End of Summer, But the Fun Doesn't Stop

The end of August was a whirlwind of activity, I'm not quite sure if we got a chance to breathe or not. Besides all the craziness Brandon usually does for film, he also wanted to host a neighborhood BBQ on the 31st. He didn't just want to do a lunch or dinner BBQ, oh no, he wanted to do BOTH! A friend from the ward provided the meat for dinner and we did hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch. It turned into an all-day event.  The turn-out was good and we had a lot of fun times.  But the craziness didn't stop there.  Brandon had the crazy idea to set up Rock Band in the back yard so we could play when the sun went down.  We had a surprising number of people stay so they could do that.  I'm glad it turned out, but I'm sorry for all the neighbors who wanted sleep that night...I had fun, but I'm glad it's over (until next time).

On top of all that planning for the BBQ, I was planning with Katherine for our annual HoBo birthday party for the twins (Kayla and Amy) the next day (Sept 1).  We decided to do lasagna and french bread and have family bring side dishes.  I think it turned out really yummy.  I was so full I almost didn't have room for the amazing cake Katherine and I made! It was Katherine's idea to do a flower, and we both thought doing cupcakes would work really well. I think it turned out fantastic!

Katherine bought the dresses so they could match. So cute!

If you want to see more super cute pictures, Katherine put some up on Facebook. I just love these girls so much!

Yesterday was Labor Day, so Brandon and I were both off work.  We decided to go to his grandparent's place and swim in their pool. Once she got used to the water, she had a lot of fun playing in it.  Eventually I'm going to teach her how to swim; then she'll be our little fish.

Grandma and Grandpa had some friends over, and they brought their new puppy.  She was so friendly! She came right up to us and started sniffing and licking us. (The licking may be due to the salt water from the pool).  Kayla instantly fell in love with her.

In addition to this crazy, fun weekend, Brandon got a new calling in our Ward.  He's the new Elder's Quorum President. It's the same calling that gave Brandon's dad his peppery hair.  I think it's a very selfless calling.  Brandon will be fantastic.  I think it's going to give us a lot of opportunities to serve and love our neighbors more.  Brandon's charitable nature has already blessed our family, and I think this will open up the windows of Heaven and bless our lives even more. 

Birthday Girl

As we did last year, we decided to go out to Brandon's parents in Colorado to celebrate Kayla's birthday (I feel a tradition coming on) that was last Tuesday (the 13th). We left Friday afternoon and got there early Saturday morning. Mom was super awesome and let us sleep while she woke up with Kayla every morning. Saturday we went shopping at Macey's where Mom works while Grandpa played with Kayla.  They had so much fun together! She's finally old enough to really have fun with her grandparents. I don't think she missed us at all.

Sunday we had a bunch of family over to have a birthday party for Kayla.  Here's a picture of the decorations Mom set up (she's so awesome!)

And here's the cake she made and I helped decorate. It was so much fun to do!

Kayla kinda freaked out when we started singing "Happy Birthday" to her but calmed down when we started opening the presents   She got a bunch of cute stuff.  Thanks everyone! And thanks to Aubri who took a bunch of super cute pictures for us. We were Skyping with Amanda, so we couldn't use Brandon's phone to take pics.

We got her the tricycle. I think she's going to have a lot of fun with it, whether she's riding it or pushing it down the street!  She got Grandpa to "ride" it while she pushed it. It was really silly and cute to watch.  

We also got her a picnic table that we found at Kid-to-Kid (awesome place to find kid stuff), but we left that at home to play with.  We can have it outside or inside, and there's plenty of room to have her friends sit with her and play (or eat).

We had so much fun, we just didn't want to leave. Kayla loves her grandparents so much! We can't wait to see them again.

After we got home we got invited to go with some friends to Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on Saturday.  We loved it, and Kayla had so much fun watching the animals. Half the park was closed due to construction, but the parts we did see were awesome.  We saw the polar bear swim and play in the water and then get a nice back scratch when he got out.  I think Kayla especially liked the seals. She called them fish, but they were going so fast in the water, I don't blame her!  When she gets a little older (and the park's done with construction) I think we'll go again. We had so much fun!

Summer Fun

There's been so much going on that it's been hard to sit down and write about it, but I'll do my best.

June was a pretty crazy month.  Brandon and I got asked to be leaders for our Stake's Youth Conference.  We got a little "family" that we were in charge of.  I didn't realize how much work we had to do before the actual Youth Conference even started.   Luckily, our Stake is only about an 8 block radius so we didn't have to travel too far to contact our kids.So we organized a little party for our "family" so they could get to know us and us them.  It turned out to be a lot of fun.  After all the meetings, paper organizing, packing lists and permission forms distributed, it was finally  time for us to pack and go to Youth Conference!  (We couldn't take Kayla with us, but luckily my mom was available to watch her while we were gone.)

It started out at the Stake Center with a Carnival of Life activity.  There were a lot of misgivings about how the kids would take it (for those who've done it would know what I'm talking about), but I think they were just fine.  The Stake leaders handled it very well so that the kids got the point of the activity: it was centered around Christ's Atonement and its power to save us. After lunch we got on the buses and headed down to Manti.  We were set up in tents and then went down to the Manti Pagent after dinner.  That was a really cool experience.

The next day we drove up to the church's Heber Valley campsite.  It was up in the mountains, so it was much cooler than down in the valley.  We were put in cabins: Brandon with all the other male leaders in one cabin next to the boys, and I was in the cabin with my girls.  We went on a sunrise hike (luckily we didn't have to be there for the sunrise, otherwise we would've had to wake up at 5am), did some service, and generally had a fun and spiritual experience.

Here's our family:

After Youth Conference we did a little mini-family reunion. These are really awesome kids.

While we were off having fun with older kids, my mom and some friends of ours were having fun with Kayla.  Mom watched her for a couple days until she had to go down to St. George to visit with her dad. So Adam and Ashley played with Kayla for a day.  They went to the aquarium in Sandy.  Kayla loves fish, so she had a lot of fun there. We'll have to take her ourselves sometime.

Right after Youth Conference was the 4th of July.  We hosted a BBQ at our house for my whole family.  My mom and Mike were in town visiting everyone out west, and we wanted to make a centralized location for everyone to come visit her.  (One of her brothers came all the way down from Washington to see her.) So we found out that we can host a party of 50 in our back yard.  We also learned that we get absolutely NO shade at 4pm in July.  Things got a lot cooler by 6, though, so it wasn't too bad (I hope!) for everyone.  The food was good; the company was fabulous, and I know my mom had a lot of fun.  

Before everyone left, Brandon got some fireworks and set them off on our driveway.  We learned that Kayla does not like fireworks.  She huddled in my arms the whole time.  And these were the fountain fireworks! Not even the really loud ones! My poor little girl. The kinda funny thing is that Brandon recorded it on his iPhone, and Kayla keeps watching it and says "fireworks!" so I think she'll get over the loud noise and enjoy them when she's older.  Our neighborhood also shot off a lot of fireworks that night, so we got to see them all over the place.  It was a good night.

A couple weeks later, Brandon and I were able to go on a date! Yay! A wonderful family in our neighborhood loves to watch Kayla, so they took her for an evening while we went up with another couple to Salt Lake City to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform at the Conference Center. It was the Pioneer Day Celebration, and they had Lindsey Sterling and Nathan Pacheco perform with them.  It was really awesome.  Nathan Pacheco has a beautiful voice, join that with MOTAB and it was AMAZING.

At the end of July there was a wedding!  Emily Bobo is a Bobo no longer!  So, my family had to get together again to celebrate this awesome day.  My brother, Clark, and his family stayed at our house while my mom flew out here again and stayed at my sister, Jessica's.  The morning of the wedding, we were invited to a wedding breakfast up in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  We dropped off Kayla at Jessica's house where the babysitter was and headed up to Salt Lake City.  The breakfast was awesome and we got to see what kind of man Emily was hitching herself to.  He seems like a really awesome guy; they're going to have so much fun together.  Then we walked around Temple Square until the sealing that afternoon.  It was my first time at that temple, and the little that I saw was beautiful. It was a beautiful ceremony.

Later that night was the reception at the Capital Building.  They set it up in the rotunda.  It's a beautiful building with marble everywhere. We got some nice family pictures from it.

Since most of my family was in town we decided to get together for a BBQ at our house on the weekend.  It was a perfect day for a BBQ: cloudy and cool for July.  Unfortunately before we were able to cook the hamburgers we had a bit of a scare.  Kayla scratched her eye and we had to go to the doctors.  So we left my family at our house to eat food while we went to help Kayla.  They checked her out and found a nice big scratch right on her pupil. They gave us a prescription gel to put in her eye that would numb the pain.  The worst part was holding her down while we did it.  We then had to go to the doctors the next day to see if it's healing.  We went in and it was completely healed. Eyes heal fast! It hadn't been 24 hours and the scratch was all gone.  I'm so grateful that she healed so fast. It's the worst thing in the world to see your baby in pain, and there isn't much you can do to help but hold her.

Besides that little adventure we had a lot of fun with Clark, Lonnie, and little Makenna.  Kayla loves her cousin. They had so much fun together.  Kayla was asking for her all the time. So cute!  

And that was our fun-filled June and July.  On to August where the fun doesn't end!!!

Our New Home

Over Memorial Weekend we got new siding done on our house. So here are the before and after pictures.

Before:

After:

I think it's a vast improvement to what we had before.  Hopefully we'll have more updates by the end of summer.

We also went to see Clark, Lonnie, and MaKenna at their new apartment. It's so much bigger than their last place, and a park right in their back yard.  I see many fun times at their new place.

Here are the Daddys playing with the girls. It gave the Mommys time to make dinner. So of course they talked about video games.  It's a good thing those girls loved to swing.  We love our boys! :)

I think this is one of my favorite pictures of Clark's family. So cute!

My favorite picture of my cute family!

 We have MaKenna...

 and Kayla...

watching their favorite videos.

And that was our vacation.  We loved it.  We need more like it.

Home Update and Other Cuteness

We've made a lot of changes to the outside of our house since the weather's been so nice, so I'd like to show some pics of our progress.

Tree Before:

Tree After:

It's kind of hard to see, but that's a peach tree.  We actually got two of them, but this is where the old tree was.  I'm super excited to have fresh peaches in a few years.

Before:

After:

I still can't believe the difference between those two pictures.  Brandon and everyone that helped him were amazing!!!  Thanks!  It turned out great.

Brandon's been really busy making our backyard look amazing! Hopefully we'll get everything set up nice for a big BBQ we're planning on having this summer. Brandon's wanting to start a garden in the back yard, and he's super excited about it.  It'll be fun eating food of our own making. 

In other news, Kayla's been really fun coming up with games to play.  Lately she's been using her old car seat as a sort of rocking chair in the house.  I've come to realize that we should probably get her a child-size seat. I think she'd like that.

She's eating olives in this picture. It's become one of her favorite foods. 

Kayla has always loved dancing to the music on this keyboard (for more details, see today's Facebook post). Now that we've put the keyboard up on the stand, she's been doing as the picture illustrates above. So cute!

She just loves her daddy.  I loved her scrunchie face!

She's also been having fun playing in an empty bin we have. She pushes it around, gets in and has us push her around. She hides in it...you get the idea. 

And for the grand finale, I saw this video we took a few weeks ago and thought it fitting for this post. Enjoy.  Love y'all!

Puppy Love and Easter Fun

We went to see Brandon's grandparents last weekend and got to visit with his cousin and new fiance. We're super excited to see her part of our family.  And while we were there some friends brought over their 6 month old puppy named Toby.  He's the cutest ball of white fluff we've ever seen, and Kayla absolutely adored him.  In my mind she viewed him as a moving stuffed animal, and so she treated him like one.  The best way to illustrate this is with a video.

This week has been pretty crazy but lots of fun.  It was Brandon's birthday on Tuesday. We had some friends offer to babysit Kayla so we could go out which was really nice of them.  So we went to PF Changs (yum) and I gave Brandon a fedora to go with his tux he'll be wearing next Friday. Then we came back to have bread pudding and play games with our friends.  It was nice and relaxing.

Brandon's grandma went into the hospital for a knee replacement and Brandon's mom and uncle made a surprise visit to see her and help out during the week.  That meant that we made every opportunity to go up and see them.  Grandma's surgery went pretty well and will be in recovery for the next 8 weeks.  Kayla and I went up Thursday and Friday to the hospital and had as much fun as you can at a hospital, but it was good to see all the family.

Saturday Mom and Uncle Damon came down to visit us and Brandon's friend Adam Collet with his wife, Ashley, came down, too and had a BBQ.  And of course with most gatherings at our house, it ends with Rock Band.

And today is Easter.  We didn't do too much to celebrate but it's been a good Easter.  The choir sang a couple songs in Sacrament meeting and the Primary Presidency each spoke and then gave a musical number.  It was a lot of fun. I then gave the sharing time lesson and the kids were really good as they listened to the Easter story.  I was grateful for that.  It's a good and important story.

My mom gave Kayla a dress at Christmas and we thought it would be a good dress for Easter, and I found a cute hat to put her in.  Surprisingly, she liked the hat and kept in on most of the day.  Let me illustrate.

We gave her a small Easter egg hunt in the afternoon, and I think she had a lot of fun hunting for them.  Hopefully we'll be able to do more of that next year. I'm grateful for this holiday we have to remember all that Christ did for us.  I'm also grateful that the weather in Utah fit the season for once. 

Happy Easter!

March Madness

I could blame a lot of things for why I haven't posted a blog yet this year: my mom's wedding, work moving locations, Kayla, Brandon's busy movie making, work changing cell phone carriers which I was in charge of, Kayla, a new calling in the Ward, reading the Wheel of Time, Kayla...etc. All those things happened, but they're really just excuses for my laziness.  So I feel like I need to apologize for my neglect.  I love posting pictures of Kayla and giving everyone updates on the Ho family life. So, I will try to be better. Here we go...

At the beginning of March, it rained one weekend. That one event created what I am going to call Spring Fever and it spread to the Ho household.  I believed that since it rained, winter was over.  It's time for change and warmth.  So, the logical people we are, Brandon and I started working on the front and back yards. I started weeding my tulip garden in the front.  It took me three days during Kayla's nap time to get my one section done.  Brandon started working on the garden/patio in the back. It's a lot more work than both of us anticipated.  Brandon's gotten a lot of help pulling out a tree stump and redoing the patio/fire-pit area.  It's morphed into a Ward service project/BBQ scheduled for this Saturday unbeknownst to us until it was announced in Elder's quorum. I thought that was pretty funny, and we love having a party.  The more the merrier. Hopefully when it's all done, I'll show before and after pics.  I think it's going to turn out well.

Kayla's been growing and learning so much.  She hit the 18 month mark in February and she was looking really good and on track developmentally when we had the doctor checkup.  She's become Miss Independent. She'll spend 15 minutes trying to get her shoes and socks on herself because she won't let us touch them.  It's really cute except when we're trying to go somewhere and need to leave soon... :)  

She also believes that the Kindle Fire is HERS. We've got a few games on there she likes to play, and she's getting really good at them.  Her favorite game is My Little Pony. She also likes to play Angry Birds but shoots the birds the wrong way.  It's pretty funny to watch.  

Kayla's also getting her ABCs down really well.  She can repeat most of the letters back to us, and she's recognizing letters in the books she "reads" and other various places you see letters.  I've been really impressed with how quickly she's learning.  It's been a really fun experience watching her grow.

Of the three of us, I think Brandon's been the busiest.  Besides working at the LDS Motion Picture studio, he's got several independent projects going.  I'll list a few: 

• Working with his cousin, Steve James, on some music videos for children
• Finishing the post-production on his short film, Steamed Dumplings 
• Starting up a company called Cinema Book Trailer with a couple other guys. As part of an effort to get their names out there, he's doing a book trailer for Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. Here's a link to a book trailer one of the other guys did: The Maze Runner
• Finishing the post-production on his feature film, Missed Connections.  We'll go to the Premier showing on April 5th, so everything's gotta be done by then.

That's not everything but just the major ones, I think.  He's doing some script work on other projects he has in mind.  He's just crazy busy.  But what I think the most amazing thing about all this is that  he gets of work early so I can go to my meetings for my Ward calling, he's a Webelos leader for the Cub Scouts, and he takes the time to watch Kayla while I work in the mornings.  I know Kayla appreciates the time he spends with her.  She's a Daddy's Girl and I love that. I'm a Daddy's Girl, too.  Daddies are so very important to their little girls; it's a special relationship that everyone should have in their lives.

Now for what everyone's been waiting for: the pictures.  I took this one yesterday while Kayla and I were playing in the back yard.  It was her idea. Not mine.

 The stump came up to my chest and the fence came to somewhere by my head, so that might give you a reference for how far up she is.  Silly girl.

Here's one where I got her to look at me and smile. I was impressed that I was able to get the shot. I used my phone (which has a weird delay), and the sun was pretty bright.  If that's not adorable, I don't know what is.

More pictures and videos to come, hopefully, soon. :)

Happy Spring.