Spring- Summer 2015

Okay, skipping right from Christmas to Summer and doing so in November... pretty much par for the course with me. Though you can probably already tell what we are up to at any given time with a glance at my Facebook page, I  like to have things written out for our family to look back on so I try (not well) to record our adventures. I wish I was better at doing this more often because now I'm reaching back alllll the way to Easter and trying to remember what even happened.

Easter, as it often does, landed on a Conference weekend this year. We had a pretty simple holiday but I was excited to play the Easter bunny more so than last year now that Luke is more little boy than baby. On Saturday I took Luke to a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt during Priesthood session. I think I got there maybe five minutes late (if that) and all the eggs were already gone! I've learned for next year that kids are voracious when it comes to Easter Egg hunts! A friend let me use some of her daughter's empty eggs to set around and let Luke pick them up, so that was nice. The next day was simple. We got up and had cinnamon rolls (trying to make that a conference tradition) and let Luke find his basket. We gave him a little candy and some simple toys. We watched Conference and then had Ham and Cheesy Potatoes for dinner-- my Easter classic dinner.

Luke "hunting" for eggs.

A week or so later we had such a treat to have our friends David and Weston come and stay with us for a weekend. Bryan grew up with these guys and then they all lived together in college. In fact, before Bryan and I were Bryan and I we were all just good friends. I've written about them before. It was a pretty relaxing weekend of playing games and just hanging out. We went out to eat at The Counter (drool) and they got to meet Luke, which was really neat.

Luke and his new buddy Weston playing on the computer.

A few days before Easter our niece Ella called us multiple times begging us to come visit them in Utah for the weekend. It was pretty last minute so we didn't go but we promised we would visit over Memorial Day weekend so that was our next trip! Road trips are hard with kids. But we had fun and mostly just relaxed and played games. My favorite kind of vacation!

Luke helping Ethan play at the park near Grandma Sandi's house

A couple posts ago I wrote about our sweet Callie and how she died. I was really not sure when I'd be ready to have another cat because I didn't want to feel like we were replacing her. However, it just so happened that a family in our ward/neighborhood had two cats that had a litter of kittens each right around the same time. They had twelve kittens to find homes for! We wanted to help them out and we love kittens so we decided to go for it... we got two! Just after memorial day we were finally able to bring them home. We named them Clara (after Clara the companion from Doctor Who) and Watson (From Sherlock).

Clara and Watson join the family

In June Luke and I had Mommy & Me swim lessons from a family in our stake. For two weeks we got up and out the door by 9 with our friends Jennifer and Tyson. Luke had fun in the water but was also pretty independent and didn't want to do the things we were trying to learn a lot of the time. Still, he did learn a lot. One thing he loved to do was jump in the pool into my arms. We had fun showing off his skills to dad over the summer.

Also in July I cut my hair to my chin, updated my Etsy shop, we had Father's day and Luke went to nursery! He... did not like it at first. He cried a lot the first few times and then for several Sundays we was just kind of sober but now I drop him off and he runs off to play without so much as a goodbye when I'm trying to smother him with kisses.

We invited Bryan's mom and his brother Mike to come visit us for the 4th of July and again we had a nice relaxing time. We had delicious food and set off poppers in the street. Luke LOVED those! Then after Luke went to bed Grandma stayed home with him while the rest of us checked out fireworks all around the neighborhood. It was a lot of fun!

4th of July Spread

Luke didn't want to let me take a picture of him in his Captain America shirt

Sandi had to go back to Utah after the weekend but Mike was able to stay with us for a week. We are pretty chill so we didn't have a lot of activities planned or anything but on Saturday we all went to the World Center for Birds of Prey that happens to be, oh, a 10 minute drive from our house. It was seriously awesome too!

We also went to Bryan's company (Clearwater Analytics) party. They decided to host at the zoo, which was so fun! We didn't get to be there too long because I'm kind of strict about Luke's bed time but we did get to do some fun things-- like feed a giraffe! Luke was in awe.

Just a little bit later than that a few friends and I decided to check out a petting zoo in Caldwell, ID. it was a lot of fun but also like 45 minutes away waaay out in the country. We had fun but man, was that a hot day. My cousin Melissa came and she was super pregnant with twins-- poor girl.

We also had a fun Stake pancake breakfast celebrating pioneer day. We had a pie baking contest and then got together later with friends for swimming and a barbecue.

Climbing trees at the pioneer day celebration!

At the end of the month my sister Natalie came to visit for a couple days with her kids. She lives overseas most of the year but they set up camp in Utah for the summer and, since Boise is not too bad of a road trip, I begged convinced her to come. It just so happened to land on a little family holiday we celebrate-- Harry Potter's birthday! So, since we all love Harry Potter I decided to throw a simple party.

Pin the scar on the wizard

Mixing potions

Drawing our Patronuses

Last of all, Butterbeer!

Just a week or so later we took our second road trip to Utah for the summer for my nephews Elijah and Tyler's baptism! We had a lot of fun with almost all of our family together, playing games and hanging out. One day we had the chance to go down to BYU and check things out and that was neat to see. We met up with my old roomie Alicia and caught up. A lot of stuff has drastically changed there since I was in school. Sigh, I'm old. The baptisms themselves were so neat and the spirit was really strong there. I'm so so glad that I got to be a part of it. That evening I even got to see my long lost best friend Ashley who I hadn't seen in over four years! I miss my friends!

Hanging out at BYU

After we got back to Boise, we had yet another fun time when Bryan's cousin Brynn and her family came to stay. They have a daughter about two weeks younger than Luke so those two had fun romping around together. We got to go to the zoo again but this time we spent a lot more time looking at every exhibit and it was so fun! But... then it got hot. We also went to Brynn's sister's wedding open house, played games and hit up H&M (a must when Brynn comes to town).

Lastly, we finally got a new oven. I haven't written about it on here but we were dealing with a horrible mouse situation where the mice had peed on the insulation of the old oven and taken some out, which made it unusable. It smelled like mouse pee every time I turned it on and the safety of it's use was compromised. We tried to get our builder to pay for it since the mice got in through a hole they hadn't sealed but they wouldn't So, we relented and just bought a new one over labor day when we thought the mice were all gone, Spoiler: they weren't actually >:( but we are working hard on that issue now and they haven't done anything to the new oven so far. The oven is covered under a 3 year warranty that would cover situations like that, though. That is making a veeeery long story short. But we were without the use of an oven for over 6 months. Stove top, Slow cooker, Grill. At least it was summer time!

Well anyway, we sure did a lot this summer but I loved giving Luke all of these new experiences! Next up, Halloween... which will be much more timely!