Finally! We've been wanting a family picture in front of the Detroit temple for some time now, but every time we would go I would either forget the camera or if I remembered the camera it was pouring down rain and cold but last Saturday was a perfect, beautiful day! Thanks Hall family for coming with us, Jeremy and I were able to do sealings TOGETHER for probably the first time in 20+ months now...it was fun.
And he wanted everyone to know how excited he is to have a baby brother to play with and be best buds with! 
Today we went to a U-pick farm and picked five quarts of raspberries and 2 1/2 quarts of blackberries-yum! Our good friends Laura & Felix Hall came with us (we are sooooo excited you guys are in Ann Arbor!) Hyrum got a bit muddy but enjoyed eating the berries and helping put them in our buckets. He and Felix got along great too :) Then we all went to our place and made (and ate) a delicious apple/raspberry crisp and ELEVEN jars of raspberry freezer jam! I'm excited to try some soon. We are going to try blackberry jam later this week. And we have big plans for picking apples, pumpkins, tomatoes and beans later on!
What a fun day! We decided to take a break house fixing/decorating/cleaning to go somewhere beautiful and we picked a perfect spot! Pinckney State Park is in Dexter Michigan and the drive out there alone was worth the whole trip. It is GORGEOUS out there, we decided maybe it wouldn't be so bad to stay here in Michigan :) Hyrum absolutely loved playing in the water and the dirt and anything else he could get into. There's a nice lake, picnic areas, and trails. It was such a nice morning. We really need to go back soon!
Jeremy and I recently celebrated our 3 year anniversary on August 7th! Our good friends Ben & Telia watched Hyrum so we could go out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants-The Shalimar. We dined on exceptional Indian food :) and enjoyed one of our favorite activities afterwards, walking around holding hands. Downtown Ann Arbor is a fun place for that. We plan on going canoeing sometime in the next couple of weeks. Indian food and canoeing seem to have become traditions for our anniversary. I brought the camera with us but of course promptly forgot about it, so we have no pictures to show off our fun date, so we'll just have to show off our cute boy playing in his new frog pool, enjoying ice cream, and enjoying his books-three of his favorite activities!
COUSIN LOVE...Hyrum has never been "affectionate" with other kids before, he'll play with them maybe or he'll just look at them curiously but if they get too close watch out! But he just loves his cousins, he actually was the one to snuggle up to Kylie to give her hugs. It just about melted my heart! Oh how I wish we lived closer!!!!
We had lots of fun at home in Austin too! Jeremy's parents live on a river so we were able to go swimming there one day. Hyrum really loved Nana's 3 dogs and would follow them around constantly :) Hyrum also had fun in their fountain with Poppi a couple times. We went down town Austin to see the capitol building, go out to eat at a Texas bbq restaurant-love those baby back ribs!- and to a park to play. We were also able to spend some time with Jeremy's brother Stephen, sister Jennie and brother in law Matt.
One day we drove down to San Antonio to visit the Alamo and the famous Riverwalk. It was rainy all day which was so nice because it kept things cool! Hyrum really enjoyed all the puddles and rocks to throw at the Alamo and was excited for the boat ride down the river. It was a very fun day and again I was so impressed with how beautiful Texas is!
We spent a weekend with Jeremy's brother Joel, our sister in law Stacie and their kids Cole and Kylie. We had a blast!!! We went to the Fort Worth zoo and to the botanical gardens nearby. Everything was so gorgeous and green. Hyrum enjoyed his first trip to the zoo, I think his favorite animals were the monkeys. It was so fun to be able to play with family for a few days!
