Welcome to Sacrament Meeting

Jace was really cute this Sunday at church. He and I attended the Spanish branch. After sacrament meeting, I was holding one of Jace's hands and was walking out of the Chapel. People kept stopping and shaking his hand. They were laughing and telling me stuff in Spanish. So I started to watch Jace. Everyone we walked by, Jace would stick out his hand in an effort to shake everyone's hand. It was so funny! He was so cute.

Avary Frann Andersen v2.0

Well it is official. Amber and I have started the red tape necessary to change the name of the baby. We originally had spelled her name as "Avery".  However, as people would ask us how it was spelled, I would always respond, "it's spelled just like the mailing labels." Amber did not like this type of response and so she started to reconsider the spelling of our baby. During the baby blessing weekend, she started asking for some spelling support from all of the women folk that were down here for the weekend. I was out voted and our darling little Avary is no longer named after those famous mailing labels. Won't Amber be surprised when I begin to tell people that Jace is spelled just like the CPU processors on Macintosh computers. :-)

Jace helping Aliece

This is what happens when Jace helps Aliece clean her room.

Harry Potter fun!

I kicked off work early today and took the older kids to see the latest Harry Potter movie (#6).

We had a great time together. Aliece and Alayna aren't familiar with the books, but felt left out - so they tagged along for the fun.

TV Divinity

Aylee was watching the kids tonight while Amber and I went on our date. While we were gone, they were all watching a movie when the sound from the TV quit working.

Aylee called me several times for tech support, but we couldn't get the sound to work.

I told her that they would just have to go in the back yard to play.

A few minutes later I got a call from aylee again saying, "it is amazing! Alayna just knelt down and said a prayer and the tv is now working!"

I guess the Lord even hears prayers for televisions.

Sent via my blackberry

Planning a baby blessing

I know this is short notice, but due to some events bringing several of the Reed clan to Provo in a couple of weeks, we have decided to help save them a trip by doing a mid-month change to Avery's baby blessing.

We are hoping to do the blessing in our ward on July 19th. Our sacrament meeting is held at 11AM.

We understand that this is short notice and will not be offended if you are unable to attend. Hopefully many of you can work with this change.

We look forward to seeing family again!

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Happy birthday John Jr

We have been busy in birthday activities all day long as Johnathan celebrates his 9th birthday.

Thanks to everyone who wished him well on his exciting day!

Cozy Sisters

Ice cream cone pit stop

After colonial days we bought some fireworks and had ice cream cones to kill the heat.

Our family at Colonial Days

Amber and her 200 year old birthday pal

Amber shares the same birthday as Abraham Lincoln. This was Lincoln's 200th birthday this year.

We were lucky enough to find Pres Lincoln at colonial days. We had to get this shot of the two of them together.

Aliece learning how to card wool

Aliece learned how to card wool - that puts all the strands on one direction to make yarn.

We're having a great time at Colonial days learning abt that period.

MRE Campout

After we got home from the park yesterday, Amber and I had planned a surprise evening for the kids of camping out in the back yard.

One of the purposes for the little back yard campout was to try out some of the food in our 72 hour kits to see if we had planned the right proportions, could handle the food, and to rotate some of the items. We got out our 72 hour kit backpacks and cooked some of the MRE's for dinner. They were actually really pretty good!



Everyone downed all of the MRE contents and no one complained about the tast. The little MRE warmers that we had were neat. You just add water to the heater pad and it warms up the food so it is nice and hot.





Aliece helped me break up the sticks for our little campfire. I cheated and doused the wood with gasoline and nearly burned every hair on my arm off when I reached into the firepit to light the kindling.

Aylee had carved out some roasting sticks from branches lying around in the yard. We gathered around the small fire and roasted our marshmallows for some smores.



Around 9:00PM We had the kids make their beds on the trampoline. I set up our two-screen portable DVD player that we use in the van and let them watch "Cars" all night. I popped them some popcorn to go with it. They had a ball camping out on the trampoline.

So where was Jace during all of the campout festivities?



Jace was worn out from our busy day's activities. He broken down while we were cooking our MRE's and so he was fed some leftover pizza and eagerly went to bed.

While the kids were sleeping outside, I moved the couch in the family room over to the window and left the window open. I went to sleep under the pretense of helping the kids if they needed it during the night. However, I was woken up by Amber about 1:30 telling me that there was a lot of lightning and a big storm coming in fast. Jace had woken up and she then saw the approaching storm. I ran outside and woke up the kids. We quickly cleared the trampoline and all of their items and sent them to their beds. Thank heavens for Amber, as soon as we got the kids in the house, a huge downpour rained down on us. It was a terrific rain and electrical storm. The sky was ablaze with some incredible lightning displays.

Hanging Out in the Canyon

After Jake and I got home from riding, Amber started me cooking hotdogs for the kids for lunch. Just after they were cooked, however, she thought it might be fun to run up into Provo Canyon at one of the parks and have our hotdogs there.

We bundled the hotdogs in tinfoil and loaded everyone in the suburban and headed up into the canyon.



During our lunch, Aylee and Johnathan started having contests to see how many cheese puffs they could stick in their mouths. Obviously John won.



I tried to take a nap, but Jace found me after about ten minutes and pounced on me. I was not allowed to take a nap, obviously. This picture was my view of him standing above me with the big canyon walls in the background.

These last pictures below are of the older kids playing on the climbing walls in the park.







We ended up staying at the park until about 5:00pm. It was as lot of fun.

Holiday Ride around Utah Lake

Having lived in Utah County now for 15 years, I am embarrassed to confess that I have never been to the west side of Utah Lake.  Today, Jake and I donned our helmets and hopped on our motorcycles for a morning ride around the lake.

We had a great time getting to know various parts of the valley.  We saw some great land formations and even had some small antelope cross the road right in front of our bikes. 

We took a chance to walk right out to the lake on the west side and enjoy the beauty of the lake from that vantage point.  The lake is sure a lot prettier and prominent from the other side. 

After quick stop at a Lehi Arctic Circle for lunch, Jake and I took backroads home.  The entire trip took nearly four hours and was exactly 100 miles.