My Little Evan

I can't believe Evan will be a year old in about a month!!! Time has gone by so fast. Here are just some things about Evan;

• He has 4 teeth. Two on top and two on bottom.
• He LOVES to yell. His favorite place to yell is when he's sitting/standing on his brother's chair.
• He is pulling himself up against furniture.
• He loves to put anything and everything in his mouth! 
• He loves to watch his brother. Logan makes him laugh all the time!
• He is the smiliest kid you will ever meet! All you have to do is say "hi" to him and he gives you a big toothy grin!
• He loves chasing (crawling) after the cat and has scratches to prove it!

Fun and not so fun weekend....

Friday, Logan, Evan and I met my sister and my nephew at the zoo. We had lots of fun together! Logan had a blast with his cousin. He loves to see all the animals. He's been asking if we can go to the zoo since then. Hee hee! I love having a zoo membership. I can just pick up and go whenever I want! :) 

Saturday, I was sick. I had a fever and was in bed all day! Sunday was a lot better, but for some reason, today it's coming back with a vengeance! Adam took such good care of me and the boys this weekend. I hope I'm going to be better by Wednesday! I'm going with Adam's little sister to see Big Time Rush's concert at USANA. I'm excited!!! :) This will be my second EVER concert. My first was a year ago tomorrow with Katy Perry. I'm so excited!!! Nothing else eventful went on this weekend. We don't really have any plans for the 24th, so I don't know what this week will bring. I may just be in bed relaxing all week long. (Or at least today and tomorrow).

My Inner Nerdiness!!!

This is my newest addiction.... It's a game called Magic The Gathering. It is a really really fun card game. Adam got me into it. It's something we like to do together. It takes a bit to understand it, but once you do, you're addicted!!! Adam's little brother is addicted to this game too. He's the one who taught Adam how to play. I am a nerd all the way! I play WOW, Nintendo, Playstation, computer games, etc. My name is Julie, I am a nerd and I am proud of it! Hee hee! :)

Army Family Day

Evan's favorite spot in the house!

 This weekend, the Army had a family day at Fort Douglas. We braved it and took BOTH boys! Adam had to be there either way for drill, the three of us just tagged along. We decided to not put a pull-up on Logan and just leave him in underwear. That was a little scary! We had never gone anywhere but the store in his underwear. We took a change of pants and underwear for him just in case. I was completely expecting him to have an accident especially because his cousins were there (Adam's brother is in the Army as well). Well, Logan didn't have any accidents at all!!!! I am SO proud of him! He is getting so big! Adam and I are ready to say that Logan is potty trained. There are still some issues we have to work out, like he doesn't tell us when he poops and he puts his underwear back on without wiping. Other than that, I think we are in a good spot! I'm one proud mommy!
Adam had to be at Fort Douglas at 9:45 am for formation and then the family day would officially start at 11:30. Instead of taking two cars, we all just went together and hung out until it started. It was really fun! They had hamburgers and hot dogs for everybody as well as chips, watermelon, drinks, etc. There was also a little tent that had cotton candy, popcorn and snow cones.

Army Family Day

 

Evan eating some puffs

After we ate, we took the kids over to the bounce houses they had set up. There was a regular bounce house, a slide and an obstacle course. Logan and his cousins had a blast running around together. After running around for a little bit, a fire truck showed up. The kids got to go see it and even sit in it. Logan thought that was really cool! He loves seeing firetrucks when they pass by.
Evan was a little cranky after a few hours there. He was so tired! I finally got him to fall asleep for a bit. It took a while. He was so tired, but he didn't want to close his eyes because there was too much going on. He didn't want to miss anything.

Waiting in line for food with Ariel, Darrel and Bella.

 Once it was time for Adam to go get in final formation, it started raining! The boys and I booked it to the car. We had some cotton candy with us and, well... we'll just say it didn't look like cotton after long! Logan still had fun eating it though! We were pretty wet when we finally got to the car. It was a little time consuming on my part because I had to put both boys in their carseats and pack up the stroller and put it in the trunk. I was more wet than the boys after that! We sat in the car and waited for Adam to be done with formation. Adam was finally able to leave and we all went home! Evan had a good nap on the car ride.

 When we got home, we laid Evan down for a nap and just relaxed. Once Evan woke up, we all headed to Target to get some formula. We had a fun walk around Target, looking at the things that we wanted but couldn't have. LOL! Story of our lives! :) We got sick of walking around the store and went to check out. I found a punch card for Sub Zero Ice Cream in my wallet that had all the punches! FREE ICE CREAM!!!! We jumped on that! Logan and I went inside to get it while Adam and Evan waited in the car. Logan loves to watch them make the ice cream.

Cotton Candy Face!

Cotton Candy Face!

 Overall, it was a great weekend! I had so much fun with my family! I love them all so much. My boys are my world! I love being able to have fun with them wherever we go. Logan is just getting so smart and he amazes me with the things he says. Evan is getting so big and I can't believe he will be a year old and a month and a half! Where does the time go?

Our Scare

Yesterday, at 9:23 am, I get a phone call from Adam. The scariest thing he could've said, he said it. He said, "Logan is missing. I can't find him." WHAT?! I was scared half to death... Adam woke up to hearing Shadow panting. He got up and Logan's bedroom was empty. He goes down the stairs and the front door is open. Logan and the dogs had gotten out. Adam went on a frantic search for him and he called to tell me. I ran out of work so fast and I sped home! The first thing that came to my mind was that poor little 6 year old girl who was kidnapped, raped and murdered. I kept thinking, I can't lose him! I can't lose him! On my way home, I called a few neighbors to ask if they could go out and help Adam look for him. I am forever grateful for those neighbors who dropped everything to search. Adam found Logan walking down the street hand in hand with a man. Logan had crossed the street and wandered into this guy's backyard. The man asked Logan where he lived and Logan pointed towards Winco. So the guy walks with him toward Winco and when Logan wasn't helping any, he turned around with him and walked back the other way trying to find out where he lived. Adam then spotted them and ran over to get him. I am so thankful that some creep didn't find him. I have never been more scared in my life. I hope to never experience that EVER again! My adrenaline was going so fast I was too tired to go back to work and too scared to leave Logan. I don't know what I would do without that sweet boy. He is my life!

Food Storage/Pantry

No, this is not mine. I wish it were!

Last night, I cleaned out our pantry and went through our food storage to get rid of any old and expired things. I threw a TON away... :( It was a little depressing to see things go to waste. But now I have a nice clean, organized pantry and my food storage in the basement is a lot easier to view and see what I have. It's going to be nice because now I can plan meals according to what I have on hand and it'll make shopping a lot easier. All I have to do is go look in the food storage and see if there is anything down there that I need for a meal.

Smash Journal

 For my birthday this year, my mom gave me what is called a "Smash Journal". You can buy these in the store and it will have lots of different pages with all sorts of designs. Well, instead of buying me one, my mom MADE me one. She put this whole book together herself. Yes, even the binding. My mom is just clever like that! :) You can put whatever you want in a Smash Journal. You can put down ideas, tickets, pictures, receipts, trinkets, etc.
 I love this book! I carry it with me wherever I go in my purse. I have double stick tape in my purse as well as a pen/glue stick and a pad of decorative paper. I'm ready to "Smash" any time, anywhere! It's a great way to remember memories. For example, we took Logan to the dinosaur museum and he wanted to do the penny smasher. So we let him. We did a photo booth there as well. So, I put our receipt for that day, the pictures and the smashed penny in the book. Now I'll remember what day we went and what we did.  I have TONS of pages left in the book to fill. I'm excited to fill them all and have my mom make me another book!

Smith's Receipt and Dinosaur Museum

Disneyland Trip

Art Work

Art Work

Money, money, money. Must be funny, in a rich man's world!

Alright, I have gotten back into couponing. We need to cut costs somewhere so I started it up again. Last week, I had a savings of 49% with my coupons. I went to the store last night with coupons and Logan in hand and ended up with a savings of 67%. Wow! Talk about awesome!!! The best part is, we all eat the things that I got. I'm not buying useless items just because I had a coupon for it. I am getting things like cereal, hot pockets, gatorade, poptarts, milk (yes I have .75c off a gallon of milk coupons), fruit snacks, etc. It's fun tracking down the sales and the coupons for it. I use www.grocerysmarts.com for the hunting of a good deal. If you want to check it out, the passport number for Utah is: g84ckv. I'm not buying the Sunday newspapers like it tells you to and I'm still saving a bit of money. There are a lot of good coupons you can print from online. Hopefully my savings just get bigger and better every time I go!

4th of July

Danny, Courtney and Harper

 Unfortunately, Adam had to work on July 4th. He at least got off work at 2:30 (his normal time) so we still had some time with him. In the morning, I spent time doing laundry and cleaning. Nothing too eventful! Once Adam got home, I started getting things ready to go to my Grandma's house. It was a bring your own meat and a plate to share type thing. The day before, I had put some chicken in some marinade so it would be nice and juicy when we barbecued it. It turned out sooo good!

Mom and Ken

 My Grandpa usually was the one to work the grill. My grandpa has been gone now for two years. It was hard to not see him at the grill. :( I miss my grandpa very much! My dad did very well in his place as grill master.

Hammond Family

 We all had a good time seeing each other and catching up. My cousin's son, Max and his wife Courtney made it down from Las Vegas. It was fun to see that little guy! Courtney and I were in the SAME hospital on the SAME day having our babies. Max was born in the late hours of August 31st and Evan was born a few hours later in the early hours of September 1st. Two babies born hours apart with different birthdays! It was fun being in the same hospital with them. We never saw each other, but family that came to see them also came to see me.

Courtney, Max, Katheryn, Amy, Mason and Eric

 Logan had so much fun with his cousins running around in the backyard. I have so many memories of that backyard playing with MY cousins. I'm glad Logan can enjoy this house that I have so many memories in. I hope we can have many more memories in it.

Evan and Adam

 Evan had fun rolling on the grass and trying to get to people's food. He had a lot of fun playing with his cousin, Mason. Mason knows how to make him smile! I'm glad he loves my boys!

Evan

It was also my niece, Emma's, birthday. She turned two!!! What a big girl! I love her so much. She is such a diva and it totally fits her! She is definitely all girl. Happy birthday Emma! We love you!
After eating dinner, we sat around and played a fun version of baseball. It was a dart board type game. We just put it on the ground in the middle of all of us and we would take turns throwing mini bean bags at the targets. Then there was a watermelon seed spitting contest. Adam and I left before that game got in full swing.
After we left, we went to Adam's parent's house to pick up his sister (she lives with us and watches our kids while we are at work). Adam's older brother and his family were there, so we let Logan get out and play with his cousins for a little bit before we headed home.
By the time we got home, it was after 9 pm. It was a fun day and I'm glad I got to spend it with our families!

Weekend Fun

 This weekend was a little busy! Friday, Evan had his 9 month check-up (a month late). No shots this time. Whew! Next time he won't be so lucky... He is growing at a steady rate and is built very different from his brother! Evan is closer to "average" than Logan has ever been. We discovered that Evan had hand/foot disease. I had never even heard of that before! Apparently it makes your throat pretty sore. Sure enough, when she looked he had a red throat. That explains the constant crankiness from the past week. He was starting to get over it at that time. Hopefully he'll make a full recovery soon. 

Saturday Adam had drill that day. He was gone from 5 am to about 5 pm. When Adam got home, we got ready to go to a barbecue. Adam's work buddy, Rhandie, invited all his fellow co-workers to his house. Rhandie makes the most delicious barbecue chicken you've ever tasted! I was excited to go for that mouth watering chicken. Logan had fun playing with his daughter and the daughter of another co-worker's. He even told me when he needed to go potty. I'm so proud of that kid! The dessert I made for the barbecue was a hit! I made some yummy cookie balls (oreo and strawberry). I had made the strawberry cookie balls for Adam to bring to work on a previous week and everyone raved about them. I figured I'd make some more. :)

 Sunday, Adam had to be up bright and early and be at Liberty Park at 5 am for drill. He had to do some PT tests (running 2 miles, situp's and pushup's). He was exhausted by the time he came home (which was around 1). I let him take a nap since he was up before the sun! Once Adam woke up, it was time for me to make a fruit salad for our monthly Sunday dinner at my parent's house. Dinner was yummy! We rotate being in charge of dinner for the month. This month it was Steven and Katheryn's turn. They chose to do chicken taco salad in tortilla shell bowls. It was SO good.
When we got home, Adam and I put the boys to bed and sat down to play some Magic the Gathering (a card game). We played two rounds and Adam kicked my butt both times. Which doesn't happen often! ;) Hee hee! Then it was off to bed. Or so I thought.... Outside of our house were people doing fireworks. It started at about 10pm so I figured I'd give them a little while and they'd be done... Nope!!! It was 11 pm and they were STILL doing fireworks! This was the first time ever that I've called the cops on people. People had to wake up early for work! I mean, come on! Eleven o'clock on a work night?! Who does that?! After about 10 minutes from hanging up with dispatch, the fireworks stopped and I was able to go to sleep.