Where have we been?

I've had a few people notice that I haven't blogged in a while. So here's the question... Where have we been? Actually let me start over. Where haven't we been????

We have been up to a ton of fun stuff lately. Some caught in photo's but most of it not... lucky you!

First off, we've been trying to finish our house, a few weeks ago Kevin took half of the doors off to paint them. This picture was sent to Daddy at work one day with a note that said "WE NEED DOORS!"
Our awesome Daddy nicely hung them back up that evening.
MORE ON THE "REMOD" later...

We also bought a new car which was exciting, then it started having problems, which was even more exciting but not in a good way. So we've been dealing with that and missing my good old trusty Altima so very much! The car finally was fixed for good last Friday at no charge to us. YEAH! Sorry no pictures, it's just a car.

Kevin's parents are in town for a few weeks so we have been visiting with them as well. Over Father's Day weekend we went down to St. George with them for a family reunion. Kevin's youngest brother Jeff came as well and we all rode down together in our new car. Me being the smallest got to ride in the very back with "Chatty Cathy", AKA Zack. Let's just say I lived :)

A few pictures from our trip...

The ride down, he finally stopped jabbering and fell asleep.
Doesn't your neck hurt looking at this picture?

Zack thought our hotel was the coolest place he'd ever seen. When we got there he crawled around just laughing and squeeling, checking things out.

Some of his favorite things to do at the hotel were opening and closing the fridge, also emptying it's contents, standing in front of the mirror and either playing peek-a-boo with himself or rearranging his hat.

On Sunday (Father's Day) we went to breakfast at IHOP, tasty I know but it's the best we could find. (we figured out on our last day that our hotel served a killer breakfast!) We found a church to go to that afternoon and just like I guessed, we were out numbered by senoir citizens. I'm sure the meeting was really good, I have a hard time concentrating on the message with little busy body around, either he was causing trouble or making us laugh.

After sacrement meeting we went across the street to the temple grounds and took some pictures. It was HOT! Here is Kevin, his parents, and younger brother Jeff.

Our little Family


Zack crawling the steps of the temple. He didn't appreciate us putting him here.
He was tired and probably hot!

Kevin and I

Beautiful Temple!

Sunday evening after everyone had a nap we went back to downtown St George to check things out. Kevin's mom went to school down there so she really wanted to see how things have changed. They have a really neat park in the middle of the city that has these cool statues of children. We took several pictures of psycho's posing with them. Zack isn't a psycho but you'll see who I'm talking about.

This one actually has a really hilarious story with it. He had to crawl under the kids arms to get inside the circle right... he was fooling around being funny and all the sudden this BEE decides that Kevin looks pretty cool and starts buzzing around him. He couldn't just walk or run away because he was stuck in this statue with the kids. It was so funny! I think the bee eventually buzzed off and left him alone.

Some other cute pictures from downtown

This is my good little sleeper. I don't know how I got so lucky! I guess he get's it from his dad. They both could sleep anywhere, I quite often find Kevin asleep under the crib while Zack wanders around playing in his room. But seriously, he did so well while we were in St George, even took 2 naps a day most of the time!


This was at a little ice cream shop in downtown St George. We stopped here on our way home. Zack was exhausted because it was nap time and I wouldn't let him go to sleep til we got on the road.
He warmed up after a minute though.

We also were able to do an endowment session in the St George temple. Thanks Jeff for babysitting! We went to a VERY WINDY family reunion. (that was the reason for the trip) We played in the pool, made a trip to a really ghetto Walmart. (the highlight of the weekend for Kevin) And we drove around alot just exploring things. Personally I liked seeing the airport.

This is where our weekend gets exciting...

Our drive home seemed longer than the drive there. As we pulled into our driveway there were beach towels on my rocking chair. I was absolutely crazy wondering who in the world would throw their towels on my rocking chair. HOW RUDE? Then I looked across the street and Kevin's sisters car was there.... weird, maybe they came swimming? But how did they get the key? And why wouldn't anyone mention that they were going to be here?

I walk in the front door and no one is there... hmmm, fishy. Then Kevin asks, did you notice? NOTICE WHAT?

Are you kidding me?
NEW CARPET?!

Kevin had our entire house carpeted while we were gone! I had no idea! That explains why he brought me new carpet samples a few months ago and I told him he was crazy, we weren't ready! But really I wasn't ready to deal with the mess and headache of moving all our crap. That also explains why he was texting and on the phone 75% of the time we were gone.

But who did this? I certainly didn't know it was going to happen or I would have packed things up and not left our house a complete mess when we left! (nor would I have left my bra hanging on the bedroom door handle)

My wonderful husband arranged for his sister and brother in law to come pack up, and move all our stuff. I was so embarrassed when I found out he made them do that. They were troopers though! The carpet was all laid the day we got home and they had already moved the furniture back and vacuumed a few times by the time we got home. Michele and Josh, you are amazing! We owe you big time!!!!

This last weekend we trekked up to Midway to stay at the Zermatt resort with my parents. My awesome aunt Suzy lives in Heber and agreed to take Zack for us. Friday night the 6 of us went to a yummy seafood buffet and stuffed ourselves silly. Suzy and I couldn't stay away from the desert buffet. After dinner we sent Nanny Suz as we like to call her and Zack on their way. I wanted to explore Zermatt and all it has to offer but it was pooring rain. We checked into our rooms instead. Kevin accidently took one of my parents bags so we decided to take it to them. We knew what their room number was but for some reason had a hard time figuring out exactly where it was... We finally figured out that behind a door at the end of the hall was room #344 and the service elivator. We couldn't control our laughter when we walked into their secret cupboard under the stairs, as we liked to call it. What a funny place to put a room! The rest of the evening we watched a show about Michael Jackson and didn't do a whole lot the rest of our time in Midway. It was a nice weekend though, the first that Kevin and I have had alone since Zack was born. I missed him but wasn't terribly worried about him. I knew he was in good hands. Even he wasn't really THAT excited when we came back to get him.

The day after we got home I realized that I left my wallet at Suzy's house so we got to go up again and see her. This time it was 9:30 pm, and we didn't get home til midnight. I can't remember the last time I stayed up that late!

We are hoping that life settles down a bit, not likely though since the summer holidays are fast approaching!

One last picture, Zack isn't walking yet....


But he CAN wear 2 hats at the same time...
GENIUS!

Our little Mad Hatter

I just have to show you how truly obsessed this little boy is. It all started about 3 months ago. Zack has a shelf in his room with all his hats on it. At the time he had about 5. They always sat there, we didn't put them on him very often and certainly didn't get them down for him to play with.


One ordinary day I went to get him from his nap. He was standing in the crib reaching towards that shelf with the hats. I thought he wanted the stuffed animals and got them all down for him. He was still reaching for the shelf. So I got down all the hats. This picture was taken that day. We sat for 20 minutes putting the hat on and taking it off.


Since then the hats have become more important than anything else in his life. Hats aren't necessarily a "fun" thing for Zack. He is very serious about them. He will see one anywhere, the grocery store on someones head, and reach for it and say "hat". At first it was "ahata", then it changed to "at" a few days later came "hat" but in a whisper (trying to say the 'h' sound). By now he can say hat and you know what he's talking about.


When I say Zack is serious about hats this is what I mean.... He'll sit and play and find a hat. He'll put it on, crawl, play, stop.... adjust his hat. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! If you happen to be in the room, he will find a hat for you and bring it to you and say "ah?", crawl on you and try to put it on your head. He will sit down and smile, then crawl up on you again, take it off, sit down, and hand it to you again saying "ah?" meaning, "will you put this hat on please?".

Can you count the hats in this picture?
I can see 4, the 4th right by his foot.

3 in this picture



This particular day he was riding his car back and forth from the stove to the table. Each time he would hit the stove he would very seriously adjust the hat, same with when he got to the table.


He really likes this hat





He loves to play with Daddy's hats and knows which ones belong to him.


Here he is playing the hat game with Daddy


Sporting the hat he bought for me. We were at a boutique one day and he saw a rack of hats. Kevin was holding him and he began whispering "hat hat" when he saw them. They begged me to buy a hat! Now I have something to wear when I don't want to do my hair.


Handing the hat to me


Sweet! A hat for my birthday!

About 5 months old, I swear we did nothing to promote this behavior!

Camping in Vernon

We went to Vernon this last weekend to celebrate Kevin's Grandpa Yates 89th birthday. Since Vernon is so far away most of us camped over night. I should have taken better pictures of the yard. It is picture perfect in my mind. His house is up on a hill, surrounded with huge trees and below is a pond also surrounded by huge trees with a zip line going from the house down over the pond and to the garden. Kevin and his siblings like to think that it's not very cool. For me growing up we played at my grandma's condo, which was awesome for us, but it was nothing like going to grandpa's farm!

We brought Kevin's niece and nephew out with us and Zack loved having them in the back seat with him. He would squeal with joy every time they looked at him. Once the kids were trying to sleep and Zack started screaming because he was happy they were back there and woke them up. Once we got to Vernon the first thing Zack noticed was that Grandpa has a FAN! He kept pointing to it wanting us to turn it on.

Friday night was a really windy cold night, lucky for us it didn't rain. We were going to have a hot dog roast but couldn't because of the wind. Instead we cooked them inside and ate there as well. Later on everyone watched a slide show of photos from Grandpa Yates life. We went to bed because Zack was getting restless. Once we got settled and Zack finally decided that we were seriously going to sleep here, I lay there, cold and worrying about how Zack would do through the night, thinking "why do we do this to ourselves? We could be at home in our warm beds right now!" We had such a good time though, it's nice sometimes to get our of your routine.

Zack Friday night, too excited to go to sleep.

Zacky and Skylar
These 2 are obsessed with each other, I think they look a lot alike too!

Zack and Skylar playing with Beau. The night before Kevin was out playing
with Zack and Beau and all the sudden Zack started saying "Bu Bu". He is really
starting to pick things up fast.


Look how cute Skylar is with him....


All this old stuff made for really neat pictures.
How lucky was I that he was wearing his paisley button down shirt!

Zack and Bella

The sky here was so awesome, too bad he kept pulling silly faces.

Letting the air out...

Kevin, Grandpa Yates and Zack

We took a hike to look for trilobytes.

There is a funny story about this picture.
The short version is, that this hike was pretty rough and even the DOG was too tired!


After the hike

This my favorite picture of all! Too bad I can't take credit for it.