July

Baby Birthday Cake turned 1!!!!
Time sure flies and our petite little guy (17%) has officially been around for a whole year! Watching Spencer and Kade I sometimes think "what took so long to get Kade here?!" They are BEST buddies and I sometimes feel guilty they're so far apart in age, but I try to reassure myself that it's exactly as it was meant to be.

We had a cactus birthday party and invited the Rices and my parents over for tacos and cupcakes. And I made my dad bring his camera and drive over to Wilson Pond to try to get a decent family picture. I thought they turned out great for amateur and free :) Even though Kade was not real happy about pictures on his birthday!

For the 4th of July we headed to Melba to tag-a-long with the Jones'. It was a cool parade even with TONS of people. There was SO much candy given out, popsicles, water ice, it was a fun time even if we had to hoof it a mile both ways with thousands of people!

Later that day we went swimming with cousins at my parents and celebrated Katie's birthday and had Opa do some fireworks with the boys.

My parents worked a lot of JDRF events over the summer to raise money for T1D and the 100 mile bike ride Heaton and my dad were doing in October. A few times while Nate was marathon training, the boys and I went to the events. This is car they were raffling off.

Some friends invited us up to Black Canyon for a day of boating and playing in the lake. We spent a good chunk of the day up there and had a ton of fun!

We made it to Meridian Speedway for a night of car races!

Jourdan and I were pretty consistent runners even though our strollers were getting heavy! We tried to make the big kids ride bikes one day and this is how it turned out after half a mile...

I turned the big 3-0 this year and had my first of many "I'm old!" moments...starting with my first ever migraine!

My friend Brei talked me into volunteering for our ward at the "Dirty Dash" so that we could then "run" it for free. We spent all morning pouring water for the racers and at 2pm it was our turn. It was HARD! I don't think I ran very much of it and I know I slowed Brei down, but it was hilarious and a great memory!

 

 

June

Kade turned 11 months and we made our usual summer stops to the MK Nature Center as well as Fanci Freez where Kade commandeered Nate's entire milkshake, and a trip to Esther Simplot ponds where even though I told the boys to only get wet up to their knees, they ended up soaked. We called the Rice's and they even came over and played in the water with us for a while.

 

Spencer took swimming lessons at Lakeview and totally caught on! It was awesome to see his progress and my fingers are crossed he doesn't forget how over the winter! He is a fish and loves the water! So we also spent plenty of time at Oma and Opa's pool.

The circus came to the Idaho Center in the middle of June so we took the boys. Spencer enjoyed it but at intermission was playing with Kade and tripped so they both face planted and gave Kade his first bloody teeth/lips/face.

Our friends have a little standup paddle board business and they invited Nate and I to go float Indian Creek with them. We had never been on paddle boards before so it was a learning experience. I fell in the water twice (and I wasn't even standing). Still super fun, plus it's always nice to have a more exciting date than just going out to eat.

We also had a date night to a Hawks baseball game thanks to Codi and Austin! We're sure glad we have such great friends!

At the end of June Spencer got to go on his first overnight without mom or dad. He went to Camp Ameriben (my mom's work) with Oma and Opa and his cousins! He had so much fun and must have stayed up all night because he CRASHED the next day when he got home!

That same weekend Emily and Brannick were driving through and Allison and Dallin were in town! It was a full house for one night but we're always happy to see family! Nate was right in the thick of marathon training and had a 16? 18? or some crazy number of miles to run that morning so he left early to get that out of the way and the rest of us went to check out a lavender festival.

We had a ward campout sometime in June at Grand Jean. It was a cool place I'd never been but the drive was terribly long and windey for the boys. Spencer puked at twice and as we were stopped cleaning it up some friends from the ward drove by... thankfully we took a different rout home and it was much better. Once up there the kids saw some horses and the owners were so nice to take them on a little ride!

And here's just some random pictures from the month