children's museum

a couple saturdays ago we joined up with some of the other brysons and headed to the childen's museum in salt lake. it's such a fun place for the kids with so much to see and do. here are some of the fun memories we made... :)

Everett Facts

1. Our little buddy is 18 months old now, which means it's time for a blog post all about him! :)

2. He had his doctor visit last week and we found out that he is 24 and a half pounds and is in the 55th percentile.

3. Everett is 33 inches tall and in the 55th percentile for that also. He is growing right on track according to his doctor.

4. Everett is quite the biter. It's probably related to teething somewhat because I always see him chewing on his jacket or blankets and things. But he also tends to bite us when he gets upset or mad at us. Right now he has his 4 top teeth and 3 bottom (the doc was a little surprised that 4th one on the bottom didn't come at the same time as the other) and he has a couple molars that are poking through in the back.

5. He is talking so much. He knows so many more words than I thought Claire did at this point, but then it's probably because of Claire that he's learning more words. He needs to know how to get what he wants so he learns those words quickly. He's also very good at imitating us and our words.

6. He just started nursery 3 weeks ago. It was a little rough the first day, they had to come get us to calm him down and I had to stay with him for a little bit. The next two weeks were better besides a couple crying fits. I think he's just not used to playing with other children instead of Claire. He loves playing with the toys in nursery though and it's a lot more fun I'm sure than hanging out with us in our other meetings. :)

7. Everett has an obsession with his belly button. He's always poking his finger in and rubbing his belly button. One of his favorite games is saying, "Where'd it go?", then he pulls up his shirt, points to his belly button, and says, "There it is!" We'd love to catch a video of him playing this game before he stops. :)

8. Everett is all boy. He's very active. He loves to jump from furniture to furniture, he climbs ladders at the park like a pro, and he loves to climb all over people, especially his daddy. One thing he's made a habit of lately is getting a ride to bed on daddy's back and then standing up on daddy and jumping into his crib.

9. He is an eater. He's pretty good at trying new things and wants everything. He still insists on eating things like we do. He doesn't like when we cut up his food into smaller pieces.

10. He loves cats and dogs. He gets super excited when he sees them on the TV or in books. He knows exactly what sounds they make and when he sees one he'll run right up to it with a scream of excitement. The other day he did this to a small dog while we were on a walk. The dog also got pretty excited and started running straight towards Everett. Everett didn't like this return of affection as much and turned to run away in terror while his scream turned from delight to fear. The whole scene was a little humorous, but he saw another dog on TV the next day and was still happy to see it, so I'm glad it didn't scare him away from dogs all together. :)

And a little video to show his awesome dance moves... :)

our quick trip to wyoming

we were recently able to enjoy a wonderful weekend with some of our our wonderful family. april (amber's sister) and her husband dean were blessed with a brand new baby boy so we made the trip over to wyoming for our newest nephew's baby blessing. since it was a three hour drive, and since church was nice and early, we decided to make the drive up on saturday and stay in a hotel, which is always an adventure with our family. it's always fun, but it rarely means a good night sleep since our two little ones are usually too excited and just want to play all night. :) we checked into our hotel and then headed over to april's house for some food and fun. that evening i took the kids back to the hotel early for baths, which ended up being a challenge when we realized our room only had a shower. but with the help of a wash rag, we clogged the drain and made a fun little splash pad to clean up in, which the kids loved. amber meanwhile stayed and played games with her sisters for a little bit before joining us back at the hotel. the next morning we all gathered at the church for baby isaac's blessing. afterwards, we headed over to dean's mom's house for a wonderful lunch that she had prepared for us. that's when amber got to take these wonderful pictures of isaac and his family.

unfortunately, some bad weather moved in as we started our drive home that afternoon. that combined with a little girl who is still mastering the idea of "use the restroom before we get in the car" made for a very long trip home. thanks to claire though, our road trips always seem to include places we'd never see otherwise. this time it was one of those utah visitor's center. it was... pleasant. because of the bad weather, we decided to skip driving through provo canyon and headed up through salt lake, which gave us the opportunity to visit my sister becca for the evening. we had some fun there before we headed back home that evening. i am so blessed to have such a fun and wonderful family that i enjoy being with - the family i was born into, the family i married into, and the family amber and i are making ourselves. we are so thankful for the role of families in our Heavenly Father's plan. :)

Fun At The Park

Weather has been beautiful lately, so we decided to go to the park. I had a lot of fun practicing taking video with my new dslr as well. I had so many videos I decided to put this together. It may be a little long, but I hope you enjoy watching! :)
 

Valentine's Day

This year for Valentine's Day, the kids and I went to our annual Valentine's Day party at our friend's house. This is the third year in a row that we've done this, so it's become kind of a tradition. A really fun one. :) Claire was so super excited about giving out her valentines that she wanted to get started as soon as we got there. We decorated our boxes first.

After our boxes were made we gathered all the kids together for a picture - 8 little ones are hard to get to look at the camera all at the same time. :) 

After pictures, we then passed out our valentines. I love Pinterest. :) Claire is pretty obsessed with the movie "Frozen". One of her favorite songs is, "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", so of course she loved this idea. She helped me put the valentines together and even wrote her name all by herself. She was getting really good on the last couple she made! :)

After the chaos of passing out valentines among 8 small children, Everett couldn't wait to see what was put into his box. We played some games afterwards like "duck, duck, goose" and "hide and seek" but Claire didn't get very into it. All she wanted to do was go home so she could build a snowman. She has built at least 3 of them herself. :)

Pizza with the Family

While my sister was visiting, we also got together with the rest of our family living close by. We all met up at our place and enjoyed some time together talking, playing, eating pizza and letting all the little cousins show off how well they knew the new "Frozen" songs. It was a fun night. :)

Tubing

My sister Kristy and her family visited for a few days so while they were here we went tubing. My other sister Heidi works at the Soldier Hollow tubing hills and so she was able to get us all in for free. :) We had a blast! We started the kids on the little kiddie hill, cuz last time when we went sledding they didn't love it, but this time Claire really did LOVE it. After a few times on the kiddie hill, she was asking to go down the big hill.

The little boy cousins and I waited at the bottom while Scott took Claire up with the others. I was a little scared for her and when Scott took her down he was a little worried it was so fast that it may have scared her too, but when they reached the bottom she looked up at us and yelled "that was fun!".

She went down several more times with Scott, myself, Heidi, and once Kristy watched Everett so all three of us were able to go down together. Everett thought that sitting in the tube and being pulled around was so fun and soothing that he fell asleep. :)

We ended the fun by building a snowman. Since watching "Frozen", that's what Claire was most excited about doing when she heard we were going to be playing out in the snow. Sadly, the snow was horrible for making snowmen so we only ended up making a little miniature snowman right before leaving. She was happy with it. :)