Gavin Jay

hmmm...what to say about Gavin. What not to say about Gavin? This kid is really quite the character.

One thing I love about Gavin is that he puts his whole heart into everything. He doesn't just get a little excited over things, he gets VERY excited over things. Mostly trucks, but he also loves fish and trains and bugs and....I could go on and on.

He has the funniest facial expressions and I love seeing those big brown eyes sparkle.

He does have a fiesty side, and we do try to work on that.

He is going to have to work hard when it comes to learning at school. Things don't come naturally to him (he is just like his mom and dad), so he has to work hard to learn things. I am so impressed that in the last 2 weeks he has learned how to identify an A, make the sound "A" makes and write an A. We are now working on B, and he is doing good with that.

His middle name come from his dad and his Grandpa. What a perfect kid to have his dad and Grandpa's name, because he is just like them. He is the little engineer. He has to see how things work, and he likes to fix, or watch things get fixed. He loves watching machines and see them work.

We love our Gavin Jay and he sure keeps us busy!

Kyson McKay

My friend Kristine was over the other day and snapped this picture of Kyson, and I loved it, I had to post it for all to see! It really shows what our sweet little Kyson is like. He has really grown up over the last few weeks. He isn't a baby anymore! Here is a little update about Kyson:

-loves to chase dad and say "roar!"
-says many words only Casey and I understand including-ball, mom, dad, again, more, bottle, uh-oh, stinky
-is very careful when he is in a new situation. It takes him a while to warm up to new things
-loves Gavin. He likes to chase Gavin or have Gavin chase him.
-he isn't a perfect baby, he does have his tantrums when you take something away he wants
-loves to be held and snuggled
-is a great sleeper, still takes two naps a day and sleeps 12 hours a night
-eats anything! We were at Tucanos the other day, and he didn't make a peep the whole time because he was too busy eating!
-this is gross, but he loves to have the dogs give him kisses. We are trying to stop that...yuck

We love this sweet little boy!

Splash Pad

We have been going to the Splash Pad a lot lately. Here are some pictures from the last couple of times we have been there. Gavin gets out there and runs and plays everywhere. Kyson usually just hangs out with me, but if it isn't very crowded, he will also get in. We went in the evening one day with Jess and Jared and Autumn and Doug, and it was so empty! We had a lot of fun, and I think we'll try to do that more often!

Gav loved following his cousin Kylie around
Gavin usually shows a lot of this...

Kyson and William
They stop the water every hour for a few minutes as a "bathroom break"...This is when Kyson has no problem running around...
Gavin with Brielle...we miss living next door to her!

Kyson and Asher

Cedar Hills Creek

We love spending our hot summer days here. The water was pretty cold, but that didn't matter to Gavin, he was in the water the whole time. Kyson is a little more cautious and I was impressed he got this close to the water.

Snuggling

The other day Gavin was laying with Casey drinking his drink, and Kyson saw them. He climbed up there with them, then saw Gavin had a drink and then he quickly got down, grabbed his drink and climbed back up there. They love their Dad! I just thought it was cute.

Summer!

I pictured in my mind summer being a time I would be relaxing at the pool, playing in the yard, bike riding, etc. Summer is halfway over, and I still haven't been able to do all things I wanted to do, but things have finally calmed down a little bit, we are now able to start enjoying some of these things. Our new favorite place is the splash pad here in Highland. It is just a few minutes away, and it is free! Gavin loves to run and play in it, Kyson is a little more cautious, but will get out there if there aren't very many people around.
Our yard is finally coming together, so now we are able to get out and enjoy that too!

Cousins

We miraculously got a picture with all of the little cousins on my side of the family and no one is crying! Left to right: Bailey Smith, William Jackman, Kyson Losee, Damon Jackman, Gavin Losee, Kylie Jackman, Braxton Smith.

Happy 4th!

We had a great 4th of July! It was a little cooler and windier this year, which was nice in some ways, and sad in others! At the balloon launch, only 3 balloons were able to blow up, and weren't even able to get in the air because it was too windy! We did have fun hanging out with family and enjoy our breakfast.


Later that evening we had a bbq at Casey's parent's and then headed over to the Jr. High to watch the fireworks.
Here is Gavin with Casey's cousin, aka, Gavin's favorite babysitter, Kaitlyn.

Relaxin'

Kyson is so cute and loves to hang out in the dog bed (usually with Emma)...this picture reminded me of Gavin when he was this age. He loved to do the same thing too, as you can tell from the next picture...

Strawberry Days

I get excited for Strawberry Days each year. There is always so many fun things to do, and the strawberries and cream are amazing! This year we closed on our house during this week, so we didn't do a few things we usually try to do, but we did enjoy ourselves at:

Huck Finn Days:
My mom and dad bought little fishing poles and nets for the kids to go fishing. Gavin loved playing with his fishing pole and when it was time to go out in the water to try to catch the fish with the nets, he ventured out there pretty far. Autumn was the lucky one this year to catch a fish! Ky just liked hanging out by the water!


This is the fish Autumn caught. Gavin LOVES fish, and really thought this was his to take home. He kept carrying the poor thing around.


Concert in the park:
We enjoyed a fun concert in the park put on by "Northfield" a band that is from my ward I grew up in. I use to babysit these guy's kids. They play fun popular music, so it was really enjoyable.




Baby Contest:
This cute little baby won the baby contest in the "Strawberry Days" category. Miss Bailey is such a sweet and cute baby. I think I'm her favorite Aunt. Every time she sees me, she gives me this big smile. (She probably does that to everyone else, but I'm still going to think it is just me!)

Zoo

We went with Alicia and her kids to the zoo a few weeks ago. They had so much fun! We got to see the baby elephant really close. And of course, we had to take the train ride, the highlight for Gavin.

We're In!

We've been in our new house for a while now, but just got internet, so sorry it has taken a while to post anything! It is really amazing how everything has worked out. We first looked at this house back in April, and fell in love. It did have A LOT of things to work on, but it had a beautiful kitchen, master bath, nice paint and carpet, we saw that it was worth it to fix it up. It was a short sale, so it was priced a lot lower then what the people actually owed the bank, so it seemed like a perfect house for us...except a couple of problems, they already had one offer on the home, and we hadn't sold our home yet. We put an offer on the house still, and the accepted it, but we were second in line...which was fine, since we hadn't sold our house yet.

A few weeks went by, and we got an offer on our home, so we started looking at homes. We went out one day and I didn't like any of the homes we looked at. When my realtor asked what home I liked the best, I jokingly said "the one we have the second offer on.". She said, "Well, I'll check to see if the first offer is going well, and if not, push to have them accept your offer as the primary offer." Luckily, the first offer wasn't going well, and they accepted our offer as the primary offer.

We thought things were going well with our loan, until a week before we were going to close, we realized our loan officer was being very negligent with our loan, and didn't tell us that it didn't pass the appraisal. With a week left it didn't get us much time to fix the appraisal problem (the mold in the stucco) and so that means we could have easily lost the home. We quickly decided to change lenders and they sent out another appraiser (hoping he would pass the stucco). Well, the stucco passed, but the master bathroom didn't have a counter top, so we had to fix that before the appraisal would pass. It finally passed, and we closed on the house on June 16.

We have been very busy cleaning carpets (they had a big dog that peed everywhere), replaced carpets, painted, cleaned, fixed the stucco, and I feel like we have finally turned this place into a home. There is still a lot to do, but Casey likes having little projects around the house. More pictures to come, once I get my computer set up that has our pictures on it!