Grant's 3rd

We did a Pirate theme. Kids dressed up, swam, played a treasure game, cake, the works. I am so NOT doing this every year for every kid. But everyone had fun!!

Day at Fairytale Town

Grant at the wheel, watch out!

Nathan did not like sitting on the horses too much.

Look at my big guy go!!

I'll admit it, I had to photo shop wrinkles out of this picture! I'm getting old, but my boys are wonderful!!! They ran around like crazy chickens and had a blast. How do I know that?? Because I had to drag them from the place & they both screamed at me until they fell asleep in the car. 

My baby did it!!!!!

I am soooo proud of Jared! He completed his triathlon this Saturday at his goal time. 2 hr 32 min. He was around #529 out of 1500 competes or so. He had to run 6 miles, bike 12 miles, then paddle for another 6 miles. Get out of the water, & race across the finish line. He wasn't even that sore afterwards. We  learned a lot for our first triathlon, where to park, what to do, where to wait, to get a different kyack, how to drop off & pick up his equipment, etc... Also that we'll need more help next year. It was too much for me to do everything, I ended up being more sore than him. It was from carrying that dang kyack almost a mile. That thing was heavy! 

Jared as he finishes his 6 miles of running.

Changing his shoes for the ride. 

He is the one getting out of the yellow boat, silver helmet, blue vest. I stood here for an hour waiting to take a pic  and that dang volunteer is in the way. 

Crossing the finish line!! I didn't quit get the "finish" line in the pic, but he did it & didn't die! (I was super paranoid for the last couple of months that he would drown or die, something) 

We had a blast doing this. Starting at 6 in the morning, not coming home until after 1. We were beat, but for anyone who has never gone to a race like this, it was just as much fun for me cheering people on & watching people finish! I recommend it for anyone. 

Discovery museum

We went to the Discovery museum on Monday since Jared called in "sick." It was pretty lame, but cheap, so it was ok. I'm sure the boys had fun. Saw some animals & gross insects. They got to dress up & play with magnets & other interesting exhibits. The best part  (in my opinion) was watching the penny smasher. We really need a nice children's museum around here. 

The boys driving the space shuttle outside.

I have aliens for boys!!

Nathan doing his thing. He was very independent throughout the whole place.

Oops. Jared trying to fix the display we broke.

An update on our family

So I've been posting a bunch of pictures, but have been lame about writing details on anything. So here is an update. 

Jared- is currently working at VSP. It has been over a year (congrats!!) & is doing a wonderful job providing financially for our family. He is training for a triathlon that is on the 19th. It's called Eppie's great race. Pretty popular & is one of the oldest triathlons out there. He was able to get VSP to sponsor himself & another co-worker. He is active in his company's basketball league which won the championship 2 seasons ago. Calling in church is assistant ward clerk over membership, & gets called to sub in nursery lots of the time. That is own fault since he isn't in class.  He enjoys all sports, which means our tv is verbally abused by him quite often!! Nothing vulgar, just loud. Jared loves to play with the boys, which is fun for me to watch, but they get VERY loud & run around everywhere. 

Jennifer- currently knocked up, will find out in Sept. if it's a boy or girl. I just started a new job the beginning of this month. The company is called NEBO Tools, I sell them from home calling different types of companies. So far it has been interesting trying to juggle that & the kids & morning sickness & the house etc. etc...... I am still the Enrichment leader at church but usually lay out in the nursery cause I don't feel so hot. I enjoy reading (with what time I don't know), laundry HAS to be done, & have been sleeping a whole lot extra than normal. Which normal already, is a lot. 

Grant- his thing right now is Diego, Scooby Doo & The Wonder pets. He doesn't like to play outside because it's too hot, if his mother isn't taking care of him, he can get his own food. He has really been growing in the imaginative role playing, he makes Nathan play with one toy while he attacks him with it. Loves cars, dinosaurs, & always wants me to read to him. I should relish in that fact, but we have some rather annoying books I don't enjoy reading. But he is now able to "read" to me by making up a story of what he sees on the page, which usually has to do with if someone is happy or angry. In general, he is a wonderful & loving child who says " don't be sad, it's ok" to everyone who seems to have an issue. 

Nathan- this kid says "no" to everything unless it's some sort of treat or juice. His vocabulary has exploded with words such as basketball, look, no, cookie, banana, church, Jesus, no, play, up, down, kiss, Bumpa, hug, apple, no, Grant, Mom, Dad, did I mention he says no? Still does not have his canine teeth, jumps up & down, holds his own on the trampoline, & loves the water. He still gets a BB when he sleeps, & spits it out when he is ready to get out of the crib. Will drink liquids all day long until his diapers explode, but is my cutest Barlow baby. 

As a family we love to go to In & out or Dos Coyotes. Still in Sacramento which I don't think we'll ever leave, it has everything we need! We drive a van (ugh) & a POS.. you can figure out what that stands for. None of us can sleep without some type of white noise or go more than a week without seeing some set of Grandparents. Parks are the best when it's not too hot, & we go to see Mr. Tim at the library every Wednesday that he is there. 

My porch pal army......

Last year I started painting porch pals for a craft fair we had at my house. Then I was hooked & started doing more. This picture was taken awhile ago getting ready for another craft fair. I thought it was fun cause it looks like a small army. 

Poor, poor trampoline.

As you can see here in this video, this poor structure

was creaking & working hard to stay together.

We were all waiting for it to break. But alas, no

one will be needing to buy a new one yet. 

WII

Parts of this video are a little boring, but others

are fun! Grant usually beats us at bowling, even 

though we are helping him.

My boys in the crib!

These kids are too cute! Grant is trying to tell us 

what Moroni says on top of the Temple.

The 4th of July

So there was lots to do this weekend. The PJ & Pili family came up, pancake breakfast that wasn't so hot. Literally, it was cold. And the food was a little worse than normal. No cotton candy, games for the kids, but the band was there. Nathan just stood in front of them staring. No dancing, just staring. 

We swam all day, went down the slide, rode the swan, ate good BBQ ( thanks Jared! ), and had lots of fun. No one got burned with fireworks, Jared wore his "England" shirt, PJ crossed out Jared's name in the street & the neighbors looked like they spent thousands of dollars on fireworks.

The trampoline even made it through the weekend. PJ, Perry & Jared decided to torture the poor thing. They jumped so high we were sure it would not last. But that thing is faithful! 

4th of July!!!!

We had tons of fun on the 4th!!!!

Happy fourth!

 Tuesday was our 4th  year wedding anniversary!! We took some pics to remember this day. Here we are looking normal. Which picture you say?? You get to choose. Some of you know the real us & can tell the difference.

 Jared got down on one knee with the boys, & asked me to marry him again. See my ring pop? Then said that one day it would all pay off. Therefore, the payday. The boys saw the candy, & asked me to marry them too. I think they thought marriage equals candy. Only with the right person!!

 It's been a great 4 years, except the whole being pregnant for most of it. I love you! I look forward to eternity with you.

Morning sickness

So give me all your tips on morning sickness. Also, I added a poll to see how long yours lasted. 

Survival skills

Because I haven't been feeling well, I have been on survival mode lately. Make sure the boys are fed & don't die. That's my only concern. I stay in bed most of the day, they come get me when they need me. So Grant comes to me & says, "mom, help me clee up" I start thinking, if Grant is wanting to clean up something, that's not a good sign. So I get up, & this is what I see.

They're aaaalllliiiiivvvveeeeeee

I thought I had killed most of my 

plants, but some sprouted!! I 

think the 3 bigger ones are 

watermelons. The tiny ones 

that are barely up are pumpkins. 

My 2 tomato plants are everyday 

threatening me to die. 

We'll see what happens. 

Nathan Had an Ear Infection :(

My kids have never had ear infections before. So this was a little trying for us to deal with. He got to keep his binkie the whole day, & always had his blanket wrapped around him. How mean of a mom am I to take these  pics??

Husbands!!!

Dear Tech support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate.

**************

DEAR DESPERATE,

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.) Also do not attempt to reinstall Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck,
Tech Support

I copied this from another blog. Thought it was funny! Of course Jared has nothing to do with it.

My swimmers

I finally blew up the pool the Martini's left when they moved far far away from us. The boys had so much fun playing in the water. 

I left the water running the whole time, I know, not saving anything. But they loved playing with the hose!

So now we have a light green circle in our yard where the pool was. 

Due date

So my due date is Feb 3rd. I wanted to scan the ultrasound picture, but it was barely a gray dot. 

How boring is that?

Watermelon, watermelon. watermelon.......

Jared always jokes about singing watermelon in the choir. Just mouth the word over & over again. It makes it looks like you know what you're doing. Tonight we went outside for some dessert. Glad we were outside, & half naked, were just able to throw the boys in the tub afterwards. It was delicious!!