June Joys

June already feels like forever ago, but it was a good month filled with lots of joys.

We spent every Saturday at the soccer field watching this cute kid play soccer. He's becoming quite the little soccer player and loves the sport with a passion. Now he's on to rugby but I'll post about that next month.

His team picture:

This group of cuties came to stay with us for a week.


Bryson and Lilly both loved having four extra friends/cousins around to play and giggle with all day.

Bryson graduated from first grade and earned the "Leader in Me" award.

So proud of this boy.

Here is our reading list for the Summer. We've already read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and are just about finished with Hatchet. Reading together as a family each night is something we all look forward to.

We got to see this fine young man get baptized. Cole is Lilly's half-brother and is such an amazingl kid.

Lilly loved getting to spend time with her Mommy Amber.

Lilly is growing like a weed, but is still such a petite little thing.

If we don't take her pigtails out at night she wakes up with "antenna hair" as we call it. You'll also notice that her pajamas are on inside out in the picture below. That's because she learned how to unzip her jammies, which wasn't such a bad thing until she started taking off her diaper and pooping all over her crib (seriously DISGUSTING!). Fortunately inside out jammies have solved that gag-worthy problem.


We snapped this quick picture of us before heading to church. Even though it doesn't look like it in the picture, Lilly absolutely loves going to Nursery (it took a few weeks) and has some fabulous leaders.

Bryson got to babysit Mike sister's snake for a week, which he thought was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Me?...not so much.

My sister's and I took this handsome man out to dinner for Father's Day. I am seriously so beyond lucky to have been blessed with him as my dad. He's definitely the perfect dad for me.

We ended the month with a fun siblings dinner with all of my siblings & in-laws (minus Ike, Amy & Cali). We decided to start meeting together kid-free once a quarter and talk about business strategies, money management, investing, planning for the future, food storage, couponing, health, nutrition, etc. We rotate who hosts and who's in charge of planning the dinner and topics. We keep minutes and everything and it has really brought our family together and helped us stay more unified as a family.

Favorite quote this week (maybe I should start saying "month" because that's about how often I update this thing...haha):

"Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself."

-Henri Amiel

Life rules.

6 Years Old

Our little man turned six a month ago (on March 24th). I know I'm very behind in posting about his birthday and everything else going on in his life, so this post is going to be flooded with all things Bryson. First of all, I absolutely love the age he is at right now. He soaks up the world like a sponge and is so eager to learn about everything around him. There is something truly special about Bryson and we feel so beyond blessed to have him in our lives.

For Bryson's birthday this year he asked us for a globe and a liahona. I'm not sure where he plans on going, but at least he'll have a way to find his way there now...haha. The globe is illuminated and looks so pretty when it's lit up at night. In the weeks leading up to his birthday when family members asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he was very strategic in his planning and made sure to tell each person a different item from his wish list in order to be sure he got everything he wanted. His strategy worked and he really did walk away with everything on his list. Pretty smart thinking for a 6-year-old!

We had a small family birthday party this year and Mommy Kim got to come to his party for the very first time since he was born. She's always lived outside of Utah up until now, so it was great to have her here to celebrate his big day with us. She is so amazing and we love her so much.

Bryson recently finished playing indoor soccer again with his cousin Naish. Bryson LOVES soccer and decided to play outdoor soccer instead of baseball this year. He is becoming quite the player and is a pretty fast little runner.

For some reason Bryson decided to start copying The Book of Mormon into his new little notebook from school. I have no idea what inspired him to start doing this but he's been doing it pretty consistently over the last few weeks and spends a few minutes before bed most nights copying down a few lines of text. He's such a cutie.

Bryson absolutely LOVES school! He has an amazing teacher and has made some really great friends. He has been in all-day kindergarten and it has been fun to watch him progress and learn. He got chosen to be the student of the month and they gave him this cute little framed certificate to take home. What his teacher said about him was so cute and made me tear up a little when I read it. He is such a good kid and we are so proud of him.

I try to do a video each year of Bryson telling about his life and this is this years video. He was quite the little talker so I had to edit it a little so it wasn't so long. Enjoy!

We can't get enough of our little man and love him so much!

The Latest

Here's a quick look at some of the fun we've had lately:

SOCCER PICTURES
Bryson got his soccer pictures back last week. Aren't they cute? His season is almost over and he's had a lot of fun. He says he likes soccer, but that he's more excited to play baseball (yay!). Anyone who knows my family knows baseball was kind of our thing growing up so it would be super cool if baseball ends up being his thing too.

FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT
One evening each weekend we snuggle up on the couch as a family with a big bowl of popcorn on our laps and enjoy a family movie together. We take turns choosing the movies each week and the three movies above are the ones we've enjoyed this month. Courageous and A Little Princess are must sees if you haven't seen them yet. I LOVE this scene from A Little Princess. Can you guess which movie Bryson chose? 

NEW DESIGN
Our little home on the web has been neglected for far too long due to the fact that I'm always so busy designing other peoples blogs that I have a hard time finding time to work on my own! However, I was finally able to find a few seconds the other day to work on a re-design and it feels so good not to have to look at the old design anymore. Bryson's bedroom was the inspiration for the new design and since this blog is mostly about him, I thought it should look like him....so there you go.

BOOK OF THE MONTH
This month we've been reading Charlotte's Web to Bryson and he's loved it. He especially likes the spider Charlotte and is now obsessed with learning about spiders. Thanks to our good friend Google, he can now identify all major types of spiders. He has also learned how to crawl super fast around the house on his hands and feet just like a spider. It's a little creepy. He says his favorite spider is the Wolf Spider (pictured above) and "sometimes a Black Widow and sometimes a Teranchula."

HOUSE INVASION
My insanely talented sister-in-law Michelle (check her blog out here) was asked to film a cute Valentine's segment for Studio 5 a few weeks ago. Since her house is still in the middle of a re-model, she asked if the segment could be filmed here at our house. Even though our place isn't much to look at, I agreed and a few days later our house was taken over by all sorts of video equipment, spotlights, TV screens, microphones...the works. The camera guy is the producer/videographer for the television documentary series, History of the Saints, so it was cool to meet him and hear about his experiences in film. Michelle did such a great job. You can view her segment here.

FAMILY HISTORY
My mom and I have really been wanting to start working on our family history together and so a few weeks ago we decided to take a trip to the Family History Library downtown to get started. My brother Ike and his wife Amy kindly volunteered to come with us to watch Bryson and took him over to play in the children's area of the Church History Museum while my mom and I did our thing. We learned a lot and since then have had the chance to go as a family to do work in the temple for some of our ancestors and it has been an amazing experience. I've also learned how to index and it's become one of my new favorite hobbies.

FUN FRIDAY
We still continue our Fun Friday's and last month we went to the Discovery Museum at the Gateway with cousin Brock, Brody and Kaylee. I laughed when Bryson grabbed the vacuum and started vacuuming the little play house there because that's one of his chores at our house...except he's usually in just his undies when he vacuums at home.

Indoor Soccer

It's official. As of last Wednesday I'm officially a soccer mom. Bryson had his first indoor soccer game and loved it and did so well for his first time playing...ever.

Getting pumped up for the game with his team.

Standing in line during the warm-up.

Bryson's loves playing with his cousin Naish, who is also on the team.

Before the game Bryson spent about an hour drawing himself up all sorts of different plays for the game. This is a picture of one of them.

 Here's a look at Bryson putting one of his cool plays into action (he's player #1 in yellow). They ended up winning the game 7-3... or something like that.