We finally bought a piano!

About a month ago, I saw a piano listed on Cache Valley Classifieds that caught my eye. So I sent a text to the person selling it and kind of forgot about it, until someone called me back about it a few days later. So I talked Lars into going and looking at it that Sunday (it was only about a mile away)...and we had Ashton play it and we all liked it right away and decided to go ahead and buy it. The people had gotten it years ago for their own boys to learn on and they were getting ready to move and didn't have room to have it at their new place.

Anyway after we paid for it, we needed to find a way to get it moved to our house, and into our basement!

Let's just say we have super nice neighbors and one of them had access to piano moving equipment! So 3 of them plus Lars got it safely moved downstairs a few nights after we bought it.

Ashton and Gunnar are loving it and I'm so glad we got it. I think it's so pretty and it sounds really good too.

 And Ashton hasn't been fighting us on practicing at all! I'm sure that will come again...but for now I'm enjoying it :)

My latest cake/cupcake project...

My friend from church...Lorena, who I've done a few cakes for before asked me to do another cake this year for her son's 3rd birthday and she wanted a Despicable Me theme. Oh and she also needed 80 cupcakes! They were celebrating her friend's little boy's birthday the same day and they have big parties!

Anyway...here is what I made.

It was fun, but exhausting!

 I had always wanted to do this theme, but Ashton & Gunnar never went for it, so I was excited to do it :)



Recent photo shoots...

Some of my recent shoots...and I still

have 4 or 5 more I need to schedule before it gets too cold and ugly!

A couple of my friend's kids who were turning 8...

 I love this one with the blue flowers!!

 And her cute little brother when he was turning 1...

 And I did these for my neighbor a couple nights ago...

another perfect light night :)

First day of School!

 A couple weeks before school started, to be honest all I could think was..."When is school ever going to start??" I couldn't wait because Ashton and Gunnar were fighting like crazy and we just needed to get back to that schedule and they needed to be separated!!

But as it got closer, I got really sad. I guess because I knew in a matter of days, my baby would be gone to school ALL day this year. A big first grader. It just came too fast. He's growing up too fast. They both are. If I could have whatever I wanted in this world I would have the ability to rewind time and just stop it completely from moving at times. And of course I would have everyone get along and love each other and have nothing bad happen in the world too. :)

 

But since I can't have either of those things...I just have to accept reality. And the first day came and went. Gunnar off to first grade and Ashton off to 4th!!

Which really blows me away. How is he in 4th grade already?

They were both excited and are both doing really great so far.

Last minute we decided to put Gunnar in the dual immersion French language program, so he has half of his day taught in English by Mrs. Miller and the other half in French by Madame Abuou. So far so good even though I can tell he is more tired! And he did say at one point that "First grade seems like it's 12 hours long!" Hard to imagine these little 6 year olds that first week walking into the French class and ONLY being spoken to in French and being completely confused! But he's already picking it up some and doesn't seem very frustrated.

Ashton has Mrs. McNeil...and she seems great as well.

Proud of them both :) And I miss them during the day.

Oh and for some dumb reason I thought that life would slow down a little when they were in school, but if anything it has only gotten more busy! I guess a lot of that is PTA and just everyday life being a Mom...oh and doing a few more photo shoots these days too. Oh and soccer has started again and Ashton decided he wanted to play again after a year and a half off, so we'll be running to lots of games and practices too...

I guess being busy is good, mostly :)

Bear Lake weekend...

Well it's been almost a month ago now that we did our yearly weekend over at Bear Lake. We stayed at Ideal Beach like usual in the same room we always stay in. When we got there, the boys of course wanted to go swimming first thing so Lars took them and I watched :)

 Sometimes I wonder if they're really my kids... 

 Anyway, then after they were done, we went and checked out some tennis rackets and played for quite awhile. Ashton loved it! Well they both did, but Ashton really got into it and didn't want to leave...

 But it was getting late, so we got changed and went and got some dinner at Merlin's. It was super busy, so we ended up not eating till about 9:00.

Then we went back to the room and they watched part of a movie I think? I don't know... It's been too long ago now!

Then next morning we got up and they all had some breakfast in the room while I tried to go for a run. I made it about a mile and a half before my knee started killing me, so I walked the mile and a half back. So frustrated!!

Then I think they went swimming again, then later we got lunch at Firehouse...

 I thought it was actually way better than our Firehouse here...

Then we played mini golf...

Then Grandma came and met us for dinner at Café Sabor and then we all went to Pickleville to see "Who Shot Juanito Bandito?"

Kelli, Boo and the kids even met us there for that. We actually had gotten the tickets a couple months before so the kids (and Grandma) got to be on the front row.

 

The show was hilarious! We laughed the whole time...it was so much fun. Really the highlight of the weekend and one of the highlights of our summer!

Fun to have the boys on the front row..."Bandito" interacted with them and even gave them each a dollar bill that they had him sign for them after the show :)

I love this picture...

Afterwards we went back to the room and went to bed, then got up and got packed up to head home and were checked out by 10:00.

We had debated renting wave runners or something this time, but by the time we got around to thinking about it, there weren't any available. We didn't even go to the beach at all the whole weekend! Well except far enough to play on the park for a little bit.

 Oh how I love this boy...and this picture :)

Anyway no one seems to like  going down to the beach anymore besides me.

So I'm not sure if we'll continue this yearly tradition any more unless we just stay one night and rent something like that to entertain the boys!

Still a fun way to end our summer :)