Butterflies!

Here is a video of our evening...this is our 4th time raising them from caterpillars, and I am still completely amazed at the whole process!  The kids love it too, and it is so fun seeing their reactions at each stage in their life.

Father's Day Fun!

Since we sold our Audi, and said Audi could NOT make it up to Alta lodge without oil dripping, and causing the engine to smoke, I got the bright idea to celebrate the sale of the car by going to Alta lodge for an all you can eat brunch with the kids.  And it just so happened to land on Fathers day too. (BTW, we were completely honest to the buyers about the smoking issues, they were fine with it because the car was going to be mainly used for around town).  

Anyway, we were missing the mountains, and have not been there for probably 6 yrs. and thought it might be fun to take the kids up there for some delicious food and fun.  The really nice thing about that canyon is it feels like you are so far away from it all, but it really is actually not that far to drive to!  So it makes for a great little mini day vacation.  We got up to Alta Lodge around 10am for our reservations.  Liam wanted to eat inside, which was probably best since it was a bit breezy, but the view was still beautiful out the window.  Rowan actually did much better than Liam, which was a little surprising.  She especially loved the bran muffin they had, but was NOT a fan of the Pate which she thought was hummus, or the cheese cake.  She made the best disgusted faces we've seen!!  Liam did OK, but had a hard time listening and sitting still. 

After brunch we drove down to Snowbird, they had a festival going on, so there were lots of fun activities for the kids.  We took them down the Alpine slide for the first time.  And after that we let them play on the bounce house for almost an hour.  We had to bribe them with ice-cream to get off!  We didn't find any ice-cream, but did find some shaved ice, which they really liked.  Mike did find an ice-cream shop in one of the buildings when he took Liam to the bathroom, so next time we will know!  We were only up there 4 hrs. but we totally wore the kids out, and ourselves.  But we ALL had a really great day! 

Bye Bye Old Car

Been meaning to do an update for May, but alas behind on pictures again...what's new?!

Well, the most recent thing that happened is we sold our Audi A6 wagon.  Considering it's age, and issues, we were unsure how difficult it would be to sell.  But, as always, if you price it right, it will sell eventually.  We kinda sat on it for a while, we had it cleaned up real good at the car wash, and then I thought it might help if we got it inspected.  So it seems like it took forever to sell, but really we only started advertising it a few weeks ago.  Anyway, the car is gone, and really it is bitter sweet.  I realized last night that I had driven that car for nearly one third of my lifetime!  Also, both kids came home in that car from the hospital, so there are some great memories with the car, and we will all miss it (although we won't miss the maintenance that comes along w/ a 15 year old car!!)  We were completely honest about all the issues it has with the couple that bought it, and they are going to be having a baby soon, so it's going to be a family car again!!  They drove a mini cooper, which Liam was super excited to see, esp. the pipes...he is pretty obsessed with the pipes on cars lately.  Anyway, the guy buying the car was nice enough to take this picture of us in front of the car.  As Rowan and Liam said that night 'Bye Bye old car'!

Liam's Graduation Pictures

They are not joking when they say the school year flies by before you know it!  It truly doesn't seem that long ago, when I posted his pictures at the start of the school year, and here it is graduation already?!  Liam probably only has one more year at Kids Village, and I am quite sad about that.  The teachers there are so wonderful!  I just hope that when he does go to public school, he won't get too lost in the huge class sizes.  But, I guess we will cross that bridge when the time comes.

We had the end of the year parent teacher conference, and all his teachers praised Liam for being such a good kid.  They said that he has advanced very well with socializing.  He is very good with the other kids, and he's doing well with his writing.  Miss Kelli mentioned that he can be a bit of a worrier, and I told her he probably gets that from me.  She also said that he was a perfectionist, which he probably gets from his dad.  She said that she has a son like that, so she knew just how to help him.  Miss Kelli said we should work on his lower case letters over the summer, but all in all, he has done very well passing off all of his tasks.  We are very proud of him and look forward to seeing his graduation program in a couple of weeks.

If you click on the label 'school pictures' below, you can see the previous ones, and see how he has changed.

The Story

So my Audi A6 is getting old, has been for a while now.  She is a teenager, 15 yrs old.  And in car years, that is pretty ancient.  She has a bad oil leak that costs far more to fix than the car is worth, so sadly we have been dealing with puddles of oil in the garage.  Kinda sad to see large cut out cardboard boxes soaked with oil...Other flaws include no side air bags for the kids, no trips in the mountains because of said leak causing it to drip on engine and cause horrible smoking, no family trips...and the impending possibility of the engine or something else major crapping out any day,which is NOT a good thing with 2 young kids in car seats.


Anyway, the last week or so, there were some minor issues with the car, and so we decided it was definitely time to start getting more serious about finding what we wanted.  Our perfect car that we really wanted would be a newer version of our Audi.  Unfortunately, the used market for A6 Audi wagons is near impossible to find, and also much more expensive than 11 yrs. ago when we bought ours.  We considered an A6 Sedan too, and I even test drove one this last week, but really prefer a wagon for the space.  We spent a few days online looking at several different options.  Friday, my mom came over to babysit, and right before we left, Mike found a Silver 2009 A4 Audi wagon, the exact car we loved driving a couple of years ago.  The downside though, it was in Florida.  We were pretty tempted to buy it anyway since it had a great carfax report, and still had about 3 years left on it's warranty.  But, we decided to go out and look at some other vehicles, just to say we tried.  


We headed over to the Subaru dealer in American Fork, since they had a few different vehicles we wanted to look at.  We first looked at a used Toyota RAV, low miles, and descent price.  Our impression was, eh, it's OK.  Then we drove a couple of used Subaru Outbacks.  Then we looked at the brand new ones...which surprisingly where not much more than the used ones.  And since we were pretty used to the sticker price shock of the used Audi's, we were pretty surprised that we could get a brand new 2012 Subaru Outback for around the same price as a 4 year old Audi?!  We took the brand new one for a spin, and were pretty impressed...it's no Audi, but after driving an old car for so many years, it was a lot nicer than we had expected.


Anyway, we slept on it for a night, and decided to take the kids over to show them, and get some questions answered, and get a more solid estimate with the options we wanted.  We took the kids for a ride in one of them, to see how well they fit, and everything.  They really loved it!  We also took it home since it wasn't too far, to see how well it fit in the garage.  We went back and our sales guy, Chris Smith, (really great sales guy, no pressure, very patient, and went out of his way to help us)...we asked him to see what he had in the area that fit what we wanted.  There was one in SLC, but was sold today...then since we were also considering the Limited package, we asked to see if there were any in the area.  He tracked one down in Ogden.  After much thought, we decided it was the best decision for us right now, so we had him go ahead and get it.  We thought he would have one of the employees go get it, but he went himself!  Pretty impressive.


He said we could go over around 6:30 pm and it would be ready.  Liam and Rowan were being quite good considering the long crazy day.  Liam was running around like crazy by the end, but I kept an eye on him while Mike listened to all the instructions, and did most of the paperwork.  We got one quick picture, with horrible lighting, but I figure we will cherish it no matter what, it's not every day we get a BRAND NEW CAR!! Never in a million years thought we would ever buy a new car.  As kids we always heard you lose so much value driving it off the lot, but have to say the market is so much different today. Pretty crazy!!  So, the other great thing is they offered us an extended warranty for not much more.  And we know how horrible car repairs can be, so having 8 years of mostly maintenance free is definitely appealing.  So I know this is getting super long, so I will end with my most favorite feature it has...there is a camera in the back that shows the image in the rear view mirror!!  This feature is super great, and very useful in our neighborhood where little kids run around with no supervision.  Anyway, so far we are super happy, and I'm sure there will be a few things that disappoint, but overall we feel it was a solid decision.  Looking forward to taking the family on some drives.

And The Decision Was Made!!

More on this later...but here is our picture of us in front of our new car!!

Family Picture

Yay, we finally all were able to hold still for a few minutes and have a family picture : ) It's been a whole year...Thank you very much Erica!