Raspberry pickin' with the Gause's

 My sister-in-law Brooke let us in on a little (HUGE) secret:

McBride Briar Patch. 

Coolest place ever. Nicest owners you ever met. They let you come, pick your own raspberries (they provide little cute buckets for the kids with strings so that they can tie them around their waist, this allows both hands for picking--very ingenious.) And they don't care how many you eat along the way. IF you have any leftover they basically give them to you for  $3/lb.

 In case you don't know my kids, or kids in general for that matter, THEY LOVE RASPBERRIES. My mom usually has tons of raspberry plants and picking, but it has definitely been more slim this year than usual.  So this HUGE patch was like a happy haven for my kids. And they were not alone. Their little cousins loved it too--I think you'd have to be WAY weird to not love it. And i'm WAY weird and I STILL love it. :)

Anyway, point being--you never saw such happy kids (and adults) just running and playing and eating and eating. Too bad this place is closing for the winter or we would be back weekly for sure!

Rodrik loves him some raspberries!!

 

Rod loves to pick raspberries. That is unless someone offers him a whole bucket full of pre-picked. He's no dummy. Neither is Lincoln. They actually "hung out" pretty good together at that patch. At least as well as little 1yr old's can. It was pretty cute to watch. Lincoln kept trying to "hug" Rod, he did this by leaning into him until they bonked heads. Ha! It was really cute.

 Thanks for sharing Brooke! :) 

 Jax was SUPER happy to be at the raspberry patch AND be with Ethan at the SAME TIME!! Happy day for him!! :) My biggest regret from this outing is not getting a picture of the two of them together. They were having a lot of fun chasing and playing hide and seek and letting Katelyn tell them what to do. :)

 

 Jax is demonstrating how to find and pick a raspberry, (he has perfected this art,) put it in your bucket, change your mind, and eat it instead. That was his basic ritual all night--or he would just skip the bucket part altogether. At the end of the night he had nothing to show for all that picking. Except maybe looser stools. :)

I'm so gross.

Oh, and if I had a picture of what the guys were doing all night it would look like this:

Justin and Jason are standing across from each other with a row of raspberries in-between them and they are discussing in great detail the some "amazing" technology (probably iPhone or Droid related) and are so in rapture of their conversation they don't notice the children running around like crazies (getting lost more than twice) and don't realize that in the hour we were there, they hadn't moved an inch. They did say they ate raspberries--though I didn't see much of it--but I'm inclined to believe them because Justin was motivated by the gross remark in Jaxton's paragraph. hehe.:)

And Me, Chanel and Brooke basically chased kids all night and tried to pick berries intermittently. Chanel did more chasing than me. I tend to let Chanel parent my children when she is with me--she does a better job. :)

Then the few berries we had left Jason and Brooke bought for us, because we "accidently" didn't have any money with us.;) Thanks guys! Love you!!

Park City

My parents have a Timeshare Condo in Park City that they pay top $ for and mostly just get ripped off constantly (Westgate--don't use them). But the good news is that their children (us mostly) who don't really ever pay anything get to use it sometimes. So that very situation happened last week.

So, kind of embarrassing confession: I think this was the first "family overnight-er"/ "family vacation" that we have ever been on. Alone. Me, Justin, Jax, and Rod. It was one night. :) We ALWAYS go with at least one other family. I've always been scared to death to go by myself with my kids and Justin only. So this is a new development. Way to go us!! And it went great! It was actually really nice to just have it be us for a little bit. It IS possible to have fun by ourselves!:)

We went to the Farmers Market--it's a little different from the Provo Farmers Market--more Ritz, but it was really fun. Park City is seriously the most dog friendly city ever. They had dogs running around everywhere and just had random dog bowls filled with water around the city for random thirsty dogs. At the Farmers Market they had this crazy dog trainer man that had his crazy loyal dogs doing all sorts of crazy things. It was pretty cool. And I don't like dogs. Jax wanted one. Jax always wants a dog...

 After dinner we went to Main Street. Because we love that place. It was even more pleasant than normal. They had lights everywhere, lots of things to look at, it was really fun. 

And we got over priced ice cream cones. 

Jax picked "bubble gum" ice cream. Bright blue with super hard bubble gum pieces to crunch on and almost break your teeth. Glad we paid $5 for that cone. I got some kind of magical chocolate caramel heath bar chocolate thing. SO good. And here I go on to shock and awe: Justin got the same thing. What?!? Is this a Gause?! Is this Justin Gause? What's he doing ordering triple chocolate threat and loving it?? I'm telling you, I have a positive chocolate influence on that man. :)

 And of course the Moose; with my sweet boys. 

I LOVE THOSE BOYS!!

Jax thought this bear was pretty cool.

We also swam at the pool for long periods of time, that was probably one of the highlights for my boys. They love that water. But seriously, I think they liked the whole thing. It was a good 24 hours.

Thanks for throwing your money into a terrible Timeshare trap mom and dad, it makes for some very good times on occasion. :)

The latest in September...All things positive.

IT's DONE!!!

Our lawn. 

The project of the century.

 We are SO happy and relieved; and so are, I'm sure, all the amazing people that have helped us tirelessly. Those poor souls. We love them much.

They all did SUCH a good job!! The pictures don't do it justice... Our nice camera is broken so I'm having to document my life with my iPhone.  There are worse things; especially since we pre-ordered the NEW iphone 5 2 days ago(what?! Ya, I know.) So the camera on that phone is going to rock,  pretty darn exciting. But in the meantime the picture quality is slightly less than "normal" when we had our "nice" camera.

So, we should have legit grass in about 6-7weeks folks!! Feel free to come over and roll in it with me 

all day,

everyday,

thereafter. 

 Doesn't it look WONDERFUL?? I know you cant really see because of the lighting--but it looks awesome. And we got "curbing" put in and it looks REALLY good too. Ps. In case you didn't know, our backyard is massive. I'm suddenly realizing it's going to take like an hour a week to mow that bad boy. Bring. it. on.

And then Natasha came over and said "Why don't you ever spike Rod's hair?" It really struck me, why don't I ever spike Rods hair?? So then I did. And I asked myself the same question AGAIN, because seriously, IT's SO DANG CUTE!! Where have I been??

 He looks so much more grown up with his hair done! And that's really saying something because he always just looks like a mini adult anyway. So basically, anyway you slice it he looks amazing; so you can be expecting to see more of it...

And this is Jax, in poor lighting, doing the look you can also expect to see more of; because he has started doing it EVERY TIME I say "Smile!" It's kind of half terrible pain, half beyond giddy, half dental appointment, and half totally faking it. 200% Cute!

 Sorry this is blurry--darn phone:) But I was trying to get a picture of them together and this was the best I could do. Rod refused to sit NEXT to Jax, he just wanted to sit ON him. He kept backing up to him and sitting and then they would both fall over and he would do it again.

And I think i'm going to start documenting special stuff I make.  Because I really think I like to bake. And when I look back at my blog book I can remember the all the stuff I made and get the "see Tawny you DO do cool things sometimes" 

I have a fetish with desserts. 

So I usually ask what people want for their birthday dessert and try and oblige. (It will also be fun to document what people choose--I'm weird curious like that) My family is kind enough to let me experiment on them on those special occasions. Actually it doesn't have to be a special occasion for them to let me experiment on them. :) This "experiment" (baking is always an experiment I think) actually worked out--some of  them don't as well.

So it was Gabriel's birthday yesterday.

Gabe is one of my kindred spirits when it comes to desserts. He loves cheesecake. I love cheesecake, He loves brownies, I love brownies, He loves chocolate ganache, so do I, x 12.:) 

So I choose, with his help, to make him this "Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake". I've actually made a LOT of cheesecakes in my day,(there is an exta-special place in my heart for cheescake,) and I think this one turned out, overall, (look, taste, and texture) as one of the very best. So I'm kind of proud. It's so nice to spend tons of time on something that actually works out. I've had the opposite happen more than I like to count.

 To bad I'm not a food photographer, cause it looked awesome. And tasted awesome.

 So there is my ode to myself.

PS. 53 days until our cruise!! It is sooo nice to have something so positive to look forward to; it can really help with those hard days. Today is a good day though (yesssss!). But it's still really nice to have something so positive to look forward to on good days too. :) 

"BIG slide."

This is the "big slide" I made for Jax and Rod. I only have pictures of Jax because I got video of Rod. He basically rolled down it, it was halarious. The video is too long to post. Sad for you.

I LOVE HIM!!

It's happening...!

Our yard is officially trenched!!

 Officially sprinkler-i-fied!! 

Thanks a whole heap to these "young men". :) I didn't realize how big of a project this was going to be.  These guys were here ALL DAY Saturday.  Studs I tell you. I love them all. And it didn't even really "finish" until the following Monday. I can't imagine how long it would have taken without help; months I'm sure. 

Tasha would know, poor Steve did his by himself..., only to help us with ours a few months later. Thanks dude and sorry!!:/

 Aww ya!!

 Professionals!! All of them!!

 Thanks for trenching our entire 1/2 acre lot Preston!! I'm sorry it had you shaking and vibrating for the next 24 hours...:) Don't worry, we paid him...with water. Every hour or so...:)

 These are my awesome Brother-in-laws! I got these boys to smile out of awkwardness-- I said "Say I love you!".  Ooop, that's not normal. I forgot I was talking to grown men and not my kids or niece's or nephews. Heehe, sorry for the awkward moment boys! But hey, the pict turned out okay! :)

 My poor father has been at deaths door with this crazy broncial/lung thing for like a month and a half.  He used all of the strength left in his oxygen deprived body to dig pits in our yard. A saint I tell you. If he would have passed out or stopped breathing we would have allowed him leave...;)

 Lets just say Justin was NOT happy about me saying, "Hey hon, look at me and smile" in the middle of digging and digging in like 90 degree weather. Sorry babe...smile! :)

And another shot of this ruthless man with the trencher. He showed it who was boss. Preston is boss.

We are planning on planting grass this Saturday...So ya, 

It's happening!!!

You guys were WONDERFUL!! 

Thank you so much for the help!!

Start Smart Soccer...

 Jax has been so into soccer for such a long time. He is finally old enough for "Smart Soccer". Which is purely instructional, no "games" or anything. Just basic drills and excersizes.

 And he was real excited; we got him some "closed toe shoes" for the occasion. Also that awesome ball he's holding. See, he's totally excited. :) It was an excitement that had a tendency to fade about 5 minutes into any activity (It was an HOUR long)--the darn field was RIGHT by a playground...I could see Jaxton's wheels turning "Soccer or playground, soccer or playground". Poor planning on their part--half of those commited 3yr olds just wanted that playground.

 So first they stretch. Beyond a joke, but looks SOOO cute!! Those uncoordinated cuties!!

 Please try and see how these kids are stretching--40% got it, 60% totally did not. It was pretty funny. As you can see, Jax was one of the 60%'rs. :)

 But kicking a ball he CAN do.

 "Dribble the ball around the cone for 15 minutes"...seriously? And that is why everyone wanted to go to the playground.

 The below pict is Jax learing how to "stop" the ball. That was a cute one.

 Goal kick! Jax was one of the few to get it in one kick each time. Stud!!

 Such a good listener. For about 30 seconds.

My crazy obsession with my GORGEOUS kid.

 Probably my favorite picture of the day. 

Goober. :)

Kiss you right on the face child!!

Cutest thing...

Everyone say "Awwww." :)