Yellowstone

These are some pictures of our Broadbent family reunion in Yellowstone over the 4th of July. We had such a great time!

Proof

Wade is a very clean child, clean in that he hates anything sticky or slimy to be on his hands. When he turned one, I had to force his hands into his cake because he was quite content to just pick the sprinkles off. He also refuses to eat hot dogs, bananas and even cupcakes unless I feed them to him. My family tends to make fun of him for this, so I wanted to post this picture as proof that he will get messy on occasion if given a good enough reason. The reason...fresh out of the oven, ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookies!

(Look Em, it's even up his arms!)

Summer is Here

To celebrate the beginning of summer we decided to go to a Bees baseball game for family night. It was a perfect night for a ball game, and we were surprised at how much more exciting the game was than the DC Nationals...although, is that really surprising? We will always love the Nationals, but let's face it, they are terrible.

Wade had his first taste of Cotton Candy, which he loved much to his dad's chagrin.


We went camping up Cottonwood Canyon with Mark and Amy. Phil and Mark spent a good portion of the night being pyromaniacs.

Wade slept better than everyone else, and was a great little heater for his mom!


And who doesn't love homemade strawberry jam made from freshly picked strawberries?



This has definitely been a great start to summer!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the three greatest fathers in my life! They are such great men and I am so thankful for each of their examples.

Look a like

So everyone always says that Wade looks SO much like Phil, but I'm tired of him always getting all the credit. I finally came across some baby pictures of me, which I think proves that Wade has some of me in him too!

Phil

Wade

Me


What do you think?

Dancing Lessons

Wade has a toy that makes noise that he loves to dance to. I managed to catch him dancing with my beautiful wife.

Then Wade made me take him for a horse back ride.

Bathroom Humor

Every kid has to do this at least once, right? I guess that's what I get for not paying attention!

All In a Day's Work

Yesterday's project consisted of making a flower garden in our back yard. Here is a picture of the space before hand...an ugly pile of bark??

Halfway there...didn't Phil do a great job laying the stones?
And the finished product....much, much better!
We ended the night with a little fun at our first pro soccer game. It was a good day!

Highlights

Last Week I got to hang out with my cousin, and one of my best friends, Alyson and her little girl, Emma. We spent the morning at the zoo with our kids and catching up...good times. A very happy birthday to Emma who turned one last week!

Wade ate his first lollipop all by himself. Life will never be the same!

Phil and I spent the weekend doing some yard work.
We built a box and planted our boysenberries, and next to that a peach tree.
Phil also picked out a tulip tree to plant for some shade in the back yard. It may not look like much work, but the soil in Woods Cross is ALL clay, nasty to dig up. Here is the massive hole we dug for the tulip tree.
And the finished product.

I can't wait to see how these trees and plants grow. It is so much fun having our own home!

Funny Wade

Wade finds lots of things funny around the house.  He's always quick with a smile, and a great laugher.  He found his Dad pretty funny the other night when he was trying to eat his dinner:

Tulip Festival

Last week Wade and I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point. The tulips were beautiful, but unfortunately Wade was not in the best of mood so this is the best picture we got. If you have the chance, I definitely recommend going.

Lookin' Sharp

Is he not just so adorable when he is all dressed up? I know I am a little biased, but I think so!

Our Easter Surprise

So the Saturday before Easter, we had a great day. Phil got to mow his lawn for the first time with his brand new lawn mower and weed-wacker, and he got it fertilized. We also got our new patio furniture and BBQ put together. Needless to say, we are ready for summer.

We put Wade to bed that night (knowing he had a cough and thinking it was just a chest cold) and finished dying Easter eggs since we were hosting Easter dinner at our house. We had just laid down to go to bed ourselves when Wade woke up crying. I went to check on him and quickly yelled at Phil to come. He was barely breathing in between cries. He was so raspy and sounded like he was hardly getting any air. I knew this wasn't just a chest cold. So at 11:30 pm, we all rush to the ER, completely freaked out, to find out that he has Croup.

Turns out that Croup is the children's version of laryngitis, but because babies airways are so much smaller than adults, it can be pretty serious. They gave him some steroid treatments and watched him for a few hours. He was a champ by the way, he hardly complained and the doctors were impressed with how good he was to take all the treatments. Anyway, they sent us home at around 3 am. Because Croup is contagious for other babies, I didn't take him to church on Sunday so he didn't even get to wear his new Easter outfit. Oh well.

Even with all the bustle, we did manage to have an enjoyable Easter. Wade even managed to find a few Easter eggs that the Easter bunny left for him. He is doing much better now and should be back to normal in a few days.

We hope everyone else's Easter was less eventful than ours!

Man Shed

When we bought our house:

it looked like the previous owner had used the shed:

for little other than an extra storage room.  So, we have a few projects on our list to be finished in the shed.  Last weekend, we finished up the first shed improvement project.  Jen's dad and brother in law came over to help me wire the place for electricity.  (A keen observer will notice the trail of dirt leading up to the shed.  That was a trench that we had to dig to bury the electricity line.)  Notice that there is a light on.

Other projects I'm looking forward to:

• Finishing the siding in the shed
  
• Landscaping both the front and back yard
  
• Installing a new kitchen faucet (our current faucet doesn't have a sprayer, how does one live without a sprayer?)
• Building a secret passageway from the house to the shed, in case of an intruder