Look at these cute faces in blurry pictures, how can I say no when they beg to play baseball -I can't- not even when its time for bed!

 

I did make the mistake of showing Cannon how I used to pitch (just one little quick pitch) now when he grabs one of the bigger balls he whirls his arm around like a maniac in all kinds of directions and then throw some  scaddywampus side arm thing, when Isaac told him to knock it off and throw it right he said "I'm play'n girls softball dad!" It was kind of hilarious. 

Friday was such fun day-well after Isaac came home that is-before that we were definitely feeling cooped up, its always a little hard to adjust after running wild in Utah. But Isaac came home and took the boys to the CAT dealership (man what are we going to do if Kirksville doesn't have one of those? Cannon's answer is buy our own equipment) anyway, I went down to the fitness center. I beat them home and as they walked in the door Cannon excitedly asked if I wanted to take the SeaHawk out. Obviously a planted idea. But I said "Sure, we can take it over to the swimming pool!" Which I'm also sure wasn't quite what Isaac had in mind but it worked as a great bribe to get the boys to eat their dinner and Isaac went along with it, and no one else was at the pool (it was the first day it was open) so it was awesome. They had to clean it off first...

 

We had a blast and laughed and laughed together! I love days and memories like that. Life's not all bliss-but boy, we've got to enjoy it when it is! I tried to take a movie of Cannon jumping into it-he thought he was so brave, but... it was really anti-climatic so I won't post it. (We really had so much fun we did it again the next day too!) We topped off the evening with some rice crispy treats and a little Thomas the Train movie after tubbies--and a little tickle war. (I won-but don't tell Colt or Isaac)
We broke out the bbq for some hamburgers one of the nights last weekend too! I thought my mom said it best when I sent her the following two pictures she text back "Super Dad strikes again." Yep. Pretty much! Just for the record roasting marshmallows on the gas grill didn't work so well, but we had fun trying.

 

And truthfully I have a few more pictures but I can't think of much else. It seems like its been a big week but maybe not, not much to write about, maybe its just good to be back. We went to pool with some of our friends from the ward. We stumbled onto this little gem when we were walking between stores up to dogwood one morning. It was a must stop! (And must go back when we actually have swimming suits and towels.) The boys were in HEAVEN. My friend Laura told me about it the first year we lived here but somehow we never found it. We'll know where to go when the pool is closed now!

 

Even though he loves playing in the water Colt hasn't quite grasp all that summer entails, every time we get in the car he say "Hot hot hot" which of course only really comes out as "ot ot ot" but its just pitiful. I keep telling him "sorry buddy" and "I'll get the air on as fast as I can." Then this morning I started the car first and he bust into tears because he thought we were leaving him. (I couldn't figure out what he was bawling about-Cannon had to explain it to me.) Poor little guy! Sometimes life's rough! 

I thought this next one was a darling picture of Colt, I know I have one of Cannon that's similar--if I can just keep them loving the scriptures, then I'll have done something right! If ya ask Colt what he wants to read about he always says "Jesus" its pretty cute. 

Cannon has a mysterious cut on the top of his lip (that I thought showed up in the above picture but it doesn't very well) ...I'm pretty sure he grabbed Isaac's razor, but I can't figure out when, and he's not coughing anything up about it either. He said a pretty funny thing yesterday, he was asking about the close airport and telling me he wanted to go there and he wanted dad to come and I gave him the same old spill, about it being expensive and he said "After I own the CAT dealership, and lots of equipment, then I'm going to own the airport, the close one, and its just going to have cheap flights and people will just have to deal with it." Oh I wish you could hear his cute little voice saying it. It was priceless. I said "Sounds GREAT buddy."
He also got to give a little talk in primary last week about getting to go to the Paysin a Temple open house. I missed it because I was doing the 5 minute wrap it up klick for Senior Primary classes but the report was he did awesome! Truthfully he probably did better because I wasn't there! But we'd talked about a few things after Ginger had mentioned having him do it and when Liz was telling me how awesome he did it sounded like he remembered everything and then some! He's awesome I was so proud of him!

This picture really should have been on last week's post, but I uploaded it in the wrong spot so, Oh well. Annie took it while we were at their house last week and at first it didn't make the cut for the old bloggy-lou but then I thought I really don't have that many pictures of me with the kids-I'm usually on the other end of the camera, (and that's how I like it) but every once in a while I guess I can post me too ;)

Blake and Annie are coming tonight, just for the weekend (and its stake conf) but we're still excited! Hopefully I'll have fun stories and adventures to write about next week.

In other exciting news my high school softball coach's son, Dallas (who was like my boys age when I played for Coach Kittrell) got his mission call to Jackson Mississippi. I almost did a cartwheel. He reports July 15, I was like oh perfect we'll still be here for two weeks, we'll leave a little treat for him at the mission office...but I forgot about the darn MTC, we're just going to miss him-but we still know and love people here and so we're glad he's coming...and we can still leave a treat-it'll just have to sit there and wait for him. 

I think that's about it, until next week...

OH boy, where to start. We're back! And its good to be back. We had a jam packed busy week but hey-that's the way we like it. Saturday Isaac helped load up a truck of stuff for Grandma Kenworthy (she's moving to St. George) then came down. We tried to hit the indoor pool in the morning for one last fun play day with Ann and Elsie-but it wasn't open until noon. So we went up to Lory's to swim there but FROZE...so we hit Wendy's and then the indoor pool :) It was pretty fun! After naps Isaac got there, we ate snow cones and then went up and said "Hey" to Poppa Great. He hates being in that home but he's so much better off there because there's always someone there if he falls, they make sure he's all cleaned up and so on. But it was a little hard to say goodbye...ya just never know. I borrowed his car the last couple days when we were going our own way doing our own thing and when I walked in his house to put the keys back I think that's when it hit me. It was just empty and everything was the same...but it was that imminent-everything is different, and he will move on. He could live 10 more years, seriously, with that Hafen blood you never know. But the other thing is he's outlived everyone in his family, it will be a happy day for him to go. His wife, his daughter, besides all his brothers, and parents, Anyway...such is life....and the end thereof.

Sunday after church we hurried and ate packed up and hit the road! We were going to stop at Nathan and Melanie's on the way up but both kids were zonked out so we drove on past and crashed at Levi and Stacy's place Sunday night. It was good to see them, their kids have grown a TON and Shredder was a hit-as always.

 

Monday Isaac met with the statistics professor and he felt like it when well. The boys and I went and said Hi to Miss Carol from last summer. They boys were crazy out of control but it was so fun for me to get to visit with her for a few minutes. Sister Russell was out of town so we missed her :( but we asked Carol about all the friends we could remember from the 16th ward. (And I bribed Cannon in to showing off and telling her the articles of faith that he knows.) It was really fun and her yard--even more beautiful than I remembered it! We grabbed Isaac and had a little picnic and then I took the boys back to Levi and Stacy's for naps. The plan was to watch Jacob's little league game that night. But it was pretty rainy and cold so we scratched that and headed for Ogden to see Blake, Annie, and their girls. It was SO FUN.  Cannon and Ayla were little best friends reunited! (Annie did remind me of the day when we couldn't even carry on a 2 minute conversation because they fought over EVERYthing-glad those are behind us.) We had so much fun though it was just great to visit and catch up. Cannon was fishing for Blake and Ayla, Isaac read stories to the older two just like old times. Colt was introduced to princess toys such as high heels. HAHA. Really Colt and Eden pretty much steered clear of each other but we did talk them into a parting hug;)

 

It was so fun!...and then we were off through the night. The next morning along with our trusty old (and mandatory) McDonalds with a play place we found a tractor Museum in Lincoln Nebraska. It was cool-more for Isaac than for me because he understands engines and torque and horsepower and such.

 

 

I had a good time taking pictures of the boys all over different tractors until the guy told us that "technically they weren't supposed to climb on them" then it just got hard to try and keep them off. And of course Isaac was like "They're fine, he said 'technically.'" Oh brother. The other thing was that it was dang cold. They had more outside (that I was more willing to break the rules and let them climb on) but we didn't last long in our wimpy little jackets and shorts! So once again we were off! I fell asleep and when I woke up Isaac had aborted the freeway plan for a "more direct route." So we toured southern Iowa. I will admit it was pretty cool though I kept seeing these signs that said "Mormon Pioneer" on the top and "Auto Tour" on the bottom. (Isaac hadn't even noticed them.) I don't know why you'd want to do an auto tour...but apparently we're not the first!  He assured me it wasn't really a slower route because he was speeding -great- but really it was pretty cool. We loved the little town we stopped to eat in, we were the only ones in the place and we blasted the worker with questions about the area-she was nice and it was fun. And hey-there's a town called Lamoni in Southern Iowa-crazy. (not the one we stopped at but it wasn't too far away) Cannon loves the story of Ammon -the great servant- in the Book of Mormon so we asked the workers how that town got its name...we got quite a different story than the one we later read on Wikipedia but whatever we had a great time. And eventually we made it back to Kirksville, were we got a room for the night. Holy Cow it feels good to actually lay down and sleep after doing the in the car thing! But we took the boys swimming, they LOVED showering off the chlorine together--probably stayed in that shower longer than they were in the pool! We ate popcorn (and dumped it all over floor-it was a race between me trying to pick it up and throw it away and them trying to eat it off the floor- now I'm not a germ-a-phobe but a hotel room floor, I'm going to draw the line!)

 

The biggest thing though was we secured a place to rent for this fall!!! Such a huge relief (for me anyway) we both liked it and we'll count it as a blessing that we were driving to the house we picked and we called to make sure that it was even still available and the gal said "I'm there right now, I just showed it to someone." So we got to see it too-right then. It's not perfect but its going to be great for what its for! It has a YARD -no more having to go to the church if we want to have a squirt gun fight!!! The landlord was also willing to work with us and do a little bit shorter lease, that was nice! Anyway that was huge HUGE HUGE and really the whole reason we went back through Kirksville so--mission accomplished. YAY. We were out of there and on our way around 2-ish. Which put us in (or rather near) St. Louis for rush hour traffic...great. I was totally wishing we would have done the back road scenic route thing again. Oh well I didn't speak up so, my fault. And really we just stopped at chic-fil-a when we saw it on an exit sign because we knew it had a play place and we waited it out!
And now we're back. In the past I have not always been so thrilled to be back but this time I am. We can kind of wrap up things here before we move on.
Jenna's little family is in the process of moving :( but dealing with all the headache of packing/loading up she took her kids to the park yesterday for a break so we got to meet them there and have a little bonus play date, we loved that! Cannon said getting to play soccer with Rylee and JD was his "High" for the day and that his other high was that "Me'n Rylee win'd" And that's saying something because he also got this little surprise yesterday. I bought him some used rollerblades while we were in Utah-he was with me but distracted-but when found them he was pretty pumped! It thought it was a pretty well spent 5 bucks until the trip to the mailbox yesterday took 40 minutes-oh and I have to lace them up for him and I've done that about 40 times. Oh well. He's having fun. The cutest thing was when he asked if Colt could have some too. I said yes if we could find some more for $5 but ...we'll see!

Friday May 15th

We have had a great week! Last weekend My mom and I went to my cousin's bridal shower--always over the top when Aunt Kay throws a party--it was darling and fun!!! Isaac and the boys got to go check the water with Grampa. My mother's day present was that Isaac came down for mother's day. (And whatever I want that I tell him he got me for mother's day later ;) ...but I'm holding that card to play when needed :) No, really it was great to have him here. I was glad he came.  He kept saying he wouldn't have missed it...I had a little insider info that someone reminded him what weekend it was. HAHA, whatever it takes!! We LOVED getting to have our dad here! It was fun to get to spend the weekend with my mom on Mother's Day too.

We went over and visited Great Grandma Cottam Sunday night but I didn't take a single picture-what's wrong with me?

Isaac stayed Monday and headed back to SLC on Tuesday. The boys and I have just been hang'n out and playing hard while he's work'n away. Cannon is loving cashing in on all the cousin time. We try to go visit poppa great most days (we missed one and he noticed) its fun though. We even got him outside to play baseball with us one of the days!

He's typically kind of an ornery guy but my boys soften him right up. He loves seeing them come, and that makes me happy. Colton has figured out those automatic hand santizer dispensers and it is all I can do to keep him from getting 60 handfuls of it the hour or so we visit. Those things are everywhere--and he knows it. When I told Isaac about it he said "Oh...that might be my fault." Saturday when Aunt Jayne was there she offered to trim my hair so I took her up on it and Isaac took the boys exploring the VA home to keep them out of the way. Along with driving by our old house...that was one of the things they found. Oh well. Colt also knows we took Poppa Great that bag of Hershey Kisses and sometimes when you ask him if he wants to go see Poppa a Great he says "mmmm num num"

Wednesday we got to go over to the Eschler's. It was so fun to catch up with Sister Eschler and meet her family. They were so nice. (And they live in the coolest place.) 

Thursday we got to do one of our favorite things-Go watch Trey play baseball! When I knew we were coming I looked at the schedule and we barely missed the last region game. So I thought we'd missed him because we know he's good but we didn't realize he was starting varsity as a freshman! AWESOME! So we got  watch a state tournament game that he hit a single and later a triple in, and started a rally, scored the tieing run, (they went on to win) played second base and then shortstop when they swtiched pitchers, stole a base, who knows what else but it was awesome, we had a great time! We new he wasn't #3 cuz and older player had it but Trey is (always number 3) so we looked on the internet and it said #9 so we made shirts accordingly...only to get to the game and have him be #7. Oh well, we were still the cutest little big fans! This is my favorite picture!

So I don't have much of Friday left -spotty wifi-and a hundred or so more pics! I'm going to throw a few more on and then maybe edit later, we'll see!

Cannon is 4!!!

I don't know if you can see it or not but Colt's shirt says "Family Road Trip" and boy was it ever! Plus it has a big truck on it and that's what we look for while driving, Cannon likes the Peterbuilts and Colt likes Volvo--because he can say it.

We've had a busy week! First things first though how bout those fathers and sons pics? He got me a few and most importantly they had a BLAST! Plus Isaac told me he's going to go to fathers and sons until he dies. Sweet! I had a great time too ;)

Saturday we did a few birthday presents and caught the last few innings of the Braves game. 

Sunday Cannon got his primary birthday shirt, he was so excited! He had to wear it, we made him tubby fist but he was STILL wearing it Tuesday afternoon per the travel days. YUCK. I was ready to see a different shirt! Anyway Sunday I still hadn't packed anything for the big adventure...but after church, and naps--I shouldn't have napped-- I eventually started and we got it done. Isaac patiently put up with me getting wound up for most of the time. It was miserable though trying to remember everything and get laundry done and whatever else. But about 9:00 that night we hit the road and boy--it was a LONG ONE. I hope its not often that I'm actually awake at the very time Cannon was born on his birthday but this time I was so I took a picture. 

Birthday excitement included checking out a wal-mart while dad caught and early morning nap. Wow, there was a lot of St. Louis cardinals stuff. I guess we'll see if we convert to Cardinal fans while we live there. Grampa Frei always cheered for the Cards...we'll see. And speaking of baseball, if our trip had been a little better planned the Cubs played the Cardinals in St. Louis on Cannon's birthday--that would have been awesome, but I'm glad we just got headed west and on with things too! The birthday highlight was going to dad's new school and looking at the animals (snakes-yuck) in the science building, then a gal who worked there let us into the ???? whatever they call the place where they keep even MORE animals. I wasn't going to go in with them, but they'd been in for about 2 seconds and Isaac came back out and said "You gotta see this!" So in I went, to be the camera woman. It was still kind a gross to me, but we have pictures so it was worth it. 

Other things from out few hours in our new town... I was asleep as we rolled into town Isaac said "Here we are!" and I was said its a cute little town. Then later I was REALLY REALLY tired and I commented how pretty and green it was and "those are cute little flowers all over" and Isaac turned to me and said "Those are dandelions." Oh. Whoops. Yes they were. Oh well it had been a long night. And another thing, there's a reason houses are cheap! Whoa-Isaac is good with living anywhere but...I think we're going to have to be willing to open the checkbook a little to keep me sane. Yikes. SO good though that we got to see that and not go into someplace blind. We still haven't picked a place yet but I won't be going for the very cheapest option. 

It was a long busy day in Kirksville we didn't get much rest and talked about just getting a hotel but once we started driving, we were drive'n! And we headed west. We went up to I80 then across. Wyoming is big and long and so is Nebraska! We got in quite a rain storm in Missouri but it was different from a rain in Mississippi. I'm a desert kid learning all kinds of things about rain. Isaac was like "Hey Honey-we might see a tornado!" Thankfully we didn't. But still, oh great, and we're moving there. The sky looked just like what I remember in of that movie Twister though. We have tornadoes in Mississippi but with all the trees you can't see the sky out ahead like that. We also noticed all the "dry" farms. Yeah right dry. That's a lot of water!

Anyway, we drove on! The night before the travel at night thing hadn't worked so well because the the boys wouldn't go to sleep! It was after midnight-kids awake. Crud. But they really are pretty good little travelers-better than me. Our ipad has some Disney movies that are loaded on it--but they never work, I can't get them to play. So dumb. But knowing they never work (I try every time we go visiting teaching.) We downloaded a bunch of Mormon message clips because the boys love them and they do work. So Monday night when we busted out the tablet ~we made it that far with out it, I was impressed~ Colton just wanted to watch Bob the Builder and we'd switch Mormon messages and he'd say or rather yell/sing his preference that he wanted to watch Boooob ch ch ch. Like the little theme song. It was so cute and funny! and from his point of view-disappointing. 

As we were approaching the Salt Lake valley, Isaac asked me if I'd been able to feel the back tire shake a little. I said I'd wondered if that was the case but as soon as he asked it confirmed that I wasn't crazy. Well we were taking about buying new tires sometime with summer when POP and the tread seperated...ok we'll buy new tires NOW. But blessing of blessing, we were almost to the foothill exit. We just felt so blessed that it didn't happen in the rain or in middle of the night or anything. It was a little inconvenient we had to unpack everything put the doughnut on pack back up go to the tire shop, unpack everything. But seriously it could have been SO MUCH WORSE! We were just so thankful. When we got to the Walmart with a tire place we played homeless and loaded our belongings in a shopping cart (haha just kidding) but it was that or leave our suitcases sitting there, not everything could fit in the front of our car that already had 2 careseats and a cooler in the back seat, so we loaded them up and went to grab a bite to eat. --of course I documented it, that's what I do--

After that little rodeo we finally made it to Thanksgiving point where we met up with Grama and Grampa!!! YAY!!!  They took Cannon and Colt Isaac and I crashed for naps. They had a blast.  

After dinner we went swimming, my folks were impressed at fearless little Colt. Cannon likes the hot tubs and swimming in the "warm pools" Colt gets near it, sticks his toe in and says "HOT" then bails into the cold pool.
 Then the next day we went down and met cute baby Trevyn. It was good to see her and Henley and get to visit with Tarra for a few minutes. It was a quick visit but really fun!

Then we went down to the Payson Temple open house. It was beautiful! I love getting to go through with my boys! It was extra cool too because the first night of driving we had listened to an old CES devotional were Elder Ballard was like go to the temple, if you can't go in, go to the grounds. So it was fun to take our boys--and get to go in. It is a beautiful temple and the tour was a lot more relaxed than when we went with Kathy to the Ogden temple last year. I really liked it!
I loved the pic of the boys in the little booties to cover their shoes and the one where Colt is pointing and saying "Jesus" while Cannon feel the prints of the nails in his feet.

Then we left our dad up north to work on school and work stuff and we came back down with Grama and Grampa. So far we're having a great time. We went up to see Poppa Great at the VA Home (aka "Jail" -if you ask him) but he was good -all things considered- we took him some kisses and he was happy to see the boys!

Other than that we've just been cashing in on cousin time! We had a little pizza party to celebrate Cannon's birthday. 

Nap time and go to bed time are a 2 hour process...some how I've got to fix that-I get too frustrated and truth be told its catching up to me, I'm feeling a little run down. But we'll survive!

AND this afternoon I got a great phone call when Isaac said things are going good but right now there's nothing he can do up there that he can't do here so he's going to come down!! YAY!!!