Bluth Togetherness 2013

The ever growing Bluth family. First entire family shot in quite a while. This was the first we have all been together since Pete and Carissa's wedding over two years ago. We were together for Lanx's wedding in December but Seth wasn't able to be there.

My parents rented a house in Coronado for week, the same house that Seth's parents rent out when they come to visit with other family members. It sleeps somewhere around 12 people, so we stayed the week too even though we live just minutes away. It's fun to stay up with everyone after the kids go to bed. 

It was a pretty chill week, but still went by very fast. We hung out at the beach, played tennis, checked out the tide pools at Sunset Cliffs, paddleboarding races in Mission Bay, rented jet-skis in Mission Bay, celebrated my dad's birthday with the most enormous breakfast ever at Hash House followed by a Padres Game that night.  

Paddleboarding in Mission Bay. Of course, the only clouds in all of San Diego this day were stuck right over the bay. 

Paddle races. This was hilarious. Right after this shot Tates turns the wrong way and runs over snorkelers. We were all laughing so hard back on shore.  

Myles and Tay Tay. Aren't they cute? 

Taft loved the jetskiing. His response when we started going fast, "YEAH BABY!" 

Jayda is a Trooper, with a capital T. She played with these boys non-stop. She the sweetest. 

I think their record was somewhere around 400?

Buzzy loved the beach. 

The pools weren't as good as some of the other times we've brought cousins. It took us a while but we did end up finding a few sea creatures. 

Coach Lanx and Taft

Jayda is a natural at tennis! 

Concert in the Park. One of the best bands of the year came just for my family! 

Cuzzie's wrestling match.

Grandpa, Lukie, and Kazoo.

Giant Pete, Little Pete

Fudgsicles at  10 am? Sounds about right. 

We all just love this cute boy!

Breakfast at the Hash House for the Old Man. The portions are completely ridiculous. Pancakes 3x the size of your head. I'm not a huge breakfast person, but I had the best French Toast of my life. 

Padres Game!

And that's about it for this marathon of pictures. It was a really great week spent with family. We ate so so well. Travis is a master chef. One Lanx and Trav's night they served smoked pulled pork and brisket (that he smoked at home with his own smoker), his own BBQ sauce, and a bunch of other delicious food. Everyone's dinner was bomb. I think we also pounded 3 costco sized bags of Peanut M&Ms and 2 or 3 giant bags of Twizzlers and about 1,456 cans of Diet Coke. Tates described the Bluth soda addiction like this: "If Diet Coke were beer, we'd all be wasted ALL of the time." Good thing it's not and is just slowly poisoning us! ;) 

Thanks Mom and Dad for such a fun week. You spoiled us as usual! 

Herway Togetherness 2013

At the end of May we loaded up and headed out for 10 days of Herway togetherness. We drove half-way the first night and stayed in Phoenix with friends from Seth's intern year. While there, the boys got on their trampoline and we realized it was probably the first time they'd jumped on a tramp (parenting fail). I guess that's what happens when you live in a place where nobody has a backyard bigger than a patio.  

Next stop was in Farmington, NM. Seth's grandma turned 90 and her children organized a party and reunion for her. All of Seth's siblings and nearly all of his cousins (and their kids) were able to make the reunion. There were a LOT of people. It was so much fun to celebrate such an amazing woman. We spent the weekend visiting with family and hearing stories of Grandma Packer's life. Seth's brother-in-law made a wonderful video about her that had both Seth and me very choked up. (surprise, surprise)

Once the big reunion wrapped up, we (Seth's immediate family) headed to Durango, CO for Colie and Jed's wedding. The wedding was beautiful and super fun. Durango is GORGEOUS and I want to move there. As usual, Taft had the time of his life with his cousins. Every time we leave these things, I feel guilty that we don't live near family. Cousins make the best friends ever. I know Seth had the time of his life getting in bike rides most mornings with his brothers. I had a great time too, even though I think weddings give me anxiety, regardless of how much or little I am involved in and I have no idea why. I am terrified for wedding planning if I ever have a daughter. 

Post-Farmington, Pre-Durango. Mesa Verde-I love this place. 

Pueblo cliff dwellings.

Pretty sure this one ended with a belly flop.

Sorry we're all half naked.

Just all the Herways, basically taking a bath together. 

The morning before the wedding we had a girls morning. Yoga taught by Grammie followed by brunch at a French bakery. 

The boys on their mountain bike ride. (Remember how they were gone for like, EVER? I'm glad they made it out alive.)  

Daphne, Zane, and Grammie

Grandkids with Grammie and Pop. (missing Scarlet, Levi, Brauer, and Tori)

The buddies attempting a jumping shot. Good job Tommy :)

Taft, the cutest and most serious ring bearer there ever was. I also have to share how excited his cousin, Brauer, was for him. He was pumped for Taft. At the end of the ceremony Brauer came up to Taft with a huge smile and said, "Good job Taft!" It was the sweetest.

The AMAZING backdrop.

We tried. 

I wish we had pictures of the actual bride and groom....The photographers got amazing shots, so...just take my word for it that they looked stunning.

Four Corners on our way out of town. Woop woop!

We stayed a night with Seth's parents in Sedona, AZ at the end of the week. Sedona is incredible. Most gorgeous desert scenery I've ever seen. 

Lately...

Now that Instagram has taken over my documentation, blogging never happens! Instagram is like a mini blog every day and it's so much easier. Regardless, I think I should document things here too because I still want to print this blog into one of those blog books.

Anyway, here's what we've been up to, according to my phone. 

1. Disneyland with Friends. My good friend and former roommate from my Provo days, is living in San Diego for several months. She has two boys super close to Taft and Luke's ages. We've had lots of fun meeting up with them. 

I only bring our single because neither of them hardly want to sit in it. In this case, they were both exhausted.

Future BYU roommates

2. Outings around town:

Even though I've said it a million times, I just love, love, love that we can easily walk anywhere in our little town. We're just a couple blocks from the park which makes it easy to just go there for a few minutes in the evening when the boys still need to burn some energy.

"I fyyyyyin!!"

Sometimes we walk to the candy store for a special treat. It's super overpriced so I usually just let the boys pick a few pieces. This time I was craving chocolate covered cinnamon bears so we headed out one evening when Seth was at work. 

Sometimes when Seth works nights I go on a walk to get the boys to sleep. In my mind it's easier than the bedtime routine, but in reality I do most of the routine before we leave for a walk (jammies and teeth).  It's always such a beautiful time of night and it's nice to go for a quiet walk.

The boys love the library almost more than anywere else we go. They love to find the little nooks to look at books in, play with puppets and puzzles, watch the train go round, and choose from hundreds of children's movies. 

3. We bought too many annual passes. We have passes to: the zoo, Sea World, Disneyland, the children's museum, and Legoland. Sheesh. We figured it was the best year to do it all because Luke is still free. Surprisingly, we are still able to fit in trips to these places on a fairly regular basis. 

The New Children's Museum. This museum is really cool. Their focus is on how we can reuse common household garbage. All the art exhibits are made of trash and other recyclable items. It amazing to see the creativity. 

Legoland is not my favorite, but their waterpark is super fun especially for Taft and Luke's ages. 

Seth talked Taft into this ride. All those people of the bridge are about to get completely soaked!

We went out for burgers and fries after Legoland's waterpark. I'm sorry, but I love In and Out.

Dinner date with my little boys while Dad was at work. (He's had about 4 weeks of night float recently)

 4. Palm Springs. My mom was kind enough to come down to watch our boys for the weekend while we had a wonderfully relaxing and lazy mini-vacation to Palm Springs. We slept in until 11:00 this first morning. ELEVEN!!! I couldn't get over it, I didn't think we'd be able to sleep past 8:30!

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 5. End of School! Taft had a great first experience with school. His teachers were Mrs. Kelley and Mrs. Cuthbert. It was easy on the academics and heavy on the play, but I figured that was okay, I mostly wanted him to have a good first experience with school. I think we accomplished that, despite what the pictures might portray.