Danny's Birthday

A couple of weeks ago on the 17 of August, Danny turned 5. I can hardly believe it. His birthday was more of a birth-week. Ben's mom, Ramona, came into town the week before his birthday so we did some celebrating while she was here. It was sure fun to have her. We decided to fore go the birthday party and just have a family celebration this year. So Danny decided to go to Monkey Bizness- a local place that has a ton of blow-up bouncy castles and slides while Ramona was here. Ben was able to get off work early and join us. They all LOVED it. What a fun place.

Danny was also so excited because he got to open his present from Grandma Mona and Papa Ross early.

She got him a Wall-E eating set, meaning a plate, silverware, glass, and water bottle along with a Wall-E magnet play set. He LOVES all things Wall-E and so was SOOOO excited.

Oh his actual birthday we decorated the house with lots of Wall-E pictures. I also brought in cupcakes to school to celebrate.

It was fun seeing all the kids in his class sing to him while he wore his birthday hat.

He had to have a Wall-E cake. Seeing as I'm not talented enough to make an actual Wall-E shaped cake, I got this idea from a friend, Natalie, and found these cake/cupcake toppers. They worked and Danny was so excited. She also gave us some Wall-E cupcake wrappers that made his school cupcakes even more special. Thanks Natalie!

His Grandpa and Grandma Fellows know of his intense love for Wall-E and Handy Manny and so gave him 3 shirts. He LOVES them and wears them every week.

Danny got lots of legos and crafts this year from us and my parents. Unfortunately the sticker maker in the picture broke so we exchanged it for more legos. He is an official lego boy now. Happy Birthday my sweet boy. He is such a sensitive and tender little boy. We sure love him!

Stay-cation Part 2

We were also able to go to the zoo in Colorado Springs. It's called the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. My brother and his family have an annual membership so they got us some gift passes and we got in for free when we went with them. I REALLY liked this zoo. The only downside of the zoo is that it's all on a mountain and everything seems to be not only uphill but steeply uphill. The exhibits are awesome and there are little animals held or watched by zoo employees for the kids to pet including tortoises and a baby wallaby.

In the Australia section they have all these wallabies just laying and jumping around right off the path. They also have this area where you go and there are little parakeets flying around everywhere. You can pay to feed them too so Ben was able to get a friendly one to come a bit closer to the boys.

There is also this world famous area where you can pay to feed the giraffes. The exhibit is just so cool as you are located right next to their heads. So when you feed them they just lean over and use their incredibly long tongues to get the little giraffe biscuits from you. Ben and Caleb took a taste of the biscuits and thought they were quite tasty. Gross! =)

Here's Caleb feeding one. They were just so close. I got to pet them too.

Danny in action.

This giraffe just loved Caleb and kept wrapping his whole tongue around Caleb's hand and arm when he fed him crackers. Caleb didn't seem to mind. I was a little grossed out by all the giraffe slobber and their gigantic bluish-grey tongues but it was still a pretty sweet experience.

Check out that tongue!

I like this picture cause it looks like he's about to eat Danny's hand. Yum!

Our mini Stay-Cation- Part 1

A few weeks ago Ben had a week off of work so we decided to have some fun around here. It's lucky we didn't go anywhere because Ben ended up having to work for a lot of his vacation so it ended up only being 2-3 days off. We ended up going to this amazing place called Butterfly World which has all these live butterflies just flying around in this enclosed place. It's gorgeous! They also have LOTS of bugs and some sea animals.

We got Caleb to hold their tarantula, Rosie. We were amazed at how well he did. Ben, Danny and I didn't want to hold him so we decided to make Caleb do it. We're so mean! He didn't seem to mind though.

In with the butterflies. The boys just loved walking around following all the butterflies. And so did we. =)

I like this mini video because you can hear Caleb's yell at the end. He sure loves animals and gets SO excited.

A couple butterflies landed on the boys' heads. In this video at the end you can see that one landed on Caleb. We ended the video a little too soon because afterwards Caleb's hands flew to his head and he was so surprised and happy about it.

The Beginning- Kindergarten!!!

We have year round school here so Danny started kindergarten last week. He loves it!

Here he is lining up for school. I always heard how hard it was to send your child to kindergarten, but it actually wasn't too hard. It wasn't too hard of a transition since he had such a wonderful and more formal preschool experience where he went 4 days a week at an elementary school. Now he just goes 5 days a week for an extra half hour each day- 3 hours each day. It also didn't hurt that he only finished preschool 4 weeks ago. So he only had a 3 week summer. I have been kinda nervous since he's not even 5 yet, and he's so small, but so far it's been going okay. There are 3 other little kids that we know from church that are in his class so that definitely helps. None of us moms can get our kids to tell us what they did at school so we all compare and share what little info we have gotten out of them. All in all it's going great!

The End

Wow that title sounded so ominous. This post is actually just about the end of Danny's preschool.

Here is Danny with his best friend, Rand at their preschool end of year luau/performance.

During the last week of preschool we went on a fieldtrip to a ranch. One of the little boys in Danny's class lives on a humongous ranch and they were nice enough to let all the preschool students come and see.

Here is Danny and some of his buddies from preschool. The boy in the middle is the one who lives on the ranch.

Danny and his favorite teacher, Ms. Tonya. There's a funny little story about Ms Tonya's daughter. She is probably about 14 years old and would occasionally help in Danny's class at the end of the year. Danny kept on talking about her and I thought it was weird that he was talking so much about this girl that he had only met a couple of times. So I asked him why he liked her and he said "Cause her face is pretty." So my sweet little boy has had his first crush.

Caleb loved all the animals and tried to go join the cows.

Danny and his best buddy Rand climbing on old school farm equipment.

Ms. Heidi- Danny's speech therapist. She was wonderful! We will sure miss her but luckily I am excited for Danny to work with his new speech therapist in kindergarten. Oddly enough she is from my home ward 9the ward I grew up in), and I was good friends with her younger sister. She is so sweet and will be great with Danny.

Ms Tonya (main teacher) and Ms. Anh(aide) (Unfortunately Ms Rosie, the other aide, had a family emergency and couldn't be there the last day of school.)

Ms. Dionne- one of the specialists who worked with him.

Danny had one more specialist, Ms. Heidi, that worked with him as well. That's right, he had 6 teachers. They were all so wonderful. He made so much progress and I feel truly blessed that he was able to go to such a wonderful preschool. This amazing preschool has sure seemed to help the transition to kindergarten (for the both of us).

Utah Trip

So I finally get around to posting about our trip to Utah. Beware of picture overload.

The first full day we were there we went to John's (Ben's brother) graduation from the U. It was great to see everyone and celebrate all that he has accomplished. We then went out to lunch with the whole crew and had more time to visit.

Luckily the graduation was more of a laid back deal and so it was okay that Caleb was crazy. He just played by running around and climbing up and down the stairs. There were a few other crazy kids too so I wasn't too stressed.

Danny had to pose with his most favorite thing in the whole world, his Wall-E. He has never been one to be attached to stuffed animals, but ever since he got this for Easter, he always needs to have it. He sleeps with it, and it basically comforts him whenever he's sick, tired or scared. Pretty cute.

This was the first time we got to meet John and Kristin's baby- Evelynne. She is adorable and even though it doesn't look it- Caleb and Danny really loved seeing her.

We spent a couple of days on Ben's mom and step-dad's ranch in Coalville, UT. The boys absolutely love it up there.

Ben and Danny got to play with their newest toy. Danny loved it.

Caleb didn't.

Caleb squealed for like 2 straight hours as we saw all the cows, horses and some deer.

They of course loved playing with Grandma Mona too.

We made a trip to Temple Square with my family. My parents were in town that weekend so they could attend my uncle's funeral. We got to see the truly amazing flowers and met my dear grandpa there. It brought back a lot of sweet memories of our wedding day. Our wedding day was on April 29th 6 years ago and so the types of flowers were pretty similar. Our wedding day was a lot cooler than this day was though.

All of the Salisbury and Fellows cousins - notice they're all boys. We've kinda give up on having any girls.

Danny never seems to be looking quite at the camera. He always says "cheese" but never stops to look directly at the camera.

My amazing dad pre-broken shoulders.

Our attempt at a family picture. I had to get it at this spot because one of my favorite pictures from our wedding day is taken in front of this fountain. Don't you love that Danny's winking?! JK it was just really bright.

Aren't the flowers amazing?!

I got to have a fun mini reunion with a couple of my college roommates. We met at Cafe Rio with the kids and hubbies and then went to one of their houses for a girl chat. Those girls are so amazing. I feel so lucky and blessed to have such wonderful, life long friends. It was SO good talking to them. I absolutely adore them.

I was so glad that I got to meet Jen's hubby (2nd from left). I was supposed to fly out for their wedding last August but then I found out I had to have gallbladder surgery. Poor excuse- I know.

Danny had a blast playing with his cousins. Here he is with Christian.

The last couple of days that we were in Utah, I was alone with the boys. Ben had to fly to Tacoma for a work trip and I decided to stay and have fun with my sister rather than hurry and drive home and have Ben fly out that night and unpack and adjust back to real life on my own. It was a good idea in theory. The problem is that we all got sick.

This is the first day of the sickness. Caleb was the only one sick. We went to the Hogle Zoo and Caleb was so good. He was so mellow. Poor kid was sick as a dog. After a long couple of nights, and a trip to the doctor we determined that he had 2 ear infections (again) along with a fever.

Unfortunately most of the animals at the zoo seemed to be either hiding from us or asleep so it wasn't a very eventful trip. It was still fun though- as seen by the picture above. =)

Poor, sick Caleb. The next couple of days I got sick and so did Danny. Fun times. It was still really great spending the time with my sister. I'm not so sure she would agree as my kids weren't exactly easy to be around. We did get some fun girl time and sisterly bonding time in since my brother in-law was incredible and offered to watch all the kids. He's very brave.

All in all it was a fun trip. Exhausting but fun.