Lagging...

I have had a really hard time keeping up with the blog these days. Here are a few things we've been up to...

Jared's youngest brother got married to Michelle Van Hemert in September. Their wedding was small (surprising, I know) and pretty. Here's a picture of all the Weaver adults together. A lot of people still ask me who's who so here they all are...

Left to right..
Jason(Jared's brother)&Shelly, Tomas & Suzette (sister), James (brother) & Tricia, Shanna (sister), Shaylee (sister), Jonny (brother) & Michelle, Mom & Dad, Sharidee (sister) and Jerrin, Cole (brother) & Janet, Sara & Jared (person who these are all related to).

Closer look from left to right of just siblings (number represents where they fall)...
Suzette(5), Sharidee(3), Shaylee(9), Shanna(7), Jonny(8), Cole(1), Jared(4), Jason(2), James)6)

Jared's brother-in-law Jerrin always wants to be the first person to throw a snowball every year so we decided to beat him to the punch (or the throw, ha ha). We drove up Farmington Canyon and packed a bunch of snowballs into a cooler and caught him off guard!




We also took our 3rd annual trip to the Witchfest at Gardner Village. We took some family pictures that turned out pretty nice. And the witches are really cute and I love going there to see it all decorated for Halloween.





One of the things that has been keeping us busy was fixing up Annie's room. It all started when my friend told me about a crafty blog and told me about wallpaper "bead board". It's this cool wallpaper that looks like bead board and it's even paintable. I told Jared right away that that's my new project. He tagged along with me to Lowe's to check it out and talked me out of it. He decided we should just buy regular bead board which would cost us about $200 just for the materials not including the paint. I decided to use Jared's handyman skills to build our own "bead board". The skinny boards were on sale for $0.76 and we cut each one if half. Jared honestly didn't think it was going to turn out well BUT it looks great!! He did a great job. It ended up being a lot of work but it was worth it. Here are the before and after pics. It really doesn't seem like much in the picture but I love going into Annabelle's room and looking at it.

Our summer in a flash...

I don't know what it was about this year but I feel like I blinked and the summer was over. It was one of those summers where it feels like we really didn't do anything yet we were always busy! The kids LOVE being in our new house with ten bazillion little boys to play with in the neighborhood. Jared and I have really become very comfortable here too. I catch myself complaining sometimes that I wish my house wasn't always full of kids running through eating, playing, making messes, and waking up the baby all the time BUT I wouldn't trade it for anything different. Jared thinks I should quit complaining about the constant noise and endless messes and enjoy the fact that our boys are happy and they have so many great friends, I agree.

We didn't have any vacations planned for the summer so Jared and I decided to make a super last minute trip to L.A. so we could get away and just hang out together as a family and sit on the beach. It was a short trip but we had fun. We played in the sand, ate at a delicious little restaurant on a private beach, walked the Hollywood strip, and relaxed.


We didn't get many pictures of our trip. Annabelle didn't enjoy the beach as much as the boys but she was still a little trooper.


A few weeks ago I was looking up some fun things to do with the kiddos and I saw there was going to be a "Star Party" up at The American West Heritage Center in Wellsville. It was the night of the meteor shower, hence the "star party." They had a train ride, a glow in the dark tea party, pony rides, a petting zoo, and some other fun stuff. Jared was playing in "Dusk 'til Dawn" so he wasn't able to come but my parents came with me and it was really fun.

I LOVE Cache Valley and it was a perfect evening with the cool crisp air and the smell of hay and leaves changing (I don't know if I can actually smell the leaves changing, but it seems like I can). I also love that my parents love Cache Valley so they didn't mind coming with me and my 3 little munchkins.









Jared had a goal all summer of sleeping on the tramp and the boys all finally found the perfect night to do it. Jackson and Tanner were SO excited!! They got all of their gear together, stayed up and told each other stories, then quickly fell asleep...until the neighbor's sprinklers came on and they rushed inside and slept peacefully in their own beds.





Annie's been a sweet little baby. For a while she was having a hard time gaining weight. She weighed 12 pounds at her 3 month check up and 12.1 pounds at her 6 month check up. I had to take her in every week to see if she'd gained weight. At first she lost several ounces then I realized I was being a dumb mom and I needed to feed her on a strict schedule. I always just fed her when she started acting hungry. She's just such a content little girl that she obviously wasn't acting hungry often enough. Now she's eating like crazy and she gained almost a pound in 2 weeks and seems to be growing fast.


The summer was really fun but I LOVE, love, love the fall!! I already have some spices simmering on the stove and warm soups on next weeks dinner menu and am ready to put away t-shirts and shorts and pull out all of the hoodies and get ready to go up in the mountains to see the leaves change and buy our first pumpkin! I don't know what it is about this season but I feel refreshed and excited for all the fall festivities to begin!!

Baby? What baby?

So here Jared and I were driving over to Sharidee's house yesterday for your typical Sunday afternoon root beer burping contest when we realized we were missing something kind of important. No, not the root beer. Although that would have been a big deal...



This little gal was back home catchin' some Zzzzz's. I even double checked every door to make sure we had locked up before we left. We usually come home with most doors either unlocked or completely open. I guess in the back of my mind I knew I was forgetting something. Just couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

Ostrich Bake Anyone??

A few weeks ago Jared couldn't resist buying an ostrich egg down in St. George and we've been keeping it in our fridge not sure who'd be up for trying out the big huge egg with us.
Well, Jared's sister's family and my parents were the lucky ones who got to be the guinea pigs. This is one big old egg.

As my Geology professor would have said, "The egg of interest is on the right. There is also a chicken egg on the left and a silly Grandma for scale."


The men getting out the power tools to conquer the thing...




Now time to blow out the eggy stuff...

A nice close up for grossness

Got some recruits for help. Just like CPR it works best as a team effort.


This one egg equals about 2 dozen large chicken eggs.

We didn't take pictures of the finished product. We made one sausage-tater tot-ostrich egg bake and one sausage-tater tot-regular egg bake and most of us couldn't tell the difference in taste, It's been over 24 hours and as far as I know most of us have survived too.

Independence Day

Our 4th of July was a little bit lazy. We had stayed up late for a couple of nights in a row so we decided to take the morning slow and lazy on over to some friend's for lunch then we went over to Liberty Days (in Liberty UT). There wasn't much going on by the time we got there but the boys got to have their faces painted and they felt like superheroes!!

Tanner going with good old Spiderman


Jackson's an Avatar


Annabelle's 1st time trying out a swing. Although the picture may look otherwise, she loved it. Mostly.


Jared was tired of pushing all the kids on the swing and decided he wanted some fun for himself.


Later that evening we headed over to Huntsville for their fireworks and boogied through the night. The girls in the background make me laugh. Looks like Jared has a couple back up dancers.


The boys spontaneously had a major meltdown. We have no idea what caused it but it seemed pretty serious. To them, anyway.


Aunt Susie offered them a tic-tac if they'd smile and apparently it worked. Jackson got his groove on and put all of us dancing fools to shame.


Doing the worm


Annabelle just couldn't figure out why nobody would let her go to sleep!


We love the 4th of July. We feel lucky to have spent a few back East where our forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence and to have been able to see so many awesome historical sights where it all began. It makes us miss VA and Washington DC very much but we also LOVE having family to celebrate with. Not to mention the awesome Utah weather!!!

Mesa Verde

Last week Jared took work off and we were able to spend a few days up in Bear Lake with my sister Jamie and her family (not one single picture, guess I was enjoying their company too much) then we dropped our kids off with Jared's sister Shay and went down south to Mesa Verde.

If you've never been here you gotta go! It's pretty amazing to see how these people lived!!!



This is just up in a cliff!


this is called a Kiva. It's like a religious temple. Most of the dwellings had one or more of these.


You can see a cliff dweling behind Jared's smart little face.


We had to climb up some ladders to get to the bigger dwellings. I didn't think I'd get scared, but, I did.


We had to squish through a few of these too.


Four Corners "monument" of course it's under construction. The saying "luck favors the prepared" is a bunch of bull.


This is near Moab. We took the house tour and it's pretty cool. A man who was a miner decided he didn't like living in a super hot cabin back in the early 1900's so he decided to blow out a hole in the mountain and live in it with his wife. They ran a cafe there and made all sorts of nick nacks. It really is pretty cool.


Ahhh, it feels good to get all cleaned up after a few days in the sweaty, suncreeny, sunshine.

Going private

Please send me your emails if you'd like an invite to our family blog. I think it's time to go private...as soon as I figure out how to do it. I plan on switching in a week or so. Send your emails to saraweaver81@hotmail.com or leave it in a comment if you wanna keep up with our silly little familly.