3 Years Old

Thomas turned three years old today. My happy, friendly, good-natured little guy, with curly blond hair and a smile that can turn gray clouds into sunshine.


He's a boy of few words, but lots of cheerful and expressive jargon. He loves cars, silly dancing, and pretending to be a monster or a dog or a dinosaur. Sometimes he's talkative and sociable, other times he's quiet and thoughtful. And he's downright adorable all the time!


Right now Thomas is all about cars. Like he has been pretty much his entire life. :-) So for his birthday gift I made him a little car playmat, with roads to drive his cars on, houses and trees, a store, library, and fire station, and a little pond.


Then I decorated his cake to match. As usual, I did it using the sugar-overload method. A Hershey's Minis road, chocolate rocks, gumdrop bushes, lollipop trees.


It was a big hit with Thomas, who was too excited about picking off chocolate rocks to sit still enough to get a clear picture.


He was so cute singing "Happy Birthday" along with the rest of us. He loves to sing! I have a video, but Blogger is acting up so I can't post it right now.

Thomas LOVES his playmat. You know it's a successful gift when the plate of cake and ice cream sits ignored and all attention is focused entirely on playing with the present! He never did get around to eating his cake and ice cream, choosing instead to zoom his cars back and forth on his new playmat all evening. And he brought the playmat to bed with him. Yes, he definitely likes his present. :-)

Happy birthday to my wonderful little man.

Computer Stuff

I really haven't been wanting to write this post, because this is something I don't want to even think about, let alone write about.

About a week ago our computer crashed. Completely died. We think it was a virus that got through and did its thing. No hardware problems or anything, but our entire system was wiped out.

We had to re-install everything on the computer, all the basic software, we basically started it completely from scratch. The computer is working fine now, running fast, we have better anti-virus software.

But everything that was on the computer before the crash is gone. Completely lost. I don't mind losing all the random documents and unused software. But my pictures... more that two years of pictures and videos have been totally wiped. Gone. Anything that I didn't post on the blog is lost. And there were a ton of pictures and videos that I didn't post on the blog.

It just makes me sick to my stomach when I think of the moments we captured, the kids' adorable antics, the trips we've taken and documented with pictures. The video Jeff took when I was in labor with Audrey, when the midwife said hi to the camera knowing that someday Audrey would watch that video. The sweet little videos Jeff took of Audrey in that first hour after her birth, as she started opening her eyes and mouthing her hands. Pictures of Zaylee and Thomas playing with Audrey.

They're all gone. It's devastating.

Audrey Update

My baby's growing up! At seven months old, she finally has a tooth. The bottom left front tooth has popped through, and the right one looks like it will be following soon. The other kids got their first teeth around five months, but Audrey marches to her own beat.

Speaking of marching, Audrey has also discovered her mobility. She's not officially crawling yet, but she scoots like a pro. She can get just about anywhere in a room by pulling up to her hands and knees, then plopping herself forward onto her tummy. We really need to put up a baby gate on top of the stairs. We even have a top-of-stairs gate already. It's just the problem of installing it - we have iron stair rails and they don't line up evenly with the wall on the other side.

Lastly, we have started Audrey on solid foods. She gets rice cereal, coarsely mashed fruit (she especially loves bananas), and breads. I've given her bits of pancake, muffin, biscuit, wheat bread, etc. and she really enjoys being able to mush it around in her mouth. Her diapers aren't quite as inoffensive as they were before she started solids, but it's fun that she's growing up and trying new things.

Family Visit

Okay, this visit from Jeff's parents and brother happened the week before Father's Day, so I'm a little late posting this. Oh well, better late than never.

It was a very fun, very busy week with Jeff's family. We did fun stuff every day with Grandma Jean, Grandpa Richard, Jeff's brother Curtis, and Jeff's sister Joy and her family.

On Tuesday, they arrived and we went out to Golden Corral for dinner. So much yummy food! I love all-you-can-eat buffets. We even gave Audrey some mushed up peaches and a bit of ice cream, which she thoroughly enjoyed. And the kids ate so much ice cream I wouldn't think that their stomachs would hold that much!

On Wednesday, we decided to tour the Pioneer Memorial Museum.


But when we got there we found that it was closed for renovation. We were a bit disappointed. However, since the Utah State Capitol building was right next door, we decided to visit there instead.




I really loved the beautiful arched ceilings in the building. They were covered in paintings depicting the history of Utah.


While we were there, there was this group of Japanese tourists who were absolutely enchanted by Zaylee. They kept taking her picture as she posed and smiled. She loved it, she acted like she was born to be a model, basking in the limelight while cameras flashed all around. I wish I had gotten some of her cuter poses, she really was hamming it up for those tourists!


Here's the kids on the steps leading up to the Supreme Court. They liked being able to run up and down the stairs. My goodness, where can I get that kind of energy?


The kids and I posed in front of this replica of the Liberty Bell. Not the best picture, but it's the only one that I'm in.


Outside the building, after the tour, Jeff found a little grasshopper and pointed it out to the kids. He started prodding it gently with a stick so it would jump. Suddenly it jumped really high, right into Zaylee's overalls! We were all laughing like crazy as I unsnapped her overalls to free the poor little grasshopper.

On Thursday we visited the Sweets Candy Factory. It was founded by the Sweets family, and they are the makers of such favorites as saltwater taffy, cinnamon bears, and orange sticks. We got to walk through the factory and see the rooms where they make their delicious candies. My favorite was the chocolate room. There wasn't anything going on in there when we toured, but the smell was intoxicating! We also got a few free samples, yum. Then at the end of the tour was the shop, where Jeff and I bought enough candy to last several months. We've already finished off all the chocolate and now there's just a bit of taffy left. *sheepish grin*

They had us all wear these hair nets when we were in the factory, even Audrey. Hers was super cute, even through she didn't care for it much.


On Friday we visited the Hogle Zoo. We started off with a picnic lunch. Joy brought some delicious chicken salad and crescent rolls. Oh, that chicken salad was soooo good! I brought homemade cookies, which were also quite yummy.


After the picnic, we spent several hours wandering around the zoo, seeing all the neat animals. Zaylee's favorite animal was the enormous elephant sculpture. Whenever someone walked or stood in front of its trunk, it would "sneeze" water on them. It was hilarious to watch it happen to someone who didn't know it was going to - like when a mother was taking a picture of her children posing on the trunk. It didn't happen to me, but several unsuspecting picture-takers were squirted. I didn't get a picture of that elephant, unfortunately, but I did get a picture of the new baby elephant, Zuri, and her mommy.


A really neat thing about the Hogle Zoo is that they have peacocks that just wander around uncaged. The kids really enjoyed being able to see them up close. Here if you look closely you can see Zaylee trying to chase one. When the kids got a little too close we called them back so they wouldn't upset the peacock - they may be beautiful but they've got some major claws!


On Saturday I was too worn out to participate in the fun, but the rest of the family visited Wheeler Farm. It's a real farm, with animals and crops and everything. People can visit and see the animals, and basically just see how a farm is run. Apparently everyone had a good time. I stayed home with Audrey, and we got in some nice relaxing down time.

Sunday being Father's Day, I gave Jeff his gift of a really nice fishing rod and the Avatar DVD. We had a yummy dinner of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, with cupcakes and ice cream cake for dessert.

Jeff's parents and brother left on Monday morning, and we took several days to recover from the whirlwind visit. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and we're glad that they came to visit.

Whew! Finally finished the post, pics and all. Only a couple weeks late...