Sweet Man Cub,

Today you are 2. You have changed so much over the past year... I feel like so much growth occurs between 1 and 2. It is a bittersweet time for me. I love watching you become you- developing an opinion, determining your likes and dislikes, but oh how my heart aches for the days when I was your everything.

These days, it is all about Dad. You seem to recognize that the two of you need to stick together as the men of the household. When Dad isn't around, you still need me to help you get a snack or find you a toy. But if Dad is around, I am chopped liver, at best. I miss you wanting me over anyone, but it has been so much fun to watch you become Daddy's little shadow. You want to be like him in every way. I especially love watching you mimic him as he gets ready for the day. It is not unusual for me to find you in the master bathroom, getting into Daddy's drawer. You'll pull out his deodorant and attempt to put it on. Then you grab his electric razor and hold it to your cheek. You grin at me, as if to say "See! I can do it too! I'm just like Daddy". I hope you want to be like your Daddy for the rest of your life. He is a good man- a wonderful husband and loving father, a hard worker and a faithful Priesthood holder. You could not have better ambitions in life than wanting to be like him.

You are such an active little boy. From the time you get up until the time you go to bed, you want to play. And you tell me that with enthusiasm! "Play! Play! Play!" You cry when we pull you away from your toys, especially your collection of Disney Cars. You also love planes and trains, but if the opportunity comes to go outside, you drop everything and run. You love to climb on the playground and go down the slide. You love digging in the dirt and soaking yourself with the hose. You are busy, all. the. time. But when you crash, you crash hard! You sleep a solid 12 hours each night with a good 2 hour nap each day. You rest well so you can play hard. You need every drop of energy you can find.

You are also eating us out of house and home already. I have heard the stories of teenage boys... if your appetite now is any indicator of what is to come, we are in big trouble. You love food and you can pack away a lot of it. Once again, this comes from how hard you play. You've got to fuel the little tornado that is Man Cub!

You love your big sisters... they mean the world to you. You recently came up with your own special name for Sunshine. You call her Yaya and she absolutely loves it. When we drop her off for school in the morning, you wave until the school is no longer in sight, saying "Bye Yaya! Bye Yaya!". And your excitement when she comes home each afternoon just makes her day. You and Beebs have an interesting relationship... you fight like cats and dogs, you are partners in all sorts of mischief and she is the one you cry for when I put you down for your nap each day. It breaks my heart to hear you call for her from your bedroom. You love that girl, even if she does try to take your toys!

You are such a sweet boy and we are so blessed to have you in our family. We love your cheesy grin and your squishy hugs. We love to play with you and chase you around (unless we are chasing you because it is time to leave the house and you are refusing to come with us!). We love your excitement for life. We love you, Man Cub, and we are so glad you are ours.

Enjoy being 2, little man!
Love Always,
Mommy & Daddy

Touch The Temple

In June, I was in charge of teaching Sharing Time, and the theme for the month was "Priesthood Ordinances and Temple Work Bless My Family". It was such a fun month to teach and one of the weeks, I felt impressed to share a talk I had recently read by President Monson called "Blessings of the Temple". In the talk, President Monson shared the story of a man who took his granddaughter on a special birthday date, but instead of taking her to the zoo or the movies, he took her to the temple where he had her touch the walls and the doors of the temple. President Monson said "She had touched the temple, and the temple had touched her. As we touch the temple and love the temple, our lives will reflect our faith. As we go to the holy house, as we remember the covenants we make therein, we will be able to bear every trial and overcome each temptation. The temple provides purpose for our lives. It brings peace to our souls—not the peace provided by men but the peace promised by the Son of God when He said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”"

At the end of the lesson, I challenged our Primary children to find a time to touch a temple over the summer and then to tell me about it, and many of them have. The girls and I, knowing that we were heading to Utah where temples are everywhere to be found, made a personal goal to touch five temples on our trip. Surprisingly, this turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined! Several of the temples we stopped by were closed for cleaning, meaning the gates were locked and we were unable to get close enough to touch them. But we still managed to accomplish our goal (though we did have to touch three temples on our drive home to make it happen!)

We started by touching the Twin Falls, Idaho with my best friend KJ and her family. (An entire post about that awesome visit coming soon!)

We then tried to touch the Provo temple (closed!), the Brigham City temple (closed!) and the Salt Lake temple (closed!). We also wanted to touch the Payson temple, but it wasn't completed yet, making that a no go as well.

Towards the end of our trip we made it to the Logan temple and were very excited to finally find a temple with open grounds. We were able to get up to the temple so the wee ones could touch it and admire the beautiful stone and the gorgeous flowers. I could not get enough of the breathtaking view of Cache Valley. Cache Valley might just be my dream home location.

On our drive home from Provo, we managed to touch our final three temples. It was the first day the Provo temple was opened after it's yearly cleaning, so we stopped there first, on our way out of town. Then we hit St George and Las Vegas. Bruce wasn't too keen on that final stop as he was anxious to get home, but I convinced him we needed to do it and the girls were beyond ecstatic when we pulled up and they realized where we were. Even Man Cub had caught on to what we were doing and said "temple", then ran up to touch it's doors.

We are all loving this new tradition of "collecting" temples and we are excited to add several new temples to our list in the coming months. Touching the temple is helping our children to recognize the importance of these sacred buildings, especially when we go out of our way to visit them. They feel the Spirit  as they touch the walls and they are excited to seek out other temples to touch. Touching the temple is certainly touching our lives, and this is only the beginning!

Road Trip 2014 | Utah or Bust

Summer 2014 was a whirlwind. School ended on May 22nd. Bruce and I then spent the next two weeks in a state of panic as we made sure everything was in place for Trek. My parents arrived to watch our wee ones for us while we went on Trek. We got home from Trek and a week later the wee ones and I headed to Utah. We were in Utah for 3 weeks before heading home. Sunshine got strep throat which kept us pretty close to home for the last two weeks of summer, and then, summer was over.

Eventually I want to write all about Trek... it was such an awesome experience for Bruce and I. We loved almost everything about it and there is definitely much to tell, but I am struggling to get a hold of all the photos! And any post about Trek wouldn't be complete without photos. So, until I have those, I will hold off on writing that post. Which means I am skipping straight to recording the fun and excitement of Road Trip 2014.

This year's road trip began on Monday, June 23rd. The day before had been a hectic one- early morning meetings, church, the Trek fireside, me jamming the middle finger of my left hand in a major way (as in, it is still quite painful today, 2 months later). There were moments when I wasn't even sure we would make it out the door bright and early Monday morning, but we did it.

The drive north was uneventful. The wee ones played and coloured and listened to three Boxcar Children audio books. I spent 12 hours catching up with my mum. We stopped in Beaver for our traditional stretching of the legs and eating of the ice cream. Before I knew it, we were pulling in to my parents neighborhood and Road Trip 2014 was well under way.

Our first few days were low key. We sat down and made a list of things we wanted to do while in Utah, then we started to cross them off.

First, the girls were super excited to be reunited with Rocket. Rocket use to be our car, but when I got the Jolly Roger (our mini van) for my 28th birthday, Rocket found a new home with my parents. Even though we love our van, we all have a soft spot for Rocket and it was very exciting to not only see him, but to ride in him a few times as well. Once with my baby sister as the driver! When did I get so old!?!

On several occasions, we walked to the park at a school near my parent's house. I think it was the first time my wee ones have ever seen a metal slide! The had so much fun on that thing.  As you can see in the photos- Beebs was upset that they didn't make a three person train to go down the slide. That girl has some of the best facial expressions!

 We got shave ice at Hokulia. Multiple times. We also had Day's donuts on pretty much a daily basis, and we ate them on my parents back patio as often as possible. The cooler temps felt like heaven.

We made a trip to the BYU bookstore where each of the wee ones picked out a new book. Beebs chose a Berenstain Bears book, Sunshine picked a Magic Tree House chapter book which she then read out loud each time we were in the car. Man Cub got a book called Crocodaddy.

One of our summer fun list items was to go to the splash pad. My parents have a little one just a few miles from their home, so we headed there with my nephew Bodhi one afternoon. Man Cub was not a fan,  but the girls and Bodhi had a blast.

The Thursday after we arrived, my youngest sister and I took all the little ones to Salt Lake for the day. Aunt Tee works at the zoo and was able to get us in a couple different times during our stay. We loved watching the lions play soccer and seeing the zookeepers feed the rhinos and tell us lots of cool facts about them. And I always love watching my kiddos get a drink from the lion water fountain. Man Cub's favourite part of the zoo trip was playing with the water feature on our way out. He could have stayed there all day long and he got soaked as he played in it. We also got to ride the train and Aunt Tee let the children use  her camera to take pictures of one another at the different exhibits. They loved that!

  

On our way to the zoo, we stopped off at the Madsen Cargo Bike warehouse to test drive a bucket bike. The children all loved their ride in a Madsen and I would love to own one. Unfortunately, the price is a little hefty, and quite honestly, it's not ideal for where we live. But it was so fun to take it for a whirl!

Man Cub quickly made himself comfortable at Nana's house... his favourite spot to play was behind the curtains in her living room. Somehow he managed to avoid pulling the curtains to the floor. Thank. Goodness. I still don't know how- he spent many hours hiding behind them with his cars along the window sill, or playing peek a  boo and hide and seek, with that being his only hiding spot. 

Beebs is my creature of habit child and she struggled a bit with being away from home and especially away from Bruce. She and I enjoyed several different Mommy- Beebs outings, one of which resulted in a new Groovy Girl doll. She was very excited! Another outing led to the photo of Beebs in the mustache sunnies. How adorable is she?

And amongst all these activities (which took place in the first four days of our trip!), I started the last leg of my half marathon training- adjusting my lungs to Utah's altitude! I did a couple of short runs and about killed myself on the hills. Then the Saturday after we arrived in Utah, I went on my most favourite run ever- just over 8 miles during which I ran past not one, but two beautiful temples. There is no other place in the world where I could run only 8 miles and see two temples. It was a really neat experience and just an awesome run all around. I call it my run down memory lane as I ran past not only the temples, but my old middle school, the tree streets where my two best friends lived, the first house we lived in during our few years in Provo, and many other important landmarks from those precious years. Utah isn't my top pick of places to live, but the years we spent in Provo while my dad attended BYU were good years and I look back on them with many fond memories. And I ran past many of those memories in preparation for my half! And when I would return from my run each day, our very fickle family cat would come curl up on the grass with me while I cooled off. He ended up getting sick while I was there and despite our best efforts at nursing him  back to health,  he passed away a day or two after we got back to Arizona. He was a stinker, but I miss him anyway! I'm glad for the snuggles on my parents front lawn, and for the one photo I got of the two of us together.

And that about covers the first five days of being in Utah... only about 18 more days to blog about! Ü