Birthday BOY!!!

Someone is now



Years Old!!!

Pictures will be added later today.

A Giggle

Did you know Cheerios can do double duty as a monocle?

Simon's golf ball

Once he gets teeth, he won't have enough room in his mouth to do this:

Greenpark Ward 24th of July Celebration

Early this morning (the 25th of July) the members of the Lehi Greenpark Ward gathered for a 24th of July Parade and celebration.

The Parade

They asked the service members inthe ward to wear their uniforms, and everyone else to decorate their bikes or wagons or what-ever to walk in the parade through the subdivision.

Simon and Ben and Daddy getting ready for the Parade.  Every 16 month old should have a grenade to play with while riding in a parade.  :o)

Everybody Lining up:  They had the three soldiers, one retired Vet, and one rather jet lagged from the trip home Missionary go first.  Followed by the Scouts with the flag, then everybody else, and finally the Bishop with his rather skittish horse and wagon.  One soldier, his newly returned Missonary son (came home the day before) and the Vet all rode in a Jeep.  The other soldier and I walked behind, I kind of needed to walk so I could pull Simon in the wagon, and Melinda could walk with Ben.  We decorated Simon's wagon with service flags and yellow ribbons in honor of the fourth soldier in our ward.   He was just recently mobilized for Afghanistan.  We also have an Airforce Reservist who had drill today, and he wasn't forgotten either.

The Parade is off:  Melinda and Ben were soon at the back of the parade.  This in spite of Ben being so excited that he ran almost the entire distance, up the block and down the other side to the park.  Not far for an adult, but quite a run for such a little guy.

The Bishop was taking periodic detours to keep his horse under control.  Here he is turning down into our cul-de-sac as the parade passed by it.  Click on the picture and look at how good our wild-flower flower garden is doing.

At The Park

The 11 year old Scouts had lashed this together a day or two before, and the Scouts raised the flag just before the parade.

At the park:  We had a short patriotic and spiritual program in honor of the 24th (and a bit of the fourth as well).  Everybody posed with a very large flag while a photographer in the ward took our picture.  Hopefully he'll make it available digitally so we can post it.  Then we had a pancake breakfast and then there were several pioneer era games to be played.  In this picture brother Jensen, the 2nd counselor in our Bishopric, is winning his potato-sack race.

The kids really enjoyed the Stick-pulling, and the Tug-o-war.

Well most of them that is.

Meanwhile what were our two boys doing?  Totally ignoring the games and playing on the playground equipment.  Here Simon is crawling back and forth on the bridge, going between mommy's legs.

And Ben was having a yelling contest with a couple kids on top of the tunnel tube.  It was just yelling, not crying or fussing, they were having fun with the echo'y sound.

Cute Boy

Bang!

Then the Bishop brought out his Black Powder rifle and entertained the kids.  I wished I'd thought to bring mine, he was getting heavily swarmed at times, and could have used another gun to reduce the crowd.  Although in this picture the kids weren't mobbing him anymore.

Bishop Raff let the kids help him load the rifle for each shot.  (Powder and wadding only no bullets.)

Then each time he'd let another one of the kids acutally pull the trigger, they thought it was soooo cool.

And what was Simon doing during the shooting?  Mostly ignoring it to toodle around in the sand.  He'd jump a little and look over at each bang but otherwise was not bothered at all.  Too busy having fun.

First Family Picnic

As I'm taking some vacation this week, and we had Makae visiting. (Oh and since our April showers have finally stopped now that it is late June.) We decided to go on a family picnic up American Fork Canyon.

So here a couple cute pictures.











And finally a couple pictures of the amazingly green mountains.

A really Cute Picture

Getting Ready for Church

Tricycle: with motor

Ben has outgrown his scooter bikes so he just got his first Tricycle, I say first because he's already close to being too tall for this one.

But we were surprised to find that it came with it's own motor.















A highly motivated motor that didn't want to stop.

Big Day for Big Boy

Today is a Special day!

Simon is One Year Old Today!
YAY!!! for Simon!

Today Simon got to play with balloons, open presents and play with new toys (when he could get them away from Big brother that is).

Biiiiig Balloons and lots of them.

Simon's new toys a baby's laptop and a flip toy. Ben usually has control of the laptop.



And then came CAKE!

Cake with candle

He really wanted that fire!

Cake is served to the neat and clean boy
Simon Smiles at the Camera before tasting the cake. In fact he didn't want to taste or even touch the cake, so daddy scooped a little frosting onto his pinky and placed it on Simon's tongue.

Oh, The Horror of frosting.


After a minute or so of tears he calmed down and actually noticed the taste of the stuff on his tongue.
Visual examinationTouch it and feel it.
Now to taste it!

Oooey, Goooey

The final mess

Even big brother couldn't resist the urge to get messy with the cake.

Oh and of note, Simon is taller now on his first birthday than Ben was at 13 months. Big happy birthday boy!

He's Walking!!!

Nuff said!!!