Camping!

What a crazy summer we have had! I feel so behind in the blogging world. Unfortunately, I don't have too many pictures to go with our camping trips but I thought I should document them anyway. Our first one of the summer was with my sister Sarah and her family. Knowing that Kory comes from a camping family she called and asked if we would take them on a real camping trip. However! Kory was not very helpful and I ended up planning the whole thing! I am not from a camping family and this was HARD! I think I prefer the camping trips where I am not in charge.
We got up nice and early and reserved a campsite in Logan Canyon. (I learned how to do that from some friends. :-)) At 6 ish we headed up and got all set up. I had planned delicious pizza pockets in our cool present Kory received last year. (http://www.campchef.com/cast-iron-cookware/round-cooking-iron.html) Of course I forgot the pizza sauce but they were still delicious anyway. We had a pretty cool campsite with a trail to the river.

Kory, Boston, Sarah, Felipe, and Ferb at the river.

 We ate s'mores and played some games and then the real adventure began. Boston had had a little fever all day but nothing we couldn't control with tylenol. At about 11 he woke up pretty hot but we didn't have a thermometer with us. We gave him another dose of Tylenol and he seemed to take care of it so we went to bed. At about 4 in the morning he woke up and was very  hot to the touch. I woke up Kory, we gave him more Tylenol and we rushed home to check his temperature. (Our campsite was only 15 minutes away). His temp was not too high so we headed back to the campsite. We caught an hour or so of sleep, stayed around long enough to eat breakfast and camp up and headed home. It was a rough go but I think it was somewhat successful.

Poor boy in our tent. Not feeling so good.

 This started a weekend of crazy temps for Boston. This was the first time he had ever been sick so it was a little scary for us. I was able to snap this adorable picture though! Turns out Boston gets very cuddly when he is sick.

 Our second camping trip was with our good friends the Lauritzens. The actual planning went better on this one mostly because I asked for instructions and obeyed. We had a fun night eating and socializing and then time for bed came. Boston was TERRIBLE! We had stuffed the pack 'n play in the tent and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. Eventually, after I had visions of angry campers storming our tent with torches and pitchforks (yes, I really imagined this) we pulled him down between us in our sleeping bags. That made for one of the longest nights of my life. Boston is not easy to sleep with and was constantly pulling my hair and poking my face to see if I was still by him. After this night, I told Kory I didn't believe I really actually liked camping. I am so mad I didn't get one picture of this camping trip but we really had a blast camping with our friends.
In case you are worried we did try camping one more time this summer and it was a much better experience, but that is still to come...

Mini Vacay!

We needed a break, a time to get away as a family. There was just one little problem, everything we thought of was too far away for our terrible little traveler. Boston makes it about 2 hours tops in the car. So...we pulled out a map and looked at all of our options within 2 hours. Our best option ended up being Salt Lake City. There is a lot you can do in Salt Lake when you really look!

Our first day was at the Olympic Park in Park City. Kory and I wanted to try the Alpine slide. It was a lot of fun! We spent the rest of the day shopping, eating and trying out the pool in our hotel. We thought Boston would be all about the pool since he LOVES bath time and any splashing he can do in any other water. He HATED it. He screamed bloody murder the whole time. It was so sad!

The second day we thought we could fit in the zoo and the aquarium. We ended up spending the entire day at the zoo. Boston loved it! We thought he might get a little kick out of some things but he was enthralled the entire time. Boston has always been a very alert and observing little boy.
We went to the bird show and were on the very back row, Kory put Boston on his shoulders. Right at the beginning of the show they let all kinds of birds loose. Those birds grazed Boston's head as they flew over! He was a little freaked out! Once we moved him to our laps he loved seeing all those birds fly right past him.

 That night Kory and I dropped Boston off at his Aunt Sarah's and we took a trip to the movie theater to see Star Trek. What can I say? We are Trekkies and proud of it. It was AMAZING!!

The 3rd day we were going to spend half the day at Thanksgiving point. They made the things there sound like things Boston would love. There was a splash pad, and a petting zoo. As mentioned above, Boston loves water. He also loves going to Cal Ranch and pet stores and petting the animals. It was sooo disappointing! We couldn't touch any of the animals, we just walked by cages of birds. The splash pad would have been fun if Boston was a little older. I really wish we had just done the aquarium we didn't get to go to the day before. Bummer!

 We finished the day out and most of Saturday doing the Parade of Homes in Orem and Lehi. It was Amazing! We left really wanting a new house. :-) These were a few of our favorite things (must haves)

These looked just like cupboards until you pressed on them, it was a hidden room pantry!

I don't know why every house doesn't have one of these!  A door from the garage to the pantry! You don't have to  walk your groceries all through the house anymore!

I just loved the stair rail. This house was such an eye-catching  home!

One of the perks of going on vacation to Salt Lake was we got more money for food! I had a blast picking out restaurants. We had a great time and there was a ton more we could have done. Who knows, maybe Salt Lake will become a more regular vacation spot.

Crawling!

A long, long time ago, a month and 3/4 to be exact, Boston started crawling. 6 days before Boston turned 9 months old I was talking to my mom on the phone and complaining that Boston couldn't crawl yet. He wouldn't even army crawl. He would just get into the crawling position and rock. I was telling my mom I was so worried because this had been going on for months and he just wouldn't advance! My mom laughed and told me he was fine and it hadn't really been as long as I thought. She also told me I would be regretting it once he could crawl. I didn't believe her.

4 days before Boston turned 9 months we watched our neighbor girl. She is a few months older than Boston and was cruising around the house crawling. Boston stared at her the entire time she was here, bending all the way over to keep his eyes peeled to her.

3 days before Boston turned 9 months. I set Boston down on the floor of the living room to play with his toys while I did the dishes. A couple minutes later I heard the the x-box chime on. The x-box was at least 5 feet away from where I left him. I came running into the living room, not only had Boston crawled to the x-box but he had also opened the dvd player and lifted himself to standing by way of the disc holder! The disc holder would no longer slide back into the dvd player.  Talk about a baptism by fire into the life of a crawling boy!

Here is a little video of him crawling when it was still new.

Just some adorable pictures!

These are just a random smattering as I browsed through, they are all from different ages.

Cutest little face, cutest little outfit! Happiest day ever! (6 1/2 months)

First time on the swings! (7 mos.)

Just because I love that face he makes! (7 1/2 mos.)

This is where he ended up while I made dinner the other day! He Loved It! (8 mos)

They love each other, sometimes too much, this was a daily occurrence back when Boston would fall asleep on the floor.  (4 mos) 

I just saw this one as I was flipping through. How Stinkin' Cute!! (3 mos)

Ooohh yeah! Look at those abs! (3 1/2 mos)

This is what happens when Dad and Boston play! (6 1/2 mos)

I just love his chubby belly! (6 mos)

Just another reason I hate the snow! Ferb had to have a bath every time he went in it to get all of these off.

I had to include a little video of his giggle. 

Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Tasty?

Hilarious story. Well it was for me, maybe you had to be there. A couple weeks ago Kory was off of work for the day and decided it would be a good day to be needy! All morning long he was begging for attention. He was asking for all kinds of different food to be made for him, for back scratches, he was getting jealous of the attention Boston was getting. By lunch time he was driving me CRAZY! He started asking for lunch to be made for him, something tasty please! 

I started looking through the fridge for something I could make him fast when I saw the jar of rejected corn I had tried to give Boston the day before. I had tasted the corn and thought it tasted just like canned corn! So I took it out, dumped it in a bowl, threw in some frozen corn from the freezer, crushed up a few tortilla chips and put it in the microwave. 

I brought him the delightful bowl of mush telling him I had tried to make a corn casserole the day before and I thought it was pretty good. He stared at it for a long time, trying to be polite asked me if this was really what was for lunch. I said yes and he started eating. It was slow going, he kept asking me what was in it, and that this was probably the weirdest thing I had ever made. But, he kept eating. I had to keep going into the kitchen out of his view to laugh. 

I thought I should document the time Kory ate baby food, especially since he is so against even tasting it when he feeds Boston, and tried to inconspicuously take a picture. He noticed. He started spitting out what was in his mouth and asking what kind of trick I had played on him. Boy was he upset!  Ha, Ha, Ha. Don't worry. He was laughing too and I made him some delicious food after that. 

Together Forever!

On March 16, 2013 we got to have the most special experience ever! I felt like I had been waiting for this day forever! It couldn't come fast enough. We got to seal Boston to our family forever! Boston was a champ. He was happy, he was quite the charmer with all of the temple workers-we couldn't even walk down a hall without being stopped by 3 or 4 people, and we made it out with a clean tuxedo. 

The sealing itself was so incredibly special. I felt so close to my little family and to our Heavenly Father. I am so grateful we can have these blessings of being sealed to each other. I don't even know the words to write to explain how simply wonderful this experience was. 

After our court date the judge told us "Now nothing can take him away from you." I remember thinking "Almost!" It is funny how even though the court date was so important in so many ways, it was also so inconsequential in comparison to what we could have after going through the temple. Now we can really say: "Nothing can take him away from us!"

Court!

March was a very exciting month for our family. With Boston's 6 month mark it meant we got to accomplish a lot with finalizing the adoption. First order of business was our court date. As a very devoted Judge Judy viewer I was psyched to actually get to go to court, even though our caseworker told us not to expect it to be like that.  :-)(Thank goodness...I guess!)

Ready to go to court!

We were told to get to court 30 minutes early so our lawyer could go over everything with us. We got there and waited...and waited...and waited...I was getting so frustrated. Finally 10 minutes before our court time I had Kory call our lawyer and make sure she remembered. She hadn't changed her office clock for daylight savings!!! I was so panicked!! Luckily she got there with 5 minutes to spare.

Court was very official. We had to answer lots of yes and no questions about our understanding of being responsible parents. The judge then had us each talk a little about what adopting Boston means to us. It was a very special experience.

We were so lucky to have a cool judge that allowed us to take pictures!