My Little Kenya

This little girl puts a smile on my face all day.  Even when she's doing naughty things like dancing on the table or turning the TV on and off, she is so cute and does her little evil laugh that it's hard to be mad at her!  She is so happy all the time, doesn't seem to be effected by lack of sleep (unlike Charlie) you'd never know she was tired until you look back and she's zonked in the car seat. :)  I love when I pick her up and she puts her little arms around my neck so tight and wraps her legs around my waist, I can completely let go of her and she's hanging on to me, it's so cute just like a little monkey.  She's starting to say a couple things like "all done" and she'll put her little hands up for the sign language.  She'll do "mo mo" too with sign language for more.  She says "hi" to everyone I walk by and waves and "ba ba" and blows kisses.  I just want to squeeze her all day!  I can't believe she is 16 months old.  Love you baby!

Here she is in high chair mode.  She sometimes gets really stiff and sits in a trance when she's in her high chair.  Notice the hair, an attempt at piggies.
She loves bath time!  She throws a tiny fit whenever we take her out.  Charlie loves playing in there with her, unfortuately it doesn't last too long before he starts picking on her a bit.  

 
Here's the difference in Charlie tired and Kenya tired.
Nothing I love more than snuggling a clean baby in jammies, a hubby too. :)

Top Of Utah Marathon!

I did it, I ran a marathon!  When I told one of my friends that I was running a marathon she was completely shocked and said "I thought you didn't like to run?"  Yep, I thought so too until I really started doing it!  I never thought I had a desire to do a marathon, still wasn't sure about it a couple months ago!  But I'm so glad I did it and I can cross it off the list.

We stayed up in Logan the night before so that we wouldn't have to wake up at 3:30 at drive up there to be there by 5.  Well, we might as well have done that because I got no sleep!  It was so awful. I am usually such a good sleeper but I could not shut my brain off.  I was so nervous and anxious.  I think I finally fell asleep somewhere around 1:00 am and woke up at 3:15 and couldn't go back to sleep!  I was trying not to think about it and let it get in my head, it's all mental right? Well I could tell a huge difference in my run.  I was about a minute per mile slower than I usually am and just couldn't keep up with Cami when we've been running the same pace during training.  My ipod died after about two songs so at mile 15 Cami gave me her ipod and left me in the dust, which I of course didn't want to slow her down.  I was just bummed that we didn't get to finish together.  Anyway, I made it through, I was too nervous to push myself too hard for fear of not finishing at all!  The last mile I got a boost of energy when I saw Mark and Charlie and Charlie handed me a flower.  I was so happy to see them, the thought kept me going.  I finished in 4:37, I wanted to finish for sure by 4:30 and hopefully by 4:20 but that's ok, it leaves improvement for next time (well I need to know how it would be on a bit more sleep don't I? ) The important thing is I finished!  Yay!

Here I am crossing the finish line with the little flower from Charlie that he picked off somewhere. :)
Here we are after the race, if it looks like I was crying it's because I was!  I crossed the finish line and saw Mark and just started crying!  I was an emotional wreck!  Cami did awesome and finished in 4:16.
Love Charlie in this picture.  Thanks for all of the support sweetie!

Preschool

Charlie started preschool a few weeks ago and loves it!  He has a great teacher and the preschool is right by our new house so that'll be really nice once we've moved in.  These are pictures of him on his first day, Kenya is excited to have him go to preschool too. :)

We put the kids to work later that day sweeping the floors at our house.  

Charlie's preschool went on their first field trip to This Is The Place Heritage Park.  I've never been there before so it was fun to go and see all the pioneers homes and learn some things.  Charlie was excited to meet some pioneers and loved petting the sheep and riding the train of course.  Kenya also loved petting the animals, she just followed them around and screamed with excitement.  She also loved this little playhouse.  She kept opening and closing the door and going in through the front door and out through the back.  She was quite entertained.  

Capitol Reef

Yay! Our computer is back!  Now it's catch up time!  All my pictures and video are lost though, most of them were uploaded to Kodak Gallery but not all (like our cruise pictures, Lynette and Paige, help!) So learn from me, if you haven't backed up your pictures do it now!  

Over Labor Day we went down to Capitol Reef with my family.  I haven't been there since I was a kid and barely remember that and Mark has never been there, actually never experienced too much of Southern Utah so it was a fun trip.  We got some little cabins at a nearby campground, just big enough for two beds but it had electricity so that made all the difference! Much nicer to have walls surrounding you when you have little ones.  It poured when we first got there but that didn't stop the kids from running around outside.  Kenya splashed around with little Knox while Mark set up the little TV with bunny ears and watched the Utah football opener (couldn't miss that now could we! :)) Another plus of the electricity.  We ate our tin foil dinners cooked in the rain by Amy and Eri and my bros and that was pretty much the end of the rain.  The next day we took a drive down to the park and through the park.  It was gorgeous.  We got to do a little hike to a waterfall before we left.  This was great to do before the drive home, my kids slept the whole 3 1/2 hours home.  So maybe the night time cold medicine I slipped them helped a little. :)  They were a bit congested.  Anyway, we had a great trip.  When we got home Charlie said "Mom, when are going camping again?"  A 3 year olds dream!

Here we are at the end of the hike.  1 mile seems a lot longer with kids and wading back and forth between water.  Kenya is hiding behind Mark's back.  See that little fleck of white hair?

This was at the end of the scenic drive.  It was so beautiful we were winding right through the bottom of the red cliffs.  

There's the little monkey peeking out.  She loved the back pack and was content the whole time.  That's the beautiful muddy waterfall we hiked to.  Small but cool.
There was a beautiful orchard among the red cliffs that you could go pick your own apples and peaches.  It was a beautiful setting and the kids loved it.  I never appreciated all those fruit trees we had when I was growing up.  I hated picking those peaches, now I would love to have fruit trees!

It's been so long for me to not do a post! I do have two excuses though, one-our computer is not working, Mark thinks it's the hard drive, I'm praying it's not since I have all my pictures on there and haven't backed all of them up yet! We have to make an appointment to get it looked at so until we can find the the time I am computerless, I do have my dad's but it does this weird thing when I'm typing, where ever the arrow is from the mouse it moves the cursor there after a few seconds and it makes it a pain to type! Number two is that I haven't had too much to blog about! August has been pretty uneventful for us! We've been busy with our house, it's got about a month left and we've just started painting the rooms we didn't want to pay the painters for. I figured I painted our whole house before, what's a a few more rooms right? Wrong! Way harder to find the time with two kids and when you're not even living in the house! So I think we'll look into hiring some cheap labor if anyone has any suggestions! :) Charlie got to meet his preschool teacher this week, he keeps asking everyday when he can go to preschool, we are both extemely excited for that to start! Kenya is officially down to one nap now, it took me a while to let go she was still so young to go to one nap compared to Charlie but I had to face the facts and nap time is not such a struggle anymore. She also has a full mouth of teeth! Yay! no more teething! Still to come, bye bye binky...

A Little Holbrook Family Update

This year on the 23rd Jayme and Jeremy had us over for a bbq and some sparkler action! We had a fun time. Charlie and Samara loved the sparklers. Later that night Mark took Charlie to his Grandma Holbrook's to watch the fireworks from Mueller Park. She has a great view on her back porch from across the canyon. I missed out so little Miss Kenya could go to bed. There's always next year though right?



This little one is so busy! She loves stairs so she didn't want to sit on my lap, she just wanted to climb the stairs. She's so entertaining just to watch her walk around. And look, she still has a little bow in! Well, sort of...at this point she had it in for maybe 1-2 hours. That's a record!



Jeremy, Mark, my rugrats and Jayme's mom Lottyann and her husband Rick.

On the 24th we went to the Bountiful Carnival and man was it hot! We only lasted an hour but Charlie scored these sweet sweat bands at the fish pond. He insisted on wearing them for the next day or so.
I found sweet little Kenya in the bedroom reading herself a little book. She is such a little cutie, but she's not sleeping lately! This has happened often enough that I'm not so worried about it but for the past couple days she's only slept 1 hour during the day instead of 4! I don't know if it's teething or starting to grow out of the 2 naps, probably a mixture of both. She actually has always done this, she sleeps great for a couple weeks then has a really bad week. Both my kids are like that....does anyone else notice this in their kids? The great thing with her is that she's happy no matter what her sleeping is like, Charlie is not. I saw a little quote the other day that said "Sometimes I wake up Grumpy but sometimes I let him sleep." This is Charlie! Kenya loves pretending to color, stealing wet wipes and eating them, (mostly sucking on them but she has been known to actually swallow pieces, don't ask me why, she's done this since she was a few months old.) saying "uh oh", pulling hair (including her own.), and reading books. Both of my kids entertain themselves pretty well. I lucked out in that department. She's 14 months now! Not really a baby anymore! :(

Charlie is growing up so fast too! I can't believe how big he's gotten since I had Kenya. He's getting a little attitude though! The things he picks up! The other day he was drinking a smoothie and he said "this is my coffee." Mark and I looked at eachother "What?" He said "This is my coffee, like Kailan drinks coffee." I guess no more watching Kailan! He's also been a little mover since he was born, he's been dancing since he was in my tummy, here's a little clip of his latest moves, the other one is of Kenya reading her book. We don't have a video camera right now so my camera is all I have to record stuff on.



As for Mark and I, well we've just been busy getting stuff done on our house. Mostly Mark, he deals with most of it but I am sick of picking stuff out! We should have about a month and a half left so it's moving along. This picture is from about a month ago, the rock and brick, actually pretty much the whole exterior is done and the inside is getting ready to be painted. I can't wait to have a home again! Mark is getting ready for his flag football season, and getting excited for the Utes football season. I have been training for the Logan marathon with my sister Cami, still a little unsure about the idea but I know that if I'm this close and don't do it I'll probably always regret it. It's September 20th which is right around when our house should be done so hopefully it won't conflict with all that.

Lagoon and Mark's Birthday

We had Stake Lagoon day last week. Last year we had passes to Lagoon but didn't get them this year and Charlie was so excited to go back to Lagoon! We went during the day for a couple hours and met up with our friend Michelle and her girls. Charlie wanted to go on Puff, last year he was really scared, this year his first trip around he looked pretty scared but by the third and final time around the track he was smiling. He still didn't like the Lady Bug Bop ride and when we went back that night with Brooke and Brady he said he wanted to go on the Dino Drop ride (which is like the Lady Bug Bop) he seemed like he was going to be fine but once he was strapped in and ready to take off he started crying so I had to have them lift up everybody's safety restraints and take him off. Maybe next year. :) Kenya got to ride the boats with him though, she loved that.


Brady and Charlie right before the tears came, he really was trying to be brave.

He was much happier on the swings.

Mark's Birthday was on the 13th, 29 years old! I can't believe we are reaching our 30's! Happy Birthday babe, we love you!!!