Fireworks

We got home from the Lloyd Family Reunion on the 4th of July, just in time to watch Kaysville's city fireworks with Jake and Ashley. Corbin enjoyed the show and liked talking about each individual firework that he saw. We identified shapes, colors and tried to come up with names for them all.


Makelle was cute because she was mesmerized by the flashes of pretty colors, but startled by the loud noises. So she would stare in awe, then jump a little and look up at Caleb to make sure everything was okay, then she would stare followed by a startle again, the entire time.


It has somehow become a tradition in Caleb's family to get together with his siblings and lite off personal fireworks as well. I think that is a normal part of many people's 4th of July celebration... however, the Miller's use their personal fireworks to reinact a modified version of the original Civil War it would appear.

Everyone gets a couple of tank fireworks and then they proceed to strap various other fireworks onto and inside of their tanks, then face them off to see who can win in battle.






It is always a fun surprise to watch, because you never know for sure what all explosives are strapped to each tank and when they will go off, so you could be watching a smoke bomb fizzle around and all of the sudden a ground blossom ignites.



After they are fairly confident that no additional fireworks will spontaneously erupt, everyone goes out to examine the remains and a winner is declared based on who's tank suffered the least amount of damage. Sometimes it is hard to tell... as Ashley stated, something to the effect of, "well mine continued to burn longer after the fireworks portion ended, so..."

Lloyd Family Reunion

This weekend we drove up to Southern Idaho to go camping with the Lloyd family.

We got to stare at this great plaque marking a place where there was once a fossil bed.


Wander around a flea market. Visit this exciting alligator farm, aka small pond with a chain link fence. Seeing the alligators close up was pretty cool... afterwards Corbin requested that we go visit the zebras next -- he clearly hasn't ever seen cool animals in the wild and was certain we were at a zoo.


Go swimming, the water was about the same temperature as your average hot tub, but luckily we went the first night we were there while it was raining and stormy outside so we didn't mind warming up a bit.

All in all, we had a great time!


Okay, so clearly Makelle wasn't able to appreciate it all, but Corbin really did love camping... I think little boys always like being outside, going on adventures and getting dirty.

My favorite line out of him though was at 5 o'clock in the morning (after bouncing off the tent walls with excitement the night before about sleeping outside in a sleeping bag) when he woke up to the first glint of sun and stated that he was boring (we are still working on tenses) inside the tent and he was ready to get out and play more.


For me the best part was getting to see my family, talk with what feels like my long lost cousins, (we don't get to see each other nearly enough) and introduce Corbin and Makelle to their Great Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd. Caleb's favorite part of the trip was well...


What a great babysitter, he is always so good at getting the kids to sleep.

Dog Pile on Daddy

Remodel

Last weekend Tyler came over and remodeled our kitchen closet for us. Our dryer used to be next to our stove and the washer was in a cute little hole in the wall in our kitchen. We now have ridiculously nice front loading machines that are stacked on top of each other in a nice clean little closet area. I am pretty sure he didn't realize just how much work it was going to take to make such a simple change for us, but props to Tyler for giving up his entire weekend and working like crazy until it got done. It took knocking some stuff out, cutting up the ceiling and moving some vents, but it was so worth it (especially since we didn't have to do most of it:) Thanks Tyler, we love it!


When we were buying the machines we also got a new dishwasher, as our old one stopped working about 6 months ago. At first I didn't mind hand washing everything, but by the end our kitchen sink looked like this most days:


For some odd reason that seemed to have motivated Caleb to break down and spend the money to get a new one. Speaking of money though... I was too cheap to pay someone to install the new unit for us, so we got to spend half our weekend learning all about dishwasher installations. Just so you know, it turns out if they tell you to use plumbing tape... you probably should.


You really learn to appreciate modern inventions when you go half a year without them. It got me thinking... I am a mediocre housewife at best as it is, I would have never made it 100 years ago when you actually had to cook meals totally from scratch, hand wash clothes and dishes and what not. Man, how did they do it?

Anyway... after all the dust settled (not just figuratively either, there really was a ton of dust!) and things got put back together, we needed to repaint our walls to fill in the places that we redid the drywall on. I meant to get it done after Corbin was in bed and let it dry over night so he couldn't undo any of our hard work, but things just got too busy. So I ended up doing it in the middle of the day instead, so of course Bean comes running over, "I wanna be a helper!" And as usual, what a great helper he was!

Oh Corbin...

Add one more mark to the emergency care tally. This past week Corbin fell and bashed his head into the corner of the coffee table, resulting in his third trip to the instacare in one month and four stitches. I don't know what we are going to do with this boy. Makelle better have the best health in the world in order to even begin to cancel out the handful that Corbin is.

New(ish) Car!

This past week has been a whirlwind of things all going on at once. We suddenly got quite busy. And amidst it all we got a second car! We spent about 4 months going back and forth on what kind of car to get, but we finally settled on a Honda Pilot. And I LOVE it! Big thanks to Benson for helping us get such a good deal.


Everyone always asked us how we got by sharing one car for so long, and it never seemed like a big deal. But after one day of having my own car to load the kids into and run errands during the day, I don't think I can ever go without again. It is so great being spoiled.

Singing in the Rain

It has been raining A LOT lately. However, after that glimps of summertime we had, Corbin has not been content sitting inside all day anymore. So despite the rainy weather, we have still been enjoying playing at the park and taking lots of walks.


Who doesn't love running around in the warm rain singing preschool songs and jumping in mud puddles?

Lazy Summer Days

Playing outside, every child's favorite summer pastime.



We can't get enough of this girl's sweet smile!


I have been cleaning out closets and reorganizing the house and Corbin has been such a great helper (as always).


I don't know what we are going to do when we move eventually and don't have our own pool, because we LOVE IT!

Let's Go Fly a Kite

It was a little breezy today so I decide it would be a good time for Corbin to fly his first kite. We went out to the playground behind our condo and I proceeded to run around like an idiot for the next long while, struggling to get the kite up. I was completely unsuccessful and Corbin was getting impatient. Finally, after asking if he could hold it a billion times he goes, "Mommy, you are NOT sharing with me!" Luckily Caleb came out and got the kite up and flying within about .2 seconds, so Corbin got a chance to hold the string and watch his kite fly up high in the air.

Pizza Mia

We took a trip to the health food store to pick up some Corbin cheese and made homemade pizzas. Corbin loved the olives, enjoyed the cheese, ate the crust and hated the sauce. It was fun just watching him make it himself, as this is the first time he has ever had "pizza." It's like Pinocchio, "he's a real boy!"

Camping!

We decided to go camping last night with some of our friends. It was so much fun, even though we had to take off pretty early today to get home and get things done around the house and with work.

Roasting hot dogs with Dad:


Roasting marshmallows with Mom:


Makelle had so much fun on her first camp out!


What is it with boys and sticks? His buddy Chance came along and they took turns poking at the dogs until they were told to stop, then they started poking eachother.


Making boats to race down the stream:


Riding in a real boat (canoe):


He was oh so helpful with his own paddle... "I do it myself!" I am shocked we didn't ever have to fish his oar out of the water.


Thanks to Harm and Derek for organizing everything, we loved it!

Comfy? Cozy

It doesn't matter what position I lay her down in, or how many blankets I prop up under her. This is how we find Makelle every morning:

Not only is it creating a flat spot on the side of her head, but it can't be good for her muscle development. We even got her the nice memory foam infant pillow to help prevent flat spots, but as you can see, she wiggles off of it every night.

I put her on her stomach on Tuesday during the day to help her and she managed to roll over onto her back to assume her favorite position. Seriously?! Corbin couldn't do that until he was almost 5 months old. She hasn't been able to roll again since then (naturally, since I had the camera ready this time) but she did come pretty close.


You will notice that the camera keeps leaning to the side, it is kind of annoying to watch. I didn't realize that I was doing that at the time though... it's like when you play video games and you need to turn and it looks like you might not make it, you start to lean your body the direction you are going in hopes of willing the little character on screen to bend with you. I guess I thought that if I leaned with the camera she would suddenly absorb some of my leaning and flop the rest of the way over. Didn't work, go figure!

Gardening

This weekend we planted a garden at Caleb's brother's house. They were nice enough to lend us a section of their yard, which we cultivated into a cute little garden.

I am pretty sure that Caleb thinks it isn't even worth all the work it took, and would rather just go buy fresh vegetables at the store, but I am pretty excited. To his credit I have to admit that we did wake up with some sore muscles this morning (ones that I didn't even know I had)!

Before:



During:



After:

Ogden Marathon

Yesterday Caleb ran in the Ogden Marathon relay. He was on one of two teams from his accounting firm and he ran the final leg, which was a 5K. Although they haven't posted his final time yet, he did really well and pushed himself coming across the finish line. And most importantly his team beat the other Tanner team, so they now have bragging rights around the office.


Our sister-in-law also ran yesterday, she completed the half marathon, so Corbin's cousin was there and the two of them had a lot of fun cheering on all of the runners. (At least they did at first, there was about an hour and half in between Tori's race and when Caleb finished and they got a little restless, but overall they did really well.)



And of course Makelle was her perfect little baby self and just slept the whole time. It always feels good to get outside and enjoy these nice summer days!