Our little GRAD

Here he is, the newest graduate from our family. Our PALS (Play, Art, Letters, Song) group held a graduation day, complete with a diploma and playing of "Pomp and Circumstance". Each graduate wore a white shirt of their dad's and made their own cap and tassle. The past year has been so great, I love all the kids in Paxton's class and they have added so much to our lives. We had a great balance of teacher styles and areas of expertise and really sweet kids. One good friend from this group will be going to another preschool with Paxton starting this fall.  For now they are playing t-ball together and will play soccer this summer too.

Just for perspective, most of our days are more like this one, silly glasses and, in this case, Crystal Light mustaches.  Paxton has always liked wearing costumes and lately Bennett loves Paxton's sunglasses and a hat of almost any kind, he'll wear his own too which is great for summertime.




This kid is growing so fast!  How sad, in one way, but how amazing in another way.  Although his favourite person lately is mama, the word he prefers is DADA.  He will say it over and over and soft and loud and fast and slow but he won't say mama!  He loves to climb up on anything and bravely stand up, occasionally shaking his head because he knows he isn't supposed to be up there. Some of my family says he is getting blonder and his eyes are as blue as ever.

Now to camping, we took one trip in late April to "the desert" before it got too hot.  It was good weather, only a bit windy at times which did make for the chance to fly our Spiderman kite. This is our campsite and we took 3 or 4 hikes up into those rocks each day, all the way to the top, usually led by Paxton. We have been using my parent's older camp trailer which we hope to buy.

Here are some cactus starting to bloom (yes it really is the desert people). There were a lot of lizards and great twisted old trees too.







We went on top of Cedar mountain to the overlook of the mini-grand canyon where we took this family picture. Grandma & Grandpa were with us, they are fantastic to camp with because they supply the best camping toys for the kids.








Here are the boys with those camping toys, you can't go wrong with a bucket, shovel, and toy truck.


Our second camping trip was this past weekend, we were a little more adventurous and went to a new location.  This first photo is in a place called
Maple Canyon which attracts rock climbers. It's a small canyon with not a lot of sites but we thought it was pretty and would be amazing to visit in the fall. We stayed there one night and the next one moved to higher ground in Ephraim canyon. This time we had more room to spread out and there were some grassy areas which is great for little kids.  There were a few deer around and temperatures were really nice.

We drove to the top of the canyon for the view and found the snow banks which Paxton, Chula, and Grandma played in. Bennett played with some snow (to the point of tears since he held it in his hand too long) and loved picking the wildflowers.

Like I said, Bennett doesn't mind things on his head...and seems to know how silly he looks.  Both of the boys had a great time and we hope to get out again before the "reunion" with all of Jared's siblings and their families.  Now that the heat is getting here, it's really nice to go up to the mountains to cool off and relax.