Late Weekend Post

I haven't had time yet to write about Pioneer Day weekend. On Friday night we went camping up Payson Canyon with some friends and had a lot of fun! The weather was good and it was fun to sit and catch up. Easton spent a lot of time fishing in the dirt, and that's the only picture we got.

On Saturday morning we came home, took a nap, got cleaned up and headed to Sandy for a bbq with my family. My sisters had spent the entire day coming up with awesome pioneer games for us to play. We had potato peeling contests, three legged races, sack races, and the list goes on. We were all given a grocery sack with some pioneer clothes in it that we had to wear all night. Tyson got to take his off early since it was cutting off his circulation...

Easton beating me in the stick pull.

Our pretzel and frosting log cabin.

Tyson beating Danny in the sack race.

Thanks to my mom/sister Kennedi's blog for the pictures!

My Baby

Everyday I sit and wonder how my baby is growing up so fast. When I took him to his 18 month check up (in May) we were a little concerned that he wasn't using any words. He had even stopped using mom and dad. The doctor said he was just a little slow on talking, but to give it a couple weeks. Two weeks later Easton's vocabulary EXPLODED! He surprises me every day with what he knows.

The other day I got him up from his nap and he wanted to bring his binks with him. I told him he could bring one bink and he said, "um no, four binks."

Today while we were making lunch Easton started waving to me and saying,

"Bye mom!"

(me) "Where am I going?"

"School."

(me) "I already went to school today."

"Ya! Now home a East."

While we were eating I said, "Hey, do you know where dad is?"

"Ya, work."

(me) "Where does dad work?"

"A hopta."

(the hospital)

When I put him down for a nap I wanted to hurry and write down all the words I could think of that he says so I won't forget them (instead of doing my homework). You don't have to read them, I just wanted to always have them. I've already realized some I forgot like kneel and Amen. I'll just have to keep the list going.

Pirate Island

For date night Friday we took Easton to Pirate Island. I know that doesn't really count for a date night, but we felt like we hadn't seen him all week. We had fun, but of course it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. The food was good and Easton had fun watching smoke come out of the canons every few minutes. Our waiter talked like a pirate the ENTIRE time which was fun but at the same time sort of annoying:)

After we ate we went the the "Arrrrghcade" and played some games. We did pretty well with our 20 tokens. Easton couldn't quite keep up with the whack-a-mole (or any of the other games) but he did have fun. He liked riding the lion on the carousel and the game where you step on things when they light up.

We traded in our tickets for a pirate eye patch, a lip kazoo, a dum dum, and a pirate tattoo. Here's Easton with all his loot.

Also, the balloon man came around during dinner and made Easton a sword. He loved it, but popped it when he got home.

We spent all day Saturday at the LDS Heber Valley Camp for one last family reunion of the summer. This was a huge family reunion from my Great Great Great Grandpa Henry Freeman Cook on down. They had a few different classes where we learned about our ancestors. Here's Kelsey, Tyson, and Cassidy just before our class.

That's really the only picture I got, but we also spent some time at the pond up there. We took Easton in the paddle boat and he played in the sandbox for quite a while. It was fun, but I'm glad this was the last reunion!

Easton Stuff

Easton started going to the UVU Wee Care Center last week for daycare. It about broke my heart. I just have one class for this block for 2 hours every morning and it was too big a hassle to meet one of our moms, then get him back, then meet a mom again so I could go to work all in the same day. I don't know how so many moms do it! The first time I walked away from that place leaving my son with total strangers I felt terrible! The good news is, Easton loves it. He loves playing with other kids. The teachers say he is so good. They said last week he saw one of the teachers cleaning up and he stopped what he was doing and helped them clean up the whole room. They were very impressed that he put all of the balls, dinosaurs, blocks, etc... in their own bins and remembered where they go. I always knew he was smart. So one of my sisters watches him Mondays, he goes to daycare Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we have some cute young women who live below us that come play with him on Wednesdays. Somehow it always works out.

So after I pick him up from daycare, I generally try to plan something fun for us to do together like going to the library or for a picnic before I have to go to work. It helps with the guiltiness. Here's some pictures of our picnic.

The other day I left a chair pulled up to the kitchen counter. Easton climbed up there and when I came in I saw this innocent face.

Then I saw some gooey greasy hands.

He decided to spread butter all over uncle Danny's beloved bananas.

And demolish the butter in the process.

But he sure is cute. Last Saturday while watching fireworks I noticed Easton had a few bug bites. Two were just normal mosquito bites, but one was really swollen. Sometimes my mosquito bites swell up so I didn't think much of it. Yesterday when he got out of the tub I noticed it was bigger than ever with a squiggly red line around the edge. I knew right away that it looked like a staph infection and Tyson agreed. So I took him to the instacare and I was right!

They traced a circle around it at the instacare so that we can monitor its growth. This is from today and it actually looks a lot better as far as redness and swelling since he's had 3 doses of the antibiotic. But it has expanded past the circle a little bit. If it hasn't gotten within the circle by tomorrow he has to go have some nasty shots! I knew if a staph infection gets to your heart you're toast, but the Dr. assured me it was caught in plenty of time. So we just keep watching and re-tracing the circle. And now Easton thinks you draw circles around all your owies. Haha.

Holiday Weekend!

So I am loving this holiday on a Sunday thing. What a great excuse to set aside and entire weekend for fun! I think I forgot to mention that Tyson started a new job 2 weeks ago. He left Timpanogos Regional and now works at Primary Children's. There were over 100 applicants for the job so he didn't really expect to get it. All of his experience with making IVs really helped him out. They were offering him much more stable hours and full-time benefits. At Timp he was barely getting part time so we were paying over $400 a month on our insurance! (But we were glad to have it after all the health issues we had...) So anyway he is really liking his new job. He says the hardest part about Primary's is seeing the kids. We didn't really realize there would be that much interaction, but he delivers meds to all the rooms and he says the trauma units are especially hard to handle. My favorite part about the new job is I GET HIM HOME ON WEEKENDS! Yay!!! He used to work every other weekend and had to miss a lot of church and fun stuff. So there are a lot of benefits and we feel very blessed.

This weekend has been the first in a long time where we are actually just HOME. I love it. I found this cute blog called the Dating Divas through Ty's cousin McKenzie's blog. I have been reading it for a while and it has a lot of fun ideas on dating your husband. They suggested a 52 date challenge where you plan a date every week for an entire year. I planned a date for Friday night that totally did not work out! But I'm going to tell about it anyway.

We haven't been to the temple for a while so I thought maybe that should be our first date. I remembered that last time we went, Tyson was complaining about how none of his white dress shirts fit him right and how his temple clothes smelled weird and needed to be washed. So I planned this date: I bought him a new dress shirt and made a tag that said "Date Night" and pinned it on with a corsage pin. I left the shirt on his car seat so he would see it that morning when he went to work.

I watched out the window for him to get in his car and texted him this cheesy message in true dating diva style:

"Date night this week won't be all that fun

But it's something we'll need and be glad to have done.

We'll eat dinner there (it's your dream come true)

Then we'll go change our clothes and meet back at the pew."

The dating divas always give cheesy invitations to their husbands that hint at the dates. I thought Tyson would love this because every time we go to the temple he begs to eat at the cafeteria. So weird. I took some heat from Kelsey for saying that the temple is not fun. Sorry, I think it's enjoyable but I wouldn't call it fun. Anyway, I washed all of our temple clothes and made arrangements for Tyson's sister to watch Easton while we went. I had Tyson drop him off to her while I went to take my chemistry test. I totally bombed it. So I was in a BAD mood to begin with. When I got home and we left our parking lot, I realized...they close the Provo temple every July for cleaning. We decided to go check just in case. Sure enough - it was empty. So we called Amanda and Thomas to get Easton before they drove him back to Santaquin and decided to meet up for dinner at Red Robin. We had a good time and decided we still get points for attempting to go to the temple.

On to Saturday...

Saturday morning Tyson, Danny and my dad went golfing. When I asked them who won they said the course won, so it must not have gone well. Easton and I spent the morning cleaning and getting ready so that we could go to the pool when dad got home. We spent about an hour at the pool (by the way it was only 74 degrees) and I don't know why we didn't take any pictures. Then we came home and I made turkey bacon avocado paninis. I finally had a day to actually cook and clean - things I like to do. There is another blog I read called Secrets of a Super Mommy where I found these cute paper fireworks. I made some for the paninis and ended up using them later, too.

I found these red white and blue strawberries on Sisters Stuff. Easton and I made them, and they were really easy! We used vanilla melties from Winco and blue raspberry sprinkles. Tyson ate about 15. I put the fireworks on toothpicks inside so you could just eat the whole thing. Yes, the tag says happy mother's day because in my family we celebrate Mother's Day once a month. So we gave those to "mam-ma."

We went up to Sandy and had a barbeque with my family that night and went to watch the Sandy City Fireworks. Easton loved them, of course.

Today we went to church and Easton's beloved nursery leader was released:( I'm sure the new one will be great too. We had a great relief society lesson on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and then came home for a long nap. We had a delicious roast and mashed potato dinner. Easton has spent most of the day throwing poppers on the porch and loving every minute of it.

I can't believe how old he is getting.

Looking forward to another fun day tomorrow!