Team Briggy and Sarah Jane

Matt just completed week 2 out of 16 weeks of school. We are so happy it is his last semester of school. We have been spending most of our time at home, saving what's left after paying tuition. Brigham and Sarah Jane have been playing a lot together lately, nicely for the most part. It makes me laugh when Brigham jams all the magnetic alphabet letters together on the fridge and tells me it says "No babies allowed", referring to Sarah Jane.
They both showed their ability to work as a team when Brigham snuck a chocolate pie out of the fridge and gave himself a slice and put the rest of the pie at the edge of the table so Sarah could reach it. She was so excited to eat the pie with her fingers! I'll post Sarah's pie picture, but since Briggy's in his underpants, I'll withhold his pie picture and stash it in my blackmail pile for later... He had the most guilty look on his face too!

Sarah's pie picture: dirty face, big smile!

Briggy giving Sarah his version of a big hug!

Wasn't expecting this when I went to check on them in the living room.

So cute!

I know this picture is off topic.. but this is Matt's first attempt at pizza dough and I'm so proud of him! It was so delicious! Big thanks to his parents for sharing their recipe and wisdom of pizza dough with us!

Christmas and our 5 year Anniversary

I have gotten behind on our blog so I have lots of pictures to share now:


It's our tradition to have our family Christmas picture taken by a fireplace. This is our first year borrowing someone else's fireplace for the picture.

Here's Brigham showing his Christmas spirit!

Our annual visit to the Ogden Christmas village.

Briggy's favorite house in the village had a train that went around a track when you pushed a button.

Sarah Jane and Briggy at Pa and Nannie's house for Christmas.

Brigham woke up first on Christmas morning, went through everyone's stockings and played with his new dragon castle before he woke us up. Here's Briggy in front of the dragon castle he's been telling everyone that Santa is bringing him.



We love that Brigham is really nice when it comes to sharing.

Matt and I left the kids with Pa and Nannie to celebrate our fifth anniversary up in Logan. We had so much fun! We had a date, stayed at the Anniversary Inn, went to the Pepperidge Farm cookie factory outlet and left with loads of delicious bags of defective cookies and french bread. We also went to the Logan temple for our first time. We loved every second of our exciting romantic getaway!
We are amazed by how much our lives have changed in just 5 years!

Being One is so Fun!

We celebrated Sarah's first birthday a couple weeks ago! It was a little sad for me because she is growing up from being my helpless little baby and into a curious little explorer. She loves things that dispenses stuff one at a time. Kleenex, baby wipes and sandwich bags are some things I have to remember to keep out of her reach. She has earned the nickname "little raccoon" for her obsession with garbage can diving lately. You could imagine all the gross things that have been pulled out of our garbage can and sometimes they go into the mouth.... yuck! We always have to keep that baby within our sight. Nothing is like asking Matt where did Sarah go and him saying "I thought you were watching her" and then I exclaim "I thought you were watching her" and then of course we find her getting into trouble somewhere in the house. For Sarah, being one is all about exploring in hopes that someone left the diaper wipes on the ground again, or there will be some delicious leftovers in the garbage can, or making the exciting discovery that when she presses all the buttons on the computer at once, she can get the computer to beep. I guess she gets to have more fun being one than mommy does!

Sarah and her birthday balloons.

All bundled up.

Playing outside in the snow for the first time! I love how huge that coat is on her, I bet we can get two winters out of that one!

Getting ready for Christmas time!

Baby see, baby do...

She's a good climber!

I don't have the counter space for that!

Wheeler Creek Hike

We took advantage of the nice weather today to take a hike up in Ogden Canyon. The leaves have changed to red and yellow so everything looked glorious! We were in the shadow of the canyon for most of the hike which made my toes feel chilly in my sandals. Brigham enjoyed looking over the edge of the steep embankment at the cold rushing stream below which kept me and Matt nervous and ready to spring into action for a lot of the hike. Whoever wasn't holding Sarah got to guard the edge of the path from Brigham who obviously had no fear of the cliff. Despite having to be on guard, it felt really good to get some fresh air with the kids. The air smelt so fresh you could smell the dirt! We really enjoyed the scenery and hearing the rushing stream below. Like most our hikes we take as a family, we left this hike unfinished, to be continued because our pace is snail like with Brigham who rather play in the dirt than walk. So if circumstances allow, hopefully we will get to enjoy another attempt at this hike before winter comes!

King of the rock.

Matt & Brig

The beautiful leaves and me while Brig searches for spiders under the rocks.

Pretty Sarah and the flowers Brigham picked for her. The scratch on her face came from Brigham the night before :(

Matt and Brigham by the stream. Brig yells SMILE when I tell him to instead of smiling...

All wiped out!

Punkinaze IV

We made our annual trip to the Punkinaze! I can't believe last year I was still pregnant with Sarah Jane when we went there! Brigham loved the hay slides, he ran the whole time to make sure he got lots of turns down it. Sarah was indifferent to the whole hay slide experience; we couldn't tell if she loved it or hated it. I know we all had lots of fun getting lost together in the corn maze and we celebrated with pumpkin ice cream when we made it out- and we didn't even cheat this year too!

Matt & Brigham: Where are we?

Brigham makes a handsome little ghost!

Sarah with two fists full of corn.

Matt and Sarah having a slide.

Me and Sarah.

Brigham at the top.

Brigham enjoying the ride down.

There's always a smile at the end!

N. Ogden Fire Open House

October is National Fire Prevention month, so a lot of fire departments are having activities open to the public. North Ogden seemed to have the most exciting activities tonight, so that's where we decided to go. Like every little kid Brigham was so excited to see the fire engines. Brigham was able to walk inside a fire engine, spray a fire hose, and ride in a fire engine and an ambulance where they turned on the lights and the noise. Those firefighters have a neat job, and we all had lots of fun!

What a long day!

Today we decided to go to the Utah State Fair in Salt Lake City to have some fun. We took the UTA Frontrunner down there, which I thought Brigham would appreciate and we would get to avoid expensive parking. Brigham was thrilled with riding on the train as expected, but some things went not quite as planned, particularly on the way back from the fair with the 8 block walk to the train stop back felt more like 20 blocks and we had to carry 40 pounds of an exhausted 3 yr-old under a scorching sun. By the time we made it to the train station we had a 50 min. wait until the train left and I splurged on the best $3 bottled water of my life!

We did have an unexpected good surprise when we had to pass by Leatherbys on our walk to the fair. Leatherbys has really creamy, rich, bad-for-you, enormous sundaes. It was an easy lunchtime decision.
When we made it to the fair there was a lot for us to see and do and it used up Brigham's energy surprisingly fast. And that was when our miserable journey back began. At least Leatherbys made the trip worth it to me!