Snow Baby

This week mother nature decided that she had enough of the nice weather and sunshine and let the skies open up and dump snow on us. It snowed pretty much all of Friday and Saturday, and we ended up with 4-5 inches of snow. Since JJ hasn't been in the snow before we decided this was the perfect opportunity to see if he liked the snow.

 

 We decided to ease him into it by putting him on the sled

 

It is getting harder and harder to get his attention let alone get him to smile too.

 



 

Then since he wasn't touching the snow we put a chunk next to him so he could explore.

 

"It's Everywhere!"

 

And he's done...

 

Since he didn't try and put the snow in his mouth I wanted to help him along. He licked it a few times and made some faces but didnt seem to like it much.

 

I can't wait until he actually wants to play in the snow!

Pumpkin Patches and Halloween

To Kick off the Halloween season we went to a pumpkin patch with our friends the Hopes. I had never been to a pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins before and it was really fun!

 

 

Jenny decided that since we didn't have a pumpkin yet she would take a ride in the wheelbarrow. JJ wanted to touch (and eat) every pumpkin we found, especially the mini ones!

 

 

 Justin and Dallan with our pumpkins for carving!

 

After stopping for dinner we headed back home to carve the pumpkins. The boys got to do the messy part of "gutting" the pumpkins while Jenny and I got artistic. Jenny chose a classic silly Jack-O-Lantern, and I gave mine two teeth to match JJ.

 

 

For JJ's first Halloween I decided that we had to do something memorable. We finally decided on Mary Poppins, Bert and a Penguin. I sewed the penguin costume from a tutorial last year on Make it-Love it (she has amazing sewing tutorials!) then made Justin's vest, my hat and shirt. It turned out great and I was really glad to be done with all that sewing! we didn't do any trick-or-treating this year although Justin wanted to, but we had fun at two ward trunk-or-treats.

Hart-A-Palooza!

At the beginning of October The Harts and Kapahuas came to town! Over the long weekend we crammed in quite a bit, One of the things they did was to go to the USC vs. Utah game. Ed went to the game and got to sit on the 6th floor media level. Becky and Justin were able to go to the game and they got dressed up to show their support!

 

 

Memere and Grandpa even brought JJ his very own USC jersey!

 

The next night Justin, Jolie, Becky, and Kim went to the BYU game.

 

We also had a chance to go to General Conference on Saturday Morning, since we had JJ we were only allowed to sit in the top of the Tabernacle but at least we were there. Justin got to old JJ while he napped, which is a rare occurrence since JJ doesn't like to sleep unless he's in his bed.

 

We even got to see some of our friends from California that traveled up to see Conference. The day was gorgeous, nothing but blue skies and warm weather.

 

We also had lots of time to play! Makua loved giving JJ a hug and trying to play with him, one day they'll be able to play and be great friends.

 

 

 

We also had a mini photo shoot since JJ and Makua were both in their USC jerseys.

 

Since the weather wasn't too cold we took JJ out on the swings at the Hugie's. He absolutely loved it! he giggled a bunch!



We are so grateful to have such wonderful families and to be blessed to have them visit so often. See you at Thanksgiving Harts and Kapahuas!!!

The Croft Invsion: Temple Day

I have quite a few events to catch up on here on the blog. Life has been going a million miles an hour lately, so here's my throwback to wrap up the week my Family was here to visit at the end of August. 

One of the last things we were able to do with My family was to visit the beautiful Brigham city before the open house. My Little brother Braeden had never been inside a temple before, and neither had JJ (of course) so it was a special experience to walk through the BEAUTIFUL rooms. It also gave us an opportunity to remember that our families are forever. No matter how crazy my brothers get I'm always grateful to be "stuck" to them forever. Justin and I loved being able to walk through the temple with JJ and remember that just two years earlier we were separate people, and then we became a family.

 

The day was picture perfect! and most of our shots look like they belong on a postcard.

 

If you noticed that Brian was gone you were right, he flew back that morning.

 

This is the Tabernacle across the street, it is such a gorgeous old building still in use for church meetings today.

This

 

I am so grateful my family was able to visit and am anxiously awaiting the next time we get to cause trouble together!

The Croft Invasion: Baseball and Drive-ins

This is a mash up of a few different days and the things we did, One night we went to the drive-in to see Bourne Legacy. It was a pretty good movie but it was even better that we could go with JJ and my whole family too! It's a good thing we weren't planning on stating for the second movie since the rain started when the credits started rolling. Brian, Spencer and Braeden got comfy in the back of their car, while my mom and dad sat outside.

 

Braeden had to get a picture with JJ since they were both wearing orange which is Braeden's favorite color (if you couldn't tell)

 



 

My mom got such a cute picture of JJ and I in the back of our car, that we had to grab Justin to get a family picture too.

One of my favorite pictures of our little family, can't wait to get some more pictures taken soon too!

 



 

These next few pictures are from the day my family arrived. We went over to Leonard and Sue Looney's house and had a dinner of home made ribs and pulled pork sandwiches. After dinner my mom showed off her newest creations for JJ, first the darling grey vest she crocheted.

 

Her second project were baby bibs made from old shirts, and shorts. You can't see it in the picture but the bib is made from one of Braeden's old button down shirts.

 

One of our other adventures was to go to downtown Salt Lake and go to City Creek to look around. City Creek is really nice looking but most of the shops are way too pricey for the everyday shopper. To cool off in the hot sun we played in the fountain... well we tried to get JJ to touch it but he wasn't as interested in it as I  thought.

In the middle of the week we took the opportunity to go to a Salt Lake Bee's game with Leonard and Sue Looney. While the players were warming up we noticed that Peter Bourjos was playing for the Bee's! we were thrilled to watch him play since he normally plays with the Angels in California.

 



 

 

UP NEXT: BRIGHAM CITY 

The Croft Invasion: Planetarium & Family Fun Bike

We started our next day of adventures by meeting up with Justin for lunch, at In-n-Out. My little brothers had to come to In-n-Out while they were here.

 

 Here's a little back story... In our house we never grew up eating hamburgers, even though my dad likes them. When Brian started working at Burger King he had one and soon after Spencer was converted. Braeden is quite the picky eater and while my family was here in March he was somehow coerced into eating a burger (In-n-Out of course) and he liked it! surprised? we were too. A few months ago I decided I was going to make hamburgers for Justin for dinner, he loves them but I was still not convinced. I promised I would try one and I did... It is still not my favorite but they aren't as bad as I thought, so after 21 years of holding out I can no longer say I haven't had a hamburger. What better place to have a fast food burger than In-n-Out?

 

 

 

After our boating adventures we decided to take it easy by going to the Clark Planetarium in the Gateway Mall. The Planetarium isn't huge but we definitely had lots of free fun!

 

 

JJ was very interested in this ball (I have no idea what it's actually called) He loved watching the light move all around.

 

My brothers and I discovered that we could shock each other with our hands on the ball. We had WAY too much fun with this ball.

 

This was an exhibit where balls were moving on tracks through loops, twists and ringing bells on the way down.  There was even a part showing how you could make balls move upward on a track with a spinning motion.

 

Spencer and Braeden jumping on "Mars"

 

Brian walking on the "Moon"

 

The thinkers on "Mars"

 

JJ's first time on the Moon!

 

JJ visited Mars too!

 

After the planetarium the boys went to see 'Paranorman' and my mom and I went shopping (of course) Later on we met up for some lunch and ice cream. I discovered a chocolate ice cream cone dipped in butterscotch, YUM. JJ has become more interested in food lately and couldn't help but try and get a bite of Grandpa's ice cream.

 

This is JJ leaning in to give Grandma a hug and kiss, which he did over and over again. (Grandma totally loved it!)

 

I couldn't help but add this picture even though his face is cut off, he has gotten more goofy lately! this kid totally cracks me up!

 

 

Our next adventure was the Family Fun Bike in downtown salt lake. This is a 7 person bike where all of the pedals are configured so that you travel straight even though you are sitting in a circle. This was really fun! we biked around temple square in the street, and had our picture taken by quite a few people.

 

This is what the pedals look like. Our guide/driver told us that there are 2 bikes here in Salt Lake and the bikes were made in Germany.

 

It was such a beautiful day and the temple looks so gorgeous against the clear blue sky.

 

 

Our last stop of the day was Rodizio Brazillian Grill in Trolley Square. If you have never been to a place like this before let me tell you a little bit about it. This place is Man-Heaven! The only thing that would make it more manly is TV's with sports on. There is a buffet salad bar and unlimited appetizers, although the main event is the meat. The meat is served table side on a sword, yep a sword. The meat is cooked in a giant rotisserie, brought around piping hot, and you can have all you want until you need to be rolled out the door.

 

These are their Meat-Coma faces, we ate so much food!

 

UP NEXT: MORE CROFT INVASION!