Hailey is on 2 Wheels!

So, if you look closely at the first picture, we took off her training wheels and her pedals.  One of our neighbors recommended us to do this instead of buying a push bike.  It worked wonderfully!  Hailey pushed around on her pedal-less bike for about a month.  At first she was really wobbly, and her feet were on the ground most of the time.  But then she got the feel of being balanced.  Eventually she would push off with her feet and cruise with her feet off the ground until her bike stopped.  When she got to this point we put her pedals back on and crossed our fingers for her first bike ride without training wheels!

Oh my, it was simply amazing!  All we had to do was hold the back of her bike so she could get started and off she went on two wheels.  We rode around the neighborhood and she was a pro, she never even fell!  It took a couple more weeks for her to master her start off without any help, and she is our pro-little bike rider! 

This is so different from the experience we had with Ben.  We hadn't thought of taking off the pedals to help with balance.  It was just like you see in the movies.  Mike holding onto the back of Ben's bike and running after him, while he falls again and again.  It took agonizing and painful weeks for him to learn without training wheels. 

I'm so glad we had Hailey learn this way, she is such a good little bike rider!
The day before this grand bike adventure we took the kids to Trafalga.  It was a lot of fun and nice enough weather that we were able to go on all the rides outside.  Ben wanted to play laser tag, and read a sign that was explaining it.  He said "ninja laser tag, awesome, rocks the house!"  I'm pretty sure I passed on some 80's sayings to him.  Also Ben woke up that morning and said he had a Chinese dream.  I asked him what a Chinese dream was.  He explained that his Chinese dream had ghosts throwing pots at him, and everything was in China and speaking Chinese.  He said it was a bad dream but he told himself to change his dream to have a good one and he did.  I thought you weren't supposed to dream in a language until your fluent, well he has done amazing!  He is learning Chinese so fast and loving it.  We went to parent teacher conferences and I had no idea how he was doing, but his teacher said he is the best boy in his class.  I am so excited for him to continue learning Chinese!

Hailey's a T-ball Player

Oh, Hailey, definitely the cutest t-ball player I've ever seen!  My brother Blake was the coach and Nathan and Maelie were also on the team.  It was a fun t-ball season, and Hailey was a good little hitter!  Eliza took her job as cheerleader seriously!  She was great at cheering on the kids, although she did take a little time out to do some grass angels.  Of course the best part of the season was getting the trophy.

Hailey Starts Preschool

So, my cute Ben starts first grade and then my adorable Hailey starts preschool!  What a fun and crazy year!  My cute kiddos are growing up so fast.  It wasn't quite as hard to send Hailey to school, because it is only for 2 hours in the morning 3 days a week. The greatest thing is that her preschool is just 4 houses down and is run by our amazing neighbor Miss Nicole!

Hailey was so excited to do a little photo shoot before heading off for her first day of school, complete with her purple Tinkerbell backpack!  She picked out her outfit and requested her hair be braided in 2 little braids (I did my best).  Hailey always requests these crazy hairdos like; I would like a Cinderella ball hairdo or make my hair look like a mermaids.  I do my best but I still can't do my own hair!  Hopefully she will survive my ineptitude at hairdo's.  

Hailey has 7 kids in her preschool class; Hallie, Kate, August, Landon, Parker, and Isaac.  It's going to be a fun and fabulous preschool year!

Eliza know's what she wants, today she said "want cookie".  Yeah, she got her cookie.  Hailey was looking at my wedding ring and the right hand ring I got for our 10 year anniversary.  Hailey said "mom your rings are beautiful!  This one has two blings on the side and this one has blings all over."  Yes, she is my girly girl!

Ben is in First Grade!

Ben is in first grade!!!  It's amazing how time flies.  I thought sending him to preschool and kindergarten was heart wrenching, but first grade is a whole other story.  He is now gone from me for most of his day, and then he comes home and does homework and we eat dinner and then it's basically off to bed.  I feel like I have no time with my favorite buddy.  Things like the fact that he eats lunch at school are so hard for me to accept.  But, he absolutely loves school, which I'm so grateful for! 

Back in the Spring we applied for the Chinese Immersion program at Eastlake Elementary by our house.  We got a letter saying he didn't get in and he was #42 on their waiting list, meaning he was never going to get in.  The letter also said we could check with the other 2 schools that did Chinese in the area and see if he could get in.  We got the letter over the weekend and I was so stressed out.  It's hard to describe, but I felt like I had to do something to get him into the program to learn Chinese.  I had always felt like this was the right path for him so I couldn't believe it when he didn't get in.  I prayed to know if I should just accept that he wasn't supposed to get in and I just kept feeling this intense desire to do everything I could to get him in.  The first chance I had on Monday I called the first school and they laughed at me telling me they had a long waiting list and he could never get in because we were out of the boundaries.  Then I called Southland and the receptionist said I could try bringing in an application but didn't know if we would have any chance.  I printed out the form and took it right then.  After that I felt this calm reassurance that I did all I could do.  Amazingly a few weeks later I got a call saying he was in Southland's Chinese Immersion class.  I was so excited, and so was Ben.  We talked a lot about how he would have to leave his friends for a year or longer until a spot opened up at Eastlake, but he was willing to do that to learn Chinese!

A few weeks before school started he had a week "boot camp" for Chinese Immersion.  Ben picked up so much Chinese in just that one week, it was amazing.  He also met Hunter, and they became instant friends.  Ben and Hunter are playing on the playground before he goes in for his first day of 1st grade.  It was so hard for me to leave my handsome little man, and around 1pm I felt like he'd been gone for long enough.  But, he had a wonderful first day and loves school so much!

Soccer and Boating

Just a normal fun crazy summer Saturday.  Mike volunteered to be Ben's soccer coach this year, because Ben's coach last year was not involved at all.  Mike is a great coach!  He is super positive and makes practices fun for the kids while teaching them.  Isabelle is on Ben's team again and they have a lot of fun together (although their flirtations tend to be a bit distracting during the games.)  After a morning soccer game we headed out on Utah Lake with Mike's parents.  Eliza was tired and not a fan of her life jacket at all!  She was not the happiest boater, but she did okay.  I was sad that I missed Hailey's first knee boarding at Lake Powell, so they took us out so I could see her skills.  I am amazed at how good both Ben and Hailey are on the knee board.  It is so fun seeing these tiny people out behind the boat.  They both did great and had a fun time, it was a great day out on the lake!

Herriman Beach Fun

This was our first trip to the Blackridge reservoir in Herriman.  It was an overcast day and not too warm, but the kids had a blast.  They loved playing in the water and the sand and enjoying a summer day.  Some big storm clouds came rolling in so we decided to leave.  That was a good choice because it started raining with lightning.  It was a great time, and made me long for the ocean and beach! 

We were looking through Disneyland pictures later that day.  Ben was talking about how fun it was to go on Pirates of the Caribeaners (he'll be a great rock climber one day).  Eliza is talking more and more every day.  Eliza says fish, stuck, baby, dada, mam, cheese, Hailey, Ben, shoes, sit, mormor, byebye, laly, duck, monkey sounds.  Eliza loves watching curious George!  She went to the couch and got the remote and pointed to the TV and said 'oo ahah'.  We watched George after that, she's just too cute to say no to.

Isabelle joins our family and Birthday Fun

Yeah, Isabelle is here!  I took just Hailey on a special mommy-daughter date to go see her newest cousin Izzy.  What a sweetheart, and so adorable!  We went with my parents to see the newest Marsh at the hospital.  Nicole looked amazing, and Isabelle is such a cutie.  Hailey was really excited to come and be able to hold her.  Just a few days later we celebrated my Dad's birthday and Isabelle's arrival at their house with a fun BBQ.  Hailey was so happy to get some money from my Grandpa Marsh!

Picnic at Other Mormor's

This was a really fun day spent at my Mormor's.  My kids like to call her 'other Mormor'.  Me and my mom picked up Nathan and Maelie to give a very pregnant Nicole a break.  We had a great picnic with Kentucky Fried chicken, one of mormor's favorite foods.  It was such a nice day, and the kids had a great time eating and having "tea time" with other mormor.  I'm so glad that my kids are having some of the same memories that I had growing up with my Mormor. 

A week before this Mike and I were able to enjoy a great  10th Anniversary weekend!  We didn't bring our camera but we had such a great time!  My mom was nice to watch all the kiddos, and we headed up to Midway and stayed at the Zermott.  Mike surprised me with a gorgeous right hand diamond ring, and I gave him sheets (I know nothing compared to a diamond ring, but they were Egyptian cotton).  We filled up our 2 days with lots of fun stuff!  We had delicious pastries to start off our first day then headed to a great hike in the beautiful mountains.  While we were hiking, we experienced a little rain and Mike had a run-in with a pesky mesquito, but neither ruined our fun.  Then we went back to Midway for some Mexican food.  After lunch we headed into Park City for some shopping and fun.  We found Ben a coat and Hailey a cute jacket, and we got a bunch of winter stuff for the kids.  We went and saw the last Harry Potter which was great and then headed to get dinner.  We walked into this restaurant that had a bunch of signs outside for family deals for $20.  It seemed like a really nice Italian restaurant.  We were seated right away and were one of two tables that had people at them.  They gave us the menus and we found out why, the cheapest we could get out of there, was $60 a person.  I had no idea if the food was even any good, so we decided to leave.  It was a bit embarrassing, but we just cruised out of there before they took our order or anything.  We walked across the street and ate at Red Rock which was crazy busy, but great food!  The next day was our actual anniversary so we headed down the to Salt Lake temple (after our morning pastries of course).  We did sealings, and it was great being there exactly 10 years later.  It brought back all the wonderful feelings and memories from our wonderful sealing.  All the workers were amazed at how young we were and couldn't believe we had been married for 10 years.  After the temple we headed to Seven Peaks for some sliding fun without the kiddos.  It was great! I'm pretty sure we were the oldest people there without any kids.  The cute little workers kept saying "okay mam or okay sir, you can go down the slide now!"  We were laughing so hard, we went from being the youngans at the temple to the old people at the water park in just a matter of hours. 

After we got home our cute Eliza started her own game of duck-duck-goose.  She ran around in a circle with a goofy look on her face, saying duck-duck-goose in her cute little voice.

We also took Eliza in for her 18 month checkup; head 80%, weight 70%, height 65%.

August Family Portraits

Our traditional August family portraits!  I love that we get together every August to take family pictures with my side of the family.  We started this tradition when the Oquirrh Mountain Temple was dedicated and have done it ever since.  This time we took the pictures from the West side of the temple.  We are so lucky to have such a beautiful temple right in our neighborhood.  I have to say that I have the most adorable kids!  Unfortunately, my dad was working an missed these pictures, but we'll get him in next year.  My mom and Aly swung all of the kids, but the picture of them swinging Ben is the greatest.  He weighs around 50 pounds so he is a lot to swing!  The girls loved walking around in Aly's shoes!

Scout Camp

Oh the fun of scout camp!  Mike spent a week with his crazy scouts at camp, and they all came back in one piece!!  Well, mostly, one came back with a cut finger from his knife addiction.  Did you notice Mike's awesome mustache from his week ruffing it, he started doing the scruffy thing at Lake Powell and this is the great result.  We hung out with my family a lot and tried to have fun while Mike was away.  The kids were very happy to have their daddy back, this is the Sunday after he got home.  I can't believe Ben can still fit on Mike's shoulders.

So the same week as Scout camp we had our annual campout at my parent's house.  I hung out with everyone, but took Eliza home to sleep in our nice cozy house.  I did leave Ben and Hailey to sleep there and they had so much fun!

Brighton Hike

True weekend warrior fashion, after the Tour de Donut we headed up the canyon to do the Lake Solitude hike.  We picked up my cousin Amanda, who came with us for fun and to also help with the kids.  We met the Bower family and had a great picnic lunch before we started the hike.  Amanda and the girls (Hailey and Caelie) hung out most of the time and were great hiking buddies.  I was amazed at how great the kids did on the hike!  I thought Ben would be too worn out after his race, but he cruised up the mountain like all the other kids.  Eliza enjoyed hiking, and Mike and I took turns carrying her so she didn't have to walk the whole time.  Jon and Lynette took turns carrying cute little Simon who was only a couple months old.  The kids enjoyed running after squirrels when we made it to the lake.  It was a great day!!!

Tour De Donut

Ben's 1st 7-mile bike race!  Last year we cheered Mike on for the Tour de Donut, and this year Ben joined in on the fun!  Mike and Ben did a 7 mile circuit race. The other riders were cheering on Ben as he went around the course.  There were other kids in the race but most of them were picked up somewhere along the way.  Ben was determined to finish and did great!  The race course is full of pot-holes that they mark with spray paint.  Ben did really good at avoiding all the pot-holes that were marked, but unfortunately hit one that wasn't marked and went down and hurt his knee.  But, he got back up and kept going!  Ben was the first one in the kids division to finish the race, so he won a first place trophy!!!  And, best of all was the chance to enjoy the delicious donuts! (Ben was riding his super fast bike that he had saved $135 of his allowance for!  Ben is amazing at saving his money to get what he wants, and he saved a long time for his bike.)

A few days before this race, Ben was wondering why the scriptures didn’t mention dinosaurs before people. And where did Indians fit into the whole picture of history?  We had to have a long talk about when dinosaurs lived and who exactly Indians were.  Luckily I took a Native American class in college.  You never know when such things will come in handy with kids.

Lake Powell

Oh the fun of Lake Powell!  There was supposed to be a big group going down to Lake Powell to Mike's family's houseboat.  But last minute Mike's sister Nikki and her family and Mike's brother Tyson cancelled.  Eliza and I  also decided not to go.  I started feeling sick the week before we were supposed to go, and it didn't sound like that much fun to go to Lake Powell sick with a 1 year old.  I was dizzy, nauseous, and extremely fatigued.  I went to my Dr. and they ran blood tests but found nothing so I ended up being sick for a total of six weeks, no fun!

Back to Lake Powell. Mike took Ben and Hailey and they had so much fun!  Mike's parents, and Becky and Justin, with their boys, were all there.   Hailey was brave and learned how to knee board, she was great and hung on like a champion.  Ben also enjoyed  knee boarding again for his third year.  These pictures are from their adventure to the Indian ruins.  They went swimming in canyons that had 200 feet deep water.  They collected rocks, bbs, shells, shot Mike's bb gun, jumped off mini cliffs, went on a hike  and dug up crystals.  The kids shot fish with marshmallows out of a homemade blowgun.  Ben jumped off the boxes on the back of the houseboat, and Hailey jumped out of the deck of the houseboat.  Ben was disappointed that Mike wouldn't let him jump off the roof!  Next year.  The pictures of the kids eating on the rocks were one morning when they woke up before everyone else, so they went on a little hike and ate breakfast on the rocks.  Ben a Hailey had an amazing time!

Fourth of July Weekend

What a weekend!!!  It all started with a great bbq at my parent's house.  I love my parent's backyard, it is the best for summer bbq's and fun.  The kids had a great time slip n' sliding down the hill, then we had a great meal as always.  My cousin was married the previous day, so my dad's Aunt Connie was in town along with the parents of the bride (who were from China).  This was a normal crazy bbq for us but our visitors were a little surprised by some of the fun things we did.  Aly  had made some cupcakes that looked like corn on the cob, and they had no clue what they were or how to eat them.  We also made smores in the fire pit and they had never seen those before in their lives.  We showed them all great things American I guess.  We ended with a great firework display from the fire pit and had a great time!

The next day we headed out for some camping and motorcycle riding with Mike's family.  His brother Cory was there with his family, along with Mike's parents.  All my kids love riding along with Mike.  I love motorcycle riding also, but am not brave enough to take the kids.  Ben did great riding on his own, but there were lots of kids that wanted to ride the smaller motorcycles so he mostly rode with Mike this trip.

And the fun weekend continues!  On the actual 4th of July our neighborhood did a great parade and breakfast!  The parade went down the street to the church and was led by a firetruck.  Ben thought it was a race so he cruised out ahead of us to beat all those slow parade goers.  Breakfast was great and the kids even got a turn to spray the water from the fire truck's hoses.  After breakfast we decided we might as well use our pass of all passes and headed to 7 peaks.  We thought it would be busy but it was mostly empty.  We had so much fun and got to go down all the slides we wanted.  Ben's big goal of the summer was to go down the shotgun falls, which is a slide with an 8 foot drop at the end into a pool.  He had to learn how to swim across the pool on his own before he could do that.  I had Hailey and Ben in swim lessons and we had gone to 7 peaks before this.  We told Ben if he could swim across the swim pool on his own he could go down shotgun falls the next time we went to 7 peaks.  We never imagined he would actually be able to do it any time soon.  Sure enough, the next swim lesson he swam across the pool on his own.  So, he got what he wanted and we went down shotgun falls multiple times.  He did so amazing swimming on his own!  I was surprised how many rides Hailey and Eliza could go on.  Mike took Hailey and I took Eliza on my lap and we went down almost every tube ride.  I thought it would scare Eliza, but my little crazy thing loved every second of it!  We ended up going to 7 peaks about 6 times during the course of the summer

June Randomness

Oh how I love summer.  We bought this awesome $5 pool, and it was a big hit.  The kids would put the slide in it and slide down, and have fun in the backyard.  In this picture we were playing in the backyard and Mike returned from one of his crazy scout hike-in overnighters.  Mike is a great scoutmaster and his boys love all the great stuff he does with them.  Ben is hoping Mike is still the leader when he turns 12, but I'm not sure Mike feels the same way!

Eliza is a silly kid and loves blow-drying her hair.  Whenever I blow dry my hair, she always need a turn too.  Future Cosmetologist maybe?

I signed the kids up for swimming lessons at the Daybreak pool.  I signed up for group lessons, but Ben and Hailey were the only ones in their group.  I was amazed at how well they did with their lessons.  We took one or two a week.  By the end Ben was swimming on his own, and Hailey was doing amazing.  She can swim underwater holding her breath for a few feet by herself.  She is really good at floating on her back.  She got better and better at trying to use her arms, but can propel herself with her feet like no other.  Ben worked really hard at trying to blow bubble through his nose and mouth while swimming.  The instructor started with him swimming a few feet and by the end of the lessons he was swimming across the pool.  They are both learning how to go under the water without plugging their nose, which I still do, so I'm glad they won't be following my example.  Eliza just had a great time hanging out in the shallow end while the kids did their lessons.

On June 27th we took in Hailey for her 4 year old visit.  She was in the 80^th percentile in height which was up from 45% from the prior year.  Weight was the same at 45%.  I think the funniest Dr. visit ever was Hailey's 18 month visti.  Our Dr. was asking me if Hailey was talking at all.  I said, wow, you have no idea she never stops talking.  Just then Hailey grabbed the Dr.'s stethescope, and says "can I see your stethescope?"  Our Dr. started laughing so hard and said well she definetly doesn't have any problem talking!