Family Pictures 2012

 Since Claire was so sad during our Colorado family photo shoot and we didn't get ANY with her smiling, we decided to try again. Our sister Sherry was willing to take them and she did a wonderful job! Claire was so much better for these ones. Here are some of our favorites. :)

Halloween

 Once upon a time there was a young girl called Little Red Riding Hood...

 One day she was on her way to visit her grandmother who was sick...


And she ran into a wolf!

Luckily the woodcutter was there to save her...

And they all lived Happily Ever After. :)

The End

Earlier that week... Little Red Riding Hood was painting a pumpkin for Halloween and missed the pumpkin. She wasn't too happy with it on her face. 

I think she still enjoyed herself though. :)

Happy Halloween!

rocky mountain high

i love numbers and stats. i'm a giant nerd like that. so keeping that in mind, forgive me for this: claire and everett are blessed to have 28 aunts and uncles, 36 cousins, 4 grandparents, and 1 great-grandparent here on this earth. we recently took a trip to colorado for a bryson family reunion and during that trip we were able to see 15 of those aunts and uncles, 21 cousins, all 4 grandparents, and their 1 great-grandparent. and if you add general conference weekend earlier this month, we can add 5 more aunts and uncles and 9 more cousins. in the month of october, claire and everett have seen 71% of their aunts and uncles (20 out of 28), 83% of their cousins (30 out of 36), and 100% of their grandparents and great-grandparents (5 out of 5). that's some pretty good numbers.

now for those of you who haven't been bored to death by the numbers and are actually still reading, we'll jump into the action. our trip started on thursday morning as we frantically packed up our stuff in the hopes of getting on the road early. we knew, between claire and everett, that we would be making many frequent stops, and sure enough, that proved true. on the bright side, it did allow us the chance to appreciate sights we may have never seen otherwise. we made it to to our destination, canon city, colorado, late that night.

the next day, the entire bryson clan that was there (sadly minus one brother-in-law) took a ride on the royal gorge train. it was this relaxing train ride up this big canyon and back. i guess there was probably something historically significant about this gorge, but i wasn't listening. it was just cool being on an old fashioned train and enjoying the scenery. claire loved walking up and down the train through the different cars while everett slept the entire trip. that night, kyle and i went to the outdoor basketball court to play some of my niece and nephew's friends who had called us out. we showed those young whippersnappers. darn hoodlums. :)

the actual reason behind this particular reunion was that we had two nephews being baptized and two more nephews receiving priesthood ordinations. while we had everyone together, we thought we would go ahead and throw in everett's baby blessing as well. that saturday we gathered at the church to participate in the baptisms and ordinations. it was a wonderfully spiritual experience. it brings so much joy to see so many of my younger family members making such righteous decisions. from the church we headed to the park to see a couple of my nephews play football, and later that night, we headed out to another park to celebrate the birthdays of all those in our family born in october (and everett, because he was getting blessed.)

the next day the whole family gathered for family pictures. with 27 people, 11 of which who are twelve or younger, i'm going to say it's nearly impossible to get a picture with everyone smiling. claire especially wasn't in the mood for pictures. everett was super chill though, which helped a little. after pictures we gathered and had a family testimony meeting. i see my family's testimonies all the time, but it also nice to hear them once in a while. after the testimony meeting, some of amber's family who live in colorado, as well as grandma and grandpa mcclellan who also traveled from utah, all joined us for everett's blessing and a nice dinner. thank you for all those who joined us (or who wished they could have joined us) for everett's special day. we are so grateful for all our family, near and far.

a big portion of the family took off that night, but a few of us hung around for another day. that monday, a few of us went up to the royal gorge bridge, this huge suspension bridge that we had gone under when we had ridden the train earlier in the week. these pictures just don't show how high this bridge really was. i must admit that walking over that bridge was a little (a whole lot) nerve racking, but i managed to do it. amber was practically skipping across the bridge, no fear at all. that girl amazes me. after walking across the bridge, we took a tram back across the gorge, which again left me a little weak in the knees.

the next day, the rest of us colorado visitors headed up to colorado springs and spent the morning playing around at the mall. we then had to part ways and were forced to say our goodbyes. we decided to take the scenic route home and head north to see amber's sister and family up in green river, wyoming. unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse, and we ended up driving through a pretty bad snow storm. we made it safely, a whole lot later than we had hoped, but we got there. we spent the night, hung out with amber's sister that next morning, then headed home.

claire was super, super shy most of the time, and everett was a bit over-stimulated with so many people and was thus a little grumpier than usual, but it still was such a fun trip. i have stated before that my family never seemed to attend many big family reunions growing up and thus i never knew my extended family. thankfully, that's not looking like a problem my kids will have. this last trip was our third family reunion of the year (millie's blessing and the asay reunion at the courthouse being the first two), and with a wedding coming up soon, it looks like we'll be blessed with a fourth. by the end of this summer, i'm hoping to get those percentages from the very beginning pretty near 100. :) i sure do love my family (both sides) and am so thankful that i get to see them somewhat regularly, though never as much as i wish i could.

Everett's Two Month Facts

1. Everett is two months old!

2. At his two month check up he weighed 13 lbs 4 ounces and was 24 inches long.

3. This put him in the 90th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. He's a big boy. :)

4. Everett doesn't sleep as well as Claire did at this age, but he's still really good and getting much better. He was waking me up every 2-3 hours at night for the first 6 weeks but I've been letting him fuss a little longer each time before feeding him and now I can put him down around 8pm and he makes it until about 2am and then is usually pretty good until 6 or 7am.

5. So Claire was a huge spitter. She spit up tons and would soak a burp cloth after one feeding. Everett however is great in comparison! :) We love not having to worry about changing his clothes or our clothes after feeding him.

6. Along with him not being a huge spitter, he's a great burper. When he burps, he burps loud. They almost sound like adult burps. :)

7. Everett loves to suck on his hands. He's still trying to find that thumb to suck on, but he'll usually settle for a few fingers or the side of his hand.

8. He has the best lower lip pout I've ever seen. When he's just starting to get upset that lower lip comes out and I can't help but laugh cuz it's just so cute! :)

9. He's a talker. When he's nice and happy (usually right after he wakes up from sleeping) he makes the cutest little squeals and coos. He'll wait his turn too. I'll say something and then he'll talk back and then I'll say something and he'll do it again. I was playing and talking with him this way while we waited for the doctor and when the doctor came in he saw the interaction and said it was really impressive at that age. :)

10. He's a really good baby. Having two kids is rough and difficult, but I'm grateful I haven't had to deal with any colic with my babies. He cries when he's hungry or tired or uncomfortable or bored, but then he's happy once his needs are met. :) I'm so grateful for my little guy!

tough mudder

it was just about eight months ago that my older brother ken informed me that he was doing this thing called the "tough mudder" with some people from his work. i initially laughed at the idea - a twelve mile long obstacle course through mud, ice cold water, and the occasional electrically charged wire? never in a million years would i do such a thing. number one, i have never been a long distance runner. i played football - any running over a hundred yards was a flag for excessive celebration. long distance running equals pointless and boring. (that thought process is probably why i'm a good fifty pounds heavier than when i graduated high school, but anyways.) number two, i am a texan at heart - the only place for the words "ice cold" are in front of the words "root beer". cold and i do not go together well. and number three, i must sadly admit that i am an old man, far past my prime. as much as i love obstacle courses, my days of jumping over walls and getting electrocuted for fun should be over. all that being said, the more i thought about it, the more my excuses started to melt away.

first, i had eight months to get ready for this thing. plenty of time to get back in shape. if i ever wanted to lose some of these excess fifty pounds, i was going to have to force myself into working out. what better way than to sign up for a twelve mile run? secondly... well nothing was going to change my mind on the "ice cold" thing. cold stinks. but maybe if i dressed warm enough... and finally, if my brother (who is ten years my senior) was going to do this, how could i not? in addition to all that, us guys need the occasional crazy and stupid adventure. so with some gentle prodding from ken and my younger brother kyle, i said yes and the three of us signed up.

procrastination is a funny thing. it's amusing to look back at think how i had said, "i'll start training six months before the race", and how it quickly changed to "three months", and then, "i really only need a month of serious training." well to my credit, i did pretty good at training that last month, but i did only get myself up to three miles, not exactly comforting knowing i had to run four times that distance while doing obstacles as well. at least i finally got to use my cool nike plus running shoes which i had owned, unused, for the past five years or so.

the big day finally arrived, and of course, it was a "lovely", cold, rainy day. with fear and trepidation, ken, kyle and i made our way out to the course, the spot i was sure we would be calling our final resting place. :) we began the challenge and within a half mile we were facing our first two obstacles. first a crawl under some barbed wire through some nice, wet mud while being sprayed with a giant hose, and then a jump into a giant tub of ice cold water. now there were a lot of challenging obstacles that day, but that is the obstacle that i feared the most, and the obstacle that i, for a moment, thought i would die. my body absolutely locked up for a second and i feared they would need to drag me out of there. somehow i got out and continued on.

there was a total of twenty or so obstacles over the twelve mile course. some of the more memorable obstacles were the electric eel (an army crawl under barbed wire through mud and electric wires shocking you the whole way), the funky monkey (a set of monkey bars that sloped upward, then back downward, made harder because each rung was covered in mud from those who went before us - i made it half way before falling in the water - mad props to kyle for making it the whole way), walk the plank (a jump off a fifteen foot high ledge into a pool of water), everest (a giant quarter pipe we had to run up), and finally electroshock therapy (a sprint through a field of live wires, some of which carried a 10,000 volt shock). i have some good "before" pictures, but unfortunately no "after" pictures. (the company taking pictures charges $25 for one picture - ridiculous.)

i learned a lot that day. first, i really don't like the cold. really, really don't. second, a little training is a whole lot better than no training. while i may have only been doing a little running, ken and kyle didn't really do a thing to get ready for this, and sure enough, their bodies began to lock up on them near the end. all i could do was laugh and throw mud at them. that being said, i also learned that my brothers are studs. despite being completely unprepared for the long distance, they made it the entire way, something i still barely did even though i had trained a lot for it. that's heart folks. you can't teach that. i do love my brothers and am grateful for the bonding time. next time we just need dad, dan, hank, and justin out there with us. :)

i'm not actually in this video, but it's from our day and shows some of the obstacles we had to do. i think you can see ken's face in the back at one point (you can't really tell in the low quality video i got here, but check it out on youtube. it's at 1:53, in the mud in the background between the standing guy's arm - we were right behind the guy in the wheelchair on this obstacle, so i'm pretty sure that's ken :) ).

Fall Fun Family Home Evening

For Family Home Evening this last Monday we went to a corn maze near our home. We went a little earlier in the evening so it would still be light outside and we ended up being pretty much the only people there at that time so we had the place to ourselves! :) They had a little garden center set up with some small games for kids before you get to the corn maze. Claire loved doing the duck races and was sad when we wanted to move on. We ended up going back to the ducks a couple times that evening. :)

We wanted to let Claire do the tractor barrel ride and since we were the only ones there I got to ride it too! It was fun for Claire (and slow and too long for me), but it took Claire's mind of the ducks for a moment. :)

 Then we got to the corn maze. They had a fun little clue game thing for kids. We had to find these posts with different footprints on top and etched them onto our little papers to find out which animals were the criminals... it was interesting, but it gave us something to do inside the maze.

 We made it out and got our picture taken as ghosts. Everett was there too, but slept the whole time.
We saw the ducks one more time and then after buying Claire her own little duck we went home. :)

football

some day, in the not so distant future, my kids will look at me and see the old and feeble man i will have become. i'll tell them stories about how once upon a time i was a pretty darn good football player. then they'll look at my huge gut and they will just laugh. so you'll have to forgive me for doing yet another football blog so i'll have something to show those darn rascals. i do try to limit these blogs to once a year.

now that we have a couple kids, amber can't make it to many games, but we got a baby sitter for everett so amber and claire could come to one game. there is nothing better than playing football and looking over and seeing your family there cheering you on.