Julie Day - 8 Months

And officially crawling.

Camp Loll 2012

Labor Day weekend plans fall through?  Throw the canoe on top of the minivan, buckle up the kids, and head to Camp Loll for some good, clean family fun.  We had so much fun on our spontaneous trip this year that we've decided to make it an annual tradition.  Now that we've returned to real life, we're having a hard time finding the time to sort through all of our pictures, so we may be rolling out more over the next couple weeks.  But here are a few initial shots of the good times.

No trip to Camp Loll is complete without a visit to Polar Bear Springs.  Though nobody dared get in.

The huckleberries were plentiful, and our boys nearly ate themselves sick.  It made us so happy to see our kids appreciating the ambrosia that we just couldn't bring ourselves to make them stop.

Camp Loll always elicits a million memories, but this time it induced a different kind of nostalgia:

Tenny now

Tenny last time we visited Camp Loll in 2007 (when Tenny was about 8 months)

Camp Loll...it has become a family affair.

And Labor Day has moved up our list of favorite holidays.

Free Legal Advice: Utah Code § 76-7-203

Our adorable little Taiters is the love of our life.  And now that we've cleared up that little detail, we will commence with our story.  Taiters is in a stage of life that is commonly referred to as the terrible twos.  He's even better at being terrible than his older brother was.  Tait practices being terrible by screeching in the highest and loudest voice (it's almost a whistle) that you've ever heard.  Well, one day Tennyson's patience was wearing thin with his brother's screeching, and he turned to us and asked, in a most serious tone, "Do you think we should sell him?"

Now, that is an absolutely horrible idea and we would not entertain it even for a moment (though we did laugh for several moments).  But, being an attorney, I of course had to look up the legal ramifications of that horrible scenario.  Well, it turns out that the Utah Legislature has graced us with a law to dissuade us from doing the unthinkable:

Utah Code § 76-7-203:  "[A] person is guilty of a third degree felony if the person, while having custody, care, control, or possession of a child, sells, or disposes of the child, or attempts or offers to sell  or dispose of the child, for and in consideration of the payment of money or another thing of value."

A third degree felony?  For selling a kid?  Really?  Well, consider yourself lightly warned.

As for us, we're definitely going to hang on to our little Taiters.  The screeching is starting to wane, and he brings us sooo much joy.  The best part of almost every day for me (Jeremy) is when I come home from work and Tait runs to me yelling "Daddy's home!"  And Suzy never tires of listening to Tait repeat everything she says, though with an inflection to turn her comments into questions.  Also, there has never been a kid who was more fun to squeeze - ever.



Julie Day - 34 Weeks

Stinking cute, and nearly mobile.

Eleven Years Since 9/11

Crazy.  Jeremy was a student at BYU telling his roommate to hit snooze on his radio alarm because the movie being advertised on the radio about a plane flying into the WTC sounded lame.  Suzy was an LDS missionary in Italy wondering what in the world was happening.  Our kids weren't born yet and we still haven't told them about it.  Eleven years later it's still hard to process.

Last year, for the 10th anniversary, we visited the 9/11 memorial display at the Newseum in D.C.  It's a nice tribute, displaying part of the radio tower from the top of one of the buildings with scores of 9/12 front-page articles on the walls.

This is a shot of Ground Zero that I took from my hotel room last October, just after the 10th anniversary.  Somehow, the enormity of the reconstruction aids in comprehending the enormity of the tragedy.

Julie Day - 33 Weeks

Story time edition.

Tenny's First Day of Kindergarten

Julie Day - 32 Weeks

Rolling in the Camp Loll dirt over the Labor Day weekend (more photos to come).