Always aware of the animals

While saying our family prayer last night Luke was glossing over the beginning like always.  He goes right into the thank you for Dora and Diego and please bless Buzz (you know the important stuff)  But we have been trying to get him to start out right so Bryan promted him... "Say Dear Heavenly Father..."  So Luke goes on to say "Heavenly Father of the deers"  I didn't hear anything after that cause I was irreverently laughing.  That was too cute for me, too late at night.

Mountains and Bays

The past couple of weeks have been busy and fun, fun, fun (why has Luke stopped saying that, it was one of his best quotes,  now he says:  "Is this fun?"  we can be cleaning or swimming "Is this fun?")

We did our annual sibling camping trip .  We have a special spot we go to every year that you have to ford a river with all your gear to get to.  The family just keeps growing this year we had four tents!

Bryan & Luke after climbing to the top of the mountain

Bryan shooing the cows out of our campsite.  Luke thought this was the coolest thing.

I guess I didn't really get any good group shots.  But here are a couple of nephews and one of my brothers Owen. 

Last week we head to San Francisco to visit my Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt.  We had a great time.  We drove with my parents and managed to make the 12 hour drive with 4 adults and a child in one car. 

Luke having fun out to eat, confiscating everyone's straws for his own drink

Bry and I slipped into the city for a day trip, here we are at Fisherman's Warf

We went to Muir Woods Redwood forest.  Yes I am in a parka while everyone else is wearing shorts and light jackets.

As goes the nap...so goes the computer time

Well Luke has decided that he has way to much going on in his life to nap.  Therefore my computer time has greatly diminished.  So I just can't seem to find the time to sneak away and update the blog.  I know I will regret it when I can't remember anything that happened this whole year so I will try to give a bit of an update.

We've just living up summer.
We went to Bryan's annual work party at Lagoon and Luke loved it this year.  He even went on his first roller coaster.  He is quite the adventurer, he just kept saying he wanted to do it again and again.

Bryan and Luke in the front seat

By the end of the day we were exhausted!

We also had our family reunion that we look forward to every year.  It was great!

Having fun with cousins

Anticipating the pinata

And swimming...so much fun!

If you believe in magic

All my videos got erased of my camera...arg.. so this is the only pic I have of Luke in his party room.  Sad.

Luke's Birthday was so fun.  This is such a fun time.  He doesn't seem to care about stuff (I may eat my words when we have our family party) we can just enjoy the celebration.  I love it!  So the night before his birthday Bryan and I decorated his room, strung steamers from his fan, his door everywhere and then put balloons all over his floor.  As we started blowing up a crazy number of balloons I was a bit concerned that he would think they were day old balloons and it would all be for naught (cause he is used to being handed helium balloons at every store we go in, and is always so sad the next morning when they are deflated)

Anyway we were pretty excited the next morning...Bryan was all dressed for work and then waiting at Lukes door for him to wake up.  Luke wakes up and notices a couple of balloons and first thing he says is..."this balloon doesn't float"  But then he sees all of the streamer and tons of balloons and really got into his party room.  In fact we didn't end up taking the whole thing down until a week later he loved it so much.  Every visitor we had he'd say, "Come to my party room"

Then I went all out and made pancakes.  :)  Okay I did put sprinkles and it wowed  him and made him feel special...check.  Bryan decided to take the day off for a real birthday celebration.  We went to the zoo, ate more fries and ice cream than we should and all in all it was magical...Disney's got nothing on a three year olds birthday.

Zion

We had a wonderful weekend in Zion National Park.  This time we camped out in the park.  As luck would have it the weather didn't look great, like the whole way down it either snowed or rained on us.  So we took detour after detour, a little mexican restaurant here, Kolob Canyon there.  Eventually we arrived and the clouds parted just as we pulled up to our camp. 

Bryan on our detour to Kolob Canyon

Playing monsters in the tent was one of Luke's favorite parts of the trip.  He also LOVED having his own head lamp. 

 I think we could have just stayed at the visitors center and let Luke climb on these rocks all day.   He loved them.

Another highlight was the bus (because we bribed rewarded him with a sour patch kid at each stop, doesn't take much) 

Ta-Da

Here we are at the top of another big rock...do you see a theme.  We had made it which was quite an accomplishment.  Luke loves to either stop and laser all the passerby's (He is Buzz Lightyear) or ask their name and introduce himself (always by his full name)...so it takes a while :)  At the top of the lower emerald pools it was basically a huge mud puddle, Luke couldn't have been more thrilled.   

And of course playing by the fire with a fake mustache...I don't know...random...I just had it in my purse.

Here we are at the Temple of Sinewava.  Luke is throwing leaves and in approximately 1 minute we will be surrounded by squirrels who have no fear of humans.  As we sat down to our little picnic they tried to get in our packs, got on their back feet and begged for food, it was creepy ( and have you heard the noise they make?)...I am adding it to my irrational fears list right next to cows.