Love The Equipment

My kids love the bands


(we have them hung from the pullup bar mounted to our ceiling in the garage) that I use to do pullups with. Also the rings. I do several great exercises with these strung from my pullup bar. My personal favorite are the foam exercise rollers. Check out our website



www.garagegym.net

I think tomorrow we are going to get out the balance trainer.



What is your favorite on the website?

Dennis Turns One

Dennis turned one today! It has been an amazing year as he is quite the amazing little guy. Each kid just gets better and better.......I wonder if we need to stop while we're ahead or just keep going!

He had no idea what to do with the candle, Michael blew it out.

And, he really didn't know what we put in front of him either, or what he was supposed to do with it. So he poked at it, then tasted it....and then it was game on.

His first nibble:

back for more:

It was quickly realized that we were letting him eat sugar and he could not shovel it in fast enough, he still just mostly got frosting for quite a while.

I think this was my favorite picture of the night. He kept laughing and eating, and laughing and eating. Love him!

Then it was playtime. He squished it between his fingers, flung some on the floor, took a bite and went through the whole routine all over again.

mash mash:

It must have felt great between his fingers as he would squeeze as hard as he could until it squeezed out.

The flinging hands. I'm sure I'll be finding pieces of it around for a few days.

A few more nibbles:

And then all at once, he wanted out. I put him in the kitchen sink and let him bath there. It is a really deep sink and perfect for him to sit and play. 

 

A few things about Dennis (no I'm not going to start blogging frequently again, but figured he needed a presence on the blog): he loves to laugh. He laughs at anything and everything. He has the regular baby laugh but he has this really hilarious, deep voiced, big person laugh too. Ahhh-haaa-haaa-haa laugh. Its really funny, but not forced, he is actually laughing. He has recently made the connection to sign language and has learned about 15 signs total but is adding a couple new signs a day in the last few days (dog, baby, cheese, cracker, more, all done, nigh-night, banana, wind, eat, milk, sandwich, drink, bird, kitty) His first sign was milk. He tries to snap his fingers whenever we do it. He loves to click his tongue. He can crawl but doesn't walk yet. He climbs the stairs with ease (up and down). He will fold his little hands together and be reverent whenever prayers are said (thank you to his siblings for being a great example). He loves food but still loves to nurse too. He loves green smoothies and will come crawling when he hears the vitamix or hears someone sucking out of a straw. He can sit and play with a toy for 45 minutes. One time he sat so with his legs underneath him that his legs went to sleep and he was in a crying fit for about 5 minutes. Whenever he stumbles across a book he thumbs the pages. He signs the word cheese when we take a picture. He loves to play peekaboo. He sleeps all night in his crib and it good about going down for a nap. He hugs and kisses people freely. He loves the wind on his face. He has the start of curls in his hair. He is obsessed with people brushing their teeth. He loves to go into Penny and Michael's room to play and gets mad when the door is shut. He screams with delight if you run up to him. His eyebrows are expressive like Sean's.  He loves to dance and will break out in dance if we start singing any JustDance4 song...he also dances to many of his musical toys. His little arms alternate pumping up and down while he tilts his head, its stinking cute.
He has brought so much joy and warmth into our home, I cannot imagine our family without him anymore!
We love our Dennis Jarom!!

More September

My kids love to paint (like most kids) and when we have gone to kids museums I love how they always have tons of random household things that we would normally throw away available to paint in any way that they feel. Egg crates, for example or boxes or toilet paper rolls. Kids love to paint on those things. So, we got some out and decided to paint. Egg cartons are great because they also work as a holder for the paint and so no cups of paint are involved.
 

 
I love this munchkins fingers.

This is not a very flattering picture of me, I know but its totally me in my element; kids.

Playing in the flour after making biscuits is always fun. There is always a huge mess involved, but sometimes the mess is worth the fun. 

 

It started to get quite out of hand though. The floor had TONS of flour on it. Glad to not have carpet under the kitchen table anymore. It was a lot easier to clean up.

 

Water bottles make great noise.

Rose came in September to visit for a WHOLE WEEK. It was super fabulous. This was her first visit to us since we lived by her in Utah. I definitely love me some Rosie time.

We went to Apple Hill and visited and fed the animals. My kids always love this. It was a pretty hot day but we tried to stay in the shade. It is usually about 10 degrees cooler up the hill, but when you're going from 97 to 87 its still just plain hot.

We then decided on a hike. There were two trails.  We took the one less traveled by and THAT has made all the difference. ha! I'm so funny sometimes. 

 

 

We got to feed the goats. Some of the were pretty aggressive. Penny refused to feed them but rather threw pellets from afar.

Michael, on the other hand, was fearless. Well, mostly.

I love this picture.

Out on our nature walk. 

 

Johansen Camping! Fortress of solitude

(playing catchup. I'm diving in to September)
Our church group (ward) does a campout every Labor Day weekend. Some members in our ward own some secluded property in Grass Valley CA only 1.5 hours from our home. It is absolutely beautiful and just the right amount of camping to do with kids (and by that I mean they have showers, running water, toilets, a full kitchen, mess hall, a man-made swimming hole, man-made water slide, zip line into swimming pool, frisbie golf, trampoline, shooting range, a creek to fish or pan gold or play in, etc.

Anything we could want to do in a weekend away from the city is here.
It is so great and though camping with a new baby isn't the funnest kind of camping...its camping and we LOVED it! There's big blue, our 10 man tent that we are outgrowing (once you get 2 queen sized blow-up mattresses in there, there isn't quite room for those 10 people anymore).


Sean and Anam couldn't rest from their training for Tough Mudder. These two boys worked hard for this race! I am proud of them.

The tents all in the grass. It is a perfect spot to camp (no hard rocks).

Playing with Daddy 

This kid was going, going, going, going and then concked.

Bruh-ders

Here goes Dominic down the waterslide. I love this slide but the water at the bottom is a bit chilly. Still, its great fun.

The pool is made of huge tarps with a layer of old billboard fabric underneath. It is amazingly strong.

Aaaaaaahhhh. The serenity.

 

I watched from up above mostly. It was fun to see all the kiddos go down the water slide. I even went down a few times. I think I was the only girl this year that went down.
What is up with that????

 The awkward moment when you realize you have stuck your hands into your child's vest and everyone is watching you. Well, your wife and the camera are, at least.

Ringo and Michael snuggled (and then I kicked Ringo out after the picture cuz that gross to snuggle with a dog.)

Funnest slide ever.

So, I realize that I look like a somewhat out-of-shape, WHITE, mid-30's mama going down the zip-line
but,
well, I am all those things and it was fun.
I even went again. First time on a zip-line ever.

 

 

 

Dominic, taking his turn with the .22

 

It almost looks like Dominic isn't wearing anything behind that board. He would ride this boogie board all the way down the slide and then just skim right across the water after the jump. This was the preferred mode of transportation down the slide for the kids.....I'm not sure why I never tried it. 

 

They have a big trampoline. Lots of fun for lots of kids.

Some of my friends spotted a baby snake in the grass near where they were sitting. Not many people were around (no men anyways) and I walked by and they said, " Katie will get it."
and I did.
True story.
We had a small gardener snake growing up, snakes don't really bother me. Spiders on the other hand.

I handed the snake off to Dominic to go let it go in the creek down below.

Never knew so many ladies would be so interested/grossed out by a snake. hee hee. There were many squeals coming from this group.

Dennis got a lot of snuggle time with lots of different people. It made me happy to know that he was getting a lot of attention and I was able to give a lot of attention to my other kids too....something that I'm learning to balance at home and don't have as much help as I did while I was camping.

The cars from the life game are so much fun for toddlers. And that spinny thing. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaah. 

 

This girl got Diiiiirty! Nothing that a quick dip in the pool couldn't fix.
But even with all that dirt, I love this pretty picture!

 
Sean got a .22 from G-Gma that she didn't want anymore. We cleaned it up and let the kids get some practice shooting targets. I think guns are fun and a skill that every child should learn (with proper direction of course). I look forward to many more trips to the range to practice.

Penny was not as thrilled about all the noise they made.

Still dirty.

Not sure who was rocking who to sleep in this picture.

 This is our friend Andrew. He loved Michael and Michael surely loved Andrew. He is very good with kids and has a special connection with all of them. Shortly after this campout he and his wife split up and he moved to another State. Again, our whole family misses Andrew. =( 
Thank you for your example and the happiness you spread. We loved your goofiness and the fun and charm you always brought with you. You are, and will continue to be, greatly missed. If you are ever in the area....please stop by!

Michael's bud Miles was awesome. Michael just wanted to play and follow him all over the place....the best part? Miles didn't mind.

 
Thank you Johansen's for yet another great campout! We'll be back next year.....