Oliver Family

4th of July Weekend 2014

Waiting for the Parade on Main Street to start.

Rod fell asleep on the way home.

After the parade we went home, had lunch and rested. Then headed down to St. George. We stopped by the Carousal and Splash pad first then went over to the Wastlund's for a BBQ Dinner with my Aunt Brenda, Uncle Richie and his wife Gloria. My cousins Vernon and Matthew also stopped by with Matthews new wife Amanda. We lit firworks and sparklers and had a grand old time. I love 4th of July!

Aunt Brenda and Me.

Watching the fireworks shoot up

Kody came and spent a night with us while he was playing basketball in the Utah summer games. Rod officially fell in love with him and he is his new favorite person. Whenever Kody is around you will hear Rod say "Ko-ee!" over and over again because he gets so excited.

Watching the fireworks (Richie and Gloria in the background)

Sparklers with Vernon, Gloria, Amanda, Brenda and Matthew

Nice patriotic shot Steve got

Steve even got in the spirit of things and painted by face.

The next day we went fishing at the new pond Steve and Spencer discovered. We were missing a bob so a nice old man that was walking by with his wife found a little piece of wood and tied in on the fish line for a make shift one. We didn't catch anything but had fun. I love fishing. It brought back a lot of childhood memories of fishing with my dad at the little city pond in Laramie, and fishing with my Grandpa Atkinson when we'd go visit them in the summer.

It was a perfect weekend.

Camping...sort of

We went camping with the Wastlunds in June...sort of. I say sort of because we rented a cabin at the Zion Ponderosa. So we had a kitchen, indoor plumbing, beds, TV, swimming and other fun activities. We were surrounded by nature though.

Amber and Garrett made delicious dutch oven! I ate way too much and we had a total blast.

Gotta love the Random

Love that my boys play together now.

Spencer wanted me to take a picture of him and his best friend "basketball hoop"

Spencer wanted to take a picture of me writing out the grocery list (please excuse Rod's extremely soggy diaper)

Uncle David sang in the choir for General Conference.

Spencer dressing up like daddy again. :)

The 3 pictures below were taken pretty early, by the insistence of Spencer. Which is why he looks wide awake and Roddy and me do not.

Roddy's first day of nursery at Church. Yay!

One of the busiest times of year for apartment managing is during the Spring semester check out. So Jessica and Robin came to help the boys and Spencer went to spend a night over at the Wastlunds. Spencer and Jessica were headed out to the car to go to the Wastlund's, when he got hit in the face with the car door. I was inside helping 5 different people when Spencer comes in holding his eye with blood all over his face and hands. The best part was when I finally convinced him to take his hand down so I could look at the cut. He put his hand down,saw all the blood on his hand, got a look of horror on his face and started screaming. I calmed him down, washed off most of the blood and helped the apartment people enough that they could leave and then tried to decide if we should take him to get stitches or not. He totally freaked when we said we might take him to get stiches and it didn't look too bad. So I put butterfly bandages on it and Steve super glued it. It healed up just fine (with a small scar. But we told him scars were cool)

Despite the drama he made it to the Wastlund's and had a blast.

But....

While he was in St. George, Spencer got his first really bad sunburn.And now is sure to always remind everyone to wear sunscreen.

Spencer is seriously the best big brother. Of course he fights with Rod and gets annoyed by him, but he is also so kind to him. He'll sing to him when he's upset, read him books, play with him, help me get diapers and clothes, etc. etc. He is a awesome and it melts my heart.

Spencer's photo of his applesause (kept it to remind myself in future years I used to have a nice backside) :)

Rod is still obsessed with his monkey. And now he's added balls to it. Especially basketballs but really any type of ball. He have a little mini basketball hoop Spencer got for his birthday a couple years ago and Rod plays with it all day (and he's actually really good). One of his favorite things to say is "Shoot the ball!" Whenever he see a basketball or basketball hoop or anyone dressed like they could be basketball players he yells that and starts pretending to shoot a ball. He carries around this mini-basketball and even takes naps with it on several occasions. Today he couldn't wait for nap time and fell asleep with his two favorite things.

My least favorite "chore" is grocery shopping. Steve is always complaining we have nothing to eat (which means we have nothing convenient to eat, and he would actually need to cook something).

But today....he was right.