Cotton Balls

Nora loves cotton balls. Of all the random things. She gets them out of the bathroom drawer pretty much every day then dumps them out on the floor, puts them back in the cup, dumps them out again... over and over. It's pretty cute!

If You Give Nora a Cookie...

Sunday Best

Every so often when I get Nora dressed for church, I put a headband on just to see what she does. Most of the time it doesn't make it out the door with us. If it does, she takes it off in the 5 minute ride to church. When I tried last week and the headband didn't come off immediately, I got my camera out because she is just too cute!

She is such a ham. Oh what a sweet girl!

Love her church shoes!

Zeke had to pose too.

Heber Valley Air Show

We found out about the air show quite by accident. On Saturday morning (day of) Aaron happened to go to ksl.com, and on their recent stories list was a piece about the air show from the night before. At least we found out about it in advance this time! We have never gone because we usually don't find out about it until during or after the event, and we typically have other things going on. This day was no different, but we squeezed it in and I'm glad we did.

We spent about an hour walking through, looking at the planes and taking pictures. It was hot, but there was a good turnout in both planes and spectators.

The first thing we saw as we walked onto the airport was the 'path' of painted airplanes. We followed the little yellow airplanes and they led us to all there was to see.

Zeke really liked this one. Not sure why, but he specifically told us 'I like this one.'

Team OK3Air. I've heard this one buzzing around and seen it doing pattern flying but never knew it was an 'official' team plane.

Aaron got to fly this very plane about 2 years ago when we did a discovery flight, which is basically the introduction to flight school. We decided not to do the classes because we couldn't afford it, but after being around all of these planes Aaron is strongly reconsidering the idea of getting his pilot's license.

Love the green plane.

The Chinese plane featured in the story we watched on ksl. Here it is taxiing in from a flight. We were right next to it as it parked.

T-28 Trojan, one of Aaron's favorites.

Love the small jets. Zeke says this one is like Siddeley from Cars 2.

Great scenery and cool planes means we got some nice in-flight pictures.

Zeke was sad that we left without getting in a plane. Hopefully next year we will have time to linger a little bit and wait in the long lines of people waiting to look inside a warbird!

Whirlwind Weekend

Our Labor Day weekend was a very crazy one. It started Friday, when we got through our workday as fast as possible and headed to Swiss Days for dinner, because we knew we wouldn't have another chance for Swiss Days food this year. Zeke and Aaron had knockwurst and I had Swiss chicken to share with Nora. We also got a scone, mostly for Nora but also to share. It was all so good. We walked there and back to avoid the traffic, which I love. I don't get nearly enough walks with Aaron these days. (And it has the added bonus of burning off some of those Swiss calories!)

Saturday was mass insanity. Our calendar square for September 3rd was literally filled with fun things to do, and that didn't include the errands we had to run. We started early with the Swiss Days parade. Zeke again rode the Loertscher train in the parade.

I was hoping Nora would be willing to ride too, but she woke up extra early so she was extra ready for a nap by the time the parade started at 10. Plus Zeke was riding with Ashlynn, and I didn't think she would be willing to ride with anyone else. She did try out the engineer's seat, both by herself and on Grandpa's lap.

Aaron and I walked the parade with the train, with Nora in her stroller. She zonked out pretty much immediately, and slept the whole parade. It was really a good thing because she got a nap in before our next adventure.

After the parade, we ran some errands and then headed to my high school reunion. They provided lunch, which was awesome because we hadn't stopped for that yet. I was a little disappointed that the turnout was tiny, but I enjoyed catching up with those that were there.

Zeke was thrilled to get a balloon and run around outside for a while.

As we were reunioning, the planes from the air show kept passing overhead, and Aaron and Zeke entertained themselves by chasing planes and taking pictures while Nora and I chatted with the other moms and kids.

When the reunion started to wind down, we headed over to the air show before going on an ultra-quick trip to the grocery store before dinner with friends. A huge thank you to Aaron's parents, who not only let us have our party in their backyard but also got all of the lawn furniture ready. Also to Aaron, the grill master, who did a great job cooking the chicken. This was probably not the best weekend to host a party! Truly though, the party was scheduled first and everything else filled in after. I wasn't as prepared or organized as I had hoped to be, but was a lot of fun. We all left saying we need to do this more often!

Sunday after church we headed out to meet some friends who were in town from Colorado. They treated us to a barbeque (we brought this fruit salad) and then we went outside to play and visit. Aaron got these great pictures of the kids loving the swingset.

Monday we scheduled as a stay-at-home day. We slept in, cooked French toast, stayed in our pajamas until after noon, watched our new favorite show (The A-Team) on hulu, gave the boys well-overdue haircuts, and generally enjoyed having a day with no set plans. I think I need a stay-at-home day every week!

Our Growing Girl

Lately I often find myself looking at Nora and wondering how she grows up so fast. She went from being a baby to a big girl toddler practically overnight. Or at least in the space of only a week or two.

I love all of the things she's learning. Her latest love is goldfish crackers, and over the weekend she has started saying 'ish' when we offer her a cracker. She also says 'ba-ba' and waves at Zeke when he runs ahead of us.

It's a good thing this little sweetheart will always be our baby girl!

Z-E-K-E

We have been working on writing a little bit as we talk about letters, but Zeke really got to this point of writing the letters mostly by himself. It's amazing how fast they learn!

It's hard to see, but hiding behind the drawing board is a big smile. Zeke is so proud of writing his own name, and we are proud of him too!