"I Two"

At the start of April (has it really been that long already?) Austin turned 2.  The night before his birthday Cal and I put up some decorations.  I made some cheap felt garlands, we blew up and hung up balloons, and we hung tons of paper airplanes we made out of an old atlas we had.  Austin wanted an airplane birthday.

I think it is so fun to decorate for their birthdays.  Something special just for them.  Austin was so excited about the airplanes.  He told everyone, "My airplanes!  Mommy made for me!"

Austin made lion soup, of course, while I made him his favorite breakfast:  whole wheat apple blueberry pancakes.

Snuggles, too.

And, maybe some airplane swatting...

He was a little shocked when one fell down.

But that didn't deter them from more swatting.  And laughing.

I took the boys to the zoo that morning and the weather was perfect and we had a wonderful time.  There was an old grizzly where the polar bears usually are (apparently she is in there during the day sometimes).  She came right up to the window and was nose to nose with the boys.  They thought it was so cool.

An attempted picture of me with the boys when we had our picnic there.

That evening Zach had swim lessons and we didn't have much time for birthday celebrations.  So we planned a little party for the next night and had ice cream and presents as a family.

The loot.

Austin LOVES ice cream.

He wasn't sure how to blow out the candles and made some funny faces.

He got lots of fun new things and had fun opening presents.

We worked on the cake later that night, but our cake making was disastrous this time.  It took 3 tries to get one to work.  The cake itself was fine, but the frosting failed miserably.  I had this grand scheme of having blue frosting and paper airplanes suspended over it and marshmallows for clouds...  I ended up resorting to my usual chocolate frosting recipe which worked like a charm and went for a "cloud" of 2.  Who knows what the problem with the first 2 was...

We had some friends and family over the next night for pizza and lots of food.  It was low key and so fun.  I was a little worried Austin would be overwhelmed by the crowd (as he often is), but he loved it and seemed to have lots of fun.  He was thrilled to be sung to by so many people.

More funny faces!  He would really scrunch his eyebrows.

Immediately when the flame was out, the candles were popped into his mouth to lick off the frosting.

He now tells everyone, "I two!  I two years old!"

Adorable.

We are grateful to have our sweet funny Austin in our family! 

Girls Weekend

I had a fabulous girls weekend with 4 dear friends from BYU at the end of March. We became friends our freshman year, so we have been friends for 12 years now!  We met up in Salt Lake City and stayed at Katie's house.  We had a wonderful time talking for hours on end.  I love that we can always pick up right where we left off.  One morning we went on a little hike in the foothills of Layton.  The weather was perfect and we had a great time.  We also got a couple of runs in, went to a movie, and ate lots of delicious food.

Megan, Alycia, me, Katie, Cynthia

Me and Cyn, my freshman roommate.

Me and Alycia

A little silliness, of course.

We went shopping at Salt Lake's new City Creek Center, right next to the temple.  It was only a week after it opened, and it was conference weekend, so it was crazy crowded, but we had fun. 

My shopping stamina is not what it used to be...

It was Katie's birthday, so we had a big party for her.  Here is her "cake" of waffles, ice cream, and hot fudge, an old tradition.

I am so grateful for such amazing friends, and grateful that we keep in touch and even get together.  Love you girls!

Soccer

Zach is in his first real season of soccer this spring.  He has has 2 games so far and it is so so fun!  He LOVES it and is sad when it's over.  I love it to, it's really fun to watch.  Our friend Hailey is the coach and she asked me to help out so I am the team mom.  Too funny.  Hailey was out of town the first week, so Cal got to coach.  He did a great job and the kids had a lot of fun.

Austin does surprisingly well on the sidelines.  He loves to sit in his chair and eat snacks.  If I yell to Zach, he does too.  He likes to watch and he is actually quite good at kicking the ball too.

The herd effect.

Zach scored one of the few goals of the game.  This was his celebration.

Zach was perhaps the only player to get the concept of defense.  He loves to play defense and goalie (there isn't actually a player who plays goalie at this age, so it is usually open).  He stopped 4-5 goals that first game!  Go Zach!  In the second game he would actually chase down players to get the ball and turn it back around.  I was impressed.

Capri Sun and orange slices after the game, of course.

Here are a couple of great pictures my dad got from the second game.

I see a lot of soccer in our future, and I love it.

The Blahs

A good part of March was spent being sick.  The boys were both quite sick and had ear infections, then I got it and was totally wiped out for awhile.  I literally had all common sickness symptoms.  Then Cal got it.  It was rough.  So we did a lot of this:

Thankfully summer is on its way and that typically means good health!

More Steamboat

We took one day off of skiing and tried snowshoeing with the boys.  I found Zach some great Tubbs snowshoes on clearance at REI and we were excited to try them out.  We went to a park area in Steamboat where there are supposedly tons of great trails to cross country ski and snowshoe.  We only made it maybe 1/4 - 1/2 mile up the trail, (we could actually see the car still), so it wasn't as scenic and wild as I'd hoped, but it was still pretty and fun. 

The boys found a park by where we parked.  I'm not sure how Zach climbed up the play structure with his snowshoes on, but he did.

Austin rode the sled and walked a bit.  The trail was wide and groomed and could have easily been walked without snowshoes. Oh well. 

Happy!

"I'm tired!"  (Really?  Already?)

Rolling around and eating snow...

Austin sledded down a pretty big hill.  At the bottom he turned and almost went off of a 5-10 ft. drop off (into more fluffy snow), but Zach caught him.  Way to go Zach!

Just playing.

The snow was really deep and soft here and the boys got to make "craters."  Too fun!

Zach decided he would rather push Austin on the sled than ride it.  

Austin loved the entry area in the townhouse for some reason.  Maybe it was the heated floors?  He kept taking his blankets and books and snacks there and hanging out.  Silly boy.

An angry bird obsession on Nana's phone.

Shoveling in front of the townhome we stayed in.

Packing up to head home.

What a fun wintery week!