Fam Pics 2014...I'm baa-aaack!

Wow what a difference 2 years makes!  I think it's time to get this puppy up and running again, and what a better way than by posting our family pics we took last month?!  

We went to Thanksgiving Point and our photographer from Fotofly Away was AMAZING, to say the least!  He was incredible with the boys and had Oliver all in giggles the whole time, which, frankly, isn't very hard to do with that one! :)  These boys just melt my heart constantly, and I love that he caught so much of their charming spunkiness.  Enjoy! 

Cornbelly's 2011

In the last two years since Will has been old enough, we have discovered a love for Cornbelly's!  Last year we were able to take one of Will's good friends with us, and they had a BLAST!

 Climbing the haystack mountain, and going through the tunnel underneath.  How cute are these boys?!

The corn box was heaven!  They went diving in and buried themselves, did corn angels, and Will had handfuls of corn running through his hands the whole time!

The wooden toys to climb on were super fun

After Will's friend had to leave, he and I stayed until it almost closed because he was just having such a great time.  I never knew it would be so much fun watching someone else have such a ball!

Classic, supper happy, Will-smile.

We can't wait to go this year!

Loose Moose

Hello again!  I didn't quite make it a full 6 months without blogging, although I sure was close!  ;)  The reason for such a hiatus was A) our computer got overloaded and couldn't function to pull up my calendar, much less run picture programs necessary for blogging, and B) I became overwhelmed over the fact that I was very behind, because I post all my pictures chronologically for blog book purposes.  Alas, now I am not only 6 months behind, but a full year behind!  Huzzah!  I have decided to finish out 2011 in what will hopefully be as minimally tedious as possible, then I will move on to a new chapter in my blogging and just blog about what is current and what I want to and not worry about posting every picture of our lives.  Novel, right?

So last fall I was able to head to a friend's cabin with some incredible women who I feel very fortunate to call my friends.  These women are incredibly uplifting, and that is just the kind of weekend away a mom needs every once in awhile.  And let's be honest, Will loves the boy time with dad!

The beautiful leaves on the way there were already starting to turn.

We found out why their cabin is called Loose Moose.  We came back from shopping and found this lovely dude, along with the mom and babies, just kickin' it on the front doorstep.  Ok, more like the front lawn.  Oh yeah, and we weren't supposed to show the pic of the moose literally kickin' our lovely hostess' husband's car.  Sorry Aliesha :)

Hey ma, look how close we are!  Thanks for being such a nerd with me, Jamie.  I can always count on you for support ;)

Oh man, we are awesome.

We all brought different kinds of yummy, gooey popcorn to snack on.  Jamie makes a good Vanna White, no?

The whole crew gathered around for Jamie's impromptu "devotional".  I love you girls!!

Joy School

This past year a few neighbor friends and I decided we wanted to do a preschool swap instead of putting our kids in formal preschool for this first year. So we set it up and we take turns teaching in joy school fashion. I just remember my mom doing this when I was little and how fun it was and the memories and friendships I made, and I wanted that for Will too! It really intimidated me at first but it has been SO much fun! These kids have really grown and it has been so great to witness them learning and progressing in a setting where you can actually measure the growth in a sense. Mostly it has been fun to watch them interact and make new friendships! And the field trips where the moms get to visit at McDonalds or the park afterwards hasn't been too bad either :)

First day of school! I know it's really more like formal playdates (even though we have somewhat of curriculum), but this day was mind blowing for me! I cannot believe he is this old. I never thought I would be one of those moms who are sad to send their child off to school until I experienced it.

So this is the second day of school, but since I failed to get a pic of him leaving on his first day (the previous pic I snagged from one of the other moms), I had to get one on the second day. Only after loading this pic on the computer did I realize how embarrassingly short the sleeves on this shirt are! But in my own defense I do have a very tall child!

Our first field trip was to bridal veil falls. If you notice Will is holding a stick in every picture. He is to this day obsessed with them and will collect sticks to bring home everywhere we go. Every so often Ryan cleans the stick collection out of the garage.

Playtime on one of the days I was teaching. These kids are too cute!

Will loves his "wizard wand" (old fairy wand of mine with the tinsel and star ripped off) and appears to be casting a spell on the camera to make it go away.

Just last week our field trip was to the pet store. It was one of the best field trips yet! The kids loved all the animals that the trainer had to show us, and when she asked who wanted to feel a rat on their shoulder, Will was the first in line! We were able to get up close and personal to a lizard, snake, rat, birds, cats, dogs, and even a chinchilla, to name a few.

MV Studios

This is a shameless plug for my friend, Meagan, because she did our family pics in Sept and was just starting out with her own business and is AMAZING! She shadowed an amazing mentor for quite awhile and was finally ready to go out on her own, and from the looks of her work she definitely will do well in this business. Her website is http://mvstudiosphotography.com/ and her blog is http://mvstudiosllc.blogspot.com/. Our pics are on both. Check her out!

We had so much fun with these pics even though Will was SO grumpy that morning! You couldn't even tell because Megs was so awesome. But I do have to say even when Will is grumpy he is the best! Look at his cute little face in these pics :) We were totally bribing him with donuts so Meagan kept saying "donuts!" every time she would go to snap a pic and he would smile. She asked him what kind were his fav and he said sprinkles so then the word before every pic became "sprinkles!". I was so worried we wouldn't have one decent pic between Will's grumpiness and the sun coming out and blasting us with too much light, but again, the girl is amazing and look at how many cute pics we got! Too many! I am posting ALL of my favorites because I want them in my blog book when I get this all printed, so bear with me :)