Cousins and Family Pics

Okay, installment two of the Utah trip is actually going to make an appearance earlier than I thought. I guess I can thank Mother Nature. We have had some crazy weather out here this month, starting with thunderstorms--I have never witnessed such incredible thunder and lightning. One night Paul and I woke up in the middle of the night--the house was shaking from the roaring thunder and the lightning was illuminating our room. It was quite awesome--and a little scary. Anyway, almost every week there has been at least one huge thunderstorm, and it seems like every weekend is soggy. This August holds the record for the wettest in history for the Philadelphia area. Then, last Tuesday we had an earthquake!!--very unusual for this part of the country. And, last night we experienced Hurricane Irene (also unusual for this far north). Anyway, today is a rainy day and there are still heavy gusts of wind with the danger of trees falling over, so we are hanging out inside. A huge benefit of having the playroom in the basement is that my computer is right there in the room, so I can get a little bit done between setting up games, finding toys, and mediating fights (and it definitely feels like I do an awful lot of the latter).

I still have an insane amount of baby preparation to do on top of all of the blogging I need to catch up on. I still haven't looked at any of the pictures we took in VT, let alone Sammy's birthday (which, weather aside, was very low-key). I think I am insanely busy now--whatever will I do when baby #3 makes his debut?? At least I think I will feel better. For my first two pregnancies I held to the mantra that a newborn was much easier to take care of in the womb rather than out. But, this time my thinking has changed. I don't need to go into how miserable this pregnancy is making me again, let's just say I can't wait for this little guy to come out. I think life will be much easier when he is on the outside...

Okay--back to the UT trip. Max and Sam had so much fun playing with all of their cousins. We particularly got to spend a lot of time with Brooks, and he and Max were best buddies.

Brooks lost his first, and then his second tooth while we were there. I was a little shocked--I still remember when Brooks turned 1 and had just started living with Judd in SLC. Paul and I would pick him up from daycare once a week and hang out with him for a few hours. We still get teased for sending him home with his diaper on backwards!

Max and Brooks guzzling a Corona mid afternoon! Actually, my mom makes the MOST AMAZING homemade rootbeer, and the best bottles to use are beer bottles. We were drinking a lot of the yummy rootbeer and enjoyed homemade rootbeer floats the whole month we were there--heaven!! (No wonder I gained 10 pounds that month!)

Little Sam. Actually big-boy Sam. His vocabulary advanced immensely while in UT--he began speaking in sentences and articulating words very clearly. Also, we began preliminary potty training which I continued to work on when we got back to PA. We were very proud of our not-even-two year old who can peepee in the potty and wear big boy underwear. He still wears a diaper at night, however, and we still need to work on #2 a bit (he will tell us when he has to go, but prefers to do it in a diaper--still a step in the right direction).

The kids had tons of fun playing outside--in the little pool, on the slip-and-slide, or just spraying each other with the hose and squirt guns.

Sam has a cousin his age to play with--we got to spend a couple of weekends with Oakley while we were there.

Don't be fooled--this is not a Halloween picture. This is Max and Brooks on the 4th of July!

Aunt Marnie, Jeslyn, Jauncee and baby Clay came to UT to spend a week while we were there. It was so nice to be able to visit with my sister and her cute kids. I hadn't seen them in so long, her baby was practically a newborn when we were in UT last September and got to see them for about 2 hours the day we landed in SLC. So, I was really happy when she decided to come to Gramma Jill's for a whole week!

Sam initially felt a little threatened by having another--smaller--baby in the house. At first he was taking toys away from Clay and yelling whenever his younger cousin would scoot too close to him. By the end, though, he was happy to share anything--including fruit loops!

Then, there were the cousins in Kanosh...

Not only did we get to see cousin Brady, but my Aunt Margaret was visiting from Alabama with her kids, and Max and Sam even got to play with several of my cousins' kids--fun, fun fun!!

Brady was so good and fun with both boys...

Now that we are living in Pennsylvania, Marnie lives in Idaho, and Judd's youngest, Oakley, lives in St. George with her mom, it is rare that all of us are together at the same time. It just so happened that on Marnie's last day in UT, Judd got Oakley for the weekend. So, we were finally all together (except for Paul and Dirk, that is). But, we figured this was as good as it was going to get for a while, and we decided to take some family pictures. We briefly thought about hiring a photographer, but it was all planned so last-minute that we figured we could just use the self-timer function on my camera and a tripod to do it ourselves. The backdrop was the big haystacks in Hawbush, and the pictures actually turned out quite nicely!

All of the grandkids...

I am still amazed that we managed to capture a photo of everyone looking at the camera for the family picture--but we did!!

Unfortunately the grandparent/grandkid one didn't turn out quite so well... the poor kids had had enough!

Okay, enough for one blog-session. I think I need to work on the baby-preparation to-d0-list now. I figure I can finish the UT trip in one more entry--stay tuned!!

Fun Farm Stuff

I am quickly running out of time to get our fun-filled summer documented before this baby arrives. On the one hand I am SOOOO ready to not be pregnant anymore--EVER AGAIN!! (In fact, due to a broken foot, a hernia, constant back pain, incessant reflux/heart burn, relentless discomfort, and out-of control hormones creating an overall foul mood, I have started to gather my long-sleeved/cold weather maternity clothes to give away--I never want to forget how I never want to be pregnant again.) But on the other hand, I have so much left to do and only 2 weeks left to do it. My actual due date is just over 3 wks away, but my doctor wants to induce me on the 9th of September so that he can deliver the baby this time and Paul can relax and enjoy the birth of his third baby boy. Hopefully (for Paul's sake) things go according to plan...

Our exciting and memorable trip to UT during the month of July was definitely one of the major highlights of our summer. We packed a lot into that one month--we were busy! And my did those 28 days FLY. It was a little rough at the beginning, I think we were all a little jet-lagged and homesick (Max, especially, missed home). But, after a couple of days we adjusted to the busy, schedule-free life of summertime on the farm and enjoyed every single moment.

As I stated in my previous entry, we took a lot of pics in Utah--over 1,100! It took me forever to sort through them all and narrow down those I thought were blog-worthy. That is always the hard part--narrowing them down, mostly because in my (biased) opinion any picture of my family and home need to go into the Blane Blog Book. But, I tried really hard and managed to single out about 12% of the pictures to use for the blog. Not bad for me. However, in order to make it a little less daunting I have decided to post in increments (at least two). Here is Part 1:

The Hawbush Stack Yard...

This serves as sort of a home-base for Hawbush Ranches, LLC. This is where they proudly stack their perfect bales of hay and park their sparkling green tractors and attachments. (I say sparkling because during my one month in Holden they washed their tractors more times than I have ever washed my car).

Just east and slightly south of the Stack Yard are huge piles of sand. These are the sand hills that we usually play on at Easter, but since we Blane's didn't make it to UT for that holiday we decided to take the boys there in July. Of course they had a BLAST! And, it was MUCH warmer this time of year (at Easter we are in coats in blankets)--we went in the late afternoon and the weather and temperature were beautiful .

A picture of Holden, nestled up against the mountains, taken from the sandhills...

What a fun Grandma!

She showed Max and Sam how to jump and roll down the hills...

And then she even managed to get them back up the hill! (Paul did help a little).

But Dad and I just enjoyed the peacefulness and beauty of our surroundings. It really is calm and serene out there...

The mountains are one thing I really miss. Even Sammy was amazed by them. When we first got to UT, he kept pointing and saying, "Mountain, mommy, mountain!"

We stayed until after the sun went down. Sam was fascinated with the sunset in the wide-open sky (we don't really see many sunsets in PA with all of the trees I guess).

A sparkling green tractor! How great is it that my two boys from the 'burbs of Philadelphia get to climb on, ride in, and even drive John Deere tractors?

Uncle Jake giving Max a ride

And then Sammy a ride before taking it down to the farm and getting to work.

A different day, a different sparkling green tractor...

On this day Max, Sam and cousin Brooks got to ride with Papa to Whitebush and help him bale hay.

Then they got to climb all over it and pretend to drive.

And another day, same sparkling tractor as before...

This time Max and Sam are helping Papa bale in Hawbush.

Sam is driving!

Summertime doesn't present a lot of opportunity to see cows since, for the most part, they are all up in mountains, eating grass and living the good life. We did get to drive up to Oak Springs where Papa and Jake were in the process of pushing the cows a little farther up the mountain and check them out for a little while, however.

And of course we couldn't let a month go by without going on a horseback ride! The first three photos were taken on our second or third day in UT, and the boys were still a little skeptical of the horses.

Max happily climbed on and smiled for a picture--but then he wanted to get right down!

On the other hand, Sam was not happy when we first put him on the saddle. He was quite scared of all the animals (and I guess just the unfamiliar environment in general) during the first week or so of our trip. But after Papa led him around for a few minutes he really enjoyed himself.

Then, toward the end of our visit, the boys were so comfortable on the ranch that nothing scared them. I think they were starting to think of this fun place as their new home.

These last pictures are from our last day in UT. Uncle Jake rode with them and led them around for probably over an hour. Paul took these pictures (and probably several hundred more that I had to whittle down), so there are a lot, but they were all so good...

Thanks Uncle Jake for saddling Peppy just so Max and Sam could have one more ride before heading back to the city--they had a great time!

Okay, this is long enough for first installment of our UT trip. This pregnant mama needs to get to bed! Hopefully I can finish more before life as I know it is changed forever...