3 Years!

Remember what happened at the bottom of THIS post? Something similar happened yesterday morning. I heard Kyler say: "UH OHHHH!!!" from the other room.  I walked over to him. He was holding out his hand to me. As I got closer I smelled something funny, and noticed his hand was covered in something brown. Yup. He had stuck his hand down his apparent poopy diaper. Nice anniversary present huh?  I have the feeling that potty training is right around the corner.

After I gave Kyler a good scrub down in the bathtub, Jared and I took him over to his cousin's house to play. We then spent the rest of our anniversary kid-less! We were so grateful that our family was willing to take him in.  Jared and I went to the Salt Lake City Temple (where we were married) and did a couple of sealing sessions.

 After that, we walked around a ginormous indoor/outdoor mall and bought a few things. The mall was BEAUTIFUL. It was landscaped so beautifully with flowers and trees, rivers, waterfalls, rocks imported from Brazil, and marble walkways throughout. I had never been to a mall like that before! We ended our mall adventure with dinner at The Cheese Cake Factory which is one of my favs.

After The Cheese Cake Factory Jared took me to a musical- We saw Dolly Parton's Musical 9-5. It was AWESOME! I definitely would recommend it. We then spent the rest of the night at Little America in down town Salt Lake.

It was an AMAZING anniversary to say the least. 

These last 3 years of my life have been the very best, and we love that we get to spend all eternity together.

Berry picking

Yesterday after church all of Jared's side of the family came over here to Bruce and cathi's (where we are staying currently) for delicious home-made brownies! The kids were eating outside (until they all decided it would be more fun to play than eat) which resulted in several plates of half eaten brownies sitting on the table. The next time I walked outside to check on Ky, (I expected him to be playing with the other kids) he was walking from plate to plate nibbling on the leftovers. He was all "sweet! Suckus left all these brownies for me!" -Yikes! I guess he got jareds chocolate loving genes. Haha :p

Today we went to the splash pad with the schrammie cousins and then went to a berry patch farm after. Raspberries are my absolute favorite (especially fresh out of a garden) we got three large containers of raspberries for only 8$! The berry patch also had a few animals in the back. A few baby deer walked up to kyler and he thought they were so funny. He kept calling them dogs. (Close enough eh?) kyler was a very good berry picker. He ate most of the berries he picked but only put TWO raspberries in the bucket the whole time. One of which was white and not ripe at all. He is so funny! Okay get ready for tons of pics-mostly of Kyler.

The semi long journey to Utah

Our trip from Charlotte to Utah was about 15 hours (including our ridiculous long layover in NYC). It went about how I expected with Kyler. He was good the majority of the time but of course had his moments! One thing that made it a lot easier is these gel window clings. Seriously. Entertainment for hours! The push-pop was another thing that kept him quiet and happy for a good hour. It was a lil messy but i had a bib and pleanty of wet wipes. Another thing that was handy was strapping his carseat to our umbrella stroller. It made napping in the airport easy. I'm going to try to be really good at updating my blog this trip. Kyler is having his first ever sleepover tonight with his cousin Nathan. Be prepared to be picture overloaded! oh and I'm writing from my phone and have no idea what random order it will choose to upload them in. So here ya go!

Everything is Hilarious when you are a toddler

...even trees:

Random side note-bauer's newest trick is dancing.

The other day I was going STIR CRAZY being at home, so Jared took us to the boardwalk and we helped Ky feed the ducks. He thought it was hilarious, and has been making quacking noises ever since.

We are getting ready to go to Utah on Friday!
We will be flying there (6 hour layover in NY) and then DRIVING back.
I don't know if we will survive with our energetic toddler.... so wish us luck! 

Spontaneous Camping Trip: FAIL. FAIL. Success?

Friday after Jared got home from work, he said: "Let's go camping".  I said "Great idea!" So we threw a few things in the trunk including a meal we planned to warm over the fire for dinner, and were on our way.

Because this happened a week ago, I am a little blurry on the details, but lucky me (and you) I documented the trip as it was happening on my iphone. I will now copy and paste (beware it's long, and really for my own purposes of remembering this camping trip, so you might find it boring) ps. there are lots of grammatical errors that I am too lazy to fix :)

-We just drove to hours, and the road to South Mountain is closed.

-Lucky for us we have a Gps! Calculate alternate route.

-We are in the middle if nowhere. I'm pretty sure we just passed an Amish community.

-Oh hey look! A golf course!... the GPS says to take the mini golf cart road? Okay!

-It is 30 min later...and we are right back where we started at the closed road >:(

-We calculated a new route, and are finally at South Mountain! (an extra hour later) Oh well! At least we are here.

-Every camping spot is full.

-The park ranger makes us pay a fee and shows us which trail we need to hike up to get to the available camping spots. She tells us that she hopes we are in shape. What does she mean?

-Did I mention it's getting dark?

-Hike hike hike

-It's completely dark now, and we are sharing a flashlight to light the way.

-I'm paranoid that I'm going to step on a snake.

-Hike hike.

 -Ky is being very fussy, so I give him a few pieces of candy that I plan to roast over the fire. If we ever get there.

-This camping gear is heavy, and so is Kyler!

-Are we there yet?

-We just hiked over another river and up a mountain.

-We are there!

-There is only one other person camping.

-Is it creepy that he is camping by himself? He seems suspiciously friendly to me.

-Tried to make campfire but it is so humid all of the wood is too wet to light!

-I'm attempting to put our sugar high toddler to bed in this tent we set up in the dark (I hope it holds).

-Jared did his magic and got the soggy firewood to light! However, we are too tired from the hike to cook, and are getting eaten alive by bugs! In the tent we stay.

-No dinner.

-No s'mores.

-I have to pee, but do I wanna risk getting poison ivy on my bum in the dark?

-Nope! I'll hold it!

-Kyler refuses to sleep and is squealing and dancing in delight at the thought of the whole fam sleeping in this tent. He is literally a happy camper.

-11:30 Ky is finally asleep!

-Jared and I see flashes of lightening in the distance. He asks me if our Walmart tent is water proof. I have no idea.

-I can't sleep. Is that creepy loner camping guy going to murder us in our sleep?

-Why are the dang crickets and birds so loud? Don't they sleep? I'm pretty sure we set our tent up on rocks.

-Everything just went silent...too silent. I'm scared.

-IT IS POURING DOWN RAIN.

-Sweet it turns out that our 20 Walmart tent IS waterproof!

-Whew! That creepy loner camping guy won't wanna get wet in the rain to murder us so I think we are safe!

-I guess I fell asleep for an hour or so because it is 2am now, and the rain is still coming down hard.

-Drip drip...I checked on Kyler and his blanket is soaking wet!

-Our $20 walmart tent is not as water proof as we thought >:(

-I'm hungry.

-Jared just woke up too with his side of the tent leaking water.

-CRAP Kyler just woke up, I know he is going to cry and we are in for a long night. There is no way we can hike back down the mountain in the rain and dark.

-Kyler is a maniac! He is so happy and hyper! It's the middle of the night! What the heck? He's hilarious.

 -I just changed Kylers sopping wet PJ, and we all just scooched to middle of tent to try to stay dry. We are all 3 sharing the same pillow.

-It is 4am now and it is still raining, I am still awake, and I still have to pee. Really wishing I had a few hours ago right about now.

-I just heard a soft growl. Are there bears in NC? CRAP I just remembered we have our dinner we never cooked sitting in our tent! It probably smells so good to hungry wild animals!

-Turns out the growling I heard was Jared snoring. How is he sleeping?

ll

And that is the last thing I wrote. Next thing I know, it was 9am, the sun was shining and I woke up to this (which I of course took a picture of)

I love how they are sharing a pillow and Jared is all wrapped up in Ky's blanket :)

I actually completely forgot about all of the things that happened previous to this moment, and if I hadn't written them down, I still wouldn't remember! We had such a fun day when we woke up, hiking and exploring, seeing waterfalls, and watching Bauer swim in the river. I'd say it was a successful camping trip, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. (Well, after re-reading this post, maybe next year :p)

Here are a few more pictures from our Spontaneous Camping Trip:

This was in the middle of the night before I changed Kylers rain drenched clothes.

This is us hiking down the mountain the next morning. We were all muddy and Kyler looked like a ragamuffin in his footy pjs with shoes over the top (only dry clothes left). We got some pretty weird looks from other hikers.

We hiked past some HUGE boulders!

We hiked up next to some beautiful waterfalls too!

Also at one point during our camping trip, Jared got this HUGE tennis ball sized bruise on his arm.  The story of how he got it is HILARIOUS, but he made me promise not to tell anyone what happened. So I will post a picture of it instead :p  Here is what it looks like almost a week later: