Chase attempting to sing

Chase has been singing more lately, and can sing Pat-a-cake, Popcorn Popping, Twinkle Twinkle, part of Happy Birthday, and probably a few more. I catch him singing sometimes by himself, but as soon as he sees me it typically stops. Anyway, he was willing to sing for the camera today, but as soon as I bring it out he starts acting goofy and mumbling all of his words. So this isn't the best example of him singing, but I thought I would put it on here for my mom to hear him sing "Happy Birthday" to her since it is our birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Mom, even though you will probably never come on here to see this :). I love you so much, and thanks for giving birth to me on your birthday 26 years ago.

More SB Pictures

There were a few more pictures I wanted to post but they wouldn't fit on my last posting. Not that this is a great picture of me by any means, but I am always the photographer and people have complained that there are never any pictures of me. I had to have my hair up most of the trip, which is so not like me, but there was so much humidity that my hair was really frowy! Now Nathan has seen my ears better and realizes where Kai gets his from :).
Since Chase made so many sandcastles on our trip, I had to at least post one of the pictures capturing the master builder at work. I think we need to get a sandbox for our place!
Kai began his stranger anxiety stage while we were on our trip. He would smile at others as long as I was holding him. Too bad we couldn't get a picture of him at least being decent with "Nammy Bobbie". Thankfully Chase is good at saying "Cheese" and is smiling for us on cue when we need to take pictures.
Last but not least, we were able to dogsit while we housesat. This is Teagan, and she was a really good dog. She would even come into our room at night to let us know that Kai was crying in the other room. She put up with Chase screaming because he was scared of her, (and he never did warm up to her completely), she was laid back, and an overall great dog. Nathan and I still aren't dog people, even though we thought we were a few years ago, but we enjoyed spending time with her, and couldn't have watched a better dog.

Vacationing in Santa Barbara

We got so lucky this last week to be able to go and housesit for someone in Nathan's mom's ward. We were able to stay in their nice home, just our little family of 4, which was sooo nice since Kai was able to sleep in a bedroom rather than our family room at night :). The weather was in the 70s and 80s our whole stay, so we were able to escape the 100+ degrees back here at home.
The home we stayed at had a jacuzzi, lawn to play on, a hammock (as you can see we enjoyed that), a fire pit where we were able to toast marshmallows, and it was so airy and bright with windows all over the house.
We were able to go to the beach every other day, and despite Chase being scared of the water, he loved building sand castles and getting himself covered in sand.
Santa Barabara has a really nice zoo, and we were able to enjoy seeing all of the animals one of the days we were there. Chase liked seeing them, but I think he enjoyed just running and jumping around, and going on the train ride.
We were also able to visit Nathan's family, even though they gave us our space and allowed us to truly have a great vacation, and here are the boys with "Cuppy Steve" as Chase calls him. We were also able to spend time with "Nammy Sandy" and "Nammy Bobbie" who the boys love, and Chase always asks and talks about. It was a lot of fun and we were spoiled by each of them. We will miss them, but were grateful to see them.