The flowers are budding...and so are the faces.

The first flowers of spring!

But along came a 10 month to old to eat them!  But he really prefers leaves...

Don't mess with a kid that can give you "the eye"

Or "the mouth"

Our Whirlwind

I guess it's about time to get caught up.  Our post could never be complete without Island Park.  Why?  Because we haven't really done anything that interesting other than our Island Park trip.  Why was Island Park interesting you might ask?  Well, Sarah bashed her face in (slight overstament), we dug the worlds largest snowcave only to find a big pile of wood underneath it (great if needed for survival, not so good on your knees while you dig), we snowshoed, Gavin learned how to climb stairs (yeah!), Gavin found out he really likes to climb things (no!), we played lots of games (sorry Josh), and we ate a lot of food (too much.)

So, that could be snot dripping off his lip, but I'm sure it's just snow melting on his face...either way, too cute to not include.  :)

I told you!  Dam sledding is apparently an activity that should be avoided on Sunday.  Pre-accident conversation went something like this:  Jace to Sarah: "You should probably put your feet down so you don't just take off down the hill before everyone else."  Ashley to Jace: " I think she knows how to sled." Jace to Ashley: "No, I don't think she does."  Jace: 1, Ashley: 0

Obviously I was the one that worked the hardest on the snow cave, I didn't see any pictures of me just sitting around...or maybe I just skipped them, I don't remember.  Since Grandma had the driveway plowed out this year we couldn't spend the first morning digging out parking spots so we channeled our energy into a massive snow cave.  We didn't quite get the master bedroom and bath finished though...

For those who haven't seen it, Gavin likes to stand on his head a lot, apparently the world is more interesting when viewed upside down.  He likes doing the same thing with his alphabet train, he drapes himself over it and plays with whatever is on the other side or inside.

 Lindsey has been very proud of herself.  Not only is she now baking her own bread, she recently pickled and canned asparagus.  Every jar even sealed.

A recent Sunday picture.  We take a picture of Gavin every Sunday...usually he has pants on, but hey, who says pants are required?

All new experiences

Gavin had several new experiences in the last two days

As an introduction to Gavin's experiences, let me first just say we've been working very hard on his speed and agility.  We do exercise after exercise to make sure he's the quickest, sportiest kid on the block.  Okay...I just made that up, but as you shall soon find, he does have the speed of a mongoose.

Before church this morning I was holding Gavin while I brushed my teeth.  He always seems interested in this process, and I'm sure he will have great dental hygiene when he grows older.  However, this morning he decided he couldn't wait until he grows up.  Before I knew what was happening he had jerked the toothbrush out of my mouth and put it in his.  I don't think he likes toothpaste, that's probably a good thing.

As we sat down in church today Lindsey leaned over and said, "Do you think we should give him the sacrament today?" My thought was, did he do something bad last week that I don't know about?  I mean, if pooping your pants, slobbering on people, and being really really really good looking requires repentance then I have a backlog of penance to take care of.  Unfortunately probably only on the first two counts.  Anyway, I just shrugged and said, "whatever."  By the way, for any men reading this, that is a woman's favorite answer.  You can ask them.  However, Gavin must have been listening.  As Lindsey passed the sacrament by he lept out with both hands in some type of karate move and hit tray.  What I didn't realize with my oh-so-slow human vision was that it was all just a decoy.  He actually had two hands clear full of bread.  I may never have noticed except that he wasn't so sly as he tried to shove both handfulls into his mouth at the same time.

Last on the new experience list is riding a bike.  Or, since he's only 9 months old, riding along behind a bike.  It was about 40 degrees and sunny, so we decided it would be a great time to break it out for the first time.  He loved it, and when I say he loved it I mean that he immediately fell asleep and didn't wake up until the bike stopped.  I'm sure he was just dreaming about all of the fun he is going to have this summer when he doesn't have to wear his bear suit to ride in it.

Crawling?? Well, kind of...

Yes, we are way behind on our blog posting, but instead catching up on what has happened since San Francisco, I just couldn't resist posting these few videos.  I'm sure they aren't as cute and entertaining as we think they are, but hopefully you enjoy them.  We love seeing the progress he's making towards crawling...but with a heaping spoonful of fear about what is going to happen to our house when he does start really crawling!  He's busy enough as is without having the extra mobility!  He was playing with a book during Elders Quorum today and suddently I realized he had pretty well eaten through the binding...

San Francisco

What??  It's going to snow and be 20 degrees in Utah!?  Let's get out of here!

Okay, that's not quite how it all went down, but you could imagine what it would be like it if was...
While San Francisco certainly isn't the warmest place this time of year, it was certainly warmer than home.  We had awesome weather.  75 degrees greeted us on arrival, but unfortunately that didn't stay.  It averaged a high of close to 60 every day while we were there, and was almost always sunny.  We could see the Golden Gate Bridge every day we were there and I hear that's quite a feat.  But enough of about that, let's talk about the interesting things we did!



The first item of business was to travel to Monterey, pausing only briefly to stop by this beach in Santa Cruz where the young Lovell's used to play.  Ashley remember how much fun she used to have playing in the water, and Lindsey remembered how her Dad got hypothermia here once and she thought he was going to die.  Ah, the fond memories.

 Just to prove how sunny it was we decided to take pictures of our shadows.  They're better looking than we are anyway.

 After a lovely frolic on the deserted beach we finally made it to Monterey and our next stop, the aquarium, apparently one of the best in the US.  It was great, except for the fact that their Great White Shark went belly up the day before.  There were still plenty of sharks and other marine animals to gawk at though.

 Brent got some really cool pictures at the aquarium, and since we stole all his pictures I thought I would share.

 Gavin liked the aquarium.  He was as happy as could be as long as he could sit and stare at all of the fish swimming around.  He didn't even mind going pantless after he completely soaked through his diaper and pants.

 The jellyfish were really cool, but we couldn't find any in the petting section...so disappointed.

 17 mile drive and Pebble Beach.  This is near the somewhat famous Cyprus tree growing out on the rocks near the water, but it's apparently trademarked so you get this picture instead.

 Measures were taken to ensure Gavin was smiling for all pictures, they may have involved some of the crazyness you see below.

 We went out looking for the Golden Gate Bridge the next day, but all we found was this red one.  It seemed cool enough so we took some pictures.

 After passing over the non-descript red bridge we endured every Californian effort to make us car sick (just because Lombard street is famous for being curvy doesn't mean you need to build all roads that way), we made it to Muir Woods.  Lindsey failed to realize it was the Muir Woods sign and not a disco ball hanging over her head.

 What? These little trees?  They're hardly even noticable...  We found out that all of the black we were seeing along the bottoms of the trees was indeed from fire.  Turns out the last forest fire here was a long time ago but because they are resistant to burning, all of the junk (not the term the tree man used, but I forget) collected around the bottoms of the trees burns and scorches the bottom of the tree.  So if you ever see a really old giant redwood that looks likes it's burned, turns out it probably is.  Bet you didn't expect to learn that when you dialed up our blog today did you?

 The less pretty side of things... Lindsey thought she got him out before he completely exploded.  It initially appeared she had, but after a bit of sleuthing we found this under the car seat.  Thank goodness for rental cars.

 View of San Francisco from across the bay.  We tried to walk across the bridge but we took the side that was closed for construction 1/4 of the way across.

 Yeah, he's cute.

 Of course we couldn't go to San Fran without checking out Alcatraz.  I learned that it was originally a military base set up by Union soldiers during the civil war to protect the bay and also that after the prison was shut down Indians tried to take it over.  I can't believe how rusty my history is getting!  I guess I should not have sworn off reading books after high school.

 Turns out they forgot two inmates when they closed the prison.

 They looked like desperate folks in need of a bit of company so we joined them for a few minutes.

 Gavin realizing he is stuck in jail.

 Gavin realizing he is skinny enough that he can slip right through the bars.

 Alcatraz from the boat.

While we enjoyed many other things during our trip, I wanted to share just some of the highlights in hopes of not boring everyone to death.  A few highlights that didn't make it into picture form though:  Watching two grown men trying to get in a fight and one of them running around in a cast boot.  Brent saying he thought the ground was shaking and no one paying attention to him until a newsflash 10 minutes later that said there had been an earthquake.  The people on the bus tour trying to figure out why Gavin had one mom and two dads (Lindsey was at a conference.)  Walking through every Ghiradelli store we saw and getting free chocolate.  Watching Brent order a "sweet" in a Chinese bakery and having neither he nor the bakery woman know what he was actually talking about coupled with the puzzled look from the Starbucks employee when he ordered a hot eggnog (she ended up giving it to him for free, maybe because she didn't know how to ring up hot eggnog.)

Lastly, a special thanks to Brent for doing virtually all of the driving so I wouldn't have to be driven batty and also for taking all of the pictures. 

Two halves and the whole

This is the story of our last two weekends, which included two halves...and the whole.  The first half was October 8th, and it was Lindsey's half marathon.  This was her first half after having our adorable little boy 5 months ago.  Needless to say, she is awesome and met her goal of staying under 2 hours.  She had some friends join her in doing the races and they all went out to breakfast after.  And they all lived happily ever after.

The next half was my own.  I decided last minute to join the Blakey boys at the SOJO half marathon.  I wanted to do at least one more half this fall.  I presented the idea to Lindsey as a no-brainer.  They offer free entry to the top 3 finishers in each age group.  I reasoned that based on last years results I would be 1st place in my age division.  Well, those slow pokes from last year didn't show up this year, or maybe the word got out about the free entry.  In either case, some fast people, I'm sure they train for Nike professionally, showed up to race this year.  Luckily I was able to finish 3rd in my age group and therefore still achieved my goal.  I can only imagine how long I would have been doing dishes and scrubbing toilets for Lindsey to pay off the debt otherwise. 

I don't currently have a picture of my finish, but you can pretend it's inserted here if you want.

Lastly, the whole.  You may wonder what this "whole" is.  Well, after my half this last Saturday we travelled virtually the WHOLE state of Utah from north to south.  That may sound like a bit of  hyperbole...and it is, but it's not as far from the truth as we might like it to be.  We headed down to Moab to visit Canyonlands National Park.  We had all of our camping gear, and figured if for some reason we couldn't find a camp spot in the dark, we would just take a hotel for a night and find a spot the next day.  Much to our dismay we found that an extra 1500 (or more!) camp sites and/or hotel rooms were taken because there was a half marathon in Moab on Sunday.  After cursing the fact that we are too cheap to pay for the data plan on an Iphone and furiously calling any and everyone we knew, we ended up driving all the way to Monticello for a room at the Monticello Inn.  It seemed nice enough, although a survey of the area the next morning indicated the town was much smaller than it appeared at night, they must have had 3 street lights for every building in town.  Nonetheless, this gave us the opportunity to visit the southern end of the park that we otherwise likely wouldn't have seen.  The park was quite enjoyable and we loved all of the comments and looks we got trudging along the trails with Gavin in tow.  He loved it!  Everything except the time in the car seat it took to get there!

I now prefer eating my toes!