Seth's Kitchen

Seth, like most toddlers, loves to empty cupboard in our kitchen. He is especially fond of the pots and pans. Whenever I spend time in the kitchen baking or cooking dinner, Seth starts pulling out the pans. It is a huge mess, but I just let him do it because he is happier and I can get some stuff done. It bothers Randy a lot more-- he is in the kitchen picking up pots and pans every 10 minutes. But I think it is cute when he puts play food in, or puts the lid on, or stirs with his spoons--Seth is really trying to cook like mom.

See! He is SO happy!

We have a small kitchen that we brought upstairs in hopes of encouraging more playing at the toy kitchen, and less unloading the pan cupboard. It hasn't really helped--he just plays with both and makes twice the mess. But apparently Seth has been using his kitchen as a food storage area. A few nights ago I had given him a cookie to eat as we were cleaning up dinner. We had made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and he loved them. I saw him walking around eating his cookie while I loaded the dishwasher. A few minutes later I saw him without the cookie and just assumed he had eaten it up. I didn't think about it until the next morning when I saw Seth walk over to his kitchen, open the microwave, pull out a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, take a bite, and put it back in the microwave. I found it very amusing, and went over to check it out. Well, inside I found some goldfish, smarties, and the cookie.

I have to keep a close eye on him because Seth has put lots of things in his microwave, including a half eaten banana. I'm slightly proud of him for his ingenious use of his toy, and slightly annoyed that I have to check the toy microwave every night to make sure there isn't any rotting food stored inside.

I took a picture of the banana because
I want to remember how funny Seth is!

A Jello Slide!? Really?!

Randy pulled one of his fellow teachers down the slide.

About this time of year, Highland Elementary is celebrating their huge Hawk Walk (a walk-a-thon that raises money for the school). And every year, there is something crazy for the principal to do as a reward to the students for reaching their goal. I have seen him kiss a snake, wrestle a pig, spend a day on the roof of the school, get slimed, and much more. And sometimes, the teachers get involved in the crazy antics as well.

For those of you who read our blog frequently, you'll remember Randy sumo wrestling his principal one year, and getting dunked in the dunk tank. Well, this year was a jello slide. A slide on the grassy hill covered in jello, shaving cream, baby shampoo, and applesauce. It was quite the mess! There were about 10 teachers who went down the jello slide, and Randy was definitely one of them. So here you go: Life as a 4th grade teacher in action!

We love hanging out with our crazy dad!

The things we do for soccer

Last weekend, it snowed. I know it's only October, but in Utah that means snow can show up any time. So we woke up the first Saturday in October to a little bit of snow. I knew it would melt before the day got too far along, but unfortunately we had to head to a soccer game. This is what the game looked like...

We were all bundled up in our chairs. Seth thought it was amazing!

The snow is gone, but it was still COLD!

Dax took his coat off after the first quarter but kept his hat and gloves on.

Luckily, Mark's soccer game was at 1:00 and it had warmed up quite a bit. I even took my scarf and winter coat off about half way through his game. Let's hope we can avoid snow for the last two weeks of soccer.

Split Weekend

Las Vegas Temple--had to add it to the temple book!

A few weekends ago I went down to visit my sister in Las Vegas. My mom rode with the me and the three boys as we went to celebrate my niece's 1st birthday. The car ride was surprisingly great. Seth was a champ the entire time. On the way back home, he did get fussy every now and then, but for a 6 hour drive (twice), I couldn't have asked for better children.

Las Vegas was hot. Okay, it was only like 95 or something while we were there, but that seemed really hot to me since we had been wearing jeans and jackets here in Utah. We had fun with our family though. We spent most of the time just hanging out and the boys played. They miss their cousin Josh so much.

We love our cousins!

Audrey was a great party girl. She dove right into her cake and loved all her presents. Seth was the trouble maker getting into EVERYTHING. He does that at our house, but it was a lot harder at a different house. He really thought the WiiU was a huge cell phone and he kept picking it up. I spent most of the time chasing Seth around which isn't much different from home.

I'm glad that we were able to go because we won't be able to see them as often as when they lived across town in American Fork. We miss the Pooles.

The Birthday Girl!

The Destructo Boy!

Meanwhile, back in Utah, Randy decided to hike Mt. Timpanogos while we were out of town. It is definitely a hike we can't take our boys on right now, so he thought it was the perfect opportunity to head up the mountainside. So early Saturday morning (I'm talking 4:30 am), he headed up the canyon.

He had a wonderful time and took some amazing pictures. He almost froze to death from the wind up on the top, but I think he is still glad he hiked the mountain. I also think that Randy missed us. When we arrived home on Sunday, he seemed so happy to see us. It made us all feel very loved!

It was very early when Randy started this hike!

Randy saw about 30 mountain goats. We were very jealous.

He took some beautiful pictures...this was one of my favorites.

Proof that he really went on the hike!