Brigham's Birthday

Brigham turned 7 years old this year.  I can't believe how big he's getting.  I'm a little sad that he's actually getting older.  Some things are just easier when they are small.  But it was a great birthday either way.

Since it was library night, we already knew what we were going to do.

 They played in the courtyard a little bit and so I decided to take their picture.

 They seemed a little too dour so I asked them to smile.  Jonathan tried to help Brigham smile.

After the library we came home and Skyped with my parents while he opened his presents.  Grandma sent him some clothes, candy, and some fun toys.  One of which was a stuffed space shuttle that makes blast off noises.  He loved it.  We got him a Me Moves dvd.  It's a dvd that he watches at school sometimes and he loves it.  We also got him a cool chair cushion thing for when he plays on the DS.  Cool stuff!

Then we sang and blew out candles, of course.

He gets so excited to blow out the candles, it's cute to watch.

We also decided to go to the planetarium the next day.  His favorite place.

 He had a lot of fun.

 I don't know why he never really felt comfortable enough to uncover his ears though, he really did have fun.  We even let him pick out a toy from the Planet Fun Store.

 It's a cool Earth spinner thing at lit up as it spun and even played Axel F(?!)  I haven't heard that song in a while.  Luckily, we were able to hear it over and over for quit some time after that.  He loved to watch it spin.

 This is what it looked like with the lights on.

He loved turning off all the lights to watch it spin.

Happy Birthday, Brigham!

Pioneer Day

So one of the downsides to being so far behind in my blogging is that I'm starting to forget details about the day.  I don't remember much about what we did on Pioneer Day, but I know we did fireworks.

Actually, one thing that I remember is that I let the boys watch the parade.  That's never been a tradition for me but I thought they might like to see it.  Turns out they really enjoyed it.  We hardly ever watch live tv so it was a little weird trying to find out where it was broadcast but we worked it out and they were able to watch quite a bit of it.  Maybe we'll have to do that again next year.

That night we did fireworks as usual.  I don't know why but it had never occurred to me to do light trails with the sparklers so that's what I focused on this time.  It's tricky to do, especially with wiggly kids but there are some fun shots.

 They were still a little new to the sparklers in general, we haven't done them much in the past.

 There were fireworks going off all over so I tried to catch some of them.

 They weren't sure exactly what it was I wanted them to do at first.

 So Jaaromy showed them that I wanted them to draw shapes in the air and stuff like that.

 They got better at it.

Just in time to run out.  But it was a fun trick, I'll have to try it again.

Unfortunately, we had an incident with the sparklers.  I wasn't watching and Brigham sat down in the chair with his sparkler and an ember broke off and landed on his knee.  He tried to get it off with his thumb and so both his thumb and his knee had a pretty bad burn on them.  I let him watch Baby Galileo all night while he held a cold pack on his knee.  Poor kid.  It's taken a while to heal too, the mark on his knee is still there.

Still it was fun.  We'll have to try again next year with new safety rules in place.

Jonathan's Glasses

Jaaromy and I have both been wearing glasses since we were roughly 10-11 years old.  So we figured our kids would have to wear glasses eventually.  It was no surprise when Nathaniel needed glasses right before third grade.  It was earlier than we thought it would be, but still, we were not surprised.  We would test his eyes every once in a while at church.  We'd ask him if he could read the hymn numbers and when he couldn't read them anymore, it was time to take him in.

I was a little surprised when it turned out that Jonathan needed glasses too.  I don't know why, I guess I was hoping that his eyes would last a little longer.  He took the same hymn number test and it seemed he couldn't see very far at all.  So I took him in.

He did great.  He was very cooperative with the optometrist and was excited to pick out some cool frames.  He was very disappointed when told he would have to wait a week before they would be ready for him to wear.

Finally they were ready!  He was also a little disappointed that the Sponge Bob sticker than had been on the lens when he tried it on was now gone.  But there was still a little Sponge Bob picture on the end of the ear hooks. (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term)

I have to admit, he looks pretty darn cute.  I think his longer face is well suited for wearing glasses.  He was so excited to wear them and when we left the optical department he read every single sign in Shopko.  He's very excited that he can see now.  It's so fun to watch him.

So, for now, Brigham is the only one of us who doesn't wear glasses.  I hope it stays that way for a long time.

Someone Else's Life

Jaaromy and I had a chance to take an overnight trip for our anniversary.  We had originally tried to go in May or June, closer to our anniversary date but everyone who could watch the kids overnight were all busy.  We even had a reservation, but we had to cancel it.  Apparently, though, we had rescheduled and forgotten until one day we got an email from the hotel telling us about our upcoming reservation.  Luckily, Jaaromy's mom was free and was able to spend the night with the boys so we could go.  So, hurray for last minute trips!

Not that it was a huge trip.  All I wanted was to stay downtown at the Grand America hotel and so that's what we did.  We checked in around five and then took the train over to the Gateway for dinner.  We weren't sure where we wanted to go so we took a chance and tried a restaurant called La Jolla Groves.  Turns out it was amazingly good!  Seriously, all night I was thinking about when we could come back and eat there again.  While we were waiting for our food to come we realized that if we saw a movie, which we were planning on doing, the trains would have stopped running by the time we came out.  We decided that we would walk back to the hotel even though it would be late.  We mapped out a route on our phones that we thought would be best.  Problem solved!

Before the movie, I had heard about a clothing store called Bettie Page from a friend of mine on Facebook.  I really wanted to take a look so we walked over there to see what they had.  Turns out it was exactly my kind of store.  They had so many cute skirts, dresses, and even some tops that were just my style.  We had some time so Jaaromy humored me and let me try on several outfits.  They were so fun and cute!  He ended up insisting that I buy several of them.  Three skirts, one blouse, and one full length dress.  They were not cheap either.  I decided to let him buy them for me, as my anniversary/birthday/Christmas present.  Also, because I've lost weight, I needed new clothes anyway.  It was really hard to say yes though, and even though I was excited for my cute new clothes, it was definitely the most I had ever spent on clothes before.  We left the store and the whole experience just felt a little surreal.

After that we went to the movie.  It has been a really lackluster summer for movies this year.  I wanted to see Man of Steel.  I had heard that it wasn't great, but it was pretty good and was probably our best option.  Jaaromy didn't want to be disappointed and so he wanted to see Pacific Rim.  That movie, we knew very well would probably be dumb but at least it would be exciting.  And it was.  The characters weren't very interesting, but giant robots battling giant alien monsters was definitely action-packed.  Sitting there in the theater watching a movie that was dumb and under normal circumstances we would never pay money to see just added to my sense of surrealness for the whole evening.  But the night wasn't over yet.

After the movie we started our long walk to back to the hotel.  Google maps said it would take about 20 minutes and it was close to midnight.  Before long we came across a bike rental station.  We kind of joked about riding bikes back to the hotel and then realized that it might not be a bad idea.  We went back to the station to see if there was another station close to the hotel.  There was!  They even had baskets on the front for my shopping bags.  So, for the ultimate surreal moment of the evening, we rode rented bikes through downtown Salt Lake City at midnight on a Friday back to our hotel.

 I'm glad I thought to take a picture.  It was so crazy!  I haven't ridden a bike in years, maybe decades.  It was fun, although it stressed me out a little because I don't know what the rules of the road are for bikes.  Luckily, the streets weren't terribly crowded.  It was midnight after all!

The rest of the night was fairly typical for an anniversary trip.  We ordered a dessert brought to our room while we watched Phineas and Ferb on Jaaromy iPad.  There's a tv of course, but nothing good to watch ever.  That's the only problem with hotels.  Oh well.  The dessert was tasty and we were exhausted.

The next morning we had a big breakfast brought to our room.  That, for me, is the hallmark of a great anniversary overnighter.  Breakfast IN our hotel room.  It was expensive but it was awesome and so tasty.

After we checked out of the hotel we walked around the new City Creek shopping center.  I hadn't really been before.  It was so pretty.

Then we picked up the kids.  It was a great adventure.  The most exciting and unexpected anniversary trip we've ever had.  Until next year.

Nathaniel the Teenager

Nathaniel celebrated his 13th birthday several weeks ago.  As far as privileges go, it's not as exciting as turning twelve, but it has it's perks.  Nathaniel was particularly excited about officially being a teenager, that suffix is very important.  We also decided that he could get his own Facebook page now that he was officially old enough.  He's had some fun with that already.   Nathaniel was a little disappointed that he still had to do his regular chores on his birthday.  I know, I'm so mean.  I did, however, allow him to skip his one cleaning chore.  I know what you're thinking, nicest Mom ever, right? 

That night we went to see Monsters University.  Even though it didn't get as good reviews as other Pixar movies, I thought it was very good.  I especially loved the ending, somewhat unexpected.

When we got home we Skyped with Grandma and Grandpa while he opened his presents.  They sent him a big box full of fun stuff that had been sitting on the counter all week.  The suspense was killing him.  Finally he was able to open it up and find that it was mostly clothes.  But he also got some pretty cool books.  Some from us and some from Grandma and Grandpa.

He also got another book from G&G that came late.  He is pretty set as far as books go for quite a while.

After the presents and Skyping we sang and blew out candles on our cookie brownies.  They are still our birthday favorite.

That's pretty much how it went down.

And here's a picture of Brigham because he's so cute.

We also had birthday Sunday at Scott and Heather's house a few days later.  Nathaniel used to be the only July birthday but it has really blossomed into a busy birthday month.

Good times!

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!  It's so fun watching you grow, and I've particularly loved watching you grow over this last year as you've gained more responsibilities and also more confidence.  I love you!