First Day of School

Wednesday was Bryson's first day of 1st grade. I was pretty excited when he started kindergarten last year but this year I have had a lot harder time. I think it is because he is gone all day or maybe reality has really hit that my baby is no longer my baby. Bryson is such a great kid and I am excited for the great year he has ahead of him. He says he is most excited for math - he is following in his dad's footsteps!

Uncle Chad

Uncle Chad came to visit for the weekend! We took him to the dairy. Bryson had to race him on the climbing wall first off and then Kaitlyn made him get in the train with them.






Thanks for spoiling all of us all weekend and especially thanks for coming!!!

Our Garden

We have had a successful summer with our garden as you can see from this zucchini - they are monsters and that is just after a few days of forgetting to check the garden. We learned a lot and hope that next year can even be better. We have no idea why it grew so amazingly so hopefully we can do it again!

Here is our strawberry and pea patch.

This is our pumpkins that are trying to take over everything. They pretty much took over the watermelon but we still have a few watermelons growing so we hope they taste good.

Our zucchini and spagetti squash are gigantic - we should have planted half as many but had no idea they would get so enormous.


We planted 16 tomato plants and they are huge. If you have any great suggestions for tomatoes, please share - we are going to have literally hundreds by the end of the week!

Alyssa is walking

16 months was the golden age for Alyssa - she got her first teeth and started walking! It was just as I figured, one day she just decided to walk instead of crawl and has been doing it ever since. I love this first stage of walking when she is still a bit tipsie.

Washington DC

While Kevin was in Boston at a conference, the kids and I spent the week in DC with my family. Brody lives there and Thayne and Shantel are there working for the summer. By the time we left DC, my parents and all 7 of my siblings came in on various days to visit - I have the best family who always sacrifice to spend time with us.







We had so much fun!!!








We met Aeriana for the first time and loved getting to play with her. Kaitlyn loved that she was little enough that she could dress her.


We celebrated Bryson's 6th birthday while there and had a pinata, which he had been asking for all year. We had some good laughs as Riley took some good swings blind folded, we even got mom and Brett to have a try.





Lots of time was spent on the Wii. My favorite was watching grandma and Bryson playing tennis - they even had some dancing going on during it:)





Shantel and Kariana went with us one afternoon to take the kids to the Washington DC temple. Kevin and I had not been back since we had been married there over 7 years ago. I loved how excited the kids got when they saw it and even more excited when they realized it was mom and dad's temple!





We also went swimming every day. The kids were quite the show-offs by the time we left - Kaitlyn can jump into the deep end all by herself and Bryson can dive.



We can't wait to see all of you next summer in California!