Our Summer Vacay-The Rest of Our Trip

Caden face-planted it the second day we were there. Poor guy looked all beat up.
We played outside a lot. It is SO green there!

We ate out quite a bit, especially at Cafe Rio :)

We went horseback riding at Doug and Ilean's house. The kids had so much fun.

Caden loved riding the horse with someone. I made him ride alone the second time and he cried for a half hour.

TyTy LOVES horses. He was nervous at first, but once he got on, he had so much fun!

I had to bribe Kenzie with a shopping trip to Aero to get her on the horse. She is not fond of them.

Kenzie and Miss Tammi

Grandma Tiede consoling Caden after I made him ride the horse alone.

Bubba and Tyler (with Angie and Sully in the background)

My cute Cierra :)

We had a Sullivan Family get together and the kids had lots of fun playing together. KD and her kids and Chuck and Carter were in town at the same time as us, plus Dave and Heather were there.

Carter, Caden, Drew, Isaac

Caden, Carter, Tyler

TyTy's grumpy face

Tyler loves babies and couldn't get enough of baby Colt

Going to town on that ice cream cone

Trying on Bubba's new hat :)

We spent a few days at my Grandparent's house and had so much fun. My Grandma and I are so much alike, so we were very relaxed and had a great time.

Grandpa and Cierra playing in the rain. We hadn't seen rain for so long!

Grandpa, Tyler, Kenz, Cierra, Grandma Carol, and Caden.

My Grandparent's and me :)

We spent lots of time with Grandma Linda, Megan and Tanner. Caden and Tanner are besties (most of the time anyway)

Caden, Tyler, Tanner

We took trax downtown one day and stopped and ate at Pier 49 Pizza for lunch.

My Ty baby and me

Caden enjoying his pizza

Waiting for the train to head to Temple Square

At the Visitors Center. Tyler and Caden both love trains, so they had fun looking around in there.

The Christus. My favorite part of downtown. Caden was completely freaked out going up the ramp to see it. He thought we were really going up to heaven......lol

On the ride home. Tyler's two loves are trains and horses, so he had a great trip.

He fell asleep just before we got back to Sandy. Cutest baby ever.

I spent one morning rescuing 12 baby quail from a window well at the Sullivan's house. They were teeny tiny (like the size of a quarter) and it took me hours to get them all out.

This one hung around for a while after I got him out.

Angi developed pre-eclampsia while we were there, so they delivered Braden early. Boo on pre-eclampsia, but yay that we got to meet him! He is so super cute! We can't wait to see him again in October.

Caden adores babies and was very upset when we had to leave.

Kenzie playing in the rain.

At Cafe Rio again. It is way too loud in there for Caden. If we forget his headphones, we don't get to go in.

Cierra and I saw these cute bunnies in Salt Lake one morning right outside a building where she was having a test done.

Getting prepped for the MEG scan. It took a full hour to get her ready. We still don't have the results yet. I called again today, but they are still not ready.

Cierra getting her ears pierced. She has had them done twice before, so hopefully they work out this time.

My mama and me

My mom with all the kids.

So that is a short summary of the rest of our trip. We had a great time in Utah, but I never want to be away from home for six weeks again. The medical stuff made the trip stressful, but we tried to do lots of fun stuff inbetween. Tyler's hand is looking great. We saw the surgeon and ordered three more gloves. He has to wear them for another six months or so. Once we hit the one year mark from the accident, they will be able to give us a better idea about his need for surgery in the future. Caden saw the neurologist because of his chronic headaches and they diagnosed him with viral encephalitis and said that it would take 6-8 months to go away completely.

This was on the drive home. Caden spotted the letter I out the window, so we had to take a picture of it. Since he has been learning the alphabet, he loves to find letters everywhere we go.

We are so glad to be home and are enjoying a huge rainstorm tonight (the first one here since September.)

Caden's 5th Birthday

While we were in Utah, Caden turned 5! I can't believe that my first baby boy is 5 years old and starting kindergarten in a few short weeks. The years have seriously flown by. For a long time I felt like we had been cheated and that we missed out on raising the "real" Caden because of his difficulties with speech and autism, but I look back now and realize that we didn't miss a single thing. If anything, Caden's first 5 years have been more amazing than most kids. All of his firsts were incredible. We weren't sure if he would ever talk after he lost his speech, so when he did start talking again, it was the most amazing sound in the world. We are so blessed to have this sweet little, blonde-haired boy in our family. We are so glad that he chose us for his parents :)

We started our day with donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast and then headed to Chuck E Cheese for a few hours
My four amazing spawns :)

Meeting Chuck E Cheese. He is convinced that Chucky was biting his head in this picture.

We had a small family party later that day and Caden had so much fun opening all of his presents.

Love that smile :)

Cake time! We had to do the candles twice because Tanner helped him the first time. That did not sit well with Caden, even though he did the same thing to Tanner two weeks before that.

Happy Birthday Brockers! We love you!