Happy (late) Birthday Isaac

Isaac's 4th birthday was earlier this month. Here's the thing. He only has one cousin on my side of the family and two on Greg's side. So, yeah. He's a little spoiled. He had almost three weeks of birthday.

His main present from Greg and I (with some help from my parents) was his EZ Ski. It's a water skiing trainer. We gave it to him a week or so early because I was afraid that if I waited until his birthday he wouldn't be able to use it at all until next summer because it would be too cold. We had been looking at videos of the ski online for a few months trying to decide which kind of trainer to buy, so when he opened it he knew exactly what it was. He was soooo excited.

That weekend we went boating.

Greg was on a tube out there with him so when he fell off (and he did fall and was NOT happy about it) Greg just jumped off the tube and grabbed him.

I love this picture of Isaac and Greg. Isaac had so much fun and thought he was the coolest thing ever. He wasn't scared at all to be out there, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing.

That next day, Greg's family had a little party for him. Isaac is really into golf right now and Greg's sister Heidi made the cutest cupcakes. They have a golf tee with a gumball as the golf ball. Such a great idea.

Later that week Isaac got to go shopping with Grandma and Grandpa Baldwin for his birthday. He was staying with them while Greg and I were out of town for a couple days. I'll post about that later. He talked for days about how he got to play with all the toys at the store and all the cars there.

On his birthday he got a few little things from us, and then we went to my parents' for dinner that night. Isaac shares a birthday with my sister, Melanie. He thinks that's pretty cool. So we had a party for both of them.

THEN (see I told you this kid is spoiled) the next Saturday we had party at home with his friends. He wanted a golf themed party, you know, since he was turning fore, so we played a golf version of pin the tail on the donkey, ate pizza, made golf visors, and played some miniature golf games. It was a lot of fun, but ten four year olds can make a big mess in two hours. :)

I can't believe that my kid is four years old. He is my buddy and I'm so glad he's a part of our little family. Happy birthday Isaac!

Bend it Like Baldwin

Isaac has been playing on a Tiny Tots soccer team. I wasn't sure he was going to be able to play at first because I learned about the soccer league after the sign up deadline had passed. He was put on a wait list and we were lucky enough to find a spot on a team. He wasn't able to be on a team with his neighborhood friends, but it turned out just fine because his coach was great. It was so much fun to see these little kids play. Scoring goals for the other team, comparing grass stains on their knees, and climbing on the fence.

He had four games this fall, and he'll have another four next spring. On the way to the games, he would tell us, "I'm going to score three six nine goals." It was a lot of fun to see him improve over the few games and practices he had. At his last game of the season, he did score two goals for his team. Go Isaac! He had a blast playing and is always asking me when his next game is.

Preschool

So I'm going to sound like a big crybaby when I say this, but I'm going to anyway. My little boy is growing up. Isaac started preschool two weeks ago. I'm not afraid to admit it's made me a little sad thinking about how this is the start of many years of school for him. Then what? College? A mission? Who knows. I totally cried after I dropped him off that first day. Don't judge me. It was sad.

Here he is on his first day.

It's kind of a goofy smile. I couldn't get him to give me a good one.

He likes going for the most part. The last few times he's cried for a few minutes when I first drop him off, but then he's just fine. He's already learned most of the Pledge of Allegiance and several fun songs he likes to sing in the car. I think it will be good for him to be around different kids and have more structure in the day.

Yellowstone National Park

Earlier this month we made the drive to Yellowstone National Park. Just Greg, Isaac, and me went. While I love going on vacation with our families, it was fun to be together with just our little family and go at our own (read: Isaac's) pace.

We left on a Thursday afternoon and drove to Idaho Falls and spent the night there. The next morning we headed the rest of the way to West Yellowstone. We made it there about noon and after checking into our hotel, Isaac had to make sure there was a pool, we went into the park. Anyone who has been through the West Yellowstone entrance within the last, oh, eight or ten years knows that one of the first animals you're going to see is a bald eagle. There is nest right off the side of the road.



Soooo cool.


I think the animals are my favorite thing about Yellowstone. It's amazing to see them. That first day in the park we were lucky enough to see this buffalo up close. And when I say close, I mean he was less than 5 feet from the car.




I don't think you can see them in the pictures, but there were people STANDING outside their cars with this huge animal just feet away from them taking pictures. That is insanity. In fact one of the papers you are given when you first enter the park is an illustration of a guy getting flipped up in the air by a buffalo's horns. It said on it "Many visitors have been gored by buffalo". For some reason, Isaac thought that was hilarious. So, as we were watching this buffalo from our car and these crazy people are getting out and taking pictures in front of this beast, Isaac was yelling, "Many visitors have been gored by buffalo!!" I didn't even bother to tell him to be quiet. LOL.

We also saw elk and sheep.



Of course there's the other cool features that Yellowstone has. We went to see Old Faithful and while we were sitting around waiting for it to go off, Isaac decided to try his hand at photography. Here's a sample of his work:





When he was tired of waiting for Old Faithful, he decided to entertain the people around us with a chant of "Let's do this, Old Faithful!" and various dance moves. He's such a ham. When Old Faithful finally went off, we got sprayed big time.


One thing I didn't remember from past visits to Yellowstone, is the smell. It's pretty bad. Every time we would get out of the car, Isaac would say, "Ew, geyser!"



Here's my favorite thing we saw.





It's in Mammoth Hot springs. It was so pretty. it looked like someone had come in and designed it. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was made of salt and minerals, but it looked like ice in the middle of the desert.

We also pulled off the road and dipped our feet in the river. It was COLD!




The one animal we didn't see in the park was a bear. In fact, we went to buy Isaac a t-shirt and he told me he wanted one that said, "Isaac went to Yellowstone and didn't see a bear." LOL. So on the way home we stopped at Bear World in Rigby, Idaho. You drive your car through this little zoo where bears, buffalo, elk, and wolves roam around. It's pretty neat. They also have a petting zoo and a few kiddy rides.

Yellowstone has so many cool things and we had a lot of fun. Here's just some more random pictures. As if I hadn't posted enough already. ;)

If Wasn't For Pictures . . .

. . . I don't think I could tell you what we have been doing all summer. Seriously, it's a good thing I bring my camera along, and that Greg takes pictures (because I usually forget). I feel like one thing runs into another these days. So here's what we've been up to.

The first part of June we went to Hill Air Force Base and saw the air show. So cool. It's amazing what they can do with those planes.

Also in June we went to Idaho to a Baldwin family reunion. It was fun to see so many of Greg's family even if it did rain on us for most of the day. They had fun games for the little (and not so little) ones. Greg's dad did all the food and it was really good. He works wonders with a dutch oven.

Here's Isaac trying to win the marshmallow eating contest. I think he stuffed three of those big marshmallows in his mouth.

A water balloon fight broke out as well. You can tell by the look on his face that he was right in the thick of it.

For the Fourth of July we went to my uncle Preston's house for a barbecue/family reunion. He lives on a farm so Isaac HAD to go find the tractor.

We also went to a parade with my sister, Melanie, her husband, Dan, and Dan's family. Dan's family is so good to Isaac. Dan has three sisters and Isaac thinks they are super cool. So the day of the parade Isaac picked flowers for all the girls. How cute is that!

A few weeks ago we went fishing. We were there for about 4 1/2 hours and caught ONE fish. Oh well, I got to work on my tan a little.

And don't mind Isaac's swollen eye. He got a mosquito bite the night before and it swelled (?) up really big. I did end up taking him to the doctor and come to find out he is more allergic to mosquitos than most people. Want a closer look at that eye? Here you go.

Pretty gross, eh? It actually got worse than that before it got better. Poor kid.

And of course summer for us means boating. And so not to bore you with details from our almost weekly boating trips I'll leave you with some of our better boating pictures.

Self Portrait

Isaac drew this picture of himself

Don't you see the similarities?

Changes

Wow. It has been so long since I updated my blog about what's been going on in our lives. Let's just say there has been A LOT.

The first and most major thing was that around the first part of March Greg was laid off from his job. I know so many other people are going through this right now. That has got to be one of the worst phone calls you can get from your husband. I can't even imagine how hard it was for Greg to call me and tell me what was going on. Yikes. As most of you know, he worked at a company that sold moulding and other wood products wholesale. With the building industry the way it is right now, no one in that line of work is doing very well. Greg had survived a few rounds of layoffs, but I guess it was just his turn this time. With this job, they had provided him a car, cell phone, and our insurance was through them. So now we were out of all of these things. We were able to borrow a car from my parents (thanks Mom & Dad!) and that was a life saver. With me working and Greg out there trying to find a new job, I don't know how we could have done it with only one car.

After a month of job hunting and over 25 interviews, and 4 job offers, Greg went to work for a company that sold products to teach people how to invest in the stock market. I know, total turn around from his last job, right? He learned a lot, but it wasn't right for him. So after a month there he went to work where he is now at a staffing company. He is doing outside sales which is what he was doing before with the moulding/wood products. Such a better fit. He really likes it, and is doing well at it. He's been there for three weeks now.

During this whole time, we were looking for a new car. I have decided that if forced into it, I HATE car shopping. We didn't know what we wanted, weren't really sure how much we wanted to spend, and couldn't agree on anything. Uggh! We had looked at getting another car . . . and looked . . . and looked. Then last week, Greg's sister, Heidi, said that her friend who worked for the LDS church motor pool just happened to have this Chevrolet Trailblazer the church was selling. I guess they sell their cars all the time. Anyway, it was in our price range (we'd decided on a price by this point) and so we thought we'd check it out. It was perfect. And it was a great deal! Even better! So we snatched that thing up. I'll have to post a picture of it later. I feel like such a soccer mom driving it though. Oh well. I like it.

So, on to some pictures.

I missed an Easter post while I was in my blogging funk. Isaac thought the Easter Bunny was soooo cool. He couldn't believe that he actually left eggs in our house! He also got a book and a movie and a pair of flip flops in his basket.

Here we all are dressed up for church. I realize that we are a little matchy-matchy. We really didn't plan it that way. Isaac is the only one that got new clothes for Easter.

And this last weekend being Memorial Day weekend, we were super busy. We had a lot of fun. On Saturday we went with my family and took my parent's four wheelers and motorcycles out to for a spin. Isaac had a blast! At one point, however, Isaac and I were on one of the four wheelers that shifts automatically. Like, you just hit the gas and it will go as fast as it can go. I slowed down to turn around to see where Greg was, and apparently Isaac didn't think we were going fast enough. He hit the throttle with his thumb, and off we went bouncing across the desert at full speed. I freaked out and yelled at him to let go of the gas. He thought it was funny and was laughing! I almost wet myself. He did let go, and we did eventually stop just before running into another group's camping spot.

On Monday, we went with my family again, but this time we took my parent's boat out. We went to Willard Bay. I finally got to use my Mother's Day present. A new wet suit. I was proud of myself that I got up on my first try.

Here's Greg. He's obviously much better than I am.

The water is still too cold for Isaac to get in, but he'll beg any of the guys in the boat to dip his feet in the water for just a second. When it gets warmer, he'll do some tubing.

Isaac's favorite thing to do lately is to go outside and play baseball. I would love to find a team for him to play on around here, but he's too young this year.

No, I did not pose him for that picture.