Blue-Eyed Blessing

The second big event of the summer was the next day. John finally had his baby blessing. Can you see the giant red mosquito bites? It's because the baby acne had all cleared up! Still a cutie.
Mommy says, "Don't love your brother so hard!"

They put on a good show, don't they?

It all goes by too fast!

Why not!

I'll be really sad when they get too old for stuff like this!

...snips, and snails, and puppy dog tails...

John is almost 7 weeks old. CRAZY! He is such a happy little guy. I have desperately been trying to catch a picture of his sneaky little grins, but so far not much luck. He's still pretty darn cute even in a serious mood. Here he is annoyed with me for holding the camera in his face...not a fan of the flash!

This is John franticly looking for his older brothers after hearing them talk.

And...he found them!

This weekend we took a quick trip up to Layton to visit Great-Grandma Withers. Zach thought it was so funny to hold his hands like that in EVERY shot! The boys are HUGE fans of Great-Grandma, mostly because she is super cool, but also partly because they always score some candy and a little toy to take home. This time it was peppermints and bubbles! We left right before the they started getting roudy, so Grandma still thinks my kids are so well behaved. Man, we have her fooled!

Then we zipped over to the park to play in the fountains before it started to rain.

The Ants Go Marching...

With 3 tornados and one mess-maker in training, you can imagine the disaster zone that awaits me after every meal. There is enough food on the floor to make me wonder if anything actually lands in the mouth. Seriously, the pile I sweep up 2-3 times a day would feed an ARMY...of ants! Yes, we have a slight ant problem. I am constantly whipping out the RAID and sweeping up thier tiny carcasses. So gross! Both my neighbors have complained about these little terrors, so I'm not blaming this problem on my horrible housekeeping abilities. I hate coming down the stairs in the morning to find some crumb my broom let escape the night before, half devoured and crawling with ants. The boys, however, are not as horrified with our little houseguests.... whenever the house gets quiet and the boys have disapeared, I know right where to look. They love to lay on the kitchen floor and "play" with the ants. They give them names and crush up bits of cereal to feed them. I try to tell them how gross ants are, but they don't believe me. Even though this is REALLY embarassing, I think it's kind of funny too, so just visualize me blushing as you scroll down...










Michael tiptoed downstairs the other morning before we woke up to take a picture of his little friends....










GROSS!!!!!!!!

Lions, and Tigers, and Tiny Balls, oh my!

I love being a mom! I would like to introduce you to the 7th, 8th, and 9th members of the family... Wine Keen (Lion King), and the 2 Tiders (tigers). These are Daniel's FAVORITE toys. They go everywhere with him. They live on the bookshelf in the living room.

He sleeps with them. Ignore the tornado that is his bed, that is a story for another time! They have to be beside him in the car or we can't leave. He thinks I am the meanest mommy because they have to wait in the car when we go to church or to the store. They are pretty easy to have around, though. They don't eat very much, just a bite of mommy's nose or finger now and then. The only problem is that they don't like each other...

They are constantly fighting. The battle always happens on the piano bench, don't ask me why. And it usually ends with Lion King throwing Tiger #1 across the room.

Daniel doesn't have the market cornered on obsessions in this house. Here is Zach's:

Tiny balls...Yep, he finds them everywhere we go. I had no idea there were so many out there, but at almost every store, park, and house he can find one tucked in some random corner. Atleast it is free, but quite often the balls get lost and we are stuck on hands and knees searching under everything to find his lost treasure. Tears are shed and life is OVER until the next tiny discovery is made!

I can blame Michael's obsession on his dad! It all started a few of years ago when Drew let a 2 year old watch scenes from the 1st Spiderman movie! He was hooked. He's had superheros on the brain ever since. Right now it is Spiderman. The little boy next door has a Spiderman costume, and after begging me for days to get him one, he gave up and made one of his own out of paper and scotch tape.

Pretty intimidating, huh?

Long Weekend Fun

Okay, I know my posts tend to be overloaded with pictures and a little light on the text, so this was going to be my attemt to swing the other way.... but then I got looking at pictures from the holiday weekend and, well...what can I say, I have cute kids! John has passed the one month mark and is growing and changing so much. He smiles now, which is so much fun. He loves to stare at his older brothers. Just hearing one of thier voices makes him stop crying. He loves his baby swing and the vibrating function on his bouncer. Overall he is a pretty laid back kid (like his daddy) unless he is hungry, and then watch out!

We decided to spend the weekend out enjoying the sunshine. We headed up the canyon on Saturday to see the Temple Quarry Trail. Again, a good one for us because it was very stroller friendly.

This is the spot where the church cut granite blocks out of the mountain and hauled them down to build the Salt Lake Temple. Pretty amazing concidering that spot is up the canyon on 94th South. That's a long way to pull a rock!!

The veiw was breathtaking. We were surrounded by tall jagged mountains and rushing waterfalls. The boys, however, were more interested in the wildlife...or really the bugs. Beatles and bees were everywhere. Inchworms were hanging from trees by long silk threads all over the trail. You couldn't see them until you walked smack into them. We had hundreds of hitchhikers.

There were huge bolders all along the way for the boys to climb on. I wasn't too thrilled about this one because on the other side it overlooked the roaring river. Drew was snapping pictures and I was waving my arms and yelling not to move any higher. We looked ridiculous!

Then, on Monday, we decided to walk the Jordan River Trail and play at the parks along the way.

Throwing rocks in the water was a big hit, and... we had to look for more bugs.

This was the catch of the day. Michael was pretty proud of himself and had to stop anyone we passed to show-and-tell. I was public enemy #1, because I informed him there was NO way this bug was living in our house! I have a strict catch and release policy when it comes to creepy crawlies! Luckily he forgave me when he found 2 potato bugs on our front porch!