A great-nephew

While pretty much all nieces and nephews are great, this one actually is Paul’s great-nephew.

And a cute one he is.

Paul’s oldest brother’s oldest son, just had his second child and first son. 

Carter J.

Look at these proud grandparents holding this adorable baby!

We had a very enjoyable Sunday attending his blessing and luncheon.  It’s great to get together with family.

Once again, the pictures are sparse.  I guess I’m not that good at taking pictures at large family functions.  It may have had something to do with the 2 three and half year olds that shared my lap and my plate that afternoon!

I did snap one other picture.

Allie and Kara were being so good about playing with the young cousins.  This is a picture of Haylee and Maddie, Ted and Debbie’s granddaughters, doing Allie’s hair. 

While there is only 5 or 6 years age difference between them, they are actually first cousins once removed.

Or if you ask Allie, she’s pretty much their aunt.  Pretty impressive, right?

Haylee and Maddie are Allie and Kara’s cousin’s children.  But because she feels like such a grown up these days, you could just call her the ‘pretty-much-aunt’ and she would fine with that!

Welcome to the drama baby Carter!

Give a kid a camera…..

We have a small point and shoot camera that we let the kids occasionally use.

Most of the time this is what we get……

But occasionally when I transfer pictures over to the computer, I find something like this.

One evening Allie saw a beautiful sunset and got the camera to document it.  I wasn’t even home to see it.  It was a very nice picture to stumble upon.  And it makes me happy that she saw something beautiful and thought to capture the moment.

Maybe we have a Photographer in the making!

The week in a word…..

If I had to come up with a central theme for our time in Utah, it would have to be… PHOTOSHOOTS.

And with such a great looking family, yea even the extended family, why not?!?

Some were impromptu photo sessions…..  (some people are just born knowing how to pose!)

Other photo shoots were planned.

It all started with the new baby. With such a cute sleeping baby, how could we not take pictures?

We decided that since Amy now has 4 kids under the age of 7, that it would be better to let an unknown stranger try to wrangle the kids together for a family photo.  This left me free to be the helper/bag holder/pacifier finder/ blanket bringer/moral support giver/editor.

It was a great idea.  Sometimes kids are “scared”  into smiling when it’s a stranger jumping up and down in front of them instead of just their boring old aunt. (not really scared-but it’s just different when its someone unrelated)  The kids did great and the pictures turned out great too.

Tracy asked me to take some photos of Carston while I was in town, and since he’s too young to be sick of me taking his picture yet, and because he’s so beautifully handsome, I readily agreed.

Carston is so adorable!  He was such a good sport taking pictures, especially since it felt like it was 30 degrees outside.  Spring time is so unpredictable.  It was so nice just a few days before this.  Every time the wind would gust up it took your breath away, literally.  Poor Carston would suck in his breath and give us a look with those big beautiful eyes like he was wondering why were intentionally torturing him!

Sorry Carston, but it was worth it!  Look at that face!

We scheduled a photo shoot for Tauna because she had some important things coming up.

After working like crazy, Tauna is now an official college graduate!  And she got to graduate on her 23rd Birthday too! 

Happy Birthday, Happy Graduation little sister!  You are such a fabulous person and I am so proud of you!  You are such a nice addition anywhere you go and you bring such comical relief to the family get-togethers’ (especially when Paul’s there to tease you!).  Thanks for being such a great sister and for sharing your room with me with when I’m in Utah AND for all those midnight trips to Wal-Mart where I’m afraid one day, one of us might end up on The People Of Wal-Mart website!  Love ya’ Taun!

Because of my last experience photographing my family, I decided to take advantage of the philosophy that we used in taking Amy’s pictures. 

Have some one else do them!

In one of those quick runs to the store I mentioned before, Tauna helped me pic out clothes for the kids in under 10 minuets.

The kids had fun and it was definitely a change from the last time we did pictures.

And just because we could, Paul and I took a picture too.

It was fun having someone else handle my family for a change, but I do love being the one to capture the looks on their beautiful faces. 

I was also able to take some pictures of my other adorable nephew in Utah, Logan.

This was an impromptu session but I just couldn’t resist!  He has such great eyes!

I snapped this one as Dan and Kyrstin were leaving.  I don’t even think they knew I did. Dan is holding Logan’s hand and Kyrstin has everything else, including the sippy cup in her arms. I just thought it was cute of their little family, especially because it will be changing very soon.

 

In a little over 2 short months, this little Logie Bear will become the big brother.

I think he is a little unsure about the whole thing!

You would think that with all the picture taking going on, I’d have one of the whole Garvin family together.  Unfortunately that is not the case.

Maybe next time!

 

Spring Break

After a lot of arranging and coordinating schedules, we were able to come up with a plan for Spring Break.  I flew up to Utah early last Wednesday (thanks to Blair, my bro-in-law, for the 5am pickup and delivery to the airport).  I lined up babysitters and carpools for the next couple of days.  Paul and the kids finished out the week at home and then on Sunday, they drove up to Utah.  It worked out wonderfully that spring break fell this week for us.  Paul worked ‘from home’ in Utah for Monday and part of Tuesday and then we took him to Salt Lake so he could catch a flight to Arizona.  The kids and I hung out for a few more days before heading for home. 

When ever we are in Utah, the time flies by.  There is always so much to do and see that we just zoom through the days.  The kids always love it but even Cooper and Cassidy did really great this time.  We didn’t turn the television on one time this past week!  The kids just played and played.

Its great to be a visitor in different cities because everything is new to us.  My mom and I took the kids to the Bean Museum at BYU.

The museum was really interesting.  It was full of stuffed animals.  The building itself is old and the lighting is awful.  It’s open to the public and it is free, so that made it really nice.

At first the kids didn’t know what to think.  The displays are quite impressive and real.

Cassidy was not afraid at all. 

But apparently Kara was!

The green carpet and yellow lights gave the whole place a ghastly glow.

A little more confident with this one behind glass!

Grandma used the wheelchair while we there just so she could preserve some energy.  But I really think it was for the kids enjoyment! 

They were on a rotating list of whose turn it was to push her around.

What a good sport Grandma is!

And when they weren’t pushing her around, they were riding on it with her.

When we knew we had to take Paul to the airport, we decided to make an afternoon of it.  We (mom, Amy’s kids, and my family)  went to the Children’s museum in Salt Lake.  Our kids and the hundreds of other kids that were there that day, had a fun time.  The Rindlisbacher girls had to head home early so Grandma took them home.

We had planned to stay and have dinner with Paul and then take him to the airport.  It turned out that his flight got delayed by two hours so we had extra time to hang out.

It has been a long time since Allie and Kara have been to Temple Square and Coop and Cass have never been so we decided to go check it out.

It was wonderful.

The Visitor Center was quite and calm and there was just a handful of people quietly reading and viewing the wonderful displays.  I saw a sign that said they were showing the movie, The Legacy. 

 

I remember seeing it when I went to EFY at BYU when I was a young teenager.  I remember it being very powerful and memorable.  I asked the temple missionaries when it was showing again.  They said that they could start it whenever it was asked for and that they would be happy to start it for us.

We went into a room that was about two times the size of a relief society room.  They projected the movie onto the wall and we had our own private showing of it.  It was great.  Coop and Cass didn’t like a few parts of it but they made it through the whole thing.  The girls thought it was very amazing.

After it was over, we walked the grounds around the temple.  It was really neat especially after just seeing the movie and knowing the struggles the early pioneers had in getting there and building the temple.  We commented on how amazing it is to think that 120 years ago those pioneers walked these very grounds.  And while it is different today because of modern conveniences, it was shaped by the sacrifices of those early saints.

Our efforts to capture this moment with a photo were unsuccessful.

A cell phone was not adequate equipment to catch this little boy, especially when there were huge statues nearby that were so intriguing to him.

The sun was just starting to lower behind some of the nearby buildings and it was a beautiful evening.

It was a really nice bonus that we were able to go to Temple Square.  Even though Paul had to take a really late flight and didn’t get to his destination until after midnight, I am really grateful for this unexpected family experience.

We stayed for a few more days and then headed home at the end of the week.  I really enjoyed the change of scenery and spending time with family and the break in schedule.

Thank Goodness for Spring Break!

 

Ryan Rindlisbacher

On March 22, 2012, my sister had her fourth baby. Amy has three girls and they were told early on that this would be another one. When Amy had her next ultrasound, they discovered that they had spoken too soon! Amy’s husband Steve is so excited. And so are the rest of them!

It is hard being away from family when big things happen. Luckily, Paul was able to work out his schedule so he could be home and that I could go and spend some time with Amy and help out a bit.

Amy has really, really great newborns.

Ryan is on the perfect schedule. Sleeps 4-6 hours at night, eats and goes right back to sleep. Then he wakes up in the morning, eats again and then just hangs out, wide awake, just chilling.

Then he goes back to eating and sleeping, with one more awake period in the afternoon, and then off to bed for the night.

He cried every time we changed his diaper. For one minute. That’s it. I think in the four days I was at Amy’s house, there were only two times when he was crying crying. Except for soaking everything around him while he’s getting his diaper changed, he’s as close to the perfect newborn as you can get.

Funny how, even though he was really good, I felt some of those old feelings of worry over being in charge of a newborn. One afternoon, Amy went up to take a quick power nap and I started working on dinner. No sooner had she left than Ryan started to whimper. Deep inside there was a slight sense of panic that started to flare. I shouldn’t have worried though because it really was just a whimper and he was fine and I was able to finish what I was doing.

This was a completely different experience than the last time I was in charge of a newborn, make that two newborns. I may not be fully recovered yet.

I am happy that he has been such a great newborn. We all know that babies move rapidly through the early stages of life. Soon Ryan will be on to the next phase and the next milestone and that will bring all new experiences. But for this moment, it’s a wonderful stage!