Guess who went pee pee in the potty tonight? Jeffy!! No, just kidding. He technically did as well but we’re not so thrilled about that. LOGAN did! We were out and about this afternoon and I had changed his diaper while we were out. We then went to dinner at Chili’s and he had two cups of apple juice and about half of my glass of water. When we got home and were getting ready for bed, I was about to change his diaper and he was completely dry so I asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty and he said yes. He has been open to this idea for a couple of weeks now and has sat on the potty a lot but has never done anything. But tonight was the night! It came as quite the shock to us and to him. We cheered and gave him high fives and even called Grandpa Snider to tell him. He was pretty excited about the whole thing. We’ll see where this takes us but he just seems too little to be ready for this!

This morning before I left for work, Lindsay and I were talking, and somehow we got on the topic of New York. We ended up discussing New York’s subway system, which fascinated her. The conversation then went like this:

Lindsay: “Did you take the trains to the airport?”
Jeff: “No, we actually took a taxi.”
Lindsay: “What’s a taxi?”
Jeff: “It’s a car that someone else drives, and you pay him to take you places.”
Lindsay: “Oh, yeah, I know taxi. Was it yellow?”
Jeff: “It sure was.”
Lindsay: “Did it have numbers on the top?”
Jeff: “I think it was a letter and three numbers, but yes.”
Lindsay: “Was there a rectangle with a light and the numbers on it?”
Jeff: “Yep. How do you know so much about taxis?”
Lindsay: “Well, I just have a magically brain.”

Magically brain indeed.

For FHE on Monday we went to a Bees baseball game up in SLC with Spencily and Nikio (you know who you are :). It was the first baseball game for Logan and the first for Lindsay since she was a baby and they both had a lot of fun! Lindsay asked a lot of questions about the game and had fun playing with Ashlee and Logan and Hannah just played and danced the whole time.
Here’s all of us at the game.

Lindsay took a time out from the game for awhile to practice her silly faces.



Happy Logan!

Hannah, Ashlee and Lindsay with THE Bee. They were so excited to meet him!

We assume the Bees won the game since they were winning when we left but we needed to get the kids to bed. We had such a fun time being together as a family, watching a sport that we all love, and being with friends!

No fighting. No whining. No noise. Just cute!!

This is where Logan went to pout after bath time because he didn’t want to get dressed. Seriously cute buns!

Dear Lehi Legacy Center,

I HATE YOU.

Love, Me

When Jeffy and I were looking at houses way back in 2005, it didn’t take me very long to fall in love with my house. I loved the floor plan! I loved that all the bedrooms were upstairs, that the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms were close to the master bedroom, yet not too far away, but the one thing I REALLY loved was the upstairs loft. We turned it into a super cute playroom for the kids and it has been the basis for lots of different make believe games. When I first walked into our model for our floor plan, I actually went into hyper-drive into the future and imagined our kids having sleepovers up there with their friends. It’s so big and roomy and LOTS of kids could sleep up there. Well, we recently got a different TV up there, one mounted to the wall so it swivels and stuff, and I wanted to test out the sleepover idea up there, so we had a family slumber party!! We pulled our mattress out there and blew up the kids blow up beds and snuggled up to watch ‘Homeward Bound’, which is potentially the best movie ever. Not only did the kids LOVE it, Jeffy did, too. I, of course, had seen it as a 10 year old and loved it and remember all of the feelings involved with that movie. Did I mention it’s the best movie ever? It made at least one of us cry several times…
We all had SO much fun spending that quality time together, watching those animals survive those dangerous mountains and listening to the rain and thunder outside. The kids fell asleep after the movie and Jeffy and I talked the night away. We woke up to Logan screaming at about midnight, but it didn’t phase Lindsay and she slept through the whole thing. Darn night terrors… I seriously can’t wait to do it again and Lindsay asked us the next day if we could sleep out there every night. If only…

Lindsay can be such a funny girl! Every Friday after gymnastics, we stop at Subway to get some sandwiches for mommy and daddy and then take daddy’s sandwich to him at work. Last Friday as we were waiting for our sandwiches, I noticed Lindsay watching the people inside, busy at work making delicious sandwiches. Then she said this:

“Mommy, when I grow up I wanna be a Subway maker.”

Isn’t she cute?? The funny thing about this though is that she doesn’t even like sandwiches! I have to force her to eat them! Maybe by the time she’s 16 and can work there she’ll like them.

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Ever since Jeff got our cool new printer, Lindsay has discovered that she can print whatever she wants from her computer games! We’ll have to talk to her about that…Anyway, she brought something down to cut and put together, some Winnie the Pooh thing. Some friends came over halfway through this so she went outside to play, forgetting about it. So, after she came back in we started playing with a balloon and after awhile, Jeff was handing it back to her, she very excitedly said, “No, I don’t need it. I’m gonna go cut my pooh!” Jeff and I almost peed our pants! She of course meant her Winnie the Pooh papers but that’s not what it sounded like! I love her!

Today, my lovely wife turned 27. She thinks it’s old. I think it’s the perfect age, now that it’s her age. I love you, Bethy, and I’m glad I’ve gotten to spend the last six years with you. Happy birthday and stuff!

Yesterday was the last day of our city’s summer festival and what’s a festival without a parade! I LOVE parades! I don’t know why but I just always have since I was a kid. I loved going as a family to watch the big 4th of July parade in Provo and look forward to going to that for the first time this year with my little family. This was both of the kids first experience with a parade and I think they both had a BLAST!! They both loved picking up the candy they would throw and we ended up with a BIG bowl of candy. They got more yesterday than they did at Halloween!

Lindsay loved the floats with the princesses on them from different cities and the cheerleaders. Logan LOVED the cars and trucks, especially this firetruck. He saw it coming from down the street and couldn’t wait for it to be in front of us! And it was YELLOW!

He’s waving to the firetruck.

They are pretty cool.
We all just had so much fun being together and watching the parade.


The kids got all kinds of candy including some warheads. If you’ve ever eaten one of those you know how SOUR they are! Logan asked to have one and the mean mom that I am let him try it. Here’s the video:

Just a little bit later, a karate company came by and they had kids volunteering to break boards so Lindsay volunteered and she did it!

As a side note, earlier that morning, I ran in a 5K and was able to run the entire thing in 32:05. I had been sick ALL week and didn’t think I was even going to be able to run so running the whole thing was pretty neat. I felt great for the first two and the last one was hard but I had already run two so what was one more, right? I don’t have any pictures of me running, but you don’t want to see me all sweaty anyway. I enjoyed it and look forward to the next one.

Happy Happy Birthday to my bestest friend!! I LOVE YOU, JEFFY!!

I love myself a good rainstorm. Rainstorms here will never quite live up to rainstorms in Texas, but even here they are pretty awesome. This afternoon we had a good one. Good like let’s-go-play-in-the-rain kind of storm. So that’s exactly what Jeff and the kids did. I would have joined in but considering I was sick, I didn’t think getting wet would be the best idea. Logan wasn’t too sure about the whole thing and came back in pretty quick, but Lindsay would have stayed out there for hours. If the rain had been warm rain, I would have, but Jeff said it was a bit chilly so we had to cut the good times short. I loved playing in the rain when I was a kid. I don’t know how often I did it, but when I did, it was fun! What is it about being a kid and wanting to be wet all of the time?




Watering the tree…just in case it wasn’t getting any.

There are moments as a mother when you have to let go of all reason and rules and just go with the flow for the sake of your kids. Yesterday afternoon was one of those moments. Lindsay and Logan were outside playing with our neighbor kids and they were trying to catch bugs in some glass jars. They weren’t having much luck with catching anything in the air and decided to try and catch ants instead. Jeffy noticed some ants in our flower garden and pointed it out to the kids and they thought they had found the mother load! What happened next was when I just had to let go and go with it. Somehow Lindsay talked me into letting her get some crackers for the ants and the next thing I knew, we were putting crackers on the bricks around the flower garden and watching the ants swarm around them. They would then pick up the crackers covered in ants and put them into their jars. They thought it was so cool! Since they were having SO MUCH FUN with this, I suggested we break the crackers into tiny little pieces and see if the ants will carry them to their ant hill.

*eyes wide and big smiles from all the kids*

So, we broke some pieces off and sure enough, those little ants worked SO HARD to get those pieces over the side of the brick and down into their ant hill. The kids thought it was SO COOL!!! And I have to admit, it was pretty neat to watch.

Lindsay was trying to help the ants with the cracker in this picture.

Logan would watch the ants every once in awhile but he was too busy riding his bike and looking cool.

Half way through this little adventure though, I realized that purposely feeding the ants probably won’t help to get rid of them. So once the kids were losing interest I grabbed the ant poison and shook at those neat little ants. Thanks, Ants, for the fun science experiment! Now DIE!
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Last week we bought a patio set and kept the huge box for the kids to play in. They colored on it and claimed it as their house. We also bought a weed whacker and took it out of the box yesterday and with a suggestion from Lane, turned that box into a chimney/fireplace for the kids house. Lindsay then crumpled up yellow, orange and red construction paper to make fire and later on, the kids roasted marshmallows on forks. Too cute!

Jeff and I thought it would be fun to get a team together to play in the softball tournament for our city’s summer festival. So, we got a team together, which consisted of a couple people who had played softball before on teams, some who had at least played the game before and some who had never played. We got jerseys made and our team name was Clever Nickname. We only got the chance to play three games. We lost our first one, won the second one and lost the third one. It was a double elimination tournament, so after our third game we were out. We both had an amazing second game, with Jeff hitting a home run and me catching the game ending ball. I was so excited about catching the ball, I even did a little jump to celebrate. We both had a GREAT time playing and can’t wait until we can play again. Thanks teammates for an awesome run!!

Clever Nickname Team

Boys: Cam Kawa, Todd Nielsen, Jeff, Bret Olsen, Chris Wren, Spencer Poulson, Flavio Martins
Girls: Cassy Applegate, Wendy Sorensen, Me, Sarah Wren, Heidi Clark, Niki Martins

The backs of our jerseys.

On Friday, Lindsay had her Show Week in Gymnastics and she did a FANTASTIC job!! A few weeks ago they gave them all a piece of paper with the routines on each skill (tumbling, bars, beam) and wanted them to practice and memorize as much as they could. And that is just what Lindsay did! I am not joking when I say she practiced ALL day EVERY day until Show Week. She was doing cartwheels and donkey kicks any place she could: at home, the park, the backyard, and even the store. All that practice paid off and she did great! I am so proud of her for working so hard to get that cartwheel down and her donkey kicks high! While practicing she even did a couple of handstands and even flipped over on a few. I can tell she really loves gymnastics!!

This is her teacher, Miss Mel, who she absolutely adores! Every time she does something at home for the first time, she can’t wait for Friday to show Miss Mel!

This is Lindsay’s tumbling routine. It’s in two different videos. Deal with it.


Lindsay on the beam!

Lindsay on the bar.

In between each skill, they let the kids run around and have free time. Instead of waiting for this free time to play on everything, Logan just plays the whole time and he’s so cute doing it!
Here’s Logan trying to do a back roll.


The kids on the rings.


She’s even beautiful waiting patiently, watching the other kids.

Flipping over the top bar.

Logan wanted to be involved, too, so he just went and sat down by all the big kids. He’s so cute!

Lindsay getting her award. YAY Lindsay!

Logan even wanted to stand with the big kids at the end…

Way to go Lindsay! We’re so proud of you!!