Cornbellys!

Tonight was so fun! For Family Home Evening we went to the Kids fair area, called Cornbellys up in Lehi (Thanksgiving Point). The Hunt family, with their 4 boys and brandnew baby Hannah, braved the trip with us. We had so much fun, enjoying all the attractions for the kids. The only thing we didn't have a lot of time for was the corn maze, which is what they're know for! There was a lot of other stuff to do and see, including pig races, the cow train, The Creature, and go-Karts. But the kids' favorite thing (ok, and Ben and Paul's too) was the jumping pillow area.

One of my favorite pictures is this one of Garrett and Jaxon. They are about

3 weeks apart in age, and they are so much alike!

Even I enjoyed the go-karts...

Can you tell who is having the most fun on the big slide?

New stuff

Ben's mother has been in Utah for the last several days helping with a new baby up in Midvale, our niece, Miriam. Yea Stephanie! Luckily, Grandma was able to find a day to take the boys to Ephraim to visit another of Ben's sisters, Sarah. Yea Sarah!, while she goes to Snow College. Anyway, Margot got to borrow her sister's Solara convertible and the boys thought that was pretty neat, especially Ben. :)

And here's me looking big and pregnant at 24 weeks (5 months-ish). I am happy, but I think my clothes are a bit baggy...hard to be fashionable right now!

"Good Morning" Ritual

For a long time the boys would come into our room when they woke up in the morning and insist on being in bed with us for some snuggle time. This cracks me up: check out the hair and the huge grins on these little boys' faces. Ben is pretty happy too. :)

This has never happened before: Garrett falling asleep during a meal! He didn't get a nap that day, and I warned Ben that I was afraid he'd need to go to bed extra early while I was at work. Garrett ended up sleeping in his chair for a few minutes and then Ben laid him on the couch for about a half hour. So funny! He actually almost fell asleep at the dinner table in Hawaii too...his naps were few and far between while we were there. We had to really watch him at that time because he could have just fallen right off the chair!

Birthday Party!

Today was Garrett's 2nd birthday. Yesterday afternoon I baked a simple 9x13 chocolate cake. I figure he's still young enough that I get to choose the kind of cake...:) He'll eat anything, but I felt bad because I know Richard prefers vanilla...but he did branch out and actually ate some of it!! After church we busted out the balloons, gift #1. He loves balloons. They were blue and green (and spongebob) to accentuate our 'ocean' theme. After his nap we opened presents; some books from my parents, a big garbage truck from me and Ben, and a nerf dart gun from Richard. The boys were enthralled with the garbage truck, which is accompanied by our dump truck that my Dad gave Richard several years ago. They both make truck noises and 'do things'. Very fun. Then we had tacos for dinner, I decorated the cake with chocolate frosting, blue icing and sugar candy ocean creatures. Different kind of birthday cake than I've ever made. It was so fun and so easy. We each had a piece (me quite a bit later beacuse I couldn't hold tacos and cake in the same hour) and then watched baby Garrett home movies. It was such a nice simple celebration, and everyone had a good time.

More Hawaii

On Saturday in Hawaii we went to the Dole Pinapple Plantation. We went on a train ride around the fields, had fresh pineapple, pineapple frozen yogurt and walked through the amazing gift shop. Ben and Richard also went through the maze. It was made like a corn maze, but of course, with pinapple plants. It was a hot, but fun day.

On Sunday went attended church in Honolulu at the Mormon Tabernacle. It was a huge white tabernacle with an open courtyard and fabulous plants and flowers, including plumeria. Those are my favorite. :) We took a scenic route through Waikiki on the way from the church.

On Monday we had lunch with my uncle who lives in Honolulu and I've only met him two other times in my life. Then we dropped Richard off with Grandma at the Honolulu Zoo while the rest of us (Gary, Garrett, Ben, and I) went to the International Market. It's like Pike Place Market in Seattle with tons of little stands and shops selling souveniers, clothing, and other paraphernalia.

This is the boys sitting at the base of the lagoon at Wiamea Falls. It was a pretty hike complete with ancient (some reconstructed) archelogical sites. Interesting. Garrett was placed in a cave by Grandpa. :)

Perhaps one of the most fun things we did was the Luau and Dance at the Polynesian Cultural Center. It is right down the street from the LDS Temple and BYU-Hawaii. During the dinner they asked if anyone was celebrating a honeymoon or anniversary, and since our 7th anniversary was last week we went up with several other people and got to be recognized. We also got a few pictures of the temple and lot's of the PCC. It was a fun and late night. Both boys stayed awake (to our dismay) during the show and slept in the car on the way back to the hotel; it was about 11pm when we got back. My camera is now dead, so I can't upload anymore pictures at the moment. :) Pooh, I'll try again later!

We're in Hawaii!

This is the trip to Hawaii...it started by leaving Provo on Wednesday around 2pm and making it Boise at a cheap hotel...won't stay there again. Just kind of yucky. Got up around 6:30am, because that's when the boys woke up and on the road again to Seattle to stay with Ben's parents. This is one of the many rest stops we visited on our way to Seattle. The boys did surpisingly well and we even survived the 8:30am 6 hour flight to Hawaii, and here we are! Ben's parents are with us and treating us to their resort time share for a week.

The boys share a fold out couch bed in our room ...it's like a 2 room hotel room with a kitchen and living room in the middle. Gary and Margot have their own room and bathroom.

The 3 hour time change has had a bit of an impact on the boys...they were up at about 3:15am. Grandpa took them to the beach around 6 and then we all went around 9. The boys really didn't want to go in the water, just wanted to play in the sand , digging and making paths to big holes they made. We finally got Richard in the water after about an hour, sitting in our laps and letting the waves wash up on us. I swam out nearly to the border a few times. It's a manmade lagoon and absolutely beautiful. Warm and clear and everything I imagined Hawaii to be...even though it's manmade. :) We had fun burying Ben and Garrett climbed up on him when the waves got closer. That was funny.

Snacktime!

I realized I don't have many pictures of the boys recently. This was taken at my sister's house in Las Vegas. Good Sunday afternoon snack, wouldn't you say?

The Titanic

This picture is about a year old, but it still plays a big part in our lives...:)

Richard loves the Titanic. We have watched every movie, documentary, and every book that our public library has about the Titanic. Ben recently recorded The Titanic (you know, the one with Kate Winslet and Leonardo de Caprio) from DVR and Richard constantly asks to watch it. It's great from TV because there is nothing you have to fast forward though...:) I used to have to watch it with him so I could get through certain parts that aren't meant for 4 year old's eyes or ears. I don't like watching it because it always makes me cry...He loves the sinking part the best as you can see from the picture. This is an egg carton that Ben covered with construction paper and is complete with 4 funnels (the last one is fake of course) and they come out as the ship sinks. It's quite fascinating, you should read about the Titanic! "The Titanic is sinking!" is a very familiar phrase around our house.

Richard's cast

Richard has another cast on for 3 weeks. It'll come off right before we leave on our trip to Hawaii with Ben's parents, their treat! Very excited!

Las Vegas

I've finally been to Las Vegas! We drove through it at 3am in August of 2002 for our first anniversary on our way to Disneyland. Our car had no air conditioning, so we thought we'd 'beat the heat' by traveling at night. I vowed we would never, ever, travel at night with no air conditioning ever again. Well, we forgot. We had air conditioning this time, but Garrett was not happy about the long car trip to Las Vegas, so on the way back we decided to drive during the night....I have vowed again to never, ever, drive at night. It's miserable!!! The boys slept fine and Ben drove fine, but I was not too happy...could not sleep!

Here is a picture of the lions at the indoor lion habitat in the MGM casino and me and the boys at the Rainforest cafe where we had dinner before we left the city. We also went to the Bellagio (Yea Ocean's 11!) to see the water show. Very cool. We stayed with my sister and her husband in their beautiful new home in Las Vegas for the weekend just for fun. Went swimming and pretended we could live there. :) Too hot...no way!

Packing Peanuts

We had a birthday party at our house for Ben's sister this week. His parents have been here and several of his siblings and their families came too. One of the gifts his sister got was her guitar that was mailed to her in a huge box, with thousands of packing peanuts. We let all the little kids play in it and have since found packing peanuts in the couches, in the bathroom, even upstairs. They are everywhere! It was fun, and a huge mess.

Did you know?

So I am very excited to announce that we are expecting a new baby in January!!! The due date is the 20th, it's 5 days off of Richard's pregnancy, but this time we're shooting for a January baby, of course, not December...I'm 14 weeks and very excited and grateful for this little person. The other fun thing is that I am participating in a research study at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center to see if there are DNA 'markers' in women that can predict early births. Since Richard was 6 weeks early I qualify to be a guinea pig. They needed to do an ultrasound at 12 weeks to make sure everything is viable and healthy. So at 13 weeks I made the appointment and was surprised, yet pleased, that the ultrasound guy offered to locate the gender of the baby. We weren't expecting that at all. So we also already know that we're expecting our 3rd boy!!! Haha! So excited. :) I had tried to enroll in a different research study back in February before I was pregnant, about the affects of aspirin on miscarriage (which I've also had at 11 weeks), but one of the stipulations was to fill out all the paper work, have a urine and blood test to verify I was NOT pregnant and then have another period and THEN get pregnant. Still not sure exactly why they wanted to monitor that...but anyway, we got pregnant too soon...oops. So I called up the research lady and said "I can't participate in this study! But, are there any other studies I can help with now that I am pregnant?" So I got into this one where they wanted you to already BE pregnant. :) This study will be easier also. All they do is 3 times throughout the pregnancy they take some bodily fluids (we don't need to go into too many details) and study my DNA in those samples. Then they compare my samples with the other 999 women involved who have also had preemies and look for 'markers'. Then in the future when a pregnant woman goes to get her blood work done they can check for those markers and give some intervention to help the baby stay in longer. Helping with medical research is very cool....yea!

The ultrasound picture is tough to figure out, but the important part is where the little arrow is pointing. :)

Watermelon!

What little boy doesn't love watermelon?

Mine sure do!

It's been hot hot hot in the 90s and higher lately. So we let them get all sticky and play outside and then they love having a bath.

Richard's goings-ons

Poor Richard!

Nothing awfully serious, but a bit frustrating and trying nonetheless.

Episode one: About 2 weeks ago Ben and the little boys were at a church dinner in the gym. (I was at work.) All the kids were running around the gym having fun, typical of a ward party you know, and Richard got thrown by a child who wanted the ball he had. He consequently got knocked out as he hit the hard gym floor. Ben went running to access the situation and Richard's eyes were dilated (huge!) and he wouldn't answer or respond to Ben's calling his name, 2 signs of concussion. After about 30 seconds Richard 'woke up' and answered questions and said he was ok. Then Ben noticed Richard had wet his pants...another sign of a concussion. The Bishop helped Ben clean him up and then I got THE phone call at work. Of course, this is the phone call I've always anticipated, but thankfully never gotten. "Corinne, there's been a bit of an incident and I think Richard should be taken to the Doctor." I don't remember exactly how he described it, but Ben is very good at breaking bad news. He was calm and gave only enough details to let me know that everything is ok, but needs to be taken care of now. So he came and picked me up and we were at the ER for about an hour. They took Richard's blood pressure and asked lot's of questions. Bascially they said he had a slight concussion, but there wasn't anything to be done except to watch him. If he started acting unusual, bring him back in. We went home, gave the boys a bath and put them to bed. We checked on Richard a few times and since his breathing was regular we went to bed. The next morning Richard was telling me all about how he hit his head on the gym floor. He's fine!

Episode Two: We didn't notice this until Richard was over a year old, but the tendons and ligaments in his left foot turn inward, pulling the bones and muscles with them. It just makes his foot turn inward and looks kind of funny. It's called metatarsul adductus. We're afraid it'll inhibit his ability to play sports and run correctly so for the last two years he's been wearing kiddy orthodics in his shoes. We're on our 3rd podiatrist (the first two just didn't do much, I felt) and this Dr. suggested putting a cast on his leg to help right the foot. So that's what we did yesterday. Richard now has a cast on his left leg from his foot nearly up to his knee. He has to wear it for 3 weeks and then we'll take him back and I just pray that it's helped. The problem with doing this cast now is that he's so old...his bones and tendons have basically hardened into the position they'll be in for the rest of his life. But the other 2 dr.s never suggested it. So this process may take a long time. But, it's better than nothing. The good thing about doing it now is that we can explain to Ricahrd why we're doing this. Luckily, his personality is such that he is very easy going, and content to let us help him get dressed and stuff.

See the birdy?

Garrett has become interested in birds...whenever we go on a walk he excitedly points out any bird that comes our way. So, I took the boys to the Tracy Aviary in South Salt Lake on Friday morning. It was fun seeing the peacocks just wandering around and the other somewhat exotic birds they house there. They had a show at 11 featuring some more interesting birds, all of which they've trained to do special tricks or feats. It was fun. They had a large vulture, a few parrots, a golden eagle and a hawk...as my memory serves me. It was very informative and entertaining. We had a picnic lunch and just walked around; I let the boys go where they wanted and they seemed to enjoy themselves. Along with the paid membership comes discounts and freebies to get into other Salt Lake and Utah Valley animal places; Hogle Zoo, Thanksgiving Point Animal Country, and the Living Aquarium in Sandy are among those listed. I am excited to take the boys to these places over the next year while our membership lasts.