Preston.....

Oh my little Preston. He is such a character....he has the greatest personality--so happy and energetic. He's such a spit-fire...so much sass and sarcasm. He can be extremely love able and cuddly one minute and the next minute he's talking back and having a tantrum. He brings excitement and joy to my life as well as anger and frustration! I am so in love with my little man and wouldn't trade him for anything!

This is the super cool picture he drew of his mommy. :-)

Preston has been doing better at eating his fruits and vegetables. Juli gave us some zucchini from her garden and Preston decided to try some. He and Ashleigh together ate the entire zucchini that night! I was so proud!

Today he made me some silly faces and wanted me to take his picture. These pictures are the epitome of his personality.




























































I realized I haven't taken any pictures of his birthmark....Can you see it? From his bellybutton strait down and to the right (his left side) his skin is much lighter than the rest and doesn't tan or burn when he's in the sun. When the rest of him is tan, you can see the lighter skin a lot better. I love it. It's so unique! I'll try to get a better picture of it....

Incredible Pizza

Quinn came in to town for the weekend to see Betsie and the kids and we all decided to go to Incredible Pizza in Draper. This place is pretty cool....it's similar to Chuck-E-Cheese, but they have 3 food buffets to eat from rather than only being able to get pizza like at Chuck-E-Cheese. Its pretty expensive so we were really glad that Preston ate free, and we had a coupon for Ashleigh to eat free too, thanks to Juli.

Preston fell asleep on the way TO Incredible pizza.

At our table waiting to go get food
Emma, Jennidee, Quinn, and Ashleigh

Emma, Preston, Nick and Jennidee
Those girls sure loved their uncle Nick

After we ate we took our game cards and let the kids (and us) play some arcade game and try to get points so the kids to "buy" some toys. We ended up getting 412 points!! :-)

Then we went to the go-carts.
Quinn, Emma, Jennidee, Ashleigh, Juli

Watching the races
Emma and Quinn

Nick and Preston raced together first. Preston was SO excited!!!!

The good luck car #88

And they WON! yay!

Then Nick took Ashleigh, Randy took Jadon, and Juli took Josiah
Nick and Ashleigh came in First place again!!! :-)

The best driver ever with his two passengers!

I LOVE this picture!!! I love these guys so much!

Incredible Pizza was lots of fun and I know we'll be back again soon! :-)

Last day with Betsie and kids

Sunday was pretty much our last day/night with Betsie and her kids. They left on Wednesday morning and we went over on Tuesday night to say good-bye. :-(

We went over for dinner and we took family pictures too. (I'll post those once I get copies from mama-Call)

Emma and Meg

Josiah and Meg

Jennidee and Meg

Emma and Nick

Josiah and Preston playing trains in the playroom

Betsie and Jadon

Quinn came in to town for a couple of days.
It was so nice to see her again and spend time together.
Quinn, Ashleigh, Jennidee, and Emma

Emma and Jennidee

Then we got ready for family pictures. Mama-Call got some really really good shots! I can't wait to get copies to put up on my wall along with my Ballard Family pictures.

...Now I just need to buy some nice frames. :-)

We miss you Betsie!!!!

I took more videos of Nick playing his cello. I've said this before, but MAN, I LOVE HEARING HIM PLAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope you enjoy it too!! :-)

Lexi repairs

Our beautiful new Lexus has had a small power steering leak since we bought it. We knew about the leak, but it was so tiny that we'd only see about a dime-size amount of liquid in our garage at a time. However, it's been hotter outside and we've had to use the A/C a lot more and apparently it made the teeny-tiny hole a lot bigger. It's been leaking a ton, so Nick got under the hood and decided to figure out how to replace it. He's SO smart when it comes to repairing cars and I really love watching him work (except when it's really really hot outside!)

He finally got the hose removed--thanks to help from his dad--and he's all ready to install the new hose once it arrives. I can't wait to drive my little baby Lexi again. More pictures to come when the install happens. :-)

Salt Lake

We took another day trip to Salt Lake City. This time Juli, Nick, Lindsey, and Keely came along too. The day started a little scattered trying to figure out where to go and what to do first. We had lunch on the temple square grounds first. Then Betsie went to get family pictures taken in front of the Christ Statue. Then we went to the LDS business office--26th floor observation deck. Nick and Juli had never been there before! :-) It's always pretty cool seeing the city from that high up.





We were soooo worn out from the prior days activities, plus a bad night sleep that we decided to cut the trip short. We rode Trax with the rest of the gang down to the Planetarium then we got on a different Trax and went back to our car. Preston could have stayed on Trax all day, but we were ready to go home.


We did make a quick stop at Taffy Town and we each got some candy. Then headed home. We wish we could have stayed with the group, but we just couldn't keep our eyes open any longer!!!

Fire

I forgot to post this... I looked out my back window and saw a fire on the hill about 5 miles away. I watched it for a while. I saw lots of smoke, flames and helicopters dropping water on it. That's about it....by night time it was finally out.

Union Station

Betsie and I took the kids on a day trip up to Ogden to Union Station. I've heard great things about it from Tamsen, but haven't had a chance to go until now. It far surpassed my expectations! It's perfect for a train lover like Preston and an old classic car lover like myself! I love that Preston shares his love for trains with his cousins Jadon and Josiah. The boys all had a great time, and frankly so did us girls. :-)

Emma, Ashleigh, Jennidee

Jadon, Josiah, Preston
Don't you just love the conductor hats we got the boys!??!
So cute!!!

Inside an Army First Aid train

Going inside a Post office train
The train never stops when delivering or picking up mail

I couldn't believe how BIG the train wheels are!

Inside Union Station

Preston would LOVE to have these paintings in his room!

Sitting on a real train car couch

An old Train schedule

An old typewriter

The old phones. I would love to have one in my house.

They had a little train that the kids could play in and ring the whistle. They loved it!

I LOVE Josiah's smile here!

I showed Ash this Morse-code machine.

She and Betsie did Morse-code back and forth

Tool for the railroad
Betsie, Emma, and Josiah

They have an awesome electric model train system going thru different time periods and scenes. It was the coolest thing. I think the boys could have stayed in there and watched the trains for hours if we had let them!

Then we saw the Classic Car museum. I was in heaven!!! I Love love love old-time cars!

I wish I could drive this car.....I can't even imagine having a steam powered car!

They had more trains outside that we saw....

Betsie was ready to go, but Preston wasn't so we went back in with the intent to see the gun museum too....
Instead, I got Ashleigh her own pink conductor hat

And played with a little model railroad that was in the store where we bought the hat

And we got to push these buttons and hear all sorts of sounds--the conductor, the brakes, the steam, the engine roaring, the different types of whistles, etc. It was pretty cool!

Preston had a little meltdown so we decided to go home instead of seeing anything else.
He was pretending to be asleep here...

I took this picture of one of the paintings. I'm going to blow it up and print it/frame it for Preston's room for his birthday. I think he'll love it! :-)