four years with my babes

4 years seems like it should be a short amount of time when you think about it but it's hard to remember life without my lover! jeremy is the best thing that ever happened to me!!! we celebrated our anniversary in texas and jeremy "re-created" our first date...how fun! i love you!

lu & havi

brigg and havalah came for a visit on their move to pennsylvania! i am so excited they are living a mere 4 hours from us...they did a super job entertaining the kiddos and even found time for a little yard work...come back soon ya'll :)

texas flavored

I apologize for the big ol' post, but hey everything is bigger in Texas, right? We had a blast on our two week vacay to Austin in August. We were so-looking forward to it and it flew right by without pausing...I still can't believe it's already over.
For every picture posted here there are probably 20 more we have from the trip so it was hard to choose. (thanks Joel, Jennie & Abbie for the pics I stole from you!)
We went to Innerspace Caverns, Georgetown Lake, out to Nana & Poppie's land to see the cattle and horses, played in the fountain, rode a train, went to parks, ate delicious food, fished, played with cousins, ate ice cream at Amy's, bought lots of books, saw our good friends the White family (wish we could have hung out for days!), went to my very first circus (it was also a first for Hyrum & Hunterbug), watched movies, went on dates, helped Jennie & Matt move to Houston, met a new cousin baby Michael, and the boys did a lot of in-the-car-sleeping.
We did a lot but it was relaxing as well. Thank you Shakespear family for such a great time!!!

turner travels
At the end of July Pa and Darlin' came out to spend a few days with us. One day we went to a lake with a water park and somehow Pa got Hyrum to play in the water and he loved it! The rest of the time we just relaxed at home. It was so fun!
Then we drove down to Pittsburgh to visit my older brother and his family. I love that Hyrum is old enough to really enjoy playing with his cousins and Anne was so sweet to him and loved playing with Hunterbug. We are so excited they live within driving distance...can't wait to go back again!!!

zoo time
We have been enjoying Jeremy's nice, long vacation from school! For the last week we played as a family around town. We finally made it to the Detroit Zoo and stayed for almost five hours!

here is Hunter being his happy self
Hyrum loved the under the water tunnel

the polar bear made a much anticipated appearance

we put Hunter's seat down in the hopes he would fall asleep, he didn't, and the next time we checked on him he was in this position happily chewing on his seat belt we neglected to fasten

Hunter's new favorite stroller activity

out of all the REAL animals to see, Hyrum's favorite thing at the zoo were the bronze, water-spouting frogs outside of the amphibian house

our next activity was to go raspberry picking with our long, lost friends the Halls

Laura and I trying out our newly acquired jam-making skills

Hunterbug being cute...he is now army crawling with the best of them