Dexy Talking

Dexy is becoming such a talker! I love hearing him try to say EVERYTHING!
I don't know what 'monnanotto' means. Ollie's a goof!

We call underwear "chonies" because someone on Brian's mission called them that. And one day when Dexy and Jude were here doing good pottying, I randomly called them a "chonie hero." Then Brian picked it up later and started singing chonie hero to tune of "Jukebox Hero." The boys love it now!! Dexy even tries to sing it and it's so precious. He's just doing such good talking. It makes me so happy!

Catching up with Brian's Past

Brian's Madrigals partner and some of their other friends from the group were all going to be in or around St. George on the same weekend, so they decided to all get together and catch up. We met at the splashpad to let the kids play while the grown-ups chatted. I must admit, I did tons more playing than chatting. I figured Brian knew them better and needed to talk more than I did. Brian's partner is named Melanie and her little girl, Lydia, was so cute! She was shy at first, but when I reached out to her, she decided that we could be best friends! Ollie knew a cute girl when he saw one and wanted to hold her hand and come play with us. They were being so precious. We played for a while before heading back to our house for homemade pizza, salad, cantalope, and dessert pizza.

The kids played really well together. And it was fun to get to know some of Brian's buddies better. We only snapped a couple of pictures and all the kids sat relatively still and we actually got pictures. We were impressed. Oh and see? Lydia decided that she needed to sit on my lap. I feel so special! This was Melanie and her husband and 2 little girls, Brian and I and our 2 boys, Nina and her little boy and baby girl (her husband couldn't make it) and Meredith and her husband and little girl and baby boy. Fun!

Ollie and Lydia had one last chance to play as her family started to head out. They were closing each other in this outside door and calling it their cage. I'm pretty sure Ollie came up with this idea! It was nice to have a get together!

"No baby. Dig booy!"

When you ask Dexy if he's a baby he says, "No baby. Dig booy!" And he would be right. He is becoming such a big boy. The boy boys are both being very much "all boy" lately and are insisting to me that they are all grown up.

Doing such things as filling their dirty trike buckets with Goldfish and then eating from them....

....and heading outside first thing in the morning in their jammies and undies....

...to dig in the dirt...

...and make a huge mess!!

Dexy has also been using the potty and wearing undies like a big boy. We are having a lot of accidents, but that's just the name of the game and he is now too grown up to wear diapers except at night.

Ollie is getting so big that he was exploding out of these 3T sized jammies. Dexy actually usually wears these, but Ollie's jammie drawer was empty, so Brian put him in these one night. This pair is actually pretty much too small for either of them. They are just getting so big!

Sometimes, though, they still do things to remind me that they aren't all grown up yet. Like this! Dexy made a huge fabric mountain one day that consisted of a entire laundry basket of clean folded laundry, a bin of cloth diapers, a bag of clean folded laundry that I hadn't unpacked yet from our trip up North, all of the bedding and pillows from off our bed, and half of the contents of my night stand drawer! So frustrating!! I was proud of how calm I remained inspite of wanting to tear my hair out. They are certainly getting big and independent!

According to Oliver

Here is the rest of our time up North, after the massive head injury, from Oliver's perspective. He took all of these pictures. He's actually getting pretty good. There are even people in the shots now! It might be one of the only ways I get to be in pictures, so that's good. After the stitches, everything went fairly smoothly and was fun. We jumped on the tramp and enjoyed the not so burning hot weather a lot and that was about it. Glad to visit and have a good time with family. Glad to be home again now.

What Dexy Has to Say About it All

Family "Vacation" Part III

WARNING: Graphic pictures! If you are squeemish (as I am, but you'll hear more about that later), you may not want to look to closely at the following pictures.

So, here is Part III of our vacation time. On Wednesday morning, we all got up, ate breakfast, and got ready to head back down to the lake. Everyone wanted to do more water skiing and knee boarding first while the water was still calm, so we let them all go while Grandma and I stayed on shore with the boys. We set the food up on the picnic tables and sunscreened up and were just letting the boys play around on the grass while we waited and waited for our turn. Then things turned way less relaxed and enjoyable. Dexy was scampering around and stumbled into one of the picnic tables. He hit it full on, right on the corner of the bench, full in his face. I walked over to pick him up, staying calm knowing that it was probably going to be a pretty bad bump. I lifted him from off his face and flipped him over to take a look at it. I didn't have to look very hard. He was gushing blood from above his right eye! I will never forget flipping him over and seeing basically his whole face covered with blood!

I instantly headed off toward the bathroom. I washed off his face as much as I could, but the blood just kept coming and coming, so I grabbed a bunch of paper towel and started trying to apply pressure to the wound. Grandma had gone into the little store to get some ice, so I went there to tell her that we probably needed to take him to the hospital for stitches. We went into the store and I sat Dexy down on the counter. I pulled the paper towels away to see if the bleeding had slowed at all. BIG MISTAKE! I got a good look into his very deep and bloody wound, felt woozy, decided to rest my head on my arm and then woke up in a fight of terror on the hard floor a few minutes later.

Yes. I totally passed out! I am a huge sissy, especially when it comes to my babies gushing blood. I just remember putting my head down and then I was thrashing around on a hard floor and I didn't know really where I was and Dexy was screaming and screaming and screaming from really far away. Then a man's face calmly asking me my name came into focus. He was a fire fighter for the state park. We owe him so much!! He asked me my name, if I knew where I was, the day of the week and who the president is. When I got all those questions correct, he asked if I hurt anywhere. Fortunately, the answer to that was "no." I was standing next to Grandma and she said that I fell into her first and she broke my fall. I would have just gone straight back and hit hard if I hadn't fallen her direction.

After quickly and calmly assessing that I was OK, the fire fighter turned to Dexy. He got the girl working in the store to bring him and first aide kit and wrapped Dexy's head. Dexy would do nothing but sit by me and scream. I could do nothing but lay on the hard ground and shake. Ollie was so amazingly calm! He kept coming up to me saying things like, "it's OK, Mommy" "you're alright" and "I will give you a kiss." Grandma had called the cell phone of everyone on the boat about 5 times, but we weren't being able to get a hold of anyone. Again, fire fighter man to the rescue (I'm very sad now that I don't even know his name)! He told the girl who works there to go take one of the jet skies out and try to flag down our boat. He stayed with us and got some jackets to put over me because I was freezing. Dexy wouldn't even let Grandma hold him. Ollie got free ice cream!

The girl finally found our boat and soon Brian and Grandpa came walking over me into the store (I was basically laying in the entire entery). Dexy would go to Brian and kind of started to settle down. Brian took Dexy to the suburban and Grandpa had to carry me (I know, I'm pathetic).
We headed down the canyon to go to the ER.

The fire fighter had told Brian to keep Dexy awake just in case, so Brian was doing all that he could to keep him up. He actually got Dexy laughing! Here he is on the ride to the hospital, all bandaged up and looking rough and tumble! We only had Grandma's cell phone camera so the pictures aren't great, but probably a little blurry is better in this case anyway. On the way down the canyon, I vomitted. You probably all didn't want to know that. I was already woozy and I get motion sick really bad, so there really wasn't any chance that I wouldn't toss my cookies. However, I started feeling better from that point on.

Here it is. The gash! This is what made me pass out. This is at the ER after they had removed the bandage.

WICKED!! Poor kid! We all, sadistically, are a little jealous of the location of his injury. It's going to leave stellar scar, like Scar the lion from Lion King or Aniken Skywalker before he became Darth Vadar. I just hope that doesn't mean that he'll turn bad. He's way too sweet to ever turn bad!

Then they wrapped him up like a burrito in this little papoose to clean and stitch the wound. At this point, they sent me out of the room. They all knew that I had passed out and told me to go wait in the waiting room. Fair enough. Probably for the best. Brian said that he cried while they gave him the shot and was torturously calling, "Daddy?! Daddy?!?" but then he was fine. He even fell asleep while they were stitching him! He handled it so well. They were all impressed! What a brave boy!!

Family "Vacation" Part II

Part II - Boating Fun! Since we were unable to make it up here for the annual 4th of July East Canyon whole Bowles' family boating extravaganza (Brian couldn't miss classes), Brian's parents planned that while we were up here this time around, they'd take us boating at East Canyon for a couple of days. Glad they didn't want us to miss out on the fun!

I have participated in basically no water sports throughout my life, so it's fun to have a chance to go out and play big on the water. I got up on water skies about 4 or 5 times, but just kept wiping out when I couldn't find the right balance. I ditched the skies and went for the knee board and not only got up, but went the whole length of the lake before biffing it! I much prefer the knee board! After the big kids were all done skiing and boarding and the little kids had awakened from their boat nap, we took the boys out on the tube.

Ollie thought it was a riot!! He was laughing and screaming and bouncing all around. Dexy, however, just rode with an expressionless face. We kept asking him if he liked it and he just kept saying, "ya" again with very little emotion. So we'd ask him if he wanted to go back to the boat and he'd say, "no." Guess he liked it. When he did get tired, we sent Dex back to the boat and took Ollie a little longer on a faster more wild ride. He thought it was great! Then he even went with Angela and I on yet another tube ride.

Then it was time for a break and a short swim with me in the somewhat chilly water.

After that, they chilled on the boat while Angela and I went on the craziest, more wild tube ride ever!!

What a cheese!

Then it was Brian's turn to get up on the skies. He had been off in a little cove fishing (his new obsession) when we had gotten out the board and the skies the first time, so he still needed a turn. He has been going up to East Canyon at least once a year for basically his whole life, so he is much better than I am.

He sped across the water for a long time and was even jumping back and forth in and out and over the wake. It was awesome!

Last year when we were at East Canyon for the July 4th celeberation, Ollie was all about driving the boat. When Grandma asked him this time if he wanted to drive, he wasn't too interested. Dexy was, though! His year to be the driver!

As the day rounded to a close, the boys went on one last tube ride with Ben and Amanda. It was a short ride because the boat started dragging, but they still loved it. They were all about the tube!! Then we headed back to the condo that we were staying in for yummy dinner and bath and bedtime for happy, tired boys. We had a super enjoyable day on the lake!! That was Tuesday. Yesterday, however, was a doozy!!! But that is a story for tomorrow's part III post. I need to go to bed now. But I will just leave you with this little cliff hanger - that story involves more than one person turfing it, hard!!

Family "Vacation" Part I

Brian's summer semester has ended and he has a couple weeks before fall semester starts, so we decided to squeeze in a little vacation of sorts. We came up north to spend a week with his family, including a family boating trip up at East Canyon for a couple days in the middle. Here's the first event on the vaca agenda. We packed up and headed up on Saturday afternoon. The boys were so cute all ready to go. Love Dexy's cheeser face! Since we were just going to be in the car, we didn't even change out of our jammies after a morning of me cleaning to get everything ready. We got up here Saturday evening.
The first event was the blessing of Julian Weiler. He is the first child of Brian's basically life long best friend, Dan. They have been friends since 1st grade so, naturally, Dan wanted Brian at his son's blessing. Sad part was that our boys would not sleep that first night that we got here, so making it to Church on time was a huge ordeal and we actually missed the blessing! I felt so bad, but they understood and were just happy to have us there.

We joined in at what Brian refers to as "meets and sweets" at their apartment after the blessing. It was yummy food! I just wanted to keep eating and eating. Julian is getting big and is very cute.

We had a very fun time being with old friends that we don't get to see too often. The boys were very good to entertain themselves and be happy to be there.

Glad we got to take part, at least kind of, in Julian's speacial day!

Harry Potter Party!

AAAHHHHHH! I haven't posted in forever. What have I been doing? I haven't even posted about our amazing Harry Potter party and it was weeks ago! I think that when I posted these pictures on facebook, I felt like I had taken care of it, but I need them here, too. So here it is, finally. It was the party of the century! The pictures are good, but they don't do it justice. The feel of the whole thing really was magical.

My mom, Cristina and I got up to Angela's house on Wednesday night. One of the first things I was desperate to see was the tickets. We had 34 people from the party joining us at the midnight showing of the final movie. We took up the whole back row! When Angela pulled out all the tickets, I almost lost it! It was a great way to really get both my excitment and my obsession going. Look at all those tickets!

Then she pulled out the bin of goodies! They had worked so hard and made so many amazing things. We talked about final party plans and headed to bed.
The next morning, we got up and the work began. We set up house tables, quidditch, Ollivander's, King's Cross station, everything.

It took all morning and I ended up with a sunburn. It was so fun to see it all come together.

Here it is. The sorting station.

The Forbidden Forest.

The Pensive.

Chocolate frogs, painstackingly made by Wendy and Angela. They were so cute!

The rest of the goodies, including such wonderful things as a licorice wands, cauldron cakes, every flavor beans, pumpkin pasties, Irish bread, and an awesome snitch cake!

The house tables.

The Quibbler and Specterspecs, made by my clever sister-in-law Cristina. We gave them together as one of the prizes.

Ollivander's Wand Shop.

The prize table with potions, wands, treats from Honeydukes, and Weasley's Wizard Whezes.

Kings Cross Station, complete with bricks that you had to pass through to get onto Platform 9 3/4; Cristina's and Amanda's combinded genius. It looked AMAZING! Then the guests started arriving.

Including Harry Potter himself. Crisitina had a great, mad idea to go get a cardboard cut-out of Harry. It turned out to be one fun addition to the party.

Then it was time to take to the skies! Just taking a lap around the Quidditch Pitch! Again, Cristina's clever idea to lay and the ground to take these pictures to catch us flying!

They are epic pictures! I love how Cristina kind of looks like a crazy, little kid witch riding a broom for the first time.

Angela taking her turn. Some of the best pictures ever!

They had even made little sacks so the dogs could be dressed up as house elves.

As it got dark, the Goblet of Fire started to burn blue and threw out the names of the prize winners. Or in other words, I hid behind it and pitched the names out while hoping that they didn't fall into the fire for real. It was so fun!

I can't even believe how brilliant everything was and how magical it all became. After the prizes we pulled down the big screen that we had put on the side of the house and started watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, seeing as it was totally dark now and we were all getting excited.

At the part where they fight the Death Eaters in the cafe', Wade lite some fireworks and Angela set off the dark mark that she had made basically like a giant light brite. So clever!

Finally it was time to go to the theater. The party was awesome, but now we were anxious to see the new movie. Cristina and Brian's hilarious cousin, Laurie, had the mad idea to bring Harry with us to the cinema. We stuffed him in the car and rocked out to the wizard rock CD's I had complied for our party's playlist.

Harry ended up sticking out the sunroof as we turned onto the street of the theater. We couldn't stop laughing! We took him in and took some pictures with other awesome fans that had dressed up and then took Harry back to the car before finding our seats. After an incredibly long wait for only 15 minutes, the movie started and it was fabulous. It was all so brilliant! I'm sad that it's all over now and am having Harry Potter withdrawal.