Where Have the Bing's Been?

Well, not quite sure. :) It seems lately that we have been running from one thing to the next and I think we as a family have moved onto a new phase in our lives filled with kids going to school, dance lessons, sports, along with the everyday family duties. Although it seems that we never stop, we enjoy our time spent together through all this craziness.

Now, to go back in time to figure out where the last year went.

A couple of years ago we FINALLY got our patio and extra driveway done, so this last summer we were busy (or rather Blair was busy) with building a shed and also getting our fire pit built. It is SO nice to have the shed to have an extra place to store things instead of barely being able to get out of our cars because of all the stuff in the garage. Now just to get it organized. :)

We have thoroughly enjoyed the fire pit. It was a sad day when we told the kids that we could make "real smores" now and they both had no clue what a smore was. :) They soon learned and absolutely LOVE them. One day while at the grocery store I came across some ginormous marshmallows and just had to get them for the kids to make their first smores with. When I got home and showed the kids, their eyes got huge and they were both speechless...then they got REALLY excited to make smores. We invited grandma and grandpa B. to come over and try out the new fire pit with us. It has become a favorite family activity on a summer night for us.

Next, Bryce decided he wanted to take swimming lessons. With Blair working at the pool during the summer he was able to make "a request" that Bryce got an excellent swim teacher (not that the others aren't good, but she was great with Bryce). Bryce loved it for the most part. But he just had one problem...he didn't like getting his face wet. :) He said that his favorite part of swimming lessons was the last day when they got to go down the slide. :)

Our city celebration is during the summer and this last year we went to the car show, the parade, and Blair and I got to go to the rodeo.

We saw a lot of neat cars at the car show including the Delorian like in Back to the Future and even Mater. But Blair was really excited when he saw his "dream car". A black 2010 Chevy Camero...exactly what he wants.

After looking at the cars, we took the kids to the carnival. It was Family Night so every ride was only one ticket. We gave each kid 10 tickets and they were able to ride 3 times as many rides as they would have on a normal night. It was great! And the kids LOVED it!

We could tell when Emily refused to get off one of the rides and it took both grandma and daddy to get her to get off. :)

Blair and I were given the opportunity to go to the rodeo, thanks to some relatives who ended up having two extra tickets and offered them to us. It had been quite a few years since Blair had been to one and I had never been to one before. (Yes, being raised here where there are rodeos all through the summer somewhere close by, I never went to one.) It was quite the experience and can definitely keep you "on the edge of your seat". Although it was cool to watch the bull riders and the other competitions, my most favorite was watching the Mutton Bustin'. Those are some pretty tough kids and although I would never let my kids do it, I quite enjoyed watching these little kids with their own techniques and plans on how they were going to hold on for the ride of their lives. (My favorite was the kid that rode backwards and ended up winning.)

To end the few days of celebration, we went to the parade and then later had family over for smores and fireworks. The kids always enjoy the parade and this time were able to get a little bit of candy.

It was fun to have our families over to make smores and do fireworks later that night.

This is the husband of one of our cousins. He is from Poland and he had never heard of smores and was quite curious and confused when we mentioned we would be making smores. He kept calling them "snorts". It was hilarious! When he got here and saw what they were and tried one, he loved them!

This is kind of "old news", but remember earlier in this post I had mentioned that we had gotten our extra driveway done a couple years ago? Well, with it being empty for a year, we got something to use up the empty space on the driveway...we became the proud owners of a boat. :)

For years Blair has been looking on KSL at boats hoping to find a great deal on one. Well, this time he did. It's an older boat, but is in really good shape for being as old as it is.

When we brought it home Emily immediately started calling it her boat (she said it's because it is red like her bedroom and she likes the color red). So, that's just kind of stuck and everyone calls it Emily's Red Boat. :)

As you can see, it's been a lot of fun to have and to be able to just go out on the lake/fishing whenever we want.

Now since we had the boat, we needed to get a vehicle to pull it with. (Yeah, we like to do things backwards. ;) ) We had already been looking around for a bigger SUV than the Jeep for at least a year prior to this purchase, but just didn't quite take the plunge to get one thinking that we would wait until the Jeep crapped out on us (which it didn't...it kept going and going and going :) )...so with the purchase of the boat this kind of hurried up the "need" a little. Blair was able to get a great deal (which I will admit, I am now realizing) on a Tahoe with low miles.

It has been SO nice to have, not only for the boat, but also to be able to fit and haul things in the back without having to worry about borrowing someone else's vehicle to do so. It has also been nice to be able to take a couple more people with us instead of having had to caravan places. Then after finding out that we were going to have a new addition to our family and thus having to add another car seat, it was an added bonus to have the extra room we would need and made the purchase even more worth it.

Well, now after this long post and probably being bored out of your mind, I will stop rambling for today and continue to catch up another day (hopefully sooner than later! ;) ).