Some Fun Summer Photos

We've had quite a busy summer this year. It seems we've been storing up the desire to get out and do stuff ever since I got pregnant with the twins back in 2006 and almost immediately got put on severe restrictions. Unfortunately, that was the week before our 4th of July trip up to Canada. It was a huge bummer. And well, that pretty much lasted until about...um...a few months ago. Now our kids are walking, running, feeding themselves, and getting really funny! So we put all house projects (except gardening and the yard) on hold and decided to have some fun. We're headed off to California soon for a week and anticipate a great time there. In the meantime, I thought I'd throw up some random photos of the boys from this summer. Enjoy!

An early morning shot from the back door of the Wyoming High Country lodge. What a beautiful place to spend a few days! Truly, I didn't take enough pictures. Some flowers in Wyoming.
Yellowstone lake on the way home from Wyoming High Country.

The boys chasing after daddy hidden in the shadows of the trees. This was up at Wyoming High Country.
The boys and their best friend Daddy. At least it frees up my hands to take pictures!
Ah, the sweet slumber of a happy child. Oliver likes his space when he sleeps!

We took our kids for their first trip to the Gateway fountains in July. They weren't sure what to think about the water but decided to play it safe and stick together.
Gabe looking all-so-serious.
Gabe giving one of his signature grins. So cute!
Oliver not so sure about the lake water, quickly retreats.

Gabe and Oliver couldn't decide who should go first in the only kid swing in Gma and Gpa Gibbons swingset. So, we put them both in at the same time. Gabe doesn't seem to mind at all.

Oliver is enjoying himself in a semi-comotose state brought on by hours of swinging.
Oliver sharing some of Gpa's planter dirt with him.
And then blessing the dirt. :)

Gabe doing his best Zoolander look in Gma and Gpa Gibbons back yard.

Gibbons Family Vacation Big Horn Mtns., WY

Last week was the much anticipated Gibbons family vacation at Grandpa Gibbons newly completed Wyoming High Country resort (http://www.wyhighcountry.com/ ). The entire Gibbons clan gathered for a week of high altitude family adventures which included horseback rides, fishing, ORV trail drives, hiking, lots of food and excellent company. Wyoming High Country is on the top of the Big Horn Mountain range in Wyoming and is truly amazing. There was wildlife everywhere (moose, elk, deer, bear, antelope, crazed hummingbirds, etc.). The wildflowers were so thick you could smell them in the air wherever you went. The lodge staff were great and so was the lodge. In short it was a magical kind of place and a great way to spend a week. This is our subset of the Gibbons family on our hike to the Medicine Wheel (http://www.crystalinks.com/bighorn.html ).


I know you are thinking that our kids always look so happy... well in most instances they are clobbering each other and are not so smiley. So in order to get this great result, we have trained them to play the "what do monkeys say?" game. I know this puts them in league with Pavlov's dogs but it works! If this picture had audio you would hear a very accurate rendition of a screech monkey. Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh....

Flowers, flowers everywhere! The smell was amazing.

On our way home we went through Yellowstone NP and Teton NP. This was on the shores of Yellowstone Lake during a brief rest stop which turned into an hour long car maintenance adventure after the boys dumped rocks over the break pads. I had to remove the entire wheel to fish out the rocks that were stuck in the break pads! As you can see it didn't seem to bother them too much.

4th of July - Gibson Lakes, ID

So usually when I go camping it involves backpacking, traveling lite, and remote areas where I could sit back and just enjoy the silence. Well, I suppose I am still harboring in some sort of parental denial because the reality of it is those days are dead. This trip involved "car camping", enough stuff to fill an entire pick-up truck bed, and of course lots of screaming and lest I forget vomiting kids! Yes, we had it all but I must admit even so it was pretty fun as the kids kept us entertained with mud eating, tent bouncing, water wipe-outs and a variety of other feats of pure toddler talent. Suprisingly, even with all of that I still enjoyed a couple minutes of silence.

Gabe is our water boy and apparently Oliver prefers mud in all its glorious forms.
As you can see Gabe was really into hiking but it was a good time for me as he was finally quiet enough to take in a bit of sweet silence.
Fuzz head after 2 hours of bouncing off the tent walls onto the sleeping bags and air mattresses.
I am not sure there is a caption that can capture the essence of a truly happy boy but the picture seems to tell it all.

This is what dinner looked like before it made its spectacular reoccurence three hours later all over me. At least I saved the sleeping bags from a dry cleaning - kudos to dad, the official vomit catcher!

A love is born...

I've recently started taking my kids to the park in the mornings, now that the weather is nice. This is a great park. Lots of sand to dig in, swings, climbing stuff, playhouse, water fountains, etc. etc. Every time we go, what do you think my kids want to do for the entire time? Swing. Every time. The whole time. I'm thinking of just getting one (or two) for my back yard! But then I may get even less done now than I currently do!

Here is a video of Gabe's first swing ride during a recent visit to my sister, Debbie's in Sacaramento. Oliver loved it too but he was so tired that he couldn't hold his head up.

Interesting Little Tidbits

There have been a number of funny moments that we've had this year and Doug and I keep saying, "we should put that on our blog." Well, I thought I would put some of these on today before I forget them all together!

1. A few months ago I took the boys in for their 15 month wellness checkup. In order to keep them from freaking out at the doctor's office, I brought a plethora of snacks to keep their mouths full and keep them occupied. Well, the bag of strawberries lasted through the weighing and measuring part with the nurses. By the time the doctor came in, I had moved on to the cheese sticks. Now, a note about control. I have found that the easiest way to limit my stress and the disaster that inevitably follows in the footsteps of my twin toddlers is CONTROL. In this case, I cut up the cheese sticks in pieces and hand feed them to my kids. I have found that this solves a number of problems. Namely, it keeps them from stuffing as many in as possible into their mouths in an effort to get some before their brother eats them all and then not being able to chew or swallow leading to excessive drooling and eventual spewing from the mouth onto whatever is closest and hardest to clean. My kids are big fans of cheese so naturally, when the doctor came in, they were eating them up like crazy. She started talking while watching the kids. It wasn't very long until she paused, looked concerned and then asked, "are you feeding them sugar cubes?" Needless to say, I was mortified that she would even consider this as I have been crazy about feeding my kids all sorts of whole grains, milks and fruits and veggies. But it made for a good laugh.

2. This one happened around the beginning of the year when Gabe was about a year old. His pajamas are one piece footed fleece pajamas common with children. Doug got up one morning and laid Gabe on the changing table to change his diaper. Well, lo and behold, when he unzipped his pajamas, the diaper was no where to be found! This amazed both Doug and I and we commenced looking for the diaper. Now, I'm not sure how this happened but at some point in the early morning, Gabe undid his diaper (through his pajamas) and slid them down his pant leg to under his foot. We still haven't figured this out and it's never happened since!

Current Home Project

Doug and I decided to tackle the last remaining non-remodled (well, partially remodeled, but not finised) room recently. It was serving previously as our "storage room/makeshift garage/tool room. In short, it was a mess and non-functional for anything but storage.

So why the sudden urge to tackle a room remodel, you ask? Well, three things mainly. Oliver, Gabriel and food all over our Mongolian rug after every meal many times a day. You see, our back room is tiled (done during my twin pregnancy with the tireless help of my parents). So, all we needed to do was tear off the paneling and molding, sheetrock it, mud it, sand it, paint it, and put up all the new molding. Piece of cake. And since it was so easy, we decided to also change out two doors so we could see out into the back yard and side alley. Better to keep an eye on my boys, I say.

We started memorial weekend and foolishly thought we could finish it in two days. Well, we are 4 full work days into our project now (and a calendar month later). Not to mention my few hours here and there during nap time to speed us along. We are getting closer! Here are some pictures of our progress.



Picture of the back room when we were looking at buying the house.

First thing Doug did was pull up the carpet that was pee soaked from the previous owner's dog. Stinky!

Turned out, once we pulled the carpet up, that we realized the floor joists below the carpet were rotten through. Have you ever seen the movie "Money Pit" with Tom Hanks? Sometimes our house reminds me of that movie...

Tiling the floor at only 4 months pregnant with the twins. This was early September. I didn't deliver (5 weeks early at that) until almost Christmas!




This was the beginning of the current remodel - Memorial weekend. Notice that we have cement behind our walls. Yes, that made for lots of trouble trying to figure out a way to put up sheetrock, etc.




Current status of the room as of last night. We are getting closer!

They were so little!

I recently (a month ago!) got enough of my house clean (this involved removing our very crispy, half-sawed Christmas tree that we attempted to burn by pieces in our fireplace until we set off all the smoke alarms in the neighborhood) to set up a table to work on some "crafts". This was done in an effort to keep me from going stir-crazy staying inside every day with my two trouble-makers until the temperatures outside rise above freezing!

I decided that I would start working on the boys' baby books. I started them about a year ago and got as far as their birth. :) You can see how successful I was. This time I decided to take the prepared approach and print out all my pictures before working on the book. As I went through the many, many photos of the boys' first months of life, I was amazed that these now strong, opinionated, healthy boys were once very small, flopsy, wrinkly babies! They've changed so much that I had a difficult time telling them apart in a number of their earlier photos. It was especially difficult in the ones where their hats fell down over their faces because their heads were so small! Luckily, my mom was in town when we took most of these and we took a picuture of each of them labeled prior to taking a series of photos. It's a good thing or they might have had to share a baby book!

Legend: Gabriel's hat has a bear on it. Oliver's hat is plain. The feet are anyone's guess.