Happy 2nd Birthday Shawn

My little boy turns 2 today. I can't believe how fast the time goes. He is such a sweet and good boy. He has brought so much joy to our lives and he keeps us laughing. You never know what he is going to come up with next. We love you Shawn, Happy Birthday!!

First day of life

Proud daddy

Mother & son

1st Birthday (party #1)

1st Birthday (party #2)

There are a lot of things that Shawn loves to do. Here is a list of his favorite things:

-Playing with blocks
-cars and trucks
-throwing rocks in water
-anything to do with water
-singing
-helping me cook, vaccuum, and do laundry
-dogs
-friends
-nursery (he now cries when we go to pick him up because he doesn't want to leave)
-Disney movies
-marshmallows
-Going to the playground

Things he hates:

-waking up
-brushing his teeth

Roasting Marshmallows

loves water

Throwing rocks

We bought a house!!

Well it isn't finalized. We are supposed to close in the middle of Sept. As long as everything goes as planned this house will be ours. We are so excited. It is exactly what we were looking for. Actually, we weren't looking to buy a brand new house, this one just kind of fell into our laps and it is an amazing deal. It has 3 bedrooms 2 1/2 bathrooms. There is also a basement, but is isn't finished. We love the neighborhood, the house, the whole area. We actually went to the ward last Sunday and it was all young couples and there were about 1,000 kids under 10. :) When we went to the house tonight to take pictures we could hardly drive down the street because there were so many kids out playing. If it somehow doesn't work out, you will probably want to avoid me for a while because I will be so sad/mad.

Our first house

The houseKitchen view #1
Kitchen view #2

View of Living room from the kitchen (there is a sliding door you can't see to the right out to the yard)

Entry way

Loft upstairs with door to laundry room

View from loft

Master Bedroom

Walk-in closet

Master bath. Wahoo!!

Open area on side of house

Side yard

Back of house

Entry way windows

View from front yard- if you look at the bottom of the picture you will see a grassy area. That is the 14 acre park/playground.

Front Yard

View of mountains from the park

Park that is super close. The elementary school is across the street from the park

The park

It's for reasons like this that we make sure to check on Shawn before we go to bed.

$2 Tuesdays

We went to the dinosaur museum on Tuesday to take advantage of their $2 Tuesdays. It was a lot nicer getting in for $4 instead of $20. I told Shawn early in the day that we were going to meet daddy after work to go see dinosaurs. The only thing he said the rest of the day was "daddy roar (dinosaur) go". Shawn had a blast and was very sad when we had to leave. Good thing his daddy is such a softy and bought him a blow up dinosaur to take home.

There weren't many adults as excited as Jon to play with the sand/water

Saying "hi" to another dino

Lot of fun things for kids his age

Not intimidated at all....simply a "big fish!"

Diggin' for dinosaurs (poor kid kept having to fight off older kids to keep his brush)

Pioneer Day Camping

CAMPING with the fam for Pioneer Day-Jon's mom and sisters came up for the evening- Fun to have so many together.
FORGOT chocolate for s'mores- improvised with brownies and bite size candy bars- never going back to plain chocolate.
RAINED all night- nobody got water in tent- nobody had to go potty in the night.
Fun Weekend!!

Shawn loves it when I make him this laundry basket recliner. It is the only way I can get him to watch a movie for more than 1 minute. It is a trick I use when I need a few minutes to get something done and he won't let me.

One of the main reasons we love Utah, besides family, is that we live so close to the mountains. We hiked Stewart Fall this weekend. It was nice and cool when we went and even rained slightly. Right when we got back to the car it started raining really hard. Perfect timing! Shawn did pretty good on the hike. When people passed us Shawn would say, "Good morning" or if they had a dog he said, "hi dog dog". We had to carry him about 1/2 the time which is better than we expected. It was so fun going for a hike. We haven't done that in a long time.

Bear Lake Trip

We went to Bear Lake last week. We go every year and we love it. We had pretty good weather even though it was colder than in years past. Shawn had a great time. He spent hours every day in the sand and water. Never once did he get bored with it.
The exciting part of the week was the mice in our condo. This is the first time in ten years that we have had any problems with the place. My sisters and I were watching a movie when all of a sudden they both start screaming and running around. I had no idea what was happening. Then finally they shouted that a mouse ran across the floor. We watched for it and tried to find where it went. Then we called after hours emergency and they set out traps at about 1:00am. We were all so tired and not used to being up so late. We were completely giggly and I am sure the guy thought we were drunk. In the morning we found the dead mouse. Then then next morning we found another one. It was so disgusting. Let's just say that after a lot of fighting with the front office we ended up with a discount on our condo. I guess we won't have to drive all the way to California to see mickey mouse, he came to us. :)
Anyway, our trip was great and it went too fast. Here are some of the many pictures I took. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the decapitated mice.