The Joy of Reading

We have all been doing a lot of THIS this summer...

Which makes me very, very happy.


Justin has been learning to read for the past few weeks. He is doing a great job and I am so proud of my little guy. Of course it helps that he has such a wonderful big sister to teach him. :)

(My favorite books for teaching reading at home have been the Bob Books series. They are what I used to teach Emily how to read and how Justin is learning now. They are great.)

One of Emily and Justin's very favorite pretending games to play is Library. Last week we had Emily's friend Brenna over to play and they set up an awesome little library and had so much fun playing in it, and I had so much fun watching them...and taking pictures. :)

The library was organized so nicely with a fiction section,

a non-fiction section, and of course DVD's.

Here is Emily as the very helpful librarian...

Justin just browsing in the fiction section...Emily is more than happy to give him a suggestion. :)

The end.

(I am never sure about how to end my posts...it seems like the words "the end" always seems to wrap things up nicely. So I just keep on using them. :) )

Eden

Today is Eden's first ever birthday. Our baby girl is one.

I just wanted to take a minute to say that we really love this baby...

Every single bit of her...

More than words can express.

Happy Birthday sweetie!!!

Meet Fredericka

Presenting...

Starring: Miss Emily Faith...

As: Fredericka the Frog...

And even though she was thinking,

"What in the world am I wearing?!"...

Our Star was able to channel her inner frog and deliver the performance of a lifetime...

Taking a well deserved bow...

The proud parents with their budding actress...

The End.

The Graduate

I have been a blogging maniac lately! It's really just because there is SO much going on right now, and I don't want to skip one single thing. It's not slowing down anytime soon either...we still have Emily's school play (she is one of the leads!) coming up tomorrow, and then Eden's first birthday is in just a few days. So bear with me. :)

So, Justin graduated from preschool today!!! It was a big moment for him. And for Dave and I too. I couldn't help but get teary as I saw my little guy marching down the aisle to the music of the graduation song...

Getting his diploma from Miss Sheree...

We will miss her!

Cake time...

Eden loved messing up Justin's hat...

And here is David fixing it for him(I just liked these pictures for some reason)...

Justin took one last bike ride on the playground before we left.

So long preschool, hello Kindergarten!
(but not for 3 more months, He's all mine until then. :) )

Walking

Eden is walking! I just wanted to throw this video on here to show off some of her first steps. This video is from a few days ago and she has been getting better and better everyday. She is still pretty tipsy, but is doing great! It's kind of funny because all three of my kids started walking about this same time, within a week of their first birthday. I think it's pretty much perfect timing. So, yay for Eden!

St. George

Warning: There are going to be A LOT of pictures in this post (even by my standards.)

Reason: Not only did Dave surprise the kids and I with an over-night trip to St. George last weekend, he also surprised me the night before we left with a sweet, new camera as an early birthday present. Needless to say I went a little nuts with picture taking...

So we left Saturday morning and came home Sunday morning, so it was a VERY short trip. But so fun and so wonderful.

The first thing we did when we made it to St. George was head to the Farmer's Market they hold every Saturday morning at Tuachan. It was very fun, and very beautiful there.

Most of the booths were jewelry stands.

We did pretty good and didn't buy anything, just looked around.

We did decide to splurge on hot dogs for the kids...

(I don't know why it was so fun taking pictures of my kids

eating hot dogs but it totally was!)

(I love the way Justin eats his...)

Eden as usual just kicked it in her stroller...

Just some cute pictures of the kids...

Emily and Justin enjoyed the bounce house there...

Some pretty flowers I had fun taking pictures of...

Next we drove up Snow Canyon and hiked to some sand dunes there. I had never been there before and it was beautiful.

We borrowed this awesome carrier from my friend Marjorie (thank you!) and Eden loved it. It made the hike so much easier (last time we went hiking a couple of months ago I carried Eden in my baby Bjorn and she was way too big for it...it was way uncomfortable for both of us, so this was awesome!)

The kids really enjoyed running around in the sand and exploring...

Justin on a stroll and checking out some ants...

Poor Emily couldn't stand the sand getting in her shoes, so she stopped to clean them out about every 5-minutes...

Knowing how Eden feels about grass we weren't sure what she would think of the sand...

To our surprise she loved it!

Here's some proof that I was there...

I didn't notice any flowers on our hike but somehow Emily

was able to surprise me with these...

After our hike we headed to our hotel for a swim...

Next we went out to dinner and then visited the beautiful St. George temple...

(Justin was kind of tired of pictures at this point)

So that's it! Well, we actually did go swimming one more time before going to bed. It starting pouring rain while we were all (except Eden) in the hot tub which was kind of a fun way to end our awesome day together. It was really just one of those perfect days that we'll always remember. I'm so thankful for my wonderful husband and family!