping. We have been trying to go for the last 2 months but something has always come up to stop us, so we decided that we were going to go camping no matter what. Well, Friday came and it was raining. So instead of cancelling we camped in our basement. We tried to set up our 5 man tent but there wasn't enough room so we set up our two man tent instead. Reed and Alan slept in the tent and Conner and I slept upstairs in our beds. Alan was pretty excited about the tent.
No camping trip would be complete without smores. Yum!!! I love smores. Alan liked the chocolate, he wasn't really interested in making smores, just in eating the chocolate pieces.

And to make the camping trip feel more genuine we even had an injury. Alan was helping me set up the smore stuff and he fell off the bucket he was standing on and hit his head. The picture doesn't do it justice. He had a huge bump on his forehead with a small cut on the bump. Poor guy.

All in all it was a great camping trip.

Hike up Scotts Bluff

On Saturday evening we decided to climb Scottsbluff National Monument. We thought that it would be kind of sad if we lived here for a couple of years without ever climbing the bluff that our city was named after. Here is a picture of my cool boys, all with their hats and sunglasses on.This was a funny picture. Reed told Alan to make the same face he is making. Alan's impersonation was pretty funny.

Part of the way up the hike you go through a short tunnel that goes right through the monument (it is really narrow at the top). When Alan saw the tunnel he turned to me and said "Is there a bear in there?" I said no. He wasn't convinced. One of the books he really likes right now is "We're going on a bear hunt". At the end the bear is in the tunnel. He did go through the tunnel but he was pretty nervous. The picture below shows how high up we were.

We didn't make it all the way to the top because Alan walked the whole way and he started to get tired plus it started to get dark. Alan did so good on the hike, we were surprised. In the picture below you can see the bluff in the back. We climbed to the middle ledge (not the very top, the ledge below that). Alan walked all the way up and all the way down to the flat part. Then he asked to be carried. Reed is superman so he carried both boys back to the car.

Girl's Weekend

At the beginning of August I went to Utah and met up with Reed's mom and all of his sisters and sister-in-laws. No one brought their kids (except me, I brought Conner). It was a blast!! Conner was such a good boy, as usual. He travelled really well and he loved having so much attention from all of his aunts and his grandma. Jackie took a bunch of pictures so here is a brief review.




On Friday we went to the Olympic Park. We had fun playing in the bobsleds and we all took pictures in the skier poster thing (see picture). You know the olympic event where skiers ski off a ramp and do twists and flips in the air before they land? We watched some people ski down the ramps and land in the pool. One guy went off the really big ramp: he must have gone at least 40 feet in the air and he did lots of twists and flips. It was really cool to watch.


people left to right: Jackie, Kristie, Lynn, Shelly, Me, Brenda, Mindy
After that we split into two teams. Each team went to find the silliest outfits we could find and then we took pictures of each other. Here is a picture of me and the rest of my team.

After that we tried to go to the Cheesecake Factory to eat but we got a late start and then we got lost. So we ended up eating at food court in a mall. The reason we were in a hurry was that we were going to a play that night: 7 brides for 7 brothers. The play was really good, when we first got there I wasn't expecting it to be very good but it turned out really well.

The next day we went for a hike in the Wasatch State Park. It was a very steep trail and I only made it part way up. Coming back down I slipped and fell and woke poor Conner up with a start. It was so nice to be up in the mountains again!

After that we all went to the lake and went swimming. It was a hot day so the water felt really nice.

The next day was Sunday. We took this picture after church. Lynn brought some of her journals and she let us read some of them from when her kids were young. It was really nice to talk with each other and to read about how she and her family were in the same place as some of us are now. It gave me hope that maybe my kids will turn out as good as hers did!!! Thanks again Brenda for putting the weekend together - it was a ton of fun.