Thomas turns 3

 

Thomas is the KING of our house here!  His 3rd birthday (July 13th) was such a big hit for him and his sisters!  We all love to spoil our little man!

 

We had a small party for him here at home...

...before we decided to make a last minute trip to Laramie (without Daddy) for my 15th high school reunion.

We celebrated his actual birthday in Laramie with Daddy on the phone and lots of cousins! 

 Uncle Jackson even gave Thomas a new hair cut.

I wish I had been a little bit more picture happy on this trip.  I only took one of us looking at Grandma and Grandpa's new house.

And this was the only picture I got of my reunion...this was in my van after the fact when I realized I didn't take any of the night.  I think a couple of friends took a few the next day on the parade float.

And on our way out of town I thought I'd drive by our old apartments.  There were people sitting on the porch of our 1 bedroom, so I thought I'd better not take pictures of them, but here is our 2nd apartment...where we lived when Kaylee and Taylor were born.  

 It was a quick, last minute trip, but fun to get away!

Once we got home there was another present waiting for Thomas.

 We hope he had a fun birthday!  He really is the king of our house!  I LOVE how much the girls love him and want to do everything to make him happy!  I love how he makes us all laugh with his boyish ways!  I always used to hear people talk about the old cliche of how instinctively different boys are than girls.  This boy really does make everything into a sword or a gun....and his sound effects!  He is definitely his daddy's boy!   Happy Birthday Thomas Jay!!  We LOVE you!!

Uncles

 

We had a couple of uncles around our house quite a bit this spring and summer.  Uncle Dale (the youngest in my family) was working at the Lagoon Amusement Park all summer long singing and dancing.  We drove the hour up there for his dress rehearsal, and then we got to see him in between Kaylee and Emily's dance competition that they had up there in June.  If I hadn't been so pregnant we would've liked to have actually gone to the park for rides and everything and see him again, but we had fun the couple of times we did get to go.

 

He even made it on to Fox News!  Click HERE to see Dale dancing as a baby!  :)

 

And here is a little clip of him singing too!  

Also in the early summer we had Matt's brother (the oldest in their family) stay with us during the weeks.  Their family was in the process of moving from Heber City up to Rexburg, Idaho.  He still had to finish up work in Salt Lake so stayed with us during the week and then went to his new home on the weekends.  The girls had a blast hanging out with him for Family Home Evening and hopefully he had fun sitting in on our craziness...especially during Lehi Roundup Week.

We don't have immediate family very close anymore!  We do have some cousins, Aunts and Uncles close that we get together with every once in a while.  Matt used to have 2 brothers living here in the valley, but both of those families are gone now.  :(  Matt's parents are the closest...2 1/2 hours away.  We miss having family around, thus the reason we travel up to Wyoming as much as we do!  We do love those times when the Uncles pull out the guitars, or make our kids laugh!  We miss having the cousins all get together!  We do make the most of it when we are together though...that is for sure!  Thanks Uncle Dale and Uncle Ryan for hanging out with us a little bit this summer!  :)

Lehi Roundup Week

The last week in June is our Lehi Roundup Week with activities nearly every night!  Monday night is the picnic in the park and “Lehi’s Idol”!  We enjoyed some pizza and voting for our favorite performers. 

Wednesday night was the cattle drive and then Thursday, the horse parade.  I didn’t get any pictures from those days.   Friday we all went to a water park and played.  This was where Taylor stuck her first back layout.  She was on a little bit of a slope, so that helped!  She was soooo excited!  I turned the video off too soon so I cut off her saying, “That was awesome!”  This girl loves to be flipping in the air.

It was sooo nice to be in the water on a hot day. Especially for me who was 7 months pregnant at the time.  I'm sure if I was writing about this back then I would have been complaining about the heat a lot more.  I have KINDA forgotten how miserably hot this summer was!  :)  This was a fun day though!  We brought a lunch and just relaxed!  The kids had a blast!

Later that night was the miniature float parade.

I wish I could remember what nights Matt was with us.  We also had Uncle Dale come down from Lagoon to join us for a cattle drive I think and Uncle Ryan was living with us off and on at this time so he also came to a couple of things with us.  Matt was biking a lot this summer;  I'll have to post more about that later, but I know he definitely missed Saturday's activities.

 On Saturday Kaylee and Emily were in the big parade with Jazz ‘n Place.  This was their last time doing something with their dance teams.  It was kinda sad to say good-bye to all of them, but they had a ton of fun and we had fun watching them!!  

 

  

 

We have been so blessed to live in Lehi!!  

We are 5 minutes from anything a big city can offer, but Lehi is still small town enough to enjoy these kinds of events and see lots of friends and neighbors!   It is always such a great week!  :)

DANCE!

  The first weekend of June was DANCE weekend.  On Thursday night the girls had a huge recital down in Provo that Grandma Hoopes was able to come to!  Grandma was so great to have flowers for all the girls and little treats for everyone too!  The girls had so much fun!  They got to do their dances again on Saturday at the Lagoon competition!  Their teams did so great at Lagoon with Kaylee's group taking 2nd in their category and Emily's taking 3rd.

We loved watching the girls dance and they really enjoyed the girls they were with and the amazing teachers.  Jazz 'n Place won so many awards at both of their competitions this year, including best studio, best director and best choreographers.  Maybe the girls will go back to dancing, but Emily decided to do gymnastics again, and Kaylee is gonna give swimming a try!  It's so hard to pick and choose.  They love doing everything!  Way to go girls!!

Pictures from the recital!

Warming up at Lagoon!

 Lagoon awards!

 

Junior Prodigy Prep (Kaylee) at the recital:

Junior Prodigy Prep (Kaylee) at the Competition:

They also did this song at the recital, but this video turned out better.  All videos are pretty grainy...I wish I knew a better way to upload them.

And then here is Small Troupe (Emily) at the recital...they did this same song at Lagoon.  But this video has better close ups of Emily!  :)

Tyson Grey and the Snake

 Back to updating the blog!  We are now to June 2012!  My sister had her little boy in May and so we went to Rock Springs the first weekend in June to see him get blessed.  I hope DJ doesn’t mind me posting 2 pictures I stole from the family website, but here is her beautiful family!

There is always a special spirit in the Stauffer family home!  We LOVE our Stauffer cousins and wish we could hang out with them more.  We had a fun picnic at a park in Green River while we were there.  And with Uncle David around there is always some crazy adventure happening!  Tyson was definitely the highlight of our quick weekend trip to Wyoming, but the video below was a close second!!  Ya gotta check it out!  Love the Stauffers!  :)