The Reader's Digest Version of our Lives as of Late

As you can see, it's been quite a while since I've blogged regularly.  Instead of trying to do a bunch of smaller posts, I thought I would just post a bunch of pictures of what's been going on lately & that will have to suffice.

Steven is turning into such a little boy.  Anything he finds can be turned into a gun.  Case in point: he's got a straw in his hand & he was laying on the ground making shooting noises.

This was before I cut Steven's hair last.  This was when I had picked the kids up from the babysitter's & she had parted his hair like this because it as getting in his eyes.  I just thought it looked funny :)

Steven really loves to help me cook.  This night I was making bread & Josh pointed out the nice little hand print after I was done.

Sofia is quite an enthusiastic eater.  She really prefers to feed herself & tends to get quite dirty.  This night I didn't want to draw up a whole bath so I just put her in the sink to clean her off.

This is the kind of stuff I find after Sofia has been too quiet for a while.  This is also the reason why we now put the toilet paper roll up high.

We got a very nice tax return this year.  We used a large chunk of it to pay some bills but we decided to use a portion of it to jump start our food storage.  This is a picture of most of the stuff we got with that money. The blue barrels are 55 gallon water drums.

Around the same time that we were buying our food storage, Josh worked at the local church pasta factory.  In return he was able to buy a bunch of pasta to put in our food storage. We had so much so we had to put some above our cupboards.

One of our cupboards full of pasta.

The final set-up of our food storage

A little while ago I decided to have a fun little activity with the kids.  This is the set-up of our finger painting activity.  I taped some trash bags on & under the table for easy clean-up.

The tools we were going to use: chocolate pudding instead of finger paint, pretzels, & plastic utensils.

Steven wearing his little apron.

Sofia's ready to play!

Steven was way more interested in eating the pretzels than finger painting...

"Look, Mom! I get to play with pudding without getting in trouble!"

"Hehehe! I'm going to get messssyyy!"

Steven getting into the fun :)

This is Sofia's really excited face

Sofia & I with our AWESOME chocolate mustaches!

This is Steven actually saying, "SMILE!" in this picture :)

A real smile :)

The aftermath of the activity

I love the faces she makes :)

Two of my sisters & I (Lisa - middle, Ginelle - right) at BYU's Women's Conference at the end of April.

At the end of April we went to Moab with a group of friends. This is Josh's truck piled up with stuff on the way there.  Don't worry, not all of this stuff is ours ;)

Steven helping Josh set up the tent. Somehow he knew, even before Josh got out the poles, that some sort of straight thing went in the loops.

Steven insisted on walking around in his bare feet

Sofia the cheeseball

Josh & I took the kids on a walk & I took this picture with my phone. There was a really bright glare on my phone so I couldn't even really see what the picture looked like until later.  I think it's so gorgeous!

On said walk.  Many people had carved their names in this rock so Josh decided to do the same.  Steven was trying to do so as well, but a stick doesn't work very well...

What Josh carved: "J+C".  The picture quality sucks because I used the front camera on my phone to take it.  Apparently that also flips the image...lame.

  One afternoon we hiked up to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park.  This is Steven following some of the other people in our group.

Josh, Sofia, & Steven on the hike.  Both of the kids did really well!  Steven seriously walked at least half of the 3 mile hike by himself!

Steven, Josh, & Sofia checking out Delicate Arch

We forgot to get a picture in front of the arch so we just found this cool tree to get a picture in front of.

Our friend, Scott, carrying a tired Steven.  All of our friends were super nice & helped carry Steven on the way down

Meghann & Steven.  I think he had a crush on her ;)

Sofia fell asleep on the way down

One of my best & oldest friends turned 25 in May so this is a group of us out to dinner to celebrate.  L-R: Katie (I think...), Arika (a.k.a birthday girl!), Cora, Erin, & I.  We went to this place called La Jolla Groves in Provo; it was very yummy & the atmosphere was awesome!

Arika's dessert.  Look how fancy that is!jm  ,

My dessert.  Mmmmm...chocolate... :)

Josh's fancy new work truck.  It's HUGE!