Friday, July 3, 2009

A Bowl of Cherries

We went to visit Angela's grandparents in Orem this evening. They have a fruit orchard and we had the chance to pick cherries tonight. So Brian and the boys went out and filled up a bucket full of them. Lucas would eat cherries all day if we'd let him. Here's Lucas with our big bowl of cherries.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Travis goes to Kindergarten

Travis started his first official preschool this past Monday. He did do some informal preschool where a group of moms rotated who had the kids at their house and did simple lessons. Anyway, Travis is going to BYU with Brian, Mondays thru Thursdays from 8:45-10:45. Travis had a really good chance of getting in to the BYU preschool since Brian works there. Here's Travis on his first day of school in front of the Joseph F. Smith Building where he goes to preschool. He was pretty excited.
After bringing Travis into his classroom, he jumped right in and wasn't worried at all that Dad was leaving him. It was a bit of a tough moment for Brian, but he made it through fine. They have a one way mirror so parents and other BYU staff can observe the students in their classroom. Here's a photo of the inside. Travis' head is slightly in view near the bottom middle of the screen.
Here's another photo of the classroom from a different angle.
Here's Travis playing blocks as the rest of his classmates were coming in. Travis was right at home and immediately started up a conversation with one of the teacher's assistants in the area.
Brian came back to pick up Travis and peeked in on the class one last time. They were getting story time from their teacher, Ms. Dorie. Ms. Dorie is actually our neighbor and is in our ward. She's great and Travis likes her. Travis seemes to make friends just fine and was talking to his neighbor to the right in this photo on a few occasions.
The J.F.S.B. is a fairly new building on campus. In case you haven't seen it yet, here's a photo of the front of it (the preschool is on the back).
The building also has a large courtyard in the middle of it with trees and fountains and study areas.

Happy Father's Day Brian

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers. Brian was treated to breakfast in bed and then in the evening he got to BBQ (one of his favorite things to do). Angela helped with the BBQ food recipes this time and we had some great food. Here's some BBQ chicken and BBQ squash.
Here's some salmon finishing up on the grill. Make you hungry? Brian insists on cooking with charcoals as it makes it taste just so.
And finally, here's what Angela and the boys got Brian for father's day, some real grilling tools that hook onto and hang from the grill. Brian put them to good use.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ward Campout

Our ward held a ward campout last weekend. Angela didn't exactly feel up to camping being less than a month from her due date so Brian made it a father and sons outing. Here's the boys kicking back and enjoying some Squirt water drinks (they loved these).
Here are the three at dinner eating their BBQ hot dogs, BBQ sausage, and chips.
While Dad did the cooking and cleaning up, the boys kept on playing in the water with their shovels, much to Dad's dismay.
Here's a shot of our tent. This is our new tent and it was our first time using it. It was rather large, but that's much better than using a tent that's too small.
Here's Travis sleeping in in the morning. It was quite cold that night since it was up at 8000 feet elevation (just above our previous residence in Los Alamos).
And here's Lucas waking up at 6:30am after waking up screaming at 1:30am for 10 minutes. He then had to sleep the rest of the night next to Dad in Dad's sleeping bag.
And finally, here's the boys playing with a couple friends while Dad took down the tent and packed back up.
All in all it was a pretty good campout. It did rain during the night and in the morning which is always a drag when you have to put away the tent. The camp site was south and slightly east of Payson. We did 4 geocaches up in the area as well. In the evening, the boys each got to wear a glow stick around their necks. This helped them to see better and allowed Dad to always determine which kids were his. When we went to bed, we hung the glow sticks from the tent ceiling to serve as night lights.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Orem Summer Fest

Another recent weeekend we went to the Orem Summer Fest. It was a typical carnival atmosphere and we had a good time. We let the kids do a few of the rides and enjoy some cotton candy. Here's Brian and the boys on the big slide. Travis beat Brian and Lucas down.
Next Travis wanted to ride the swings that swing you around and make you tilt outwards. Travis seemed to have a good time on it.
Finally, Lucas and Travis rode on the boats (Lucas' choice).
Both of them quickly found out that they could reach the water with their hands and splash it around. Lucas tried to splash his Dad everytime around. Travis on the other hand just tried to splash anyone leaning up against the fence and tried to splash the riders behind them.
We then bought some cotton candy. Both boys enjoyed it quite a bit. Here's Travis taking in a big mouthful.
Not to be out done by Travis, here's Lucas using both hands to shovel in the cotton candy. Lucas' only problem with the stuff was that it left your hands all sticky. Luckily we brought our wipes with us. Lucas must not have been too happy to have his photo taken here.

Utah Lake Festival

A couple of weekends ago we went to the Utah Lake Festival. It was free to the public. They had various games for the kids to play, free fishing, open boating, a hay ride, and a few other things. We brought our raft and used it for the first time (Brian got it for Christmas in '08). We had to buy a few life jackets and we got a great deal on them at Walmart. This was Lucas' first time on a boat like this and it had been a while since Travis had last done something like this. Both boys were pretty excited about it and enjoyed it. Here are some photos.
It was a little funny because the life jacket is just slightly too big on Lucas and it kind of keeps him restrained in his movement (not a bad thing in the middle of a lake). Lucas was done after one trip but Travis wanted to go back out again. Brian let Travis try doing some rowing too.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Enjoying the Rain

For the past three weeks here in Utah, we've been getting lots of rain (for June anyway). It has been nice because we haven't had to use our sprinklers for a while. The boys have enjoyed using our umbrellas to go outside. Rain this time of year is especially nice because it's generally still fairly warm out. One evening we let the boys walk up and down our sidewalk rain gutters and spash to their hearts' content. They had a good time as you can see from the pictures below.
Yes we let Travis walk in his bare feet, but remember, this is June rain, not winter rain.

Gummy Vitamins

We have found a way to make sure our kids get vitamins every day. We buy the Gummy Vites from Costco and they love them (they do taste good). Recently though we went to Costco and taste tested some adult gummy vitamins and they were good. Brian doesn't swallow pills so this seemed like a good option for us. These adult ones are too strong for kids but just right for adults. For the kids ones they suggest 2 per day per kid and the adult ones are also two per adult per day. Give them a try if you can't find a vitamin you like for your kids or for you!

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Memorial Day (a little late)

On Tuesday evening after our trip was over, we went to the Provo Cemetary to visit the graves of Brian's grandparents and try to find Angela's relatives' graves. Here's Brian and Lucas (with Travis in the background) at Brian's grandparents Norvel and Merele Anderson's grave (Norvel is Travis' middle name). The flowers to the right are for Brian's aunt.
We had brought flowers to leave at Angela's grandfather's grave but we searched everywhere and couldn't find his head stone. We had visited it before but we unsuccessful at finding it this time. We did find a couple of other graves of Angela's relatives. The boys actually did quite well at being calm and reserved during our visit. Brian explained to them the seriousness of the place before getting out of the car and it seemed to work.

Trip to Portland

Brian had an acoustics conference in downtown Portland the week before Memorial Day weekend so we decided to drive out there as a family to visit Angela's parents and brothers. The boys had a lot of fun visiting new parks and enjoying their grandparents. Here they are at a park nearby the Pippin's home. This park had a sand/water area where they can make rivers and floods. Travis couldn't get enough of this place.
Here's our climber Lucas.
Travis, Lucas, Angela, and Grandma went to the Porland Children's Museum one day. The kids have been there before and their favorite part is the water area (see below). Here's our climber Lucas again getting into the photo of Travis driving Scoop from Bob the Builder.
They ought to make this wheelbarrow work actually be work, they could profit off of this child labor!
Here's Lucas driving Muck, also from Bob the Builder. Grandma is helping him stay in the picture.
They spent most of the time in the water area of the museum. Lucas loved this pipe thing that would shoot water up and you could direct the stream of water. Unfortunately for Lucas, he always seemed to direct it right at himself. Those water bibs only shield so much.
Here's Travis and Lucas at the make your own river table. There's water flowing down the table and you put in rectangular stoppers to direct the water flow and then put boats down it. Travis loved this table.
Here's Lucas playing in another water thing.
They then played in a digging area of the museum. Grandma gave Lucas a ride in a dump truck.
One evening Angela, the boys, and Angela's parents met Brian at one of the train stations (Brian was riding the train to and from downtown to his conference each day). We got out and saw a steam train display. Brian bought the boys some cute shovels from a toy store downtown. Lucas used his shovel to play horsey (he actually gallops around and says "horsey, horsey, horsey...").
Travis used his shovel to act as the train conductor.
This was an actually decent family photo we had taken. It's not common to get a good one with our active boys.
On Friday, Brian took a break from the conference to go to the beach with Angela, the boys, and Grandma. We went to Cannon Beach. Here's Lucas and Grandma with the famous Haystack Rock in the background. As you may be able to tell, it was quite cold that day due to the cilly wind.
Travis had a lot of fun at the beach too.
Here's the three "boys" pausing during their digging work.
After the beach we had lunch at a nearby park. Here's Lucas playing airplane with his dad (one of Lucas' favorite things to do with Dad).
On Saturday we visited the Oregon Zoo in Portland. Here's Lucas at the elephant exhibit.
Lucas and Mom at the penguin exhibit (no they're not real birds in the background).
One of the cool places in the zoo is the bird exhibit where you can feed the birds some nectar. Travis was a bit timid about having these birds so close to him. At one point he got so nervous when a bird came up to him that he retracted his hand and spilled all his nectar.
Lucas was quite amazed by the whole experience. Now when he sees birds outside he wants to go up to them and pet them. The biggest problem with this exhibit is that the birds drink so much nectar all day that they pee often and a few unlucky visitors get an unwanted shower.
We really had a good time on our trip. On the way out to Portland, we stopped in Boise to visit Brian's Grandma Peterson whom we hadn't seen in many years (she had never met our sons). We also ate dinner and stayed the night at Brian's aunt and uncle's house there in Boise. At dinner, Brian's cousin, and former college roommate (in fact, he and his wife met in the same singles ward as Angela and Brian met in) brought his family over. We hadn't met each others' kids yet so it was nice to catch up.