St. George!

We got back at  midnight last night to beat the snowstorm and I'm glad we did because we woke up to a beautiful blanket of snow. Its only beautiful if you don't have to traverse through scary mountain passes, so I'm grateful to be home. We had a wonderful time in St. George so here it is:

We celebrated Lincoln's birthday. He LOVED his cake. We couldn't get him to look at the camera because he was so mesmerized by the balls. "balls balls!!"

Grandpa introduced the kids to tinkertoys. They were completely hooked!

Lincoln (and Easton too) were in love with Juicy

Grace, Olivia, and Taylor came Tuesday and they wasted no time in playing together. Easton and Taylor put some tinker toys together, tied a string on, and raced down the hallway for like an hour. Seriously? Whatever!

Nathan's probably going to kill me for this picture, but he was really gettin' in to the Wii dance game. He's never shown his dancing side, but he won the first time he tried it. :) I tried it too, it was fun! Pregnant and all!

Easton, Grace, and Olivia making a lego train shed. They were really getting into it!

Lincoln "helping" Grandma decorate the tree

Cousins. We sure did miss Allie, Kara, and new baby Logan!

Thanksgiving dinner. It was DELICIOUS! David went to town on dutch oven cooking. It was seriously the best turkey I've ever tasted. SUPER moist! Oh and the stuffing! my favorite. I wish I could eat Thanksgiving dinner every week!

Kids table. Easton ate 3 rolls and maybe 2 pieces of cantelope. I wonder when he's going to realize how much he's missing out on?!

Santa Claus came to visit! My kids were a little nervous at first, but Lincoln was pretty interested in his big colorful buttons

What a great time! The only thing I would have changed was the fact that Lincoln can crawl out of the pack n play and going to bed every night and for nap time was torture...AND he woke up an hour and a half earlier than usual pretty much every morning. I was SO tired. Oh, and varicose veins. Awesome.

Fun in Boise

We had such a great time in Boise! While Nathan and his brothers and Dad were having a blast golfing and attending the BYU game, we were doing all sorts of fun things in Boise. Easton was absolutely enamored with Grandpa Seibel and just had to do every single thing that he did. All day.

We spent our first day hiking in the Boise foothills. Easton LOVES hiking. Since my dad was on call for work we couldn't go hiking in the mountains but he didn't care. But he does want to know where the roads are to get up to the mountains, so Nathan and I are planning on taking him hiking for reals sometime soon before the weather gets too cold. Lincoln loved it too but he tripped and fell a lot and it was pretty hot. Next year I"m sure he'll do a lot better.

Our next day we went to the old train depot in Boise. It has a beautiful view with gardens and a pond with huge koi and of course, an old train. The kids loved it. I LOVEd playing there as a kid so its fun to take them there too.

While Lincoln and I were napping my dad set up his old Lionel electric train set for Easton. Easton was seriously in love. He played with it for about 6 hours. Not kidding. He was so careful with the trains and just loved to watch it go around and around. Now he wants an electric train for his birthday....great. I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in trains!!

Sunday was church and then on Monday while my mom and sister and I were shopping Easton stayed at home with grandpa. They set up the tent in the backyard and then my dad taught him how to pick green beans. Easton wanted to even try the green beans that he picked that night for dinner. That's pretty huge for Easton. He also wanted to try a tomato in from the backyard. He didn't like either of them, but it gives me hope that as he watches us grow our own food he will want to try them more and more and learn that most food is pretty darn good :)

There are seriously so many pictures to go through because my sister is a great photographer and I keep telling her she needs to buy a good camera and work on that talent!

Quilt Retreat

I have been meaning to blog about this forever but I still haven't gotten the pictures from April. (hint hint). Luckily I snapped a few on the last day just for fun. We had the first Judd Quilt Retreat at Uncle Charles' cabin. It was a blast! I was lucky enough to even go. My sister called at the last minute and offered to babysit for me since Nathan was out of town. I was tentative to ask my sisters at first but when they said they actually wanted to...I jumped at the chance! So I drove down on Monday night and got there at 11pm. I was fully expecting to be able to go to bed (hello my pregnant self was tired) but as soon as I got there Nathan's Aunt Sharon told me to get a drink, get a snack, and get my sewing machine and get started! Yikes! I think I stayed up sewing until about 12:30 or 1, but I was lucky enough to get a bunkbed in the room where we set up all of the machines and people were sewing until at least 2 or 3. I don't even know. I wasn't able to fall asleep until they stopped and then I woke up at 5 the next morning and needed to pee so bad but I didn't know how to get down from my bunkbed without falling! (i found out there was a ladder at the end of the bed that was covered up with quilt instructions...cool)

Almost everyone was working on either a lap quilt or queen sized quilt that they all started and finished there. I was SO impressed. A few of the girls had never quilted before ever! I made a table runner that was kind of a little side project for the group and I worked on my Book of Mormon quilt and I GOT IT FINISHED!!! WOOHOO!!! I literally worked all day until about midnight until i just couldn't move anymore. I fell right to sleep I was so tired. I found out the next morning that my mother in law and Sharon stayed up til 3:30 or 4 in the morning working on their quilts. Now that is dedication! Anyway, I finished my quilt the next day and it is off to the quilters! I can't wait to hang it up in my house.

It was seriously so fun yet SO exhausting but I loved every minute of it. I went running with Cheryl in the mornings with beautiful scenery to keep us going, we had AMAZING food (hello those Judds can cook) and awesome company. I hope they do another one!

I can't figure out how to separate and arrange the pictures better but here is what it looked like in the basement, the beautiful sunset view from the cabin, more sew-ers, and a sample of the quilt tops people did. Everyone's fabric was so different and it all came out looking awesome. I couldn't choose a favorite.

Easton in his element

Got this picture today. It was taken in May I think. I just love it!

Easton and Uncle Charles mowing the grass at his farm

Can I just say though how awesome Uncle Charles is? Every single Sunday unless he is out of town, him and his family put on an AMAZING Sunday dinner for at least 25 people. Family, friends, random college kids, you name it. It is just so fun with food, family and games. We look forward to it every Sunday. Easton just cannot wait. (I mean who wouldn't? Its basically a candy fest for both of my kids since I can't get them to eat anything). I am so grateful for his kindness and generosity.

4th of July in Boise

So Lincoln's tongue is amazingly all better. It looks great. Who would have thought it happened less than a week ago?

Anyways I stole some pictures off of my sisters facebook account of our trip. We had a blast. It was super duper relaxing, we ate amazing "bad-for-you" food (try Five Guys twice and homemade hamburgers once) , and celebrated the 4th with a bang. Oh and I fell in love with my parents raspberry patch all over again. Its as organic as you can get, since they do absolutely nothing to them and never have. I can't wait to plant a bunch in our yard.

We fed the ducks at the park. The baby geese were pretty fiesty and scary. I only fed the ducks. :)


A cake I threw together for America's birthday. My mom's idea :)


Dad is the master barbequer


We couldn't resist those ginormous marshmallows they are selling this year. They were good, but I was done after one!


Lincoln like REALLY loved this fake dog at my parents house. He kept going over to it and petting it.


They always play best when they are playing in the dirt



Lincoln after polishing off his ketchup and hamburger

anticipating his lunch. "yummy yummy yumMMMMM!"

having fun going down the slide. a LOT of fun

the park had a chalk art contest the day before. these two were my favorite. amazing!


if you know Easton even just a little bit you will know that this is AMAZING. Thank you Julie for telling him that fireworks weren't all scary. we got only the quiet ones. Julie brought a couple of packs of fireworks from Japan that were pretty darn amazing. You held one end and lit the other and it was like a mini big fire work show. Does that make sense? Probably not. You could even do them inside they were so small. Super duper cool.

Mel and a party!

Melissa came to visit this weekend. It was so fun to have her here. Plus its only a 3 1/2 hour drive. Pretty sweet right? It was fun since I believe I played an integral part in her dating life. Kind of a long story but if she gets married soon, its because of me. hee hee


Anyways, besides the fact that she got a major stomach bug on Sunday night/monday morning we had a lot of fun! Can't wait til she (or anyone else we are related to) comes again!

We also had a party and invited all of Nathan's friends from high school. Nathan has been blessed with amazing friends and its also amazing that they are still great friends. I think they played an important (MAJOR) part in his life. Don't all good friends? It was fun to see them and have all the kiddos play together. We tried to get a group shot (minus Lincoln who was asleep) and it turned from being hilarious

to being super scary

for Easton. Oh well. That's my Easton!

Oh and I really can't get Lincoln to watch TV at all which is totally a good thing most of the time. But as soon as basketball is on the TV he is completely dialed in.

stuff

It was so much fun having my parents and Julie here last weekend. I kept saying how awesome it was to be able to have them all here and still have enough space. My parents never visited together when we lived in California and they never could have driven. I'm so grateful to be here. My mom helped me work out how to make my pillows not fray (genius!) and we amazingly finished them with the little amount of fabric we had left. Phew! And my dad helped me take apart my piano (like TOTALLY disect it) so we could paint it black. It was a big ordeal until we found the type of paint to use. I think it turned out great and I love the knobs I found. I was dead set on yellow knobs but I like these better. Easton for some reason had a blast telling stories. This was a new thing. He made up a story about a pig owl monster. I wish I had it on video. He is hilarious. We also went up to the temple that is right up the way and before we got there he kept saying something about "stacked" in regards to the temple. I'm like sure, ya, the temple is tall, whatever. But when we got closer Julie realized he meant "stuck". He proceeded to tell us that people go to the temple to get stucked together. I couldn't handle it, it was too cute and hilarious. He also though we got stucked together with tape. :) Just the monday before for Family Home Evening we had talked about the temple and how when we are married in the temple we can be together forever. But i didn't know if he understood what that meant so I said it would mean that we would be stuck together forever. I really didn't think ANYTHING had stuck with him that night. Guess I was wrong. He also is pretty stoked about our cold storage unit downstairs. He constantly wanted to build a cold storage out of legos with my dad or mom. Here he is playing with my mom :)

Lincoln is still obsessed with balls. And he LOVED Julie. That was definitely apparent since he was HORRIBLE for me yesterday. He can say "ball" and "hoop". Along with mama and dada those are his only words. Go figure. At church when he sees the basketball hoop he just stands under it and points. He wants to make a basket. Is he the next BYU basketball star? That would be sweet :D

I love our views out of our house. I have the mountains out of the big window at the top of the stairs and the temple outside our bedroom window. It is absolutely stunning at night. We have been spoiled by good views ever since we left Provo and this is by far the best place.


I tried to upload a video of Easton when we were discussing being stucked together but I don't know if it worked...so here ya go


Oh, and May the Fourth be with you. :D