Spring visit to Illinois

I totally forgot about these pictures that I had taken with my mom's camera when we went to visit this spring.  Isaac thought the lawn mover was so much fun, which is not surprising since he loves "driving" anything. 

Classic picture of my dad in the garden...gotta love the hat!

 Peter was so thrilled to learn that there were new baby kittens, if our landlords would let us-we would probably be keeping one of these babies.   They were so cute!

 Isaac was interested for about 30 seconds but he was not as gentle with them as Peter.

 Peter loved these little guys so much that one evening I went to check on him after I had put him to bed because I heard him making some noise and I found him with a kitten in bed with him!  I had to go do a kitten check to make sure he didn't have anymore stashed in bed with him! 

The boys had fun as always exploring at grandma and grandpas, getting dirty and looking for eggs.

Visit from Gma and Aunties

Grandma McKinney, Amy and Leslie came for a visit at the end of June.  We crammed as much into the visit as we could. The first evening we went to dinner at my aunt and uncle's house.  The next day the adults went to the temple, and my sisters watched the boys.  They had lots of fun playing in the yard on the slip and slide and playing on grandma's ipad.

Thursday I was getting ready for our cub scout crossover ceremony and was very grateful for my families help in getting some painting done for the award plaques that I was making and Peter of course wanted to paint when he saw what we were doing.  So we sent him outside with Leslie to paint and this was the end result!

 I am not sure if there was more paint on Peter or on the paper.  I guess he likes green...

Later that evening while I went and sweated away at our ceremony my mom and the girls took the boys swimming with my cousins at a local water park.  They had so much fun and I know they kept my mom on her toes, thankfully, no one drowned!  Then everyone came back to our house for ice cream which was a perfect cap to the day.  Poor Isaac kept giving himself a brain freeze I think trying to eat his popcicle but it was so good he didn't want to put it down.  He would take a few bites and then just start crying and saying cold...I know we shouldn't have but we all got a good laugh out of it. They sure did sleep well that night! 

Our only complaint was that the trip was not long enough!  Sorry Amy that we didn't get time to make bruschetta for you!

Oh what do you do in the summertime?

When all the world is hot, dry and yucky?   (going on 3 weeks of over 100 degrees!!) You stay inside, that is what you do!  And you get very creative and try lots of new things.  Well, that is what we do anyway...and eat lots of Popsicles and ice cream :)

Peter helping dad in the garden, before it got too hot this was Peter's favorite thing to go pick beans with dad.  We planted purple, yellow and green so it was always exciting to see what color would be ripe.

June 11, 2012

Isaac's attention span has reached the point of sitting and watching tv for about 5-10 minutes as long as it is baby einstein.  That was very helpful on our trip to utah!



June 14, 2012

As many of you know we have a basement, which is now actually furnished (yay!) and it is a great retreat from the heat.  I decided to pull out some of our area rugs from St Louis and put down there because even though we have carpet it still hurts quite a bit when little heads bonk.  Peter and Isaac were SO excited, and for some reason thought it was there own personal gymnastics mat.  Peter has known how to do a somersault for awhile  now  and started rolling away.  Isaac sat and watched for a few minutes and not to be outdone stood up and then executed a perfect somersault.  To say that I was shocked would be an understatement and Isaac looked like he just had won a gold medal on the floor exercises!    And Peter thought it was just great that his little brother could join him in his antics!  I did not have my camera at the time but a few days later we were showing dad our new trick and this is what I caught on film.  Not as perfect as he can do but definitely shows his lack of fear and personality!

June 29, 2012

After an afternoon of cleaning the couches, forts and jumping off the cushions Peter was bored and made a telescope to check out the moon.  I knew we had a curtain and stair cleaning attachment but I never new we had the telescope upgrade! 

July 11, 2012

 And of course what summer is complete without playing in the water? Isaac is getting so brave with the slip and slide.  It is so cute to watch him overcome his fear of getting splashed so that he can be like his brother.  He would crawl down the slide almost having a panic attack and would be so proud of himself when he made it to the end-I was so proud of him as well.

June 25, 2012

 Peter is getting really good at sliding, he is like a little torpedo.  He goes so fast he sometimes slides right off the edge!

Utah

Since we invested in our new van we decided to brave a drive cross country with the boys.  To save everyone's sanity we split the drive into 2 days stopping in Colorado to stay at a hotel.    Peter was in the middle of potty training so we armed him with some pull-ups, packed a whole cooler and box of food and snacks, loaded the dvd player, fired up the gps and set off!  And I have to say that they did surprisingly well as long as we stopped every 4 hours for a quick run around a rest stop or to eat lunch.  The incentive of a hotel with a pool was also a good motivator.  Here are our happy travelers.

 We thankfully made it to Richfield, UT without any problems and were greeted by Alan's grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins....and some nice 90+ degree weather.  The boys had a fun time exploring every inch of grandma clara's house, torturing the neighbor cat and playing with some boy cousins.  I of course spent so much time running around making sure that they weren't destroying things that I didn't get many pictures.  But we did get some with grandma, although they are not the best since getting those two to hold still at the same time is near to impossible-but I will take what I can get!

My little love bug just can't pass up an opportunity for smooches and landed a big one on grandma clara before we left.  We stopped in at the local dairy and picked up our box of punch bags (if you are a jensen you will know what that is) and headed north to visit my cousin Julie for lunch.  It was fun to see her new house and visit with her family!  We wish they were closer!  After lunch we headed to the salt lake area to visit my aunt Norma and Bob  and cousins.  It was a great visit,  but a little crazy since we had to be on constant guard to protect her valuable that were all right within toddler reach. 

Then the two day drive back.  Driving back is always the worst...it seems to take much longer than it should be we made it home safe and sound and we were all very happy to be out of the car!