Hogle Zoo

For Skyler's birthday, Nicole & Megan took all their kids to Hogle Zoo.







It was a lot of fun and the kids really liked looking at all the animals, even the little ones.


The kids seemed to enjoy posing more with the statues of animals than the real thing...it must be more fun when you can actually climb on their back!




Of course Payton absolutely loved being there and seeing everything. He thought it was pretty cool when the bears started wrestling when we were watching them.




Emma really liked seeing all of the different animals, she thought it was pretty cool.

Lake Powell

Here is a little slideshow of some of our pictures from our Lake Powell trip with Megan's Family. It was too hard to narrow them down. We had a blast and the kids loved the water, especially Payton. He was in the water pretty much the whole time we were there.

Camping Adventures

This year we had a couple camping trips with our family and some friends (the Baer's).
 For one of them we went up in the Uintah's to Butterfly Lake.
The girls told the boys that there had to be bathrooms, so they took us as far as they could, but still meeting this requirement.

It was a very beautiful place with an amazing view.

We had lots of fun roasting (or burning) marshmallows, making smores and drinking hot chocolate.


It got very cold at night. Megan and the kids stayed bundled up in the tent in the morning until the fire was started.


Payton had a blast in the dirt. He was constantly dirty, it was pretty gross, but he didn't seem to mind. Thank goodness for wipes!

Emma was a good sport and such a cutie. She really liked sitting in the camp chair by herself.

Summer Fun at the Haroldsen Home!

Here are a variety of pictures of some fun things we have done this summer just around our house...we had some indoor fun with Emma in a box and Payton making a fashion statement with his pajama pants, underwear sticking out the top, socks on his hands and a hat on his head. So dang cute!


Our kids share a room and absolutely love it!

Whenever we put them to bed at the same time, we often hear

them playing and giggling for a while before they fall asleep.

It is adorable and so much fun to listen to!




We had some backyard fun in our pool.
 Payton loved to run and jump in it, he even tried it when Emma was in it...as you can see, she was not too fond of the water being splashed in her face.


They also played with their cousins, Mason, Kim & Andrew, in the water with our water pipes that Marcus made. (We got the idea from the Family Fun magazine. If you make them we would recommend using a 1/2 inch pipe and to drill the holes at least 3 inches apart.) They were tons of fun!

We also made many trips to the park and Payton got to take Emma down the slide with him a couple of times. He thought it was pretty neat being the big brother and getting to hold her.

We dusted off our bike trailer and took the kids for a ride around the neighborhood. Emma got to wear Payton's helmet and thought it was pretty cool.

Megan has tried to keep the kids entertained while their dad is a work and has done a good job wearing them out. Emma has been a trooper and is getting much better at sleeping in her carseat.

Payton has had a blast being Daddy's Little Helper (as usual) with any project he can around the house. He would help Marcus carry the 2x4's for the fence and put them up. So cute!

Marcus's Family in Town!

This year we got to spend 3 weeks with Marcus's family! Two of his sisters live out of state and we don't get to see them very often, so we were very happy to have them here. Payton got to play with his cousin Annie, who is only 6 months younger than him.

They kind of had a love-hate relationship going on...they wanted to play with each other, but didn't want to share anything or anyone (Andre). Despite all this they did have many cute moments.



We also went down to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point and had lots of fun there!

The little (and big) kids loved the hands on stuff. Emma made a super cute fashion statement with one of the hats.

It was pretty cool and we almost got eaten by a shark but managed to escape by offering it Payton instead. :)




This is Marcus with all his siblings (on his mom's side). Roger, Cheri, & Laurissa

4th of July

For the 4th this year we went down to the Stadium of Fire with the kids and Megan's parents.
We had a blast and both of the kids seemed to enjoy it.
We got some ear plugs for the kids, because we knew it would be loud, and it was a good thing!
Shedaisy and the Jonas Brothers (insert high pitched little girl scream here) performed.
It was a lot of fun and the fireworks were awesome (of course!)!

Neither of the kids liked how bright they were, so they wore our sunglasses.

Payton managed to stay awake the whole time, but Emma fell asleep during the grand finale! It was pretty funny.

Payton's Birthday - The Party

For the party portion, as usual Megan went overboard on the planning, but the kids had a lot of fun. We invited all of Payton's cousins to come, so we had kids ranging in ages 0-9 years. When they first got there we had a craft table set up for the

kids to make their own monster. They were quite creative and we had some very cute monsters in the end.

After they were done they could go over to Marcus and get a snow cone (just like Mike and Sulley had in the Himalaya's)! Of course this was a huge hit, the kids and adults were begging for seconds.

Next we played pin the eye on Mike. It was pretty fun to watch the kids blindly try to figure out where it went. Ren got his eye to closest.

Then we brought out The Cake! Payton was very excited when he say it and thought it was pretty cool. After we sang to him he took a chunk out of the corner of it, it was pretty funny. We are discovering that he is not so much into the cake as he is the ice cream, but he did like pulling the fondant off and just eating that.

Last but not least we opened presents. Megan tried to keep Payton from being swarmed by the other kids as he opened each present by letting only the people giving the gift come to him. They all sat in a circle really well.

A couple of the cards Payton got played music when you opened it. He thought it was so cool that he walked around the entire circle and held it each kids ear so they could hear it. It was so dang cute!

Overall Payton had an awesome birthday and he had lots of fun. Thanks to all the family that came and for all the great gifts. We may need to move into a bigger house so we can fit them all, but Payton sure does love them! :)

Payton's Birthday - The Cake

Payton turned three this year! His latest obsession was Monster's Inc., so that is the theme we chose for the party.

For the cake we wanted to make a really cool one with Mike Wazowski on it (because he is Payton's favorite).
After watching the Ace of Cakes show, we figured it would be easiest if we used some sort of fondant to cover it.

So we baked the cakes and frosted them with cream cheese frosting (buttercream didn't sound too appealing to Megan).

Next Marcus made a white marshmallow fondant (with a recipe Megan found online) and we covered it with white, then he continued to make a green so we could make Mike.

We rolled it out and cut out the piece to make his body, arms and legs, then did a little details with just some black frosting.



Overall the cake looked pretty cool, but we learned that working with fondant for the first time is not the easiest thing.