Tooth Fairy

About a week ago we were lucky enough to be swimming with some friends at their pool. Logan was climbing the ladder out of the pool, stumbled, and did a face-plant. The poor little guy cut up the top of his nose, got a pretty bad nose bleed, scratched his upper lip, and was bleeding inside his mouth! After we got the bleeding stopped and some of the pain went away he let me check to see if any teeth were loose. Sure enough, one of the front bottom teeth was a little wobbley. I just told him not to touch it and to try not not eat on that tooth; I hoped it would just firm up again if we left it alone. But a couple of days later I looked at his mouth and...the tooth was GONE! He must have swallowed it while eating. (And actually a few days after that I noticed that the tooth not right next to the one that fell out, but next to that one was gone too! I have no idea if it was knocked loose in the pool fall too or fell out for some other reason before all of this. You can see both of them missing in the picture, but at the time I only noticed the one missing. Geesh, way to be observant of my kids!)

There was no tooth to put under the pillow, but we wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy explaining what happened and hoped she would still leave money!

I slept terribly that night; I was so excited for Logan to see if the Tooth Fairy had come and kept thinking he'd wake up in the middle of the night to look. As it was, when morning came I had to remind him to look and see if the Tooth Fairy had come. Once he remembered, he was very excited, and more excited still to see that she HAD come and had left him money!

Quiet Time or Nap Time?

This summer we once again had to make the transition to no naps. They gave up their naps before preschool last year, but they came home from school every day so exhausted they started  needing them most days again. So this summer we started doing "quiet time" while Eli was sleeping. It started out fine, each of them enjoying some time to play alone, but quickly evolved into this:

It got to the point where they fell asleep every quiet time, basically they were back to napping every day again. So we had to adjust, and now they have "quiet time" together. Most days quiet time is anything but quiet, but at least Mommy gets a bit of a break. Hopefully eventually we can try it on their own again because I see value in knowing how to play on your own, but for now I guess this is one of the perks of being a twin!

Make-up-on

The other day when Ali was playing with her "make-up-on" (as in "Can I put my make-up-on on?") she found out it can be another way to wear a super-hero mask!

Sunglasses

Eli has been carrying around his sunglasses for days now. He doesn't actually wear them very often, but I love it when he does!

Playing School

I was pretty unimpressed with the rewards for our Library's Summer Reading this year, and so were the kids. When they saw that these folders were their "surprise" one week they told me they didn't want them. But when we got home, Ali had an idea: she could use it to play school! She drew a calendar and different kinds of weather on the inside, propped it up and got a doll to instruct. Logan liked the idea, and so got out his along with some dinosaurs because that was going to be the topic of their lesson that day. They spent several days playing school and I found it adorable. So maybe the folders weren't as usless as we all first thought.

Grandma and Grandpa's House

OK, since we've been home from Colorado for about a month, I guess I can finally end the posts about our trip. As you have seen, we had a great time. But really, all our fun adventures were just the icing on the cake; we could have spent the whole time just hanging out at Grandma and Grandpa's house and probably would have had just as much fun. We all loved spending time in the backyard:

Eli loved the swing. He always wanted to get in when we went out, and wasn't even bothered if the swing stopped--he'd just hang out. He never wanted to get down.

And there were always fun people around to play with...

Or someone to read a book to you. What's not to love?

Reservoir

One of our favorite days in Colorado was the day we went to the "beach"--the reservoir. I got the biggest kick out of Logan who wore his mask and snorkle the entire time we were there, not that he ever put his face in the water:)

Daddy was the hero of the day and took the kids far out in their "boats". I found the water too cold.

We made some fun sand castles:

We want to go back!

The Denver Temple

The kids, and Logan especailly, have been asking a lot lately to go to the temple. We thought it would be fun to show then the temple where Jason and I got married, and I thought it would be fun to be there with Jason so close to our tenth wedding anniversary. Sadly, Jason was sick the day we went, so he stayed home to rest.

It was so cute when I told the kids we were going to the temple. They cheered for joy and then Logan asked, "Did you bring my black socks and tie, Mom?" As I hadn't, it was lucky he decided it would be OK to go in our regluar clothes.

They were actually really disappointed they didn't get to go inside the temple (and who can blame them). But they were very excited to see this staute in the waiting room.

Of course, the grounds were so pretty.

I was glad we took the time to go.

Colorado: Great Grandparents

My favorite part about our trip to Colorado was getting to see so much of my family. It meant so much to me that so many of them arrainged their busy schedules to be there when we came to town. It was espeically nice to get to see my grandparets. Here is a four generation shot of the girls:

And I had to add this one. It's actually my favorite:

And we didn't want to leave the boys out, so here they are too:

I love my family!

Here's to US!

Ten years ago I married the man of my dreams:

Ten years later he's still making all my dreams come true!

What a blessing to be so well matched, so happy, so in love! Here's to a million more, Love!

River Wadding

Before we headed home from the mountains, we stopped a  pretty river. We wadded in up to our knees at some points, eventually getting over the shock of how cold it felt at first (maybe our feet got numb). Logan was actually a little more fearless about it than I would have liked, considering how fast the water was flowing. He sure is growing up (much to his delight--it's a fact he reminds me of almost daily).

Not surprisingly Ali was a bit more timid, and mostly enjoyed dipping her feet in from the safety of the shore.

And Eli didn't like the water at all. But that didn't mean he wanted to be left out. Good thing Aunt Emily was there!

Boating

A little town near where we camped had a pretty lake. We rented a paddle boat and had fun chasing around the ducks.

 Love those mountain views!

Rock Climbing

The evening we went camping we went to this area that had fun rocks to climb on. It actually started raining right when we got there, so we had our picnic dinner under some cover and were pleased when the rain stopped just as we finished eating. It was a little chilly and a little wet, but when did that ever stop a kid from having fun?

Colorado: Camping

Ok, I've been intimidated by all the pictures from our wonderful trip to Colorado, but I'm making myself get over it. When we asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was they said, "Camping!" so that seemed like a good place to start. We drove 45 minutes from my parents' house, and voila! we were in the mountains! Gotta love that.

My amazing Mom brought stuff for the kids to do while we set up. Eli painted himself more than the rocks, but he was happy!

Logan loved running through the "jungle" and the "forest"

We were so glad Aunt Emily could be there with us!

We couldn't have a fire, but we had to have s'mores so this was the solution. The kids didn't seem to mind one bit.

The funniest moment of the whole trip came was we watched Eli eating his s'more. He kept getting it all over the place, stretching sticky strings all over him and the chair. We were all cracking up and he was totally oblivious, just trying to get seated so he could eat his yummy treat.

We told Ali and Logan they could either sleep in a tent or a trailer. They were adamant that they wanted to sleep in the tent, but we thought they might change their minds when they saw the trailer. They did. They were so silly and excited about it, all evening they kept asking to go change into pajamas, when really they just wanted to get in the trailer! It only took all of us about 30 minutes to calm down when it really was time to sleep, not bad all things considered!

It was a lot of work to go camping for just one night, but I think these faces show that it was well worth the effort.