THE STAPLETON FAMILY

Truly his father's child

A house full of toys and Brad asks to help me clean out the fridge. Besides the fact that he looks like a miniature Dan, there's no question who his daddy is.

Dan took the boys to the museum up at Hill Air Force Base on Thursday. Dan's grandpa used to take him to show the plane he flew on during WWII, so Dan has happy memories, plus, our boys loved anything with an engine. I stayed home and painted.

Seth, as always, with his hood on.

Awesome new video by Ok Go. They just keep surprising me with their creativity!

Family Date Night

I couldn't find a babysitter, probably because I wait until the last minute and hate being turned down, so I'm not persistent, so we went on our date as a family. The boys were so good that I'm glad we took them. We went to a posh pizzeria in Orem and then a bakery.

Brad insisted that he had his sunglasses on correctly.

Seth ate four pieces of pizza. It is going to be very expensive to keep these boys fed when they get a little older. Brad mainly just drank water, but he liked the pita bread they brought out in the beginning.

Februrary

For about half the month I've been sick, but we did do some fun things this month. Dan's coworker has a cabin at Strawberry Reservoir, so we went up for the day with our cousins and Grandpa and had rides in the snowmobile.

Joyschool is still going strong and the boys love it. I was in charge of the Valentine's Day party. Frosting cupcakes may not have been my best thought out idea, but the kids liked it.

Brad was having a bad day and didn't want a headband, so here is Seth with his girlfriends.

Brad and Seth are really into fixing things. We went out and pretended to fix the tires on our car with their toy screwdrivers. Most days that Dan has the boys he's been taking them to "Papa's fix it shop" and they pull up chairs to the window and watch the technicians work on cars.

Weekend in Bryce Canyon

Dan and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary this weekend. A big thank you to both sets of grandparents and aunt Robby for taking the boys so that we could take a trip together.

And what a trip it was- we went to Mars. Unfortunately we had fog Saturday and Sunday and couldn't see any of the majestic vistas which Bryce is famous for. But, if the planet Mars gains more of an atmosphere and warms up, then Dan and I have a pretty good idea what to expect.

This is for you Bob, an attempt at fine art photography.

Dan, trying to make his way through a snow filled tunnel.

Bryce is beautiful in the winter, but there is only one restaurant open in the entire area and it is awful!!!! Do not eat at Ruby's Inn if you can help it. We were so disgusted after the first night that we bought TV dinners at the little grocery store and ate in our car. There was a German couple watching us cook them and I'm pretty sure they thought we were crazy. And yes, those are new glasses- I was disappointed when no one at church noticed. :)

This is the bed and breakfast: Stone Canyon Inn; it was great.

http://www.stonecanyoninn.com/

When we got there on Friday we had picture perfect weather. Looks like a postcard. We had a great time snow shoeing and even went on a guided ranger tour with people from all over the country and world.

January

January looks more exciting in pictures. We've had very little going on since the festivities of Christmas.

I took the boys sledding last week and it was huge success. I tried to repeat the moment yesterday and failed, ice and little kids don't mix well.

Sometimes Seth's fierce independence comes in handy. He wanted to be like the big kids he saw sledding so he carried up his own sled.

It's a little hard to tell in this picture, but he went clear to the bottom, almost to the dugout.

We tried some freestyle sledding as well.

After church the boys decided to make a mountain with the couch pillows. They enjoyed it so much they brought anything they could from their bedroom to add to the pile.