Little Stinker Pants.

What's a 3 year old to do when he wakes before everyone else?  Play with mom and dad's camera of course!  I erased about 100 random pictures of our house, but had to keep these self portraits, they were just a little bit hilarious.  

He knows how to use our camera a little too well.  When he got in trouble for it, his excuse was that he couldn't find his toy camera.  

Life is Good

Isaac is finally completely potty trained!  It's been such a long hard journey, but I think that wild ride is finally over.  Almost exactly a year ago, he was potty trained as far as urinating goes.... but that is when the issues with number 2 started as well.  He wasn't ready yet, and we paid dearly for trying to be the ones in control and pushing it too hard.  Lesson learned.  Hopefully Luke's potty training will be a much simpler matter.  Isaac is so proud of himself, and truly feels like a big boy now  :)  I am so grateful that trial is over.

For every day that he had clean underpants at the end of the day, he got a sticker.  7 stickers= a lunchables pizza and a donut.  He earned it, no problem.  They were even consecutive days  :)

Enjoying his well earned reward.  He was so excited to put that last sticker on!


Not only is Isaac potty trained, but we bought a van!  I finally have transportation while Brad is at school all day.    This is actually the first time in our married lives that we own 2 vehicles!  I've been scouring Craigslist for a long time, and we finally found "the one".  My qualifications were for it to be dirt cheap, and low miles.  Hopefully equalling dependability.  We ended up getting this van for $1600, and it only has 84,000 miles on it.  Mission accomplished.  Sure, it may be 18 years old... if it can last us a couple years without any major problems, we will then say it was worth it.  Bad news is, is a mere 2 days after buying it, the battery on it died.  For good.  So we have already had to buy a new battery for it.  Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come.  But anyways, here are the pictures you all have been wanting to see.

Here I am modeling it in my lovely gym attire. 

Front view, door open.  Yes, it does have an ugly stain on the hood.  Looks like someone dumped paint thinner on it at some point or something.

Inside.  The headliner is all torn up, and well, ugly.  It's fixable, but we probably won't pour the money into it.   Over all the interior's not bad for being 18 years old.


So there you have it.  Definitely not a beauty queen of a vehicle, but it'll serve it's purpose.  :)  It's been a good week.  Except Brad also officially started his summer classes this week as well.   He started full blown clinic working, and it's not been easy.  Long hours and learning new things- poor guy has really been working hard.  I won't see him nearly as much as I did the first half of the summer.  We got spoiled with having him home so much, but I guess this will slowly get us used to a crazy fall semester in a couple months.  And at least I have a van now!  :)

June in Utah

Here's a few pictures that shows a few highlights of our trip to Utah:

Amy's sister Jessica is graduated from High School!  We're so happy for her and glad we were able to celebrate a little.  Good luck in all your future goals Jess! You'll do great.

One of the main reasons we came to Utah was to see this little one. It's our new and first ever niece Ada.  Quynn and Chelsea are working their butts off taking care of this precious baby. She's so cute and so tini tiny.

Somewhere out there there's a picture of Luke and Rach's Bella. So I thought I'd take another similar one of Luke and Stephani'es Belle.  I can't find the Fat Cat Bella pic anywhere though...

Here's the first ever picture of cousins! Ada on left, then Isaac, and Luke on the right!

Went to the mountains and ate breakfast and then went on a hike. This is up Millcreek canyon near the Terraces.

Luke is now 1 year old and we celebrated with a real fun birthday party. Amy made Luke some cake and he definitely approved of it.  He ate Every drop of frosting on that thing!

Here's my artsy fartsy photo of Luke enjoying his cake

Here's most of the younger generation that showed up at Luke's party. Friends and siblings.

We stopped by the new mall in downtown SLC.  It was pretty fun. However this family portrait won't be framed and hung on our wall anytime soon ha ha

Isaac feeling daring decided to stare death in the face... err stare wetness in the face as he braved the new fountains at the City Creek Center... mall thingy.

Overall, the trip was fun.  We got to go up into the mountains, We got to eat at Cafe Rio, Betos and Chuck a Rama, the three necessities.  We got to have lunch with the Friday lunch folks.  We got to see all the Utahn Grandmothers and Grandfathers, although we didn't go to their homes this time we're just so happy they were able to come out and see us.  We got to celebrate Luke's birthday, and see him learn to walk.  We got to see some good friends and Isaac got to ride in a Semi Truck.  We got to watch the Avengers  and celebrate Bagi's birthday.  I got to drive Curtis's brand new car and Amy got to color her hair.  We got to sleep in and miss our flight and we got an extra day to wait for the next available flight.  We got to celebrate Jessica's graduation and see what she's like now that she's living in the real world (she sleeps in, and stays up late and relaxes all day long).  We got to see the new City Center and wander around Downtown SLC where we used to live. We got to shop around in Park City and go house shopping in Heber city.  I got to receive and education about Utah Optometry and visited with 4 optometrists for about an hour each.  I feel very much more educated regarding the decision to move back to Utah and I once again question the possibility.

We did all that and MORE.  How exhausting.  But hey, it's all possible when you don't have a wedding to go or a major holiday to attend to.  It was busy busy but it was fun.  I think overall it was most fun to share Luke with those in Utah. He's growing so much. He really has a special personality that is coming out that just can't be shown over a blog.  Although Luke won't have any memory of Utah, we really hope you people now have a better memory of him.  We love all you Utahns and we're happy to be home with all you Houstonians.