Idazoo

We were able to tag along the other weekend with Cassidy's parents on their trip to Idaho Falls.  I think the weekend was a lot more fun for the girls than the boys, but we had a good time and are grateful to be able to see our families so often.  

While the men were busy working (more on that to come) the girls hit the Tautphaus Park Zoo.  Jason and Laura have lived next to this zoo for years and have bever been.  We were excited at how much this little zoo had.  Both of the babies and their moms.   

We were having a lot of fun now that Alden and Sam are getting more interactive.

There was a small petting zoo were the kids had fun with the donkeys.

Our sort of new little hatchlings in their nest.

And I just loved the lion.  

After the zoo we went to lunch and then shopping with grandma.  Meanwhile the men spent the day at home helping Jason build his deck.  Here is the before shot.  Jason had posts in, but that was it.  

And here is the project at the end of the day.  All that is left is hand rails, but it got dark and chilly before they had time for that.

Jason also has some very big dogs.  Alden loves dogs so we thought we would introduce him to Bruce.  Bruce's head is bigger than Alden's entire body, but Alden loved him and just kept laughing and wanting to pet him.  

And then just a bonus picture.  October is when post season of baseball happens.  We are trying to instil a love of baseball in Alden early so on October 1st we dressed Alden in his sports pajamas and Cass read him Take Me Out to the Ballgame for his bed time story.  It was really cute especially since Cass was so excited to read this book in October :)

Depot Fire

Alden turned 8 months old on September 27th.  Some milestones he drinks out of sippy cup by himself, can walk a few steps holding your hands, sit up like a chap, and can splash all of the water out of the bath tub.  He seriously is the best behaved child in all of the world.  He hardly ever cries and sleeps all night.  He will eat anything and smiles and plays well by himself and with others.  I drug him all over the place the other day and he never even acted cranky.  We are so blessed to have such a sweet boy with a mellow temperament.  He is also super cute as evidenced in the picture below.   

In other news we recently discovered that the Home Depot nearby has a free kids craft on the first Saturday of every month.  We had to check it out because it is free.  Apparently this was their big activity for the year, fire safety awareness, so besides making our own firetruck there was also Smokey the Bear, face painting, and a fire truck and ambulance for the kids to go in

Our little builder at work.  They also give the kids a free apron.

 Just hanging out with Smokey.

 Practicing his driving skills :)

 And here he is at home withe the completed project.  I think he looks pretty happy with his new free toy.  Can't wait for next month when he builds us a napkin holder :)

Mighty Cougars

 
As has become somewhat of a tradition in our family we attended our annual BYU football game on September 8.  They played Weber State and won by a landslide so we left the stadium happy campers :)  It was fun to take Alden to his first football game and even better that we got to sit in the second row.  Alden loved to watch the cheerleaders run by with the BYU flags every time we scored :) Here are some pictures from our fun day .

2 excited boys heading in to the stadium.

Look how close we were to the action.

No trip to BYU is complete without a picture by the Cougar!

 The mall in Orem does a shuttle bus to the games for free if you eat at one of the mall restaurants during the week.  We love this option so we don't have to worry about traffic or parking.  After the game though it did take a while to get back to our car so we had fun with the camera.  What a great model we had.  I can't believe aunt LaWayne did end up in ay of the pictures on our camera, but we are grateful she came with us.

 After the game Alden got his first sippy cup so we had to try it out.  He wasn't too sure about it then, but he is a pro with it now.  We had a great day and love our BYU Cougars! 

Not so much Labor on this Day

 This year for Labor Day we went camping (if you can believe that :)  )  We went to Palisades State Park with the Peterson family.  It was a pretty relaxing weekend with a couple of four wheeler rides, a little nature walking, and mostly just hanging out enjoying each others company.

  

Alden was so tired when we went for our walk he spent most of it like this :)

Dane and his baby, a super cute puppy names Zues

We walked around the reservoir that was really low so some of the group went down to check out what the ground was like where the water normally is.  This picture was taken shortly before Chris ended up ankle deep in the weird mud.

Tryegann was a little inconvenienced by the walk

Camping must really wear this kid out :)

Alden and the new puppy playing in the trailer.

And this was a couple of weeks ago, but here is our cute boy at 7 months old.  He is getting such a fun personality now.  He smiles and interacts so much.  Alden is truly a great blessing in our life we learn so much from him everyday and can't imagine him not being in our lives. 

BJ & Shawna's Wedding

BJ and Shawna got married on August 18, 2012.  We are so excited to get another sister and even more excited that we already knew and liked her.  Shawna was Randi's roommate for about 3 years when she was in college.  After she moved to Las Vegas a few years ago her and BJ had some mutual friends and saw each other occasionally, but nothing happened until after BJ joined Shawna's bowling league.   After dating for about 6 months BJ proposed and they were married about 7 weeks later.  The wedding was beautiful and so fun with a candy bar and a photo booth.

They were married behing the swimming pool in Shawna's parent's backyard.  

Family shot!

Of course Dad did the cake.  Doesn't it look amazing!  And it tasted delicious as well.

Some good looking dudes!  I made the little boys matching red ties and I think they turned out pretty good.  BJ made them boutonnieres to wear.

The entire Norton family.

And the rest are pictures we took in the photo booth.  It was free so we might have gone through more than once :)

Cass even convinced LaWayne to get in on some of the fun.

We had a great time and hope that BJ and Shanwa will continue to have a great time as a married couple.  

Where in the world is Carmen San Diego

 After coming back from Oregon we were in Utah for 2.5 days before we headed out on vacation again.  This time we went to Escondido, CA for BJ's wedding!!!!  Escondido is really close to San Diego so we spent an entire day there doing things that we have dreamed of doing for a while.  For Randi this meant a trip to the San Diego Zoo and for Cassidy it was attending his first Major League Baseball game (even though it wasn't his team that we went to see).  Thanks for getting married BJ so we could have an awesome vacation :)

First stop the San Diego Zoo, Here we are right inside the gate.

We were lucky we did the zoo a day later than we originally planned and this way Jamie and Jonathan got to go with us.  Jamie loves giraffes so we had to get a picture of the 2 of them with the giraffes.  One of the giraffes we saw was only 10 days old!

I enjoy the flamingos so here I am with these crazy cool birds.

San Diego also has a gorilla statue so we had to have our traditional family picture with it.  Too bad Alden slept through it.

He did wake up in time to see the gorillas.  Here he is with grandpa Norton and a gorilla looking adorable in the headband Jonathan let him borrow.

And of ourse we couldn't let the Garcias pass up this photo op :)

The zoo is so big they have a couple of different bus systems to show you around.  We took the general bus tour (it is about 45 minutes).  Alden loved the bus ride

Jonathan missed the entire thing.  Good thing Uncle David was an excellent bed and pillow :)

Aren't these cousins so cute!

That night went to Petco Field and watched the San Diego Padres take on the San Fransico Giants.  It is  a good thing we were cheering for the Giants because the Padres got their trash kicked.

It was a major league game so we had to make sure we had some peanuts and cracker jacks!

An action shot.  Although it was a long hot walk to the field we had a blast once we made it there.  

The next morning we got up and went to the San Diego LDS Temple.  It is a beautiful building inside and out.  It was a great way to start the day and we are grateful to Jamie for babysitting Alden for us.

After the temple it was off to the beach.  This was Alden's first time to the ocean and he really enjoyed the water once he got used to the fact that he was always moving.  Aren't my boys so handsome.

Family picture in the water.

Jonathan didn't really care for the ocean. I think this is the only picture where he loos some what happy.

Rudy joined us late Friday night so he got to hit the beach with us on Saturday,  Isn't the Garcia family one good looking family.

After the beach we had to clean up and head over to the main event BJ and Shawna's wedding.  We are so excited for them they get their own post...