idaho falls. last trip of the summer.

before summer ended and the last weekend that "i should" travel with this pregnancy we decided to head up to idaho falls one last time to see our friends and go to a couple of our favorite spots.

the timing was perfect because we were able to attend one of our little buddies, ethan's baptism.  it is always special to be a part of our friends' lives and support them when we can.

the first night- we couldn't leave SLC until saturday evening because chris had to work, so we got up to idaho falls at around 7 p.m. and picked up my brother, bryce and had some chinese together.  he was getting ready to leave to a concert so that was our opportunity to spend a little time with him.

we spent the night with chris' sister, shawnae and her husband tim. we appreciate them letting us crash their place and it gave us a little bit of time together.

Sunday- we were able to attend our old ward and it was so wonderful to see our friends there and people we love dearly.  a few of "my young women" had received their young womanhood recognition awards the previous sunday so i was so proud of them!

after church we had a quick picnic at Tautphaus Park and then let the kids play at the playground for a little bit before heading over to our friends' rose and wes' house for dinner.  they were gracious enough to offer for us to stay the next couple of nights at their house and it was wonderful to spend some time with them and have our kids play.

sunday evening we attended ethan's baptism and then headed back to rose and wes' to test out their brand new theater room with a movie and popcorn!

Monday- we did a little shopping at some places that we needed some things at.  we don't get to go out of tooele very often here so our shopping is very limited.  we ate lunch out Cafe Rio and then went to Rigby Lake for the afternoon into the evening.  we were able to meet up with our friends, the hansens for the whole day there and also had our friends, jandy and her kiddos and kara and her kiddos come for a few hours.  later on in the evening our friends, the thibodeaus came and joined us for a bbq.

evenings at Rigby Lake are my favorite!

these boys are such good pals!  

- porter, brady & ethan -

olivia and brady rode back to the hansens' house with them in their van.  apparently aaron and tiffany hadn't had enough of us yet and invited us back to their place for some games.  good old times. there were many a night spent staying up late and playing games with them! and olivia entertained max and alice with a book.  alice liked olivia enough to hold her hand.

Tuesday- we spent the morning with rose and her kids and rose and i did some shopping for healthy picnic food.  we spent the afternoon at Rexburg Rapids and had a great time!  it took zach a bit to warm up to the idea of swimming in the splash area again.  he loves playing along the shore but areas that have squirting water and lots of people tend to make him shy off a bit.  i enjoyed sitting in the shallows with him and chatting with tiffany and rose while chris did the more adventurous stuff with the older kids.

- rose & tiffany -

i love these two girls so much.  they are definately two of my dearest friends who i can talk to about anything.  they give me their full attention, a listening ear, a warm heart and great advice.  i am so lucky to have such good girlfriends!

we ended the evening (and our vacation) at another favorite place, Pizza Pie Cafe with aaron and tiffany.  great food and even better friends!

we headed home to utah from rexburg and this guy did a great job making it both ways without any accidents!  we did have one roadside "emergency" stop, but someone had a bit of "performance anxiety!"  

                       

nothing cuter than baby buns!

who can pit the most apricots?

this time of year rolls around and i do A.LOT.OF.CANNING.  this year i'm going to take it easier, especially since i don't have a garden that i'm canning from.  

but i still need help and have six extra helping hands who can help with SOME things.  i am NOT one who likes to have help in the kitchen.  i enjoy working in the kitchen and having my kids busy coloring, doing puzzles or other activities at the table- BUT STAY OUT OF MY CORNER!

apricots take a bit of prep to make them into jam.  not much, but just enough to make me want to ease my burden a little.

that's where the little hands come in.  they can easily rinse all 400 apricots and divide them into bowls.  

they were eager for a challenge so i had them each count out 100 apricots in a large metal bowl of their own.

whoever pitted their 100 apricots first got 3 tokens for their token jar (we do a token reward system here for chores and good behavior see here). the "loser" got a token for their good effort!

who do you think won?!

don't you love brady's dimples?  they are just like chris'!

we had enough apricots for two challenges.  brady won the first round by a few apricots and olivia won the second round by a few apricots!  they loved this and were motivated the whole time!  i couldn't keep up with my chopping as fast as they were dumping their piles onto my cutting board (and that was AFTER the large bowl beside me was full!!!)

this little guy stayed busy by my side coloring "rainbows."  he has really come to love coloring.  he will sit at the table for about an hour and color spiral after spiral of color.  he is currently loving "winnie-the-pooh" color pages and shows me after each page he does.

he lines everything up!  "races" he calls it.  

apparently his crayons have places to go!

cars, legos, dinosaurs, action figures...they all get lined up.

this was a happy afternoon. cool breeze, warm sunlight filtering in the kitchen and happy faces.  i love being with my little people on days like this.

mommys' pile:

they got a whole lot of pitting done!

i diced all my apricots in quarters and had them separated into 4 bowls.  added in my lemon juice and 1 C. of sugar over the top of each and then covered overnight.  this is the next days' labors:

15 pints apricot jam

and i canned up my chicken stock at the same time in the pressure canner.  i had used 4 quarts for my chicken noodle soup, so i was left with 5 quarts to process.

a little bit of lately. {dinosaur park}.

every once in a while this summer chris has gotten home from work early enough for us to take off and do something fun with the kids.  this particular evening wasn't dreadfully hot.  chris got home around 7:45, leaving us enough time to play at a local park for about an hour.  the evening is my favorite time of day.

zach has become quite the climber this past year.  he is very coordinated and loves to climb up, down and across anything.  there isn't very much that holds him back, and since he has become quite skilled he has never fallen.

we like this park the best because it's in a pretty setting, has fun exploratory playground equipment with a dinosaur theme, has walking paths and a fun laser light game the kids (and daddy) enjoy playing.  this park gets the wiggles out big time!!!

playing the laser game-

i can't get enough of this little guy lately it seems.  most of my pictures are of him- trying to capture this fun age of excitement and exploration.  he has the cutest mannerisms and little voice and i am reminded daily that {although i wish i could freeze him right here in this phase and age} that he is growing rapidly and learning how to stay up to speed with his big brother and sister.

pretty soon he won't be our baby anymore.  i think he is starting to grasp the idea that a new little person will be coming to live at our house.  he often says "i am big." "i am going to be a big brudder." (brother)

i love that he was potty-trained in 2 weeks.  he doesn't wear diapers or pull-ups at all anymore, not even at naptime or bedtime.  no accident in bed yet.  a {HUGE} blessing to a momma who DID NOT want two kids in diapers at the same time!!!

i also love that he gets himself dressed and more often than not his shoes are on the wrong feet and his underwear and pants are backwards.  he is fiercely independent; however.  as are ALL of my children.  so, wherever we go, he goes that way.  no worries.  he'll eventually figure out that the zipper goes in the front and not in the back and that it's actually much more comfortable to wear your clothes the right way.

he has his own sense of style too.  if he's not wearing his baseball cap then he usually requests to have his hair done (spikey, like you see it the most).  he also wears his shades all over the place, but mostly in the car so the sun doesn't bother his eyes.

he loves to brush his teeth every morning and night and WILL NOT let anyone help him, other than to put the toothpaste on his brush.  he will scream at you otherwise.  he will scream at you if he doesn't like anything you're doing to him.  this can be a good and a bad thing.  no stranger is ever going to get their hands on this child!

watch out for T-rex!

look who came to visit!

mom and dad graf came down the last weekend in july so we could all celebrate dad's birthday.  chelsae & spencer, shawnae & baby brielle came too!  it was fun having some company.  mom and dad stayed at a hotel so we enjoyed several hours in the evening and the next morning swimming at the pool.

we had a pool-side pizza and birthday party with cake and ice cream for dad.  don't ask me why i didn't take pictures....?  shawnae if you have any....

i got to hold this chubby cuteness while everyone swam!

chelsae and spencer entertained the kids for hours in the pool and grammie got in on a game of marco polo too!

the next day, on sunday we took a walk around temple square and visited the exhibits there. unfortunately later on in the evening both zach and grammie got really sick.  i think we had a combination of a stomach bug and some dehydration going on.  we had a long, hot weekend combined with not drinking enough water and swimming in the steamy pool room.

thanks for coming to visit!

a little bit of lately. {settlement canyon}.

chris worked saturday and got home at around 5.  wanting to take advantage of what time we had with him i packed the cooler and had everything ready to go for a dinner picnic up in the canyon. we drove up into Settlement Canyon where there is a reservoir.  the water was down quite a bit and the shoreline was rocky.  not much to be desired, but the view from that elevation was pretty.

driving in there are campsites all along the sides and a creek that runs the course of the canyon.  in many places the creek is down a steep ravine and all of the better spots were already taken. eventually we found an open field with a play ground along the creek.  it was a nice evening, not too hot, with a nice breeze.  thanks heavens for the breeze because apparently they don't mow the grass in the field and instead opt to free-range cattle there.  a few too many cow pies lay about (some fresh!)  you really had to watch your step!

the {beware of rattlesnakes} and {watch for cougars} signs also were a bit unsettling, however; there were plenty of other people all around so i felt confident we would be ok!

luckily there was one last fire pit available next to a picnic table so we set up our spot and chris and the kids ran off to collect firewood.  chris made an excellent "log cabin" style fire and showed brady how to build the fire and add wood in as the fire got going.  he explained how a fire needs air to "breathe" and grow.

next up....hot dogs!  who doesn't love roasting a hot dog over the fire?

the kids and their cheesy grins-

i took quite a few pictures of zach as he ate.  he was pretty funny about it.  i had packed everything we needed and was quite proud that i hadn't missed anything...until we realized we didn't have any paper towels!

zach is showing me his very messy fingers

no paper towels?  got to lick them off!

usually zach eats his hot dog like a piece of corn.  i was encouraging him to eat it from the end to try and not get so messy

apparently eating a hot dog like "normal people" is funny

what's a summer "BBQ" without rootbeer floats?!

and now the face is REALLY messy!  watching a 2 year old eat a rootbeer float can be very entertaining!

and a toothless girl too!

we cleaned up from dinner and packed stuff to the car, then sat in our camp chairs and watched the kids play.  they made some quick friends and had a game of tag.

olivia climbed all the way across the monkey bars for the first time

and we were there too!

on the way home we stopped at a house that had a full apricot tree. the owner was in the front yard painting and since it didn't look like they were using the apricots i got out and asked if they would mind if we picked some (offering to pay for some of course). she was more than happy to let us pick what we wanted off the tree.

in about 15 minutes the five of us picked enough apricots to fill half of my sink.  we would have stayed longer and picked more, but this little guy who is newly potty-trained "had to go!"

we'll see how much jam we can get out of this and maybe go back for more.

turned out to be a pretty good night!