I'm 4, I'm Big.

 Our little, or "Big" boy Avery turned 4 a couple of weeks ago!  In fact, it was on 10-11-12, a fun date!  He had some really great times celebrating his birthday with family and friends.  He got to go birthday shopping with Grandma & Grandpa and go out to dinner with all of us and cousins.  It is his Grandpa Downs' birthday too (54), so we had a great time.  



What was the big item from Mom & Dad?  Well Avery is Brian's kids because he wanted (or atleast wanted with some pushing from his Dad) some of these:

his very own skis!  He is pretty excited about them (he went with us to get them, but thought we left them there...)  He is all ready to hit the slopes, all we need is snow...oh wait we got some last week!

For Avery's birthday party with his friends he wanted a "dirt bike" party.  We were planning on having it at the park and having all the kids bring their "dirt bikes" (or bicycles).  Well ofcourse it rained like cats and dogs that day and so we had to have it in the garage.  It was a little crazy with all those kids, but they had fun.  They did a bike course around the garage, made license plates for their bikes and played "Pin-the-Helmet-on-the-Biker."  Then we had some yummy dirtbike cupcakes and played around.  Its crazy that Avery is already 4 years old!  We love our "big" guy!

1st Day of Preschool

Here is Avery on his first day of preschool!

A lady in our ward volunteered to do a little preschool for her son, Avery, and two other little boysin the area.  Avery goes 2 times a week for 2 hours.  He absolutely loves it!  He was so looking forward to riding the bus to school and was disappointed that it didn't come.  However, he loves to ride his bike since it is only a couple of blocks away.  He asks every day if it is school yet.  He seems to be more interested in learning already!  We love our little (or should we say BIG) guy and are so proud of all he has already learned in preschool.

Fairmont Fun

We went to Fairmont, Montana for the annual Labor Day weekend condo time that Brian's family has.  This year, we only had Brian's brother, Bret and his family and Brian's sister Taunya come with us. On our way up we went to the Brigham City Temple open house, (we forgot to take pictures).  It was really beautiful inside and really nice to have our kids their to see the inside of the temple (since it is normally closed to people other than endowed members (who are older)).

Afterwards, we took the long drive up to Montana.  On our way, we stopped at Crystal Park which was really neat.  We all dug in the dirt and found actual crystals!  It was a little addicting to dig in the dirt.  The kids had fun to climbing all over the hillside as well as finding cool rocks and crystals.  We will have to do that again sometime.

Then we went to to Fairmont.  At Fairmont we did the tradition hunt for golf balls on the golf course (in the weeds where people lose them).  We sure did get quite  a few this year!

Then ofcourse, we played at the swimming pool.  We rode down the waterslide quite a few times as well as jumping in the pool and playing "Marco Polo" and freeze tag.  One of the times, Avery accidently dove into the pool.  He thought that was pretty cool.

The awesome water slide:

Lily's ride down the waterslide:

 

 Some other fun things we did at the condo were: visit the smoke stack in Anaconda and the Lost Creek waterfall.

It was a long trip up there, but we had a lot of fun and were glad we went.  It was fun to do some new things while staying at the condo.  It was also just fun to be able to relax with our family!

We Love 2 Camp!

We have been promising Avery we would go camping all summer.  Well it has taken us all summer to actually do it.  We went just the four of us to Bountiful Peak Campground.  It was so pretty up there.  We had to drive on a fairly scary and narrow road up and over the mountain (we went up to 9100 feet and back down to 7000 feet).  We were only able to spend one night, but we sure did make it lots of fun.  Unfortunately Avery ended up getting a little sick, but he still had fun.

After seeing us roast marshmallows for s'mores, Lily insisted on "doing" it herself.  She had become quite independent lately.  Yes, the marshmallow did light on fire a couple of times, but she didn't care too much.

Making some yummy breakfast

A cute little camper.  She fell down so many times we lost camp, but she didn't mind.  She loved to pick up rocks and sticks as well as sit in the camping chairs.  She did NOT sleep well since we didn't have an air mattress for her and she hates having any covers (besides her blanky) on her.  Once we uncovered her, she slept fairly well.  Luckily it wasn't extremely cold.

saying "cheese"

there were a couple of little ponds that we thought had fish in them (from the website) but later to find out they were probably the wrong ponds

an adorable and messy camper

the boys fishing

riding their "dirt bike" made out of a rock

Ave.  The poor guy was probably running a fever the whole trip.  He was so excited to go camping.  He kept looking at the mountains, asking if they were the one we were going camping on.  He loved to ask what our favorite thing about the camping trip was.

Daddy/Daughter time