Swimming Lessons

When we first got here my sister in law Trisha was telling me that her kids were starting swimming lessons that week. I told her I wish I had known and I would have signed Emma up. We called the next morning and they had one spot open in her age group at the same time as Trisha's kids. Last year when she did swimming lessons she was really shy and wouldn't do much of anything. This year she had a very cute boy teacher and was a little more motivated. :)


He helped her a lot and she had a blast! Every morning she would get her swimming suit on by herself, grab her towel and head to the front door. She was always disappointed when I told her it wasn't time to leave yet. She had such a good time and was happy that Hailey and Caden were there too even if they weren't in her class. On the last day of class she got to go down the big slide with her teacher.


Here's a pic of Levi and Abby enjoying swimming lessons.

My not so little baby...

Levi is a BIG boy! Everyone was shocked at how big he is when they saw him. We decided to weigh him and he weighs 21 pounds and is only 4 months old! We also weighed my little neice Abby and she also weighs 21 pounds and is 14 months old

Levi is very strong. We recently bought him a jumper to play in and he loves it! It makes noise when you bounce.
My mom has a walker at her house and he justs stands up when we put him in it. He was rolling over from his belly to his back really well but has now decided it is funner to just scream when he is on his belly. Abby loves Levi and loves to give him kisses. She will walk across the room to him with her lips puckered but when she gets close she does this.

Best picture ever!
We have also started feeding Levi baby food. Most babies spit it out when they first try food but he knew exactly what to do with it!
We tried sweet potatoes first. He would take a bite and then shiver.


So far he loves squash the most. We are also giving him some apple juice. He really didn't like it at first but I think he is starting too. It has been really hot here and sometimes you just need a drink!

2000 miles of prairie......

So while Mandy has been visiting Utah, I have been doing some traveling for work. I went to Carman Manitoba to visit a bean plant, Portage La Prairie to an oat mill, Grand Forks ND for USDA grading training, then to scout camp near Park Rapids Minnesota. The next week I drove out to southern Alberta to visit our divisional office, and see more Viterra dry bean and mustard facilities. All in all I drove over 2000 miles of prairie highways in two weeks. Anyway, here are a few of the pics I took along the way...

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Southwest Manitoba

International Peace Garden at the US-Canada border.

Manitoba Windmills

Farm near Bowbells ND

Bottineau ND has something to brag about.... the worlds tallest snowmobiling turtle!

North-Central Montana

The "Mighty Mississippi" headwaters. - Minnesota

The beginning of some fun adventures...

My parents flew out to visit us on the 7th. Emma was sooooo excited for them to come to our house.

Ivan had to work most of the time they were there but I had a fun time hanging out with them. We took them to the Ray Cafe which is a tiny place inside the Ray "mall." It took FOREVER to get our food but it was decent. When you live in the middle of nowhere it's slim pickins on places to eat. We also ate at the Gas-n-all for lunch. It is just the little gas station in town. They have really good burgers and fries though. Grandma and Grandpa decided to make an Emma sandwich while we were there.

While Ivan was at work on Thursday the kids and I went with my parents and did a lot of driving. We visited the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. We went to the visitors center there. I thought it would be a tiny little place but it was actually a very nice little museum.





We also drove down and looked at Fort Union. We saw lots of beautiful fields on our drive and also checked out Lake Sakakwea. There are lots of bright yellow mustard fields around where we live. Emma says they are her favorite. We have also seen very pretty pea fields and a flax field. We had to call Ivan to ask about the flax field...we weren't sure what it was. It almost looked like water from a distance but up close it was almost periwinkle. I think it was my favorite.

After Ivan got off work on Thursday he took us for a tour of the Viterra plant. It was pretty interesting. Emma's favorite part was the drinking fountain. :)




My dad flew out on Friday afternoon and my mom stayed with us to drive to Utah with me and the kids on Saturday. We planned on leaving at 5am our time but both kids were awake at 4am! Emma has been having night terrors lately. It is not fun for anyone! That night she thought she saw spiders in her room so she went out to where Grandma was on the couch. Then she saw her monkey blanket and thought there were mean frogs on it looking at her. When this happens she is terrified and just screams. Then she will talk to you but is convinced that everything is real. The next day she will tell us about it again and still believe that it was real. Hailey and Caden had a sleepover with her here the other night and she ended up in Grandma and Grandpa's bed at 3:30am. She thought she saw a spider web and a big spider on Caden's pillow. Hopefully she will grow out of this soon.
It took us about 16 hours to get to my moms house! My mom was amazed at how good the kids were in the car. Levi gave us a little bit of trouble, but he is teething so it's understandable. Emma watched Robin Hood over and over the whole way. I bet she watched it 7 times! She thinks it's so funny and likes to give us play by plays of the movie. We have been here two weeks now and she still won't let me change the movie in the car. She is a funny girl.

4th of July Fun

We stretched out our fourth of July festivities into two days! On Saturday we got up late and went to the parade in Tioga (about ten minutes) and got to see the whole thing. It was a really small parade but they threw lots of candy and fun prizes!
Levi was okay with the parade until one of the fire trucks honked. He had the saddest face I have ever seen and started screaming!







After the parade we walked a few blocks down to main street. They had the big inflatable toys which Emma was too scared to go on. She wanted us to wait 'til all the kids came out so she could go in. :) They also had a small petting zoo that Emma LOVED! There were tons of kids and animals in there...it really was a ZOO! We went into a small store called the Farmer's Daughter and I bought a hat and a couple pairs of earrings. They also had a live band, fresh kettle corn and free lunch. We decided to go to the diner and eat and it took over an hour and a half. They are always short handed which makes for a really long wait when they are that busy.






After we had lunch we headed to Williston which is about an hour from Tioga. They were pretty much done with the day activities so we just went and played at the park. I think this might have been Emma's favorite park of the two days. There were no other kids at the park so she had it all to herself. She was pretending that she was Captain Emma and the playground was her ship. Ivan was a pirate and I decided to be a sea monster. She doesn't usually talk to other kids but when a couple of older girls tried to come on the playground she put her hand on her hip and said "get off our ship right now!" I was shocked and told her that wasn't nice but the girls left anyway. We need to work on her social skills! :) I pushed Levi around in the stroller for a while and I looked over at Emma and Ivan and they were on the swings. Ivan would push Emma and then he would push the empty swing next to her. Apparently Koda wanted to swing too! The weather was perfect all day! It was a little overcast but not too cool.











That night we went to the drag races.





It was really fun but really loud! Levi was not happy about it and I ended up walking around with him most of the night. A couple from our ward joined us with their 3 cute kids. Their baby is two weeks younger than Levi. She fell asleep in her car seat not long after they got there and didn't wake up until the fireworks and even then she just watched and was happy. Levi liked watching the fireworks but still didn't like the noise. We tried putting ear plugs in his ears during the races but he would just pull them out. They did the fireworks that night in the middle of the track. We were on the front row of the bleachers and were about as close as you can get to big fire works. They were fantastic! The races didn't get over until after midnight and then they did the fireworks. We didn't end up getting home until almost 2am. We missed sacrament meeting on Sunday but made it for class. After church I got to have the most fabulous 4 hour nap! Then we had some dinner and headed to Tioga again for fireworks. We thought we would just go find some random spot to sit on our blanket and watch but when we got there it was a big deal. They had people telling you where to park and then they had either golf carts or a tiny John Deere tractor pulling a hay trailer that you could ride on down to the water. They shot off the fireworks just across the reservoir. There was a live band and concessions. It was such a happy surprise! They played a cd of patriotic music through the fireworks and they were pretty amazing.







Emma was soooo tired from the day before that she couldn't keep her eyes open and ended up like this.



We were sad to be away from our families this year but it ended up being really nice just spending time with our little family. Levi was so exhausted from the night before that he fell asleep in his carseat when we were getting ready to leave our house and slept until 10:30 am the next day with the exception of a 6am bottle! He enjoyed the fireworks like this!



We had a very relaxed evening while he slept! He was much easier to be around on Monday. I think that he is teething. He has been really grumpy and slobbery. He has been chomping on everything and has perfected the bitter beer face and raspberries! :) The only place I can feel that is swollen in his mouth are his bottom fangs. Won't that be attractive? Let's hope they go back down and wait awile to make their debut.
Ohhhh and my favorite picture! I laughed so hard when I saw this! ;)