Independence Day

I'm so behind in my blogging again, but we just had the most awesome birthday party for Ben which gives me motivation to get caught up so I can share all our cute pictures.  So let's dive right in....

The day before the Fourth of July, I made everyone dress up in red, white, and blue church clothes and we took pictures of ourselves. We (I) like doing that sort of thing.

This is not our apartment, but our neighbor is (apparently) much more patriotic than we are, so we used her front door as the backdrop to our photo shoot.

Hannah and I painted our nails flag colors. We thought we were pretty much the coolest.



Even Devan put on a red tie with out the usual prompting (translated: nagging, whining, threatening) from me.

On Monday, the actual Fourth of July, we had a great BBQ with our friends the Sudweeks and the Fishes. Then we went out in search of fireworks. Seeing the crowds around Sugarhouse park, we gave up and went to Devan's brother Jordan's house to watch fireworks from their balcony. They weren't home, but we had fun. After the fireworks, we brought out Devan's hammock that he keeps there.

It was fun and only a little crowded.

This was a before I knew I was a month farther along that I thought. Look at that belly! There's no way that's a 5 months belly.

What would I ever do without my Benjamin?

Ben's Practice Party for Pirates

While we were in Washington, my mom threw Ben an early first birthday party.

It was pirate themed.

Ben didn't want to be a pirate

Hannah wasn't so sure about it at first either...

But she warmed up to the idea. Then she walked around for a few minutes with her eyes closed. I think she was trying to be a blind pirate?

We were so excited that Heather and her family were able to come!

Ben loved his cake.

He ate one piece of his own...

Then half of mine...

Then licked the plate clean.

Heather gave us really cool bath dyes so we had to try them out the second everyone went home.

This picture makes me laugh too hard. It looks so bad!

It was such a fun day with my almost grown up, almost 1 year old boy!

Jungle Jim's

Hang on a little while longer, the pictures of Benjamin's awesome month-early pirate birthday party in Washington are still coming... tomorrow when Devan returns with my laptop. In the meantime, I'll start on the day we arrived home from Washington. We left Puyallup at about 6 pm on Tuesday (June 28th...I'm a little behind) The kids went to sleep in the car great and we made it in record time. Devan started out driving, then I took the dreaded 12-3 am shift, then Devan took over and I went to sleep. He pulled over at about 6:30 and said I either needed to drive or he needed to stop and sleep. I told him I couldn't drive and he should pull over and next thing I knew, we were at home in Taylorsville at 8 in the morning.

We carried the kids in and they continued to sleep until 10 in the morning. I love them. That night Devan had class at 5:30 so he left and the kids and I got to go play. Ben and Hannah have some brother/sister friends that are right around their ages. They had their joint birthday party that night.

We were so excited to go to the party!

They had dinner and cake at their house and then they took us all to Jungle Jim's Playland. It's the coolest place in the world for little kids. It has a bunch of kiddie rides and it's pretty reasonably priced, you just pay for the kid and then parents ride free with them. And the rides are unlimited. It's a much better deal than going to a fair or carnival.

On the Merry-Go-Round



We came here around Hannah's birthday and Ben was so mad he couldn't ride the swings. He was only 9 months old, but I could tell he wanted to go because he stared at the kids the entire time and made the same noises he would make when he wanted to eat. I was still afraid that if I let him go on this time he'd stand up, fall out, and die, so I kept him off the first time.

He was so sad.

How can I say no to that face?

So I let him go on later and he did great.

Ben was so funny because he looked just like this the whole night. He acted like he wanted to go on all the rides, but then he wasn't particularly excited while he was on them. He didn't cry or act upset either though.

I felt so bad for him because he had to wear shoes to ride the rides, but he didn't know how to walk in shoes very well yet. He fell down a lot, poor kid.

They never did figure out how to make the bumper car go anywhere.

Even after Hannah got demoted from driver position.

Spinning, spinning, spinning.

At the end I realized that Hannah could be trusted to go on rides with Ben. She loved this. She kept saying to her friend, "Look, I'm riding with my brother all by ourselves!"

They were so happy, and then they went through the tunnel for the last time...

And Hannah stole his binky. She'd given it back by this point, but he never recovered.

We had such a great time. Thanks friends!