Birthday Weekend

Logan turned 2 this weekend and we had a house full of company to help him celebrate. Scott's parents, grandparents and his sister's family drove over from Utah/Idaho and spent a few days here. It was a good motivator to get our house in order, never mind the fact that we have lived here for 5 months already. I convinced Scott to let me buy a new couch and loveseat a few days before they arrived. I'm thinking next time we have company we are going to have to invest in a new dining room set :)

We drove up towards White Pass on Saturday, about 45 mins away. It was gorgeous but freezing!

Jaden asked me to take his picture while sitting on this rock. He's so cute.

Of course Logan wanted one of him too.

After church Logan was able to sneak in a cupcake before the actual part started. This is the face he makes now when I tell him to smile.

The crew: Mitchell, Logan, Jackson, and Jaden

Logan had a cookie monster themed party since he is our little cookie monster. Logan loves sweets and it constantly stealing everyone else's food. I attempted to make a cooking monster pinata. It didn't turn out exactly like how I had envisioned it in my head, but good enough to have a bat taken to it.

Checking out their loot.

Opening gifts.

The boys loved their new cousin Grant. Jaden starting bawling when they left saying he missed Grant and wanted him to come back.

Four generations of Holt's.

Seattle

We headed over to Seattle earlier in the month to catch a University of Washington football game. Lucky for us Scott still has connections so we were able to get tickets to watch the game in the suites. It was great to be able to watch the game with Scott, before he was always taking off to go down to the field or to schmooze a donor.

Before the game we took the boys to a playground by where we used to live. Jaden and I used to walk here everyday when we first moved to Seattle.

We took a bus over to avoid the parking traffic. The boys loved it!

Jaden has officially overcome his fear of mascots, Logan still has a ways to go.

Enjoying the pre-game meal. It's going to be a sad day when we have to start buying our own tickets.

Logan crashed around halftime

It was 85 in Seattle that day so after the game we took the boys to the beach before we headed home. They were pretty disappointed we didn't bring any sand toys, but that didn't stop them from having a blast.

My babies grew up

It has been an eventful couple of weeks. Jaden started preschool this week and Logan recently moved out of his crib into a regular bed. Logan was my perfect sleeper, easiest child in the world to put down and would stay happy in his bed until I got around to getting him up...then he learned how to climb out of his crib. Once he learned that he discovered his Independence and our sleep routine got flipped around. I figured it wasn't very safe to have him jumping out of the crib all the time so he got to move over to the bottom bunk. He loves his big boy bed (he actually calls it his big boy crib). I have to say it was pretty cute the first time or two I saw the two boys holding hands and sneaking out of their room together. It has been a couple of weeks now and for the most part Logan stays in his bed when we leave the room and no longer shows up in our room at 3 am.

This is after Logan snuck out of bed one night, he was so happy to be up that we let him hang out with us for awhile.

Logan didn't want to to down for a nap one day meanwhile I drifted off on his bed waiting for him to join me. When I woke up (it was only about 5 mins) I came out to find Logan fast asleep on the fireplace.

Logan's first night in the big bed I heard him moaning in the middle of the night. When I went to check on him I couldn't find him anywhere. Poor kid had fell off the bed and rolled completely under it. So now we lay this big bear on the floor next to the bed to soften the fall.


We kicked off football season last weekend and I awoke to find that Scott had pulled his old BYU poster out of storage and hung it in our entry way. I told him it was fine for game day but then it had to come down...a week later it is still hanging up.

Cheering on the Cougars...they loved the easy access to chips, cookies and licorice.

Yesterday was Jaden's first day of preschool, one the first day it was just an hour of free play with parents there. Tomorrow is his first full day and he is so excited!

Of course Logan had to get his own backpack too and wear it to school just like his big brother.

Logan loved it too and I am dreading having to pull him away tomorrow when we drop Jaden off.

And we're off...

This summer has seriously flown by. We realized we still had a long list of things we wanted to do so this weekend we combined two of the activities. We recruited Chad and Amy to come with us (and my parents for part of the trip) which made the weekend even more exciting. We left early Friday morning and headed to a children's amusement park near Seattle. We spent the day there and then drove to Ensign Ranch a church owned campsite where we got to sleep in teepees.

Earlier this summer we bought a suburban so we were able to cram in all 8 of us and our camping gear. It was a tight fit with some loud kids (Logan) but it was fun I think we all still liked each other afterwards so I count it as a success.

For the most part we didn't have to wait in any lines, but there was a small line to ride the horses. Don't they look adorable anxiously awaiting their turn?

If you know Jaden at all then you know that this is a huge thing for him to be on a horse. He is about as anti-animal as a kid can get, but he put on a brave face and really enjoyed his ride.

As for Logan he wasn't quite ready to ride the pony, but he did enjoy putting on the helmet. They had a super cute tiny pony named Loganberry which was the one he was suppose to ride, but he wouldn't even get near it for a picture.

Scott and Chad really wanted their pictures taken with this bus so we convinced the little boys to get into the shot with them. The things children do for their parents :)

The pint size ferris wheel

This horse ride was more Logan's style.

Look at all those dare-devils with their hands in the air!

I'm actually very surprised that neither of my boys ended up in the water.

The kids all wanted to ride with Grandma and Grandpa on the train ride around the park.

They had a hay maze and a hay jump that the boys really enjoyed. Unfortunately it made us adults have allergy attacks so they didn't get to stay too long.

This picture is from two years ago, but I didn't have a picture of this ride from this year. I do however have a pretty good story from this year and then you'll understand why I didn't stick around long enough to snap a picture. The little boys were riding the ferris wheel and we noticed that this barrel ride was empty so Scott, Chad, and I decided to go on it. We each got our own barrel and then a few other small kids jumped on too. Since we didn't have kids with us we were spinning around as fast as we could. After awhile I was getting pretty dizzy and I could sort of hear the lady running the ride saying something about having to put my hands on the wheel to slow down. I figured she must of thought I looked sick and wanted to stop, but I was having fun so I just kept spinning around. I kept hearing her say something but I wasn't really listening. I slowed down a little to figure out what was going on and it turns out the ride was over and everyone was waiting for me to stop so they could get off. Apparently she kept saying, "miss you need to stop, miss you need to put your hands on the wheel to slow down..." Scott and Chad thought it was hilarious but I sheepishly apologized to the lady and ran away as quickly as possible, which was hard because I was really dizzy!

After a full day playing at Remlinger Farms we headed over to Ensign Ranch. They have spots to set up tents, cabins to rent, but we decided it would be fun to rent one of their teepees. You can't drive a car to where they are located so they have handcarts for you to use to haul your gear. The kids thought they were pretty cool, but mostly they liked riding in them. I'm really grateful I wasn't a pioneer by-the-way!

The teepees turned out to be really big so our family of four had plenty of room.

This is the only picture I have of the inside of them.

Saturday we went for a canoe ride, it was a beautiful morning and gorgeous setting. Despite my fears the kids didn't tip us over which I was very thankful for. After lunch the kids enjoyed the giant slip-in-slide they had set up at the ranch, but we didn't end up with any pictures of that. We are definitely sad that summer is coming to an end, but are exciting about the start of football season. We are headed over to Seattle in a couple of weeks for a UW game and are still debating whether we'll make it down to a BYU game or not.