While Lars was away...

Lars was gone for a few days the past 2 weeks. The first trip was his annual fishing trip with his friends in Idaho. He left early on Thursday and got home late Saturday night. They had a great time and caught lots of fish. I think I would have frozen my toes off if I would have gone. Not that I was invited ;)

But even he said his toes were frozen!

 Then last week he left on Wednesday afternoon and drove to Vegas with a couple friends to watch the Aggies play in the basketball tournament. Actually let's be honest...he went mostly to play poker!

And didn't get back till Sunday night.

He quickly realized that it might not be a good idea in the future to take two half weeks off in a row...a little stressful when you come back to work!

So while he was away it was the boys and me...

I really don't mind being home alone with them most of the time. We had fun!
The first Saturday after we slept in, we got up and had a late breakfast then decided to head over to the school playground and ended up staying for close to 3 hours. They found a few friends there and had lots of fun playing on the swings & slides, playing soccer and throwing the football around.
I love this picture I caught of Gunnar & his cute shadow :)

 He absolutely LOVES soccer!!
And this one of both of them.
How did they get this big??

Love them and their crazy clothes :)

On Sunday we went to church, then came home and I asked them if they wanted to do a Lego project I had found online.

Fun Lego candy dispensers :)

So we went downstairs and started digging through all of their Legos trying to find the specific pieces it required. Well we learned quickly that it is way easier to do a Lego project when all of the pieces are separated nicely into little bags for you! We never could find some of the pieces, but that kind of made it more fun to have to improvise and see that we could still make them work and then they each turned out different and unique. It took us close to two hours, and of course there were some fights between them, but it was so fun for me and in the end they loved their projects and couldn't stop talking about them and couldn't wait to show Lars when he got home.

I had gotten some little packs of mini m&m's for Easter, but I pulled them out early so they could put them in the dispensers and try them out.

They worked great! So fun :)

 Ashton's on the right...never did get a picture of him with it.

I so treasure times like this we these boys...most days they would rather play with friends, so I love when I get to spend time with them :)
Nice to have Lars home later that night though!


Breakfast with a Buddy...

 A couple weeks ago we had one of our big PTA events for the year, Breakfast with a Buddy. This year we combined it with a fun program called One Book, One School. The idea is that each family gets a copy of the same book...The one our principal chose was The World According to Humphrey...

And then everyone is invited to come to the school one morning to pick up the book and read the first chapter as a family as well as have some breakfast. Then each night they read another chapter at home and then there are trivia questions each day about that chapter for the kids in class.

It was on a Tuesday so I got Ashton up and to piano extra early...7 am! Then I went to the school to get the breakfast ready with a couple other girls while Lars got himself and Gunnar ready, then picked up Ashton and they all came to the school.

Anyway I was so busy cutting up fruit, then standing at the front doors directing parents etc...that I could never sneak away to sit and read the first chapter with the boys and Lars had to get to work. So they got something to eat then I just had to tell them to go find a quiet spot to sit and read to each other. And I crossed my fingers that they would do it nicely!

When I did have a little break I went searching for them and found them in a very back corner of the library sitting right next to each other reading and it about made me cry. :)

I was so proud of them and they said they took turns each reading a page to each other until they finished the first chapter.

Anyway it made my day and the whole event was a big success!

Signs that I made...

Oh and the local newspaper came and did an article on it...

One more thing I can cross off my list for this school year.

I love their school!!



Anniversary Weekend...

Aunt Kelli & Tianna came to watch the boys for us so we could go stay Saturday night in Salt Lake last weekend. They got here on Friday night and hung out with us then Lars and I got up and got ready and headed out about 10:00 Saturday morning. The boys were super excited to have them here for the weekend :)

And not very sad to say goodbye to us...

We stopped off at a couple stores on the way down and ate lunch at Zupas in Layton...so good!!

 Then we got to our place to check in a little after 2:00. We got online and started looking for a place to stay about a week before and I started looking at Bed and Breakfasts and found this one that got lots of good reviews, so we decided to stay there... 

 They only had one room left when we made our reservation and when we got there it wasn't quite ready yet, so they asked us if we wanted to upgrade to the Carriage House (the little 2 story cottage out back of the Inn). It happened to be open that night and they said we could have it for the same price so we said sure!

It was really nice! And nice to be away from the main building where the rest of the rooms are...

 Cute little kitchen with lots of snacks!

Bedroom upstairs...

We hung out for a little while then went and found a Home Goods store, then went to dinner at this fun Italian Place, Buca Di Beppo I think it was called. It was really good too. 

 The Inn was right below the Capitol building...It looked cool all lit up that night when we were driving back.

 We stayed up and watched a movie then went to bed and slept in a little later than usual, not much!

Then got up and went for a walk all up around the capitol...it was neat to see.

And such a beautiful day!

This was an old church up there I thought was pretty...

 And this little water fountain was right outside of our room...

We had scheduled our breakfast for 9, so after we got back from our walk we went in and ate. Eggs Benedict (without ham for me!)...it was really good, something I'd never had before. 

 Then we hung out for a little while longer in our room, got ready for the day and packed up our stuff and checked out about 10:30.
Apparently the senator was checking into our room after we left. Kind of interesting!
 Then we went to mass at the Cathedral at 11:00. Such a beautiful building and it was neat to be able to go there... 

 Then we just headed home and stopped off to try to shop for Lars in Layton...never very successful!

But otherwise an awesome 15th Anniversary Weekend!

Oh and the boys had a great time having Kelli and Tianna here...they went to the JumpZone and lunch and played lots of basketball outside at the neighbor's house. :)



15 Year Anniversary!

Seems crazy it has been that long ago since this day...

February 26, 2000

 So much has happened in 15 years...

February 26, 2015

I woke up to this on the counter and I loved that Lars did this. He really knows the way to my heart after all these years.

(Chocolate and memories)

 Oh and clothes ;)

Anyway I thought this was such a fun idea. I spent about an hour that afternoon writing down so many random things, memories from the time we got married until now. He had stayed up late and written down all of his the night before, then we went to dinner with the boys that night at El Toro and took our bags of memories and pulled out and read about half of them. The boys loved this too and Gunnar starting asking if he could write down some of his own when he got home. He is so cute :)

 

I loved thinking back to so many funny, silly, random things. Lots of the ones we each wrote were the same, but there were a lot of others that either he or I wrote that the other hadn't thought of. So much fun!

And I love this picture :)

 Funny that it kind of looks like we're in a big city or something...haha.

We loved having the boys along to celebrate our anniversary with us that night and to hear all of our memories...of course more than half of them had to do with them!

We opened the rest when we got home that night and Gunnar sat down and wrote 5 or 6 of his own.

We sure have had our ups and downs over these 15 years and have done so many fun things and made amazing memories...as well as had hard times, and I am always so grateful for a good husband and of course grateful for Ashton and Gunnar. Time flies...

We made plans to celebrate by staying over night in Salt Lake on Saturday...that's up next!