Little update on my boys

So much has happened and so much is going to be happening within the next couple of months.

Daxton: He's four years old and is going to be attending preschool on Sept. 15. He is sooo excited to be going to school. Everyday he says, "I'm bigger today mommy! I'm bigger!" He is such a helper and is always playing with his brothers and helping me out when I needed.

Corbin: He's two years old and is so wanting to go to school with Daxton. He has such a vocabulary and is always making me laugh. He has some of the greatest facial expressions that you would never think that he is 2 years old. He definetly acts older than his age, most of the time. He loves nursery and loves playing with Hayden. He is also a big momma's boy.

Hayden: He is now 10 months and growing ever so quickly. He is still army crawling around the house because it is much quicker for him to get from here to there.
He says momma
dadda
nanight
and has said love you
He is now 22.7 lbs and is stil getting bigger. He is such a stocky boy and loves to eat. When we were camping with Mat's family his mom and brother-in-law called him sparrow because I would nurse him, feed him cereal and fruit and then give him whatever we were eating at that time.
Hayden really loves mommy but loves being with his daddy.

Hope you enjoy this little update on my boys.

Oh, and Mat is doing great. He is still at PDC (Phone Directories Company) in Orem. He is now in Spec where they get to design first new designs for companies. It's pretty demanding. He enjoys it a lot and will be with the spec until February and then will go back to what he was doing before.

A spiritual weekend!

So I know that I should have posted about this earlier in the week, but it's been crazy. Last weekend we had an awesome weekend. We were able to go to the temple with my sister and her husband on Saturday and do a live endownment. We actually knew a few people in the session. It was fun to see the new missionaries all excited to be going through and it was really nice to just relax in the temple. I love going to the temple and wish that I could go more often, but it is so hard when we have young children at home. But I sooo needed to be there. Afterwards, my sister Apryl and I went shopping for a little bit and found some good buys at Susie's Deals in Provo. Later that evening we were able to go to my brother Josh's home and have dinner and play games with them and a few of my other siblings. It was much needed to get together as siblings and let the kids play with their cousins.

The next morning was kind of crazy trying to get the kids over to my sisters in Santaquin and me back at the church before 8:30am for the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple Dedication, but we made it and the kids were great for my sister. Mat and I went to the morning session while Apryl watched the kids and we watched her kids while they went to the afternoon session. It worked out perfectly. Anyway, when I got to the church they were having technical difficulties and were possibly going to be moving us to another stake center for us to participate in the dedication, but we had faith that things would work out and they would get full sound. 15 minutes till the dedication was to begin and everything was working perfectly. It was an amazing session. The speakers talked to both the adults as well as the kids that were in attendence, and told all of us to always work towards going to the temple, either continually going or as a main goal to go in someday. It was a very uplifting and gratifying event. One of the funny parts was when President Monson was talking about Pres. Utchdorf after he had just finished speaking and mentioned that they walked in a 747. Pres. Monson said that Pres. Utchdorf knew every bolt in the plane and was talking about each part of the plane and what he would do and ended up at the cockpit where he said, "And this is where I sat." And Pres. Monson said, "Don't do it Dieter! Don't do it!" as Pres. Utchdorf looked like he was ready to have it take off. And then Pres. Monson said, " And he obeyed and listened to the prophet." It was so funny, especially since it was right before the dedicatory prayer.

I am so thankful that I am apart of this gospel and church. It is very gratifying to know who I am, where I came from and what part I am in the Lord's plan. I'm thankful for the power of prayer and the priesthood. I love the temples so much and am grateful that my family can and will be together forever.

Other happenings... The DINOSAURS

Daxton and Corbin at the front of the museum with the DINOSAURS!!

Some of the other things that we have been up to is that we were able to go to the Dinosaur museum up at Thanksgiving Point with my sister and her family. It was a blast and the kids thought that it was awesome. They were constantly asking when the next time we would be able to go see the "ginosaurs" as Corbin would put it. Corbin had a much better experience this year than last because he was able to be involved with everything. Last year my sister and I went by ourselves with 5 kids and I was 7 months pregnant. We vowed that we wouldn't do that again and we would take our husbands and so we did. Mat and my brother-in-law Dave came with us and we had Hayden enjoying it too. Because the boys did such a great job they were rewarded with ice cream cones from McDonalds and they thought that it was awesome.

The famous jaws pose!

They boys all playing with the dinosaurs

My nephew Easton playing dinosaurs with his brother Christian

See Hayden is having a BLAST and is always smiling for the camera

Ferron Mountain trip Aug 2009

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post of what has been on with the Larsen family, but wow has August been crazy busy. We have been camping, visiting friends and doing lots and lots of canning along with our calling as Scout leaders. Well I will briefly tell you about our trip to Ferron Mountain. For those of you who don't know, that is where Mat's family is from and where part of his growing up years were. Ferron is located 30 miles west of Price and is out there by Castle Dale and Orangeville. It is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, but it is where his family is. Well, we went camping with his mom and dad, and sister Emily and her husband Kyle and their kids Camille, Landon and Andrew and Mat's niece, Maddison was with his parents. We were so glad to be there. Lynne, my mother-in-law, said that it has been 25 years since she has been up Ferron Mountain. It was really beautfiul. It was also really cold. The first night was great, but the last 2 nights got so cold that Hayden had to come and sleep with Mat and I in the bed.

We didn't do a whole lot, but just play games, read books and hike around the campsite and go down to the lake. The kids were entertained with the logs and trees and sticks around us as well as the crafts that Grandma brought to do such as painting with watercolors and doing necklaces and bracelets. The kids had a blast, especially Daxton and Cami and Maddi who were always doing the beads and painting. Daxton has such a creative mind and is always coloring at home and making things up. I hope that he keeps it up and uses his creativity.

The most dramatic thing that happened was that Hayden got bit on the hand by Emily's dog, Sir Sparticus or Sparti. Hayden was just looking at what Sparti was doing and he snapped at him because Sparti was trying to protect the food that he had by him. Hayden was hurt too badly and just was scraped a little bit. He wouldn't keep on a bandaid and we just made sure that the cut was kept clean and there would be no infections.

We had a great time with Mat's family. It was so nice to be up there where Mat's family had once gone generations ago. The ranger even told us that the only people that come up the canyon is those that grew up in the area. No one comes up to Ferron Mountiain for just because unless you know where it is.

I hope that through the pictures I have posted you can see the true beauty of the place. It was amazing. I hope to go back another time and hope that it is much warmer for us.

Jon Schmidt Love Story meets Viva La Vida

This was an amazing video of two wonderful songs put together by an AMAZING artist! Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v3d6SFcDys

Camping up at Maple Canyon

Mat and I have been wanting to go camping with just our little family all summer and we finally just found a date that would work, went on line to recreation.gov and we got a campsite reserved for us up Maple Canyon. The last time that Mat and I went camping up there was when we were at Snow College and we went with our roommates and we just started dating. It was a lot of fun then. We went rock climbing, repelling and just hiked around there with all of our friends. This time it was a little bit different for the fact that we had 3 young boys with us, especially Hayden who is only 9 months old. But we still had a great, relaxing time. We just hiked around a little bit and the boys went with Mat and found little things to do a fun, quick craft on paper plates with all nature things. Daxton made a cute little doggy with flowers for eyes, rocks for a nose, bark for his ears, a twig for the mouth and a leaf for the tongue. It was really cute. And Corbin's was just a collage of everything that he had found.
We got to Maple Canyon on Friday night and first thing we needed to do was start a fire so that dinner could start cooking. Well all the stuff that we found was all green wood and it was having a hard time staying lite and was really smokey. But we got dinner going and the tent setup and finally ate around 7pm. Not too bad, but I was starving. Most of my food was not cooked all the way. We did tinfoil dinners and I had bigger portion of veggies for Hayden to eat with me. I ended up feeding up something else before ours were done. I ate some of Mat's veggies because most of mine were still really crunchy. Not my favorite. Anyway, the kids were so excited to finally be camping. They talked about it all week. We got them ready for bed and let them stay up for a little bit. But they were getting onrey so we put the younger two to bed and Mat and Daxton went looking for firewood. While they were gone I caught on video Corbin and Hayden just giggling away. They were not sleeping and it was funny to just hear them laugh and play in the tent. Glad it was laughing and not fighting and crying. Silly boys that I have. Once Daxton got into the tent, the other two settled down for a little bit and things were quite by 9:30pm. Mat and I didn't stay up much longer playing card games and just enjoying the beauty up there even in the dark and just relaxed and didn't have to worry about anything.
The next day after a sleepless night of the boys falling off their mattresses and crying because it was cold and having to go potty we finally got up after 7pm and got breakfast going. After a yummy breakfast burritoes we got everyone dressed for the day and Hayden went down for a nap. During that time Mat took Daxton off to go looking for more firewood while Corbin helped me clean up camp. Daxton felt very special to go and help daddy this whole last weekend and mommy couldn't help at all. He was very pleased with himself for helping daddy find lots of firewood. Corbin on the other hand wouldn't stay out of putting things into the firepit. NO matter how many times we would get after him for it. He still would do it because mommy and daddy were doing it. What do you do? The whole time there we thought he would get burned by the fire, but loal and behold Daxton gets burned on his hand after dinner when we put his hand where the coals from dinner had been on the griddle area. The coals were gone, but the heat on the metal was still there. Luckily we treated it right away and we knew just what to do especially after he had burned his feet last year at my sister's wedding dinner. That was unpleasant and this was a little more bearable. So we had one small injury along with Corbin constantly falling down on all the little things, yet still able to climb rocks and hills without any problems. Silly boy. Oh and during that day Corbin and I watched these squirrels ravage through our garbage that they made a hole into the night before. He named them Mo and Jo. They were fun to watch and kept him entertained for an hour or so.
We came home early Sunday morning. We were out of our camp spot before 9 am and got home about 9:45am Quick trip home. Nice to be so close to such a beautiful area. Can't wait to go camping with Mat's family to Ferron Mountain next weekend. I love CAMPING!!!!