The Perfect Pancakes and Beautiful Butterflies

Joe and I are not really pancake people. We both prefer waffles for breakfast, or even eggs and sausage when we are having a special breakfast. Consequently neither of our boys have really even had pancakes before.

Well, this morning Jacob woke up and was really sad because Grandpa and Grandma Devereaux left for home. The poor little guy was crying and asking me why they had to go home. So to cheer him up I gave him a picture book I had called "Elephant's Story" that I had been saving for a special occasion. That helped a bit because he and Grandma had played with his toy elephants quite a bit. Then I offered to make him pancakes for breakfast.

I can't even remember the last time I made pancakes, but how hard can it be? I got out the batter and Jacob watched as I made his pancakes. Luckily they turned out beautifully golden brown. Both the boys ate their pancakes for breakfast and really enjoyed them. As a matter of fact, Jacob told me, "These are the best pancakes of my life!".

That made me laugh because they are probably the only pancakes he has ever had thus far!

He asked me if I would make him pancakes again, so I told him I probably would sometime. Then Jacob said, "That would make me SO happy because I LOVE pancakes!"

Looks like I will be adding pancakes to my breakfast menu for the boys! At least they are fast and easy, and Ephraim likes them too.

In other news, today we let some of our butterflies go. We were going to let all of them go, but two of the butterflies were definitely "busy". So we left them in the habitat to see if perhaps they might decided to lay eggs in there.

I really wanted to get a picture of Jacob with a butterfly on his nose. I thought that would be super-cute. He was a little hesitant, so I let him hold the butterflies in his hand.

He thought it was fun to watch the butterflies crawl around on his hands and then fly away. Jacob got to hold two of the butterflies.

Ephraim didn't really want to hold any of the butterflies. He was content with watching. By the time we got to the third butterfly Jacob said I could put it on his forehead. Unfortunately that butterfly flew away too quickly!

Oh well! Maybe we'll get another shot at it when we let the other two butterflies go. It has been really fun to watch the butterflies come out of their chrysalises and fly around. Jacob also enjoyed feeding them and watching the butterflies as they would stick their probosces into the flowers we got for them. Ephraim liked to see their "curly tongue".

We'll see if we end up with some more caterpillars. If not, we may have to do this again next year!

Roofing Finale and Toy Story 3

It is finished! Today Joe and Papa put the cap shingles on top of our new ridge vent. Re-shingling our roof turned out to be a lot more time consuming than we expected, but the new roof is beautiful and best of all it is DONE!

Here are some pictures from earlier in the day. Look at all those beautiful shingles on my roof!

The gable in the front looks particularly nice, don't you think?

This morning Grandma and the boys got on the roof as well. Grandpa was cutting shingles for the top of the ridge, and the boys helped by taking them across the roof to Daddy.

What great little helpers I have!

We are SO glad that the roof is done! I know Joe wishes he had finished sooner so he could have spent more time with his Dad doing other things. But the roof needed to get done and they did a top rate job!

After finishing the roof this morning, we ate lunch and then headed off to see Toy Story 3. The boys have been so excited to see this movie, and I thought it would be a good one for their first movie theater experience. Plus it would be even more fun with Grandpa and Grandma!

I wanted to take a picture of the boys by the poster for the movie, but they didn't seem to have one. So I took a picture of them by this Toy Story 3 window cling instead. I couldn't get them both looking at me because it was SO sunny and bright!

We all really enjoyed the movie. It was funny and heartwarming... and I admit that I almost cried at the end. This is one that we will definitely purchase and watch just as much as we already watch Toy Story 2.

After the movie, we went and had dinner at the Purple Turtle. Yummy! What a fun way to spend our last afternoon with Grandpa and Grandma Devereaux!

Roofing Report: Shingled Up and Playing at the Park

Getting sick of the roofing report? Me too!
I bet no one is more sick of the roof than Joe and Grandpa! Good thing we are almost done.

Here is the roof this morning. you can see that the back side of the house is completely shingled.

The front side of the house is nearly there. The long rows of shingles tend to go pretty quickly, so this part won't take too long.

Here is the part that took quite a while: the gable. The roofing crew had to figure out how to shingle the gable and have it look right. I think they did an incredible job. By the end of the day they had put the ridge vent on the gable, so now it's all done!

This evening Grandma and I took the boys to another park. This time we went to rotary park. The boys had a great time playing on the equipment. And having Grandma push them on the swings!

It was nice to get away for a little bit and let the boys play. We have been checking our yard for nails with a big magnet, but I still wouldn't exactly want the boys running around there barefoot right now!

While at the park I had a fun time taking pictures of the clouds and a little butterfly that kept whirling around me.

The butterfly reminded me of the butterflies we have at home. All of our butterflies have come out of their chrysalises and we have been enjoying watching them and feeding them. We will probably let them go soon, but the boys have really loved watching them this week!

Roof Report: Ridge Vent and Swimming

Hallelujah! The roof is almost done. Today the shingles reach nearly up to the peak of the house. Joe and Papa got the ridge vent cut this morning and the end is finally in sight!

This morning I went to aerobics by myself. The boys were too busy having fun with Grandma.

Since they are nearly done, the guys took most of the evening off. We all decided to go to the Lehi pool together. The boys had a great time going down the little slides, playing on the playset with the big bucket that dumps water, and showing Grandma and Grandpa how well they can swim. I didn't really dare take my camera with me to the pool, so no pictures. Suffice it to say that we all had a great time!

Roofing Report: Shingles in the Front, Rain on the Roof

This morning after Joe had left to go work on the roof, I was joined in bed by Jacob. He was up pretty late last night, so I was hoping he would climb into bed with me and go back to sleep. He did! Isn't he the cutest?

After breakfast I went up on the roof to check out the state of affairs. The back of the house is nearly all shingled up!

They have even started putting shingles on the front of the house! This morning they were working on the long portion of the front side of the house.

But just look at how far they got on Saturday! They figured out how to shingle the gable and have done the shingles up to the top of it. So the boys rooms have shingles above them now!

This morning we were lucky enough to have some more assistance. Jeff Davis came over and stayed all morning. Things really do seem to go faster when you have more help!

Since Grandma Devereaux is at our house, this morning she played with the boys while I helped on the roof. First I finished leveling out the garbage bin. Now they should have no problem hauling it away. Then I helped lay down shingles. Jeff and I would put the shingles down, and then Joe would come by with the nail gun and nail them down. It went pretty quickly, but it was HOT up there. 

It got a bit cloudy in the afternoon, so Joe and Grandpa went up before dinner and worked some more. We had dinner, and wouldn't you know it? It started to rain!

The boys thought it was great fun to go out and run around in their rain jackets.

What a bunch of sillies! Their feet, legs and faces got completely soaked!

They didn't seem to mind at all though!

Luckily the rain did not last too long. The guys were able to get back up on the roof, and Grandma and I took the boys to Discovery Park for a little while before bedtime. All in all it was a good and busy day.

Sunday at the Devereaux's

On Sunday we got to take Grandpa and Grandma Devereaux to church, as well as Great-Grandpa Sabey. So after church while we were all dressed up we decided to take some pictures.

Joe got the camera set up on the tripod and we got the camera and remote ready. Then we snapped away. I wasn't sure how the boys would do without anyone behind the camera, but they did surprisingly well. We took tons of photos, and here are my favorites.

Don't the boys all look handsome in their ties? And by some random chance, Jane and I are both wearing black and white.

Jacob and Ephraim both did a great job. Occasionally we had to go chase Ephraim down and put his tie back on, but he did amazing considering the amount of photos we took!

This little impromptu photo shoot definitely gives me hope for our next family photos. Hopefully it will be this easy to get Jacob and Ephraim to smile at the camera.

Here is a picture of all the guys. By this point the boys were getting a bit tired of the whole picture taking thing, so Jacob is making a silly face. Oh well!

 Here is my favorite outtake from the photo shoot. Joe was getting annoyed because everyone kept pulling out their cameras and taking pictures of him adjusting the camera. But that's not why I like this photo. I like it because it makes me look skinny!

Maybe I should cut myself out of this picture and put it on a white background... so I can look at it and feel good about all my hard work. :o)

After church we also had Allen and Cameo Sabey over for dinner. Allen is Joe's cousin. Allen and Cameo will be moving to Georgia in a couple of days. It was fun to chat with them and spend some time together before they head east.

After good food and conversation we watched a movie with the boys. We ended up keeping the little guys up late enough that we got to let them do sparklers when it was dark out. So fun and pretty too!

I got to experiment with my camera to try to capture the boys with their sparklers. I got some pretty fun pictures.

We were going to do the sparklers on the 24th of July for Pioneer Day, but I remembered after the boys were already in bed. Oh well this way they got to see them in the dark.

Roofing Report: Pioneer Day, Kennecott Copper, and More Shingles.

This morning I got on the roof to take some quick photos of all the progress that we have made. Check out yesterday morning's pictures and just look at how far they made it yesterday! Here is the back side of the house and just look at all those shingles!

Here is what the front side of the house looks like. You can see that all the shingles are off and the ice and water paper has been put down. You may also be able to tell that I was taking these pictures before the sun was really up!

Already my roofing crew of two was hard at work this morning. They are determined to get this enormous project DONE. Here they are getting the rest of the underlayment down on the front of the house.

The boys also got to pay their daily visit to the roof a little bit later. We had to quit working on the roof a little bit early today so we could go pick up Grandma Devereaux from the airport.

But just look how far they got this morning! The entire roof is covered up now.

So before lunch we went to the airport and picked up Grandma. Then we stopped in Salt Lake for lunch. We also decided to stop off at the Kennecott Copper Mine and take advantage of their last free admission day.

The Kennecott Copper Mine is the largest man-made excavation on earth. Even this photo doesn't really give you an accurate idea of how HUGE it is!

The mine is 2-3/4 miles across at the top and 3/4 of a mile deep. At the visitor's center we learned that the mine is so big, it can be seen by the space shuttle astronauts as they pass over the United States!

The boys thought it was fun to stand on the overlook and watch the trucks working below. I think they had a pretty good view, don't you?

I personally thought the terraced rock walls all around the sides of the mine were interesting to look at.

I have to agree with the boys-- the trucks were pretty awesome too. I would like to have seen one up close. You can see that the trucks actually have a ladder on the front so the operator can climb up to the cab! We learned that trucks that haul the copper ore are larger than many houses and weigh more than a jumbo jet. They stand over 23 feet tall and can carry from 255 to 360 tons of rock.

Can you imaging trying to drive one of those trucks around? We didn't get to climb on or walk around one of them, but we did get to stand next to one of the tires.

You definitely don't want to get in front of one of these truck tires! Yikes! Here is one that is full passing by one that is empty. I think the boys could have watched the trucks nearly all day long!

They also had some really cool giant electric shovels. They can scoop up as much as 98 tons in a single bite -- about the weight of 50 cars!

The boys had a great time at the copper mine. It was definitely a wonderland for little boys, and the rest of us enjoyed it too! We all loved watching all the equipment in action, watching the video at the visitor's center and checking out the models. It was definitely a site worth seeing!

Another site worth seeing is the progress made on our roof. It was a shorter work day today, but it's still moving along! I got on the roof this evening to check it out. See how the shingles are moving closer to the ridge?

The front of the house is looking pretty good too. Now we can start shingling, which will go faster than all the shingle shoveling and prep work is done!