Oregon Trip Part 1.....The Zoo

On our way to the Oregon Coast we stopped at the Portland Zoo. We bought a year pass last year and it was going to expire on the 31st of May so we decided to stop on in and see what was new. Not much was new....zoos don't change much year to year. But the kids enjoyed it none the less. Ashton loved it and we had a good time. Here are some pictures of the trip.

My favorite part of the zoo was feeding the birds. Two of them bit me, but it was so cool to have them land on you and get to feed them:

This is as close as Nathan would get

Kaylee and The Birds

Trevor and The Birds

I am not much for taking pictures of animals (that is one reason Trevor had his own camera, I think he got a shot of EVERY animal we passed by) So here are a few more pictures of my rowdy zoo creatures:

And because it is too hard to exclude any pictures of such cute subjects here are the rest of our shots from the zoo:

How We Came to Be

My 11th Anniversary is coming up and I thought someone out there might be interested in our "how we met" story.  I would post it on our anniversary, but we are taking a family vacation and I figure I will have plenty to post about our trip, so I would do this one a little bit early.

Spring 1997:

Locations:  Me-Ricks College, Bryan: Guatemala

Me:   

I had a boyfriend that was wanting to become more serious and so I was praying if it was "right"  As soon as I finished one of my prayers I received a very clear and concise answer that I was not to marry this boy because I wanted to date Bryan Davis when he got home from his mission.  I though..."hmmm..Bryan huh, I haven't ever gone out with him, nor have I written to him on his mission, but he is pretty cute and a good guy so I guess I will start writing him and see what happens."

Bryan:

At this time he had just written his mom asking her for my address so that he could write me a letter.

Spring-Early Winter 1997:

We exchanged a series of letters and I secretly called him "my missionary" to my roommates.

November 1997:

I knew it would be Bryan's homecoming so I made an excuse to come home from Ricks to attend.  I brought my roommate with me.  After sacrament meeting there was a crowd around Bryan so I decided I would just talk to him later, because I didn't go up to him, I didn't get the memo that everyone was invited to his house afterwards, because I didn't get this memo, I didn't go over.  I had to leave for Ricks that night.  About 1 hour before we had to go something strange possessed me and I called Bryan's house to say goodbye, he was not home, but his mother said she would give him the message.  A few minutes later Bryan showed up at my door (apparently his mother liked me and after I called she tracked Bryan down as quickly as possible and told him I was leaving soon, so Bryan RAN to my house in order to catch me before I left)  He came in and chatted with my family for about 10 minutes, shook everyone's hand (like a good missionary should) and left.  My heart was beating 1000 times per minute, I said goodbye and headed back to school.

The next week:

I had a friend leaving on a mission, and wanted to see Bryan again, so I headed back down to Utah with my roommate.  During Sacrament meeting she was my eyes and ears.   We sat right behind Bryan's family, she let me know every time he looked back at me, or whispered something to his sister.  (I couldn't be caught staring at him after all) He looked several times.

December 9, 1997, my birthday:

I received a very peculiar package from Bryan that contained a banner that said happy birthday, a cake mix, and a little thing called a hum-bug (it was a little toy bug in a box whose legs moved when you shook the box)  That night he called me and my heart leaped!

Later in December:

Bryan came up to Rexburg to "look for housing"  He later admitted that he could have found his housing online, but that he really wanted to see me, so he took a bus up with no way to get home.  He stayed at a friends house but came over one night to watch a movie with me.  He sat on the couch and I sat on the floor.  The movie we watched was My Best Friends Wedding.  After he left I was sad because I had convinced myself that I would be the Julia Roberts someday at his wedding.   His plan to get home was to ask me for a ride.  It was the last week of school and he knew I would be heading home.  I was thrilled to spend 4 hours in a car with him.

Christmas Break 1997:

We saw each other, or at least called each other every day.   One night it was getting late around 11:00 and I had not seen him, and he had not called, I was distressed and came to realize that he was not going to call, just as I did this the phone rang, it was him, he had spent the last 1/2 hour deciding if it was to late to call, someone had been on the Internet so he couldn't call earlier (yes, dial-up Internet, the good old days)  Once again, my heart leapt.

January-March 1998:

We were both at Ricks and saw each other every day, I felt SO lucky to be able to spend time with him.  We were both unsure of what was happening.  I was insecure about how he felt and thought that he might have a crush on my roommate (back to the My Best Friends Wedding feelings) and it didn't help matters that on a date he laughingly told me that when his roommate had asked if we were "dating" he had laughed and said no.  A month or so later on March 14th he proposed.  I guess we skipped that dating thing.  Of course I said yes and the rest is history.  (the proposal story is pretty good and I will share it another time)

May 29, 1998-Present

Our love has grown in leaps and bounds.  He still makes my heart leap sometimes when we are sitting close and I think about how lucky I was to be his creme brulee (if that doesn't make sense, go watch My Best Friends Wedding)  I am so glad to have been guided by the spirit to find someone so perfect for me. 

Happy Anniversary Bryan!

Here is our wedding announcement picture

Kaylee's First Grade Concert

Kaylee is growing up SO fast.  First grade is winding up and they just had their first grade concert called A-Z does it.  You can check out Trevor's performance last year HERE.  They do this every year and you would think that it would get old really fast, but it doesn't.  It is a really cute performance.   Kaylee sang really loud and knew all her actions and words.  We were super proud of her.  We learned last year that you need to get there early to get seats (which proved to be the most eventful part of the evening, but I will save that for my next post, this one is all about Kaylee!)

Here is a sample of one of the songs: (our camera is doing something funky where is goes in and out of focus...that is why we are getting a new digital video camera for Mother's/Father's Day...but that too will have to wait for another post)

I asked Kaylee if she wanted a picture with any of her friends and after looking around she decided to take a picture with Blake....oh boy.  (she fell off the stand about 1/2 a second after the picture was taken)

Here she is with more of her class mates.

Good Job Kaylee!!

Rain Rain Go Away

We have been planning for a while to get our Strawberry garden weeded, but as luck would have it every time Bryan had some time off it would rain...all...day...long.  (NO I can NOT weed the garden without Bryan....there are big hairy spiders out there!!  Who would protect me?) This last Saturday started looking like no exception.  I would have shrugged it off and gone shopping, but we were stuck in the house with sick kids (I am still stuck in the house with sick kids by the way)  So what were we to do?  I tried to start a scrapbook page, but didn't feel much like it.  I played some Guitar Hero, but I can only do so much jammin before my fingers cramp up.  I was about to give up on the day when Bryan said "lets go weed the garden rain or shine"  So we did, and low and behold the rain stopped.  We enjoyed a few hours of garden weeding (ok, maybe we stopped weeding it mid summer last year so it was a jungle) then we mowed and trimmed the lawn and cleaned off the patio.  As we were finishing up the rain started again.  I sat for a while on the porch watching the rain and pondering how good life is.  (I actually like the rain)  Here is a before and after shot of our newly re-found garden.

You can tell I took the before picture a couple of weeks before the after picture (amazing what a little rain will do!) And no I did not plant any new plants...those were all under there!

Snippits of our Life

Life has been pretty good lately.  Not a lot of big things happening, but enough small stuff to keep us sufficiently busy.  We have been enjoying the beautiful weather and reading a lot of books.  I thought I would just update a little on what each of my kids have been up to:

Trevor:

Trevor has been busy so far this spring running 5K races (just over 3 miles).  He did his first race last spring and got a time of 45  min.  The first one he did this spring (2 weeks ago) we told him that if he got under 35 minutes that we would pay off his library fines.   Sure enough he finished in 34:20!  We were so proud of him.  Then this last weekend he pushed even more and got an impressive time of 30:28 seconds!  Bryan says that before long it wont be Trevor trying to keep up with Bryan, but Bryan will have to push to keep up with Trevor!  Here is a short video of some of Trevor's other skills.

Kaylee: 

Kaylee is turning into a young girl.  She is more aware of how her hair is done and what she is wearing.  When we go on walks I am grateful that Kaylee is still willing to walk by me and hold my hand.  I can't say how glad I am to have another girl in the house with me.  Sometimes Kaylee and I just watch the boys, look at each other, and sigh.  Kaylee ran in a one mile race and came in the top ten or so with a time of around 10 minutes.  I think soon I will have to start running in the 5K races with her (although I am sure she could already out run me!)  Here is a video of Kaylee doing some of her new tricks.  She practices them all the time.

Nathan:

Nathan cracks me up all the time.  He is a joy to be around.  Nathan also ran in the one mile race and pushed really hard.  He finished with a time of 17 minutes.  One of his newest talents is to sing along with the radio.  Some of his favorite songs are the High School Musical soundtracks, Bleeding Love and Hot & Cold.  Here is a video of him singing along to a Wii game that shows you dance moves to do while you sing.  (Ashton is singing into the mic too, but unfortunately I cut off the video right as he got up and started to sing...sorry)

And last but not least.....

Ashton:

Ashton has kept me busy.  I am not sure if he is cutting teeth, or just entering a really bad phase, but he wants held a lot and is throwing lots of fits when he doesn't get what he wants.  That being said it is an absolute joy to have him around.  He has started talking all the time and can repeat most of what we say.  We started to include him in our family prayer rotations and he says Amen to all the prayers (normally around half way through the prayer though)  He has also started to Whistle which is what is in this video.

Spring is in the AIR!

I LOVE this time of year. When it is not to hot and not to cold. I truly believe weather in Heaven must be like this all the time. We were so excited when Barlow and Andrea invited us to go feed the ducks with them. We had just been talking about how even though Ashton loves animals we had never taken him to the duck pond. It was SO beautiful! We were even able to take some family pictures while we were there.

As much fun as the pictures were (the kids LOVED climbing in the trees...except maybe Ashton who we had to try several times before we got a decent picture) We fed the ducks the expired crackers and poptarts from our 72 hour kits and some old hamburger buns. Ashton was giddy the whole time, it was a little nerve racking. One time his shoe fell off and I caught him running toward the pond arm cranked to throw the shoe into it! Luckily I caught him just in time, he did throw the shoe but was a few feet to far away from the pond still and it didn't make it in.

Here are the other great pictures we got that day. ENJOY!

Happy Easter!

We hope everyone had a great Easter. We had a lot of fun. We colored some fantastic eggs:

They all turned out unique and beautiful. I am not sure what it is about dying eggs that I like, but it is one of my favorite activities. You would think that with a limited number of colors that all the eggs would turn out very similar, but they each turn out different.However, here is proof that Bryan and I have been dying eggs together for to long:On Sunday morning the kids woke up to find their Easter baskets had been hidden, and they actually didn't throw a fit when we told them they had to wait until after Church to find them. When we got home from Church the kids could hardly wait to change their clothes and get to searching for the baskets (thus we have no pictures of us in our fancy new Easter clothes....oh well) Then we ate some of our colored eggs (it was fast Sunday for us so we had to wait!)This is one of our favorite games too. We choose our "strongest" eggs and challenge someone else to see whose egg will crack first. We usually try to forty the ends of the egg with extra dye and crayon coloring, But you never know which egg will be champion.

Ashton much preferred the plastic candy filled eggs to the real ones. We pretty much let him have whatever he wanted yesterday (which is something I am already regretting today with a 1 1/2 year old coming off an all day sugar rush!)