Blessing Day

September 4 was a special day for us when Everett was blessed. He is such a sweet baby, and who can resist those chubby cheeks?! It was so nice to have so much of our family in town to share this special day with us. My whole family, Lamont's parents and two brothers (and one fiance) all stayed with us at our home. I believe that, including our family, there were 19 of us all staying at our home! Our kids were in heaven to have so much family here, and despite what you may be thinking, we had a wonderful time. We kept things busy with BYU football, BBQ, Thai cooking class, bowling, and going to see Les Miserables in addition to the blessing day. It was a very memorable weekend, and we feel very blessed and loved to have so much family to share it with!

Everett Taylor Larsen

Everett Taylor was born on July 21, 2011 at 8:34pm. He was 7 lb. 12 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. He was born at 37 weeks, one day earlier than our planned c-section due to contractions after the amnio. The c-section went well and he is a healthy and perfect little boy. After some minor setbacks we are both doing well and trying to adjust to a daily schedule. His three brothers just adore him and want to kiss him all the time. McKay tells him that he has fluffy cheeks and a fluffy nose. Tanner wants to make sure that we all know that he is still "the little boy" and Everett is the baby. Carter wants us to note that he is a newborn and not just a baby. We all love him and are so blessed to have him join our family.

Fourth of July Celebration

For the Fourth of July we took a little family getaway up to the mountains. We stayed in timeshare/hotel in Fraser, CO. We had a great time fishing, swimming, and just spending time together as a family. One highlight for the boys was the continental breakfast each morning. The other highlight was the six rainbow trout fish that they caught. One of Carter's was even 15 inches! I enjoyed being in the outdoors and some relaxing time reading.

We also went to the local rodeo in Granby, followed by a great fireworks show. On Sunday we attended a local branch and then drove around Rocky Mountain National Park. It was beautiful! The elevation was so high that we could hardly believe that we were seeing snow right out our window in July! We were also able to see a lot of wildlife - moose, elk, and bighorn sheep. The Fourth of July brought more fun when we took the kids to the Granby parade. They brought in the full fire department, hoses and all, and threw out candy to the boys. It was fun to be in a small city and take in all the festivities including a BBQ in the park after the parade. We made it home later that day just in time to do our own fireworks. Below are the pictures from our fun trip.

Tanner's big accomplishment

Tanner's big accomplishment recently is that he is now potty trained! We made it into big boy underwear before the baby will be born. Tanner was our easiest child to potty train. He knew what it was about from the very beginning, the rewards of M&M's, Skittles, and Taffy helped as well. Another motivator for Tanner is that he has a Cars Potty Seat that he gets to sit on.

I know that some have a one day potty training method that they do, but that has never worked for our kids. It is a several month process to reach the point where they rarely have accidents, but then they are potty trained for good. We start with the little rewards like candy each time and then work our way up into bigger rewards. For keeping his big boy underwear dry for a week Tanner got a Leakless Car from Cars and for keeping them dry for a week he earned the Cars 2 shirt that he is wearing. As a reward for good behavior for all the boys we took them to Cars 2 the weekend that it opened. Above, Tanner is so excited to be at the greatly anticipated movie!

Carter - awards/end of school year

Carter was very busy at the end of the school year, so busy in fact, that we decided to take a season off from soccer. Besides his baptism and starting cub scouts, Carter was involved in Chess club. This ran for most of the school year once a week after school. Carter has become a better chess player and was able to participate in several competitions. The first competitions were very intimidating for him, but things seemed to improve with each one. His last competition was on the district level. Lamont spent the day with him at the competition. It was a good learning experience for Carter and he placed in the middle of his age group. He was very proud of the participation trophy that he was able to bring home.

During the end of the school year, Carter was also named Aurora Scholar. This came as a surprise to us, but of course we are very proud of him. The city of Aurora picks one child per grade at each school in the city of Aurora to receive this award. Carter represented the 2nd graders from Challenge School. Unfortunately, we were out of town when this award was to be presented to him by the city mayor and council, so it was presented to him at a later date from his principal and vice-principal.

Carter had a great finish to the school year. Here he is with his teacher Ms. Blakeslee. She is an awesome teacher that gets right down on level with the kids. She has been his teacher for the past two years. I know that I can speak for Carter when I say that she will be greatly missed this next year.

McKay - soccer/end of school year

McKay has been a busy boy. He is improving his soccer skills and continues to enjoy playing soccer with many friends and Dad coaching. This year he received the Speedy Cheetah award because he is so quick up and down the soccer field. He proudly told me how he was such a fast runner and could go as fast as a cheetah, so this award seemed fitting. Soccer seems to be the perfect oulet for all of his energy.

McKay also recently finished round one of Kindergarten at Holy Love Lutheran School. I say round one because he will be repeating Kindergarten in the fall since he missed the deadline by two weeks. However, we are very happy and proud that he was accepted into the Challenge School where Carter goes to school. This seems to be the perfect fit for him since they will be using a first grade curriculum. I am also extremely happy to have them both at the same school - that should cut down my running around considerably. Carter is also happy to have him at his school and has given him all the inside secrets, "McKay, whatever you do, don't get the Chicken Gumbo for lunch...it looks like throw-up!" I have a feeling that McKay will do just fine next year.

We have been really happy with his year at Holy Love. His teachers, Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Aganon, have been wonderful and so willing to work with him on his level. They only had glowing things to say about McKay and he tells me that he already misses going there. For graduation they put on an end of the year program and sang a song for every year of the month. We got to hear dress rehearsals for about a week leading up to the program. :)

Carter's baptism

One month ago Carter was baptized. It was such a special day for our family. All of my family was able to be with us on this important day, which meant so much to me. He was baptized with his good friend Luke, which made it even more special for Carter. The program was very nice and Carter and McKay sang, "I Know He Lives" with some other friends. Afterwards we had a some refreshments and were able to visit with those who attended his baptism. Lamont had several co-workers who attended and told us how impressed they were with what they witnessed. It was a great feeling to share some of our beliefs with others. We are very proud of Carter, his faith and knowledge of the gospel, and his decision to be baptized.

Hawaii - Part 2 on the Big Island

After a couple of days in Oahu we flew out to the big island. The big island of Hawaii was very different than Oahu. Above is a picture of what much of the island looks like - lava fields. We stayed at a nice resort on the west side of the island just north of Kailua-Kona. It was nice to have a little more down time on this island just to relax and take in the beach.

This is along the Kona coast.

Here is our favorite beach on the island at Mauna Kea. We enjoyed a little boogie boarding here!

We were able to attend the temple in Kona. It was a small temple and of course, very beautiful!

I had to include this picture of the Kona airport. It was such a joke and I don't know how it measures up to U.S. security standards. Everything was open-air and I felt like I was in a third world country. Here is our departing gate out to our airplane. We actually had the pleasure of doing this twice since our original flight was cancelled and our new flight didn't leave until almost 24 hours later.

Hawaii - Part 1 on Oahu

For our 10 year anniversary at the end of April, we were lucky enough to take a trip to Hawaii. While we had a fabulous time together, we started out with a big hiccup and ended with a hiccup. I'll get to the trouble out first and can then get onto the more pleasant memories of Hawaii.

On our way back from the Honolulu airport we decided to grab some lunch before checking into our hotel. It was a delicious Chinese place in downtown Honolulu. While we were dining our rental car was broken into and my purse and Lamont's laptop bag where stolen out of the trunk. Needless to say we had a LOT in there including both smart phones, my wallet with all ID, watch, IPOD, laptop, you name it and it was probably in there. To say the least this set us back for a while. While we were able to stop the bleeding (shut down the credit cards and phones) we knew we would have to repair much of the damage when we got home. The whole incident to this day still makes me a little angry and sad. I still can't believe how dishonest people can be for a couple hundred dollars when the damage is so much more to us. This person now had so much personal information on me that I just felt violated. Now that I got that out, on to the more pleasant part of our trip...

The second day of our trip we headed up the coast towards Laie. It was a beautiful drive and we were able to see some beautiful scenery along the way. Above is Pali Lookout. Just below is the most beautiful beach that I have ever seen, which was in Kailua. The picture does not do it justice - it was gorgeous!

When we made it up to Laie we spent the rest of the day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We really had a great time here visiting all the different countries of Polynesia. In fact, Lamont even got a hula lesson in the country of Tahiti. He really was a good sport. During our time here we also took a tram ride over to see BYU-Hawaii and the Laie Hawaii temple. After our return we were able to see an awesome night show with fire dancers and all. Now we really felt like we were getting the true Hawaiian experience.

On our third and last day in Oahu we went to check out more of the beautiful coast. In the picture below, Lamont is in front of Sandy Beach. Then it was off to Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is always so impressive and such an important part of American history. Lamont and I both enjoyed our visit here.