Trip to Billings

Just so you know I posted the pictures in backwards order, starting at the end of our trip and going on to the beginning. Also this is a LONG post. A couple of weekends ago we went to Billings to visit Reed's parents and see Ken (Reed's brother) and his 4 kids. It was really good to see them and let the kids get acquainted with their cousins (Ken and Shelly live in Ohio and we hadn't seen their kids for 2 1/2 years).

Monday: Bishop Hansen kindly invited us to go boating with his family on Monday afternoon. We had a blast!! Reed and Alan were the first ones out on the lake. Reed took Alan tubing for his first time. I wish I could say Alan enjoyed it but that would be a lie. The whole time they were being pulled behind the tube Alan was telling Reed he didn't want to get wet and he wanted to get back on the boat. When the boat stopped both Alan and Reed got dumped into the water. Alan came back up screaming and crying but he settled down once we got him in the boat. Bishop Hansen saved the day by letting Alan help steer the boat - Alan was thrilled and he talked about that the most. On the way home he told us how he helped "steer the ship".

Before we started going.

After that Reed went for a tube ride and I went skiing. It felt great to get up on skis again, although I could tell I was out of practice.

Caden, Kailyn, Alan and Jordan throwing rocks into the water.

Sunday: We went to church in the afternoon. That evening we took the kids to feed some chickens. While we were there the kids enjoyed playing on the farm equipment.

l to r: Conner, Caden, Alan, Jordan, Kailyn. Everyone sitting in the shovel of a backhoe.

Conner petting the chicken.

This picture was taken right after church, and unfortunately Kailyn was tired. We had noticed that none of the kids were the same age and we wanted to take a picture oldest to youngest.

l to r: Kailyn (5), Jordan (4), Alan (3), Caden (2), Conner (1), Chase (0, actually about 6 months).

Saturday: On Saturday morning we all headed down to the lake and went canoeing. That was a lot of fun. Then it started to get hot so we all went back home for lunch and a rest and then Grandma and Grandpa Bassett brought out their own slip and slide. Their back yard is sloped so we just laid the plastic down and put the hose at the top. They also had a wading pool and they turned some of the sprinklers on. It was a great way to keep everyone cool.

I had fun chasing the kids around. It was so nice to get to know my nieces and nephews. Below I am chasing Kailyn and Jordan.

Alan on the slip and slide

Everyone enjoying the slip and slide.

At first Alan was pretty nervous about sliding down. In the picture below I think he accidently slipped while walking down it. After watching his cousins slide down he eventually started to have fun on it.

Jordan, Kailyn, Alan and Caden, having a splash party in the pool.

Conner enjoying some spray.

Conner wasn't as excited about the slide as the big kids. He did enjoy going down on Mom and Dad's laps though.

Below is a cute picture of Kailyn reading the kids a story. She is an excellent reader and the other kids (and parents) really enjoyed having her read to them.

When the kids weren't canoeing they played a bean bag game.

Ken, Caden, Kailyn, Jordan, and Reed canoeing on the lake.

Grandpa Bassett has a dirt box on his back porch that the kids (especially the boys) loved. It has little construction trucks in it and Alan and Caden spent a lot of time out there making tracks and moving the dirt around.

As you can tell it was a fun weekend. We saw Shelly on Monday evening while we were boating and we will hopefully see more of her and the kids later in August before they have to go home.

Conner walking

Conner is officially walking! He started walking in the 2nd week of July, so he was a little more than 14 months old. It was fun to watch him learn to push himself to a standing position. The first few times he tried he ended up almost doing a somersault - he bent in half at the waist with his head on the ground looking back between his legs.

Our Independence Day

Well, we are mostly settled into our new place. Thanks again to my parents and Reed's parents and my brother, Reed, for the help in getting moved in.
We had a fun and busy 4th of July. We started the day with a ward breakfast which was yummy. Then we went home to let Conner take a short nap, then it was off to the parade. I would say the highlight of the parade was watching the helicopters go over head. They had 2 helicopters that flew over the parade route and they flew quite low. Alan loved it, but Conner started to shake and he would snuggle up close when they flew by. Some of the people in the parade handed out Popsicles, pop, and ice cream sandwiches which was nice because the parade was long and the weather was hot. Alan received a free flag and he loved waving it at all of the people in the parade. After the parade we went home and everyone took a late nap. Then we found a park and bar-b-qued our dinner there. There are some really nice parks here. We got rained out and went to Dairy Queen to have an icecream cone and wait out the storm. After that we headed home and lit off a few small fireworks with Alan. As you can see from the picture below, he really liked lighting the fireworks.
Just as we were finishing our fireworks Mother Nature decided to give everyone and show and we took cover and watched the lighning and pounding rain. The rain let off in time for us to watch the city's fireworks. We let Alan stay up and watch the city's fireworks with us, while Conner went to bed. We just took our chairs to the back of our apartment building and watched from there, rather than going down to the river. All in all it was a fun day!

Nebraska's Send Off

The night before we left Nebraska we had a huge thunderstorm. We were just going to bed and we could look out the window and see almost constant lightning and a constant rumble of thunder. A few minutes later it started to hail and it sounded like all of our windows were going to break in. The hail lasted for 10 minutes or more and they were big hail stones - about the size of a quarter or bigger.
Here is a picture out our front door...it looked like it had snowed. You almost couldn't see our grass.
The next day when we left around 1 in the afternoon there was still hail on the grass. The hail left some small dents in our vehicles and it looked like our garage was hit with a sand blaster.

The send off from our friends was much better. People in our ward invited us over for dinner for the 4 days or so before we left and we had lots of help with loading up our truck and cleaning our house. We really loved our ward and we miss them a lot.

Update

WARNING: This is a really long post. It has been a while since I have updated and I probably won't do another post for a while so enjoy!

Family Reunion

A couple of weeks ago we headed up to Montana to visit Grandma and Grandpa Bassett. Alan was so excited to go see his grandma and grandpa. As we drove we explained to Alan that we were going to go to the Walker Family reunion first. We told him we would see Great Grandma and Grandpa Walker, and then we would see Grandma and Grandpa Bassett. His response to this: "So, first we will see great walking grandma, and then we will see our plain grandma?" We got a chuckle out of that and so did "great walking grandma" and "plain grandma"

A funny/embarrassing story from the reunion: Alan loves black olives so when we went to have dinner Alan noticed they had a big bowl of olives. I gave him a few and sent him to a table to eat. A few minutes later I couldn't find Alan. Then I hear some giggles and I turn to see Alan walking through the middle of the big circle of chairs. He is holding the big bowl of olives in one hand and shovelling olive after olive into his mouth using the serving spoon.

Garden stuff

We got to help Mom and Dad B. plant their garden. We loved it! I miss having a garden.

Here is a picture of their square foot garden.

Here is Alan digging in their garden with a toy excavator. He and Grandpa built a box full of dirt and rocks for the toys to work in. Alan was in heaven!

Alan poking at a roly poly bug

We got to see the new and improved pond and Alan and Grandma had fun swinging.
Alan got to ride in the Jeep which he loves.
Sick Baby

Poor Conner. When we got to Mom and Dad's place Friday night he didn't sleep well and he woke up with a fever. He also threw up once a night for 3 nights. The fever kept getting worse and worse and he didn't sleep well at night. Reed and Dad gave him a blessing one night and he slept a little better after that. By Monday morning his fever was 104 so I took him to the clinic. I suspected his ears were infected again but I was wrong - his ears were fine. The nurse said it was some kind of viral infection: they couldn't do anything for him. They said to just keep giving him tylenol and water and charged me $100 for the visit. Bah humbug! We delayed our trip to Great Falls for a day but then we took him with us on Tuesday (Mom and Dad kept Alan with them). By Wednesday he was starting to feel a lot better and he slept through the night.

Conner spent a lot of time in his diaper - just lounging around.
The poor baby just didn't have any energy. Here he is snuggling with his doggie on the floor.

Here he is: feeling much better!

Visiting with Russ and Kristie and Family

Yay! We got so see Russ and Kristie and family which means we got to see Gracie! Such a cutie - she has so much hair. It was so fun to see the kids play together.

Here we are playing a game. Boyce just threw the ball but Hudson dodged.

The kids had a sleep over in the basement. Starting at the nearest kid: Alan, Kelcie, Hudson and Boyce.

Hudson, Boyce and Alan playing together outside.
Driver Alan

Alan loves big trucks. The garbage truck driver let Alan sit in the driver seat.

Then grandpa got us a tour of the bus barn. Alan was so excited to see so many buses all together. Then we actually got to take a ride on a bus. When Grandpa first offered to take Alan on the bus Alan said "No, I can't, I'm not six". We have talked about how he has to wait until he starts school to ride a bus. I was surprised that he was a little bit nervous on the ride - not sure why.
Here he is sitting in the driver's seat of the bus.

Then Grandpa took Alan for a ride on the gator. Alan really liked that, although he held onto the side rail pretty tight.

Canoeing

The highlight of the canoe trip was seeing a beaver swim through the water, crawl through a culver and then walk across a lawn into a group of trees

So a ton has happened in the last few weeks. Reed was offered a job in Great Falls, Montana and he accepted it. He will be working as an assistant manager for American General (same company as before). We went up to Montana a couple of weeks ago and looked for a place to live. We found an apartment that is NOT ideal (not even close) but it will work for now. The 2 good things to be said for the apartment are that the rent is cheap and we can get out of our lease if we give a 30 day notice. So next Thursday we are moving...yup this is really fast. We are sad to be leaving our friends and our awesome ward, but we are excited to live closer to both of our families.

All about Alan

Here is the post about Alan, as promised. Here are some things that Alan loves:
1. He loves to mow the lawn with our toy bubble lawn mower.
2. He loves to play in the sandbox
3. He loves to swim with water wings, so that we don't have to help him.
4. He loves to have me hold Conner a few feet from him and then let Conner walk to him. I think Alan feels so big when Conner walks to him.
5. He still loves the color pink.
6. He loves to draw, write, cut and paste. He has just started to actually make pictures that look like more than scribbles. For example, he just brought me a picture that he drew of a spider, and it actually looks like a spider. He is interested in letters. I have been telling him that letters have sounds so his new thing is to say "B-b-b car" or "B-b-b spider" He really likes the B sound.

Alan and Conner driving around our backyard

Alan dressed up as a super hero (superman cape and knight armor - he is ready for anything!)
Showing Conner how to mow the lawn.

A few weeks ago we decided to spend some one on one time with the boys so I played with Conner and Alan spent some time with his Daddy. Reed told him they could do whatever Alan wanted so Alan chose to go jump in puddles. He came home soaking wet and very happy.

Showing off his big muscles.

Alan says the funniest things sometimes. Here are a few quotes:

"Mom, watch this famous trick" while he does something like balancing a bite of food on the wrong side of the fork and gets it to his mouth while tapping his head with his other hand.

Reed was reading the newspaper while he and Alan were eating breakfast and Alan said to him "Dad, could you keep an eye on me?"

I dropped Alan off at a friend (Zachary) house while I went to the store with Conner. After I left Zach asked his mom why I had taken Conner with me (I sometimes leave him there too). His mom replied that I had taken Conner with me so that I wouldn't be lonely. Alan had been listening to this exchange and he piped up with his own matter-of-fact explanation: "No, my mom took Conner to the store because she doesn't want Shadow to eat Conner." Shadow is their friendly but big dog that barks at us everytime we come over. Alan does not trust that dog at all, apparently.

A change of heart

Remember a few posts back when I said that Conner didn't really like icecream? Well, Conner has officially changed his mind. He was fussing in his high chair so Reed handed him a bowl of icecream and his own spoon to see if it would entertain him for a while. He gobbled the icecream up! He absolutely loved holding his own spoon and feeding himself although he made a HUGE mess.

The final result...looks like he enjoyed himself.

To explain the picture below: we were trying to feed Conner lunch but he was apparently too tired. Everytime he opened his mouth to take a bite his eyes would close. Then Reed or Alan would yell "Peek a boo" or "Hey!" and he would open his eyes again and give them a big smile. Well, that worked for a while but then he just started to smile, without opening his eyes. He looked like he was sound asleep and Alan would yell "Peek a boo" and he would get this silly smile on his face for a second, but he wouldn't open his eyes.

ps. Don't worry we haven't stopped taking pictures of Alan. The next post will be dedicated to Alan.