Out with old---in with the New

After almost 7 years of ownership, we traded in John's truck and took advantage of the cash for clunkers program. The truck qualified so we thought we would take a look and see what we could get. We found a great car and went and made the deal. John is having a little bit of a hard time as the truck was the first car he ever purchased. Even Lucas is having a hard time...he looks out the window and says..."where daddy truck?" He hasn't gotten used to the idea.

Part of the reason is that Lucas loves to drive Daddy's truck when he gets home from work.

Here is the final picture with John and his truck. We took this picture in the morning before we left to go pick up the new car....

A brand spankin' new Hyundai Sonata. It is such a fun car and we feel a little spoiled because it is so nice. We really enjoy it and best of all it gets super good gas mileage. We will save so much money just in gas!

Black was not our first choice color but it was the only one in the lot in our price range with the features that we wanted. We are really excited...but I think we will miss the nostalgia of the truck...we had a lot of good memories with that truck.

A shout out to the birthday boy!

I know I am a little late but I work Mon-Wed so this is my first opportunity to update. Lucas turned 2 on Sunday. I can't believe it has been two years since we held him for the first time. These last few years have been amazing. Watching your child grow and learn has got to be one of the most rewarding things a person can do. That's not to say there aren't days that I want to pull my hair out! But, I love this kid with all of my heart and I am so glad that we are blessed to have him in our family forever.

We had a little party for him with some of our friends from church and softball. Lucas had so much fun and recieved a lot of really fun presents. Here are a couple of pictures.


This is the birthday boy in his cute new outfit that Grandma Lyons got him for his birthday....it was soon covered in red frosting but it looked cute while it was clean.

Here is Lucas blowing out his candles. The wind was blowing a little so it was a bit of a challenge to keep them lit.

We ordered him a "McQueen and Mator" cupcake cake for his party. Notice in the bottom left of the cake it is a bit squished. Ya...that is where his hand when in when he was trying so hard to get to the cake when it was still in the box!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUCAS!!

San Diego Trip!

John and I decided since he was required to take some Vacation time before September that we would go on an actual vacation. Generally speaking we use all of our vacation time to go up to Idaho to visit and hang out with Family. And since we won't be going home for Christmas this year that we would go hang out in Paradise...aka San Diego California. I hadn't been to San Diego since my cousin Maren was married there 16 years ago and it had been about that long for John too. So we packed up and brought Katelyn and Garrett along with us too. We had so much fun.

WARNING!!! LOTS OF PICTURES!!! Here is the breakdown of what we did!

When we first drove there we went straight to the Wild Animal Park. It was really nice and had so many different kinds of plants and trees. We spent about 3 hours there which was enough for us. It was a lot of walking. While were were there we went to the petting zoo part for Lucas. He loved touching the baby deer. Although we had to tell him that he couldn't climb on the deer like he does the dog.

Lucas really enjoyed seeing all of the different kinds of birds. We saw pelicans, flamingos, parrots, and so many more. Everytime Lucas would see them he'd say..."birdee" with a huge grin on his face.

Lucas especially loved the Gorillas. He was so facinated by them. Later he kept saying "koallas" and we were thinking it was because he wanted to go see the Koala Bears....until we saw the Gorillas again later and and he got all excited and pointed at the gorillas and yelling "Koallas".

John always has a toothpick in his mouth. Well, Lucas decided to steal it so he could look like his daddy.

This is on the little train thing we went on to see the giraffes, rhino's, zebras, and elephants at the park. Lucas had fun but it was just a little long for a 2 year old's attention span.

Lucas did enjoy getting his picture taken while sitting atop a bronze Rhino though.

Here's our whole family on the Rhino.....CUTE!

After the Park we went and stayed with my cute cousin and her adorable little girls in San Jacinto California. They were so nice to let us crash there for the first two night. The next day after a good nights sleep we went to the San Diego Zoo. Can I just say that this was my FAVORITE part. I could have spent two days there. LOVED IT!!!

They had this bench at the zoo and Lucas thought it was so cool. I think this picture is adorable. Lucas loved spending time with his uncle "geeret" and aunt Kate and we loved that we had someone else to help us chase him down :).

Lucas did find time while we were there to take a little cat nap. What is funny is about 2 minutes before this picture was taken he leaned his head back to laugh at John and then just fell asleep. Silly boy.

We really enjoyed the elephant habitat too. They had 2 different kinds of elephants to look at and they were all out so we could see them.

We did stay at a hotel for two nights thanks to Katelyn and her employment. She works at the Hampton Inn in Provo and hooked us up with the employee rate for a hotel close to San Diego. The hotel had a really nice pool so we thought it would be fun to go swimming. Lucas LOVES to swim. He is like a little fish.

Aren't they cute!

This was Lucas' favorite part about the pool. He kept saying he was "flyingng". He was not so happy when we told him he had to get out so we could eat some dinner.

Here's my little fish again. He really loves swimming.

The next day we went to Sea World. While we were there John had this super brilliant idea that we should sit on the very front row of the Dolphin show. SPLASH ZONE!!! Ya, let's just say that we got wet in the first 30 seconds and John took Lucas up to the top cause he didn't like getting splashed when he wasn't ready. So Katelyn, Garrett, and I stayed on the front row and got completely drenched by the dolphin. John said he thought it was funny.

We also got to see the sea lions getting fed by people. Lucas really enjoyed this part. He had so much fun watching those sea lions barking at people who had purchased food to feed them.

We of course had to go to the Shamu show. We didn't sit in the splash zone for this show and we all enjoyed it a little better. Lucas thinks the whales are so cool.

We also saw same big sea turtles and some baby turtles. Lucas really like those too.

Here is the group at the Shamu show after it was over. It was really cool to see...kind of cheesy but still pretty cool.

The next day we went to the Padres vs Mets game at PETCO stadium. That was so much fun. The stadium is so family friendly. Lucas even got a button pin that said "First Time to Petco Park" along with a baseball. It was really fun.

Here's the whole gang. Garrett had such a good time. He even almost caught a fly ball. It ended up landing about a row or so in front of us but he was ready and prepared with his mit.

After the game we stopped by the beach for a little while. Lucas loved playing in the "dirt" as he called it. He was so dirty when we were done.

Here's daddy and Lucas at the beach. He wasn't so sure of the waves at first but warmed up to it as long as he could hold his daddy's hand really tight.

Again with the sand. He thought it was funny when he got out of the water to lay down on his tummy in the sand. Ya....good thing we brought dry clothes otherwise it would have been a long ride back to the hotel.

All in all we had a great time. The weather was perfect and we were able to see all of the things we wanted to see. Hopefully we will be able to do it again in the future.