Fall Colors

It is so nice to be staying with Mary's sister and her family instead of a hotel. They have the most beautiful house in the coolest little neighborhood in Scarsdale. After church today (where Obama came up much less than I thought he would) we went for a little walk around the block. This is a picture from that walk. The trees are gorgeous.

NY Pizza

We went into the city yesterday (Saturday). We took a car to a train to the subway to Soho. As soon as we stepped off the subway, it was pouring. We bought son cheap $5 umbrellas and ducked into the first pizza joint we saw. It was pretty good, but not as giant as we expected. The rain let up a bit later and the rest of the day was spent shopping.

Los LeSueur vs. New York

Nicole and I finally got to NY after about 3 years of trying. It was originally supposed to be a graduation trip for me, but I wanted to go to Italy. Once I came to the realization that it wasn't going to happen, Nicole was pregnant with Oliver. Now that Oliver is old enough to ditch at D's & P's for a week, we made it happen. Corwin and Mary are with us cause Mary had some work stuffs to do out here. We are staying at Mary's sister's house in Scarsdale. It's nice. This is a picture of us at Grand Central Station. More iPhone posts will follow.

Halloween Round Two

On Halloween day Sarah and I took the boys to a nursing home to go trick or treating (I know...sad but they were so happy to see the little kids all dressed up). It didn't take very long so we drove around trying to find something Halloweeny going on. Nothing. So we took the boys to the dinosaur museum and let them run around in their costumes there. They loved it! Then it was time to get home and put Ollie down for a nap, we had a big night ahead of us.


Getting ready for trick or treating. I wanted to curl his hair but a hot curling iron was proving to be troublesome with my wiggly boy so we opted for rollers. He actually let me put them in, I was shocked.

Ta da! The finished product. Dusten made a joke months ago that I looked like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With the hair and the glasses I totally agreed. So I figured it would make a great Halloween costume. The only other thing I needed was an Oompa Loompa. I decided to go with the traditional Oompa Loompa costume. Frankly the ones in the Johnny Depp version freak me out. Our costumes were quite labor intensive but I had fun doing it and they came out so good.


I mean look at this kid. I am pretty impressed with myself. I have to give a big shout out to my li'l sis. She made the pants (without a pattern I must add) and they looked amazing!










Lookin' good Nicole.

Dusten opted out for dressing up. He doesn't usually dress up for Halloween but instead dresses up for strange occasions like a Star Wars movie premiere in which he wore a Frosty the Snowman costume. The LeSueur boys are still a mystery to me.

Spooky Sacry!

I love Halloween! I love carving pumpkins and dressing up and passing out candy! Its all so fun. This year we actually had a pumpkin to carve from our very own garden. Hopefully next year we will have more than one. P.S. I am sure you are noticing my awesome new haircut! I wanted bangs for a long time but my sister wouldn't cut them until I had wanted them for at least a month (she knows me too well!) A month came and went and I still wanted them cut so she did it. She did a great job and I really like it. Thanks Auntie Em you are the best!

Cory and Mary let us tag along to their trunk or treat. It was a good trial run for the kids, and more candy for the parents which is what trick or treating is all about. Oliver's costume wasn't quite ready yet so we borrowed this Lion costume from his cousin Miles. So cute!

Hey Ollie? Remember when you had your first piece of candy last year for Halloween? If only this was your second piece.

Here's Dotty and Mary. Dotty was a bunny but we kept joking that her and Oliver looked like "the lion and the lamb". I love those cheeks! (Dotty's and Mary's).

Oliver's cute little friend Dayna made this cupcake for him. My friend Catherine (her mom) told me that they were making cupcakes and her son made a bunch to take to his friends but Dayna only wanted to make this one for Oliver! So cute. She came to the door all by herself (she's two) and delivered it to Oliver. He immediately dove into it. Thanks again Dayna!

Olie and the zoo

Hi friends. Well I am trying to take a stab at this again, if you are nice maybe I won't disappear for six months again. We'll see....Here are a couple of pictures from a trip to Cali last month. It was our last time to fly with Oliver for free. He turns two in a few weeks and then we will have to start paying for his plane tickets. So sad. I am glad that we have traveled as much as we have while he was free. Anyway, while we were there we enjoyed the beautiful sunshine, went to the beach(the beach in October...amazing), bought new Rainbows (the only way to go in footwear) and went to the Santa Ana Zoo. I use the term "zoo" very loosely here. Its mostly monkeys and birds with a llama and a kangaroo. But they also have a petting zoo and Oliver had a great time. He is not snoby when it comes to zoos.


This is him very mad at me after I took the stroller to the car. He insists on pushing it himself and kept running into people. Unfortunately none of his victims were amused by his two year old driving skills. Sorry.


Luckily the monkeys cheered him up right away! He loves the monkeys!

Here I am making him pose for a picture. He can only sit for one second so we have to be fast!

Since U Been Gone

SING IT, KELLY! Well friends, I am up at 3:00AM Hawaii time finishing up a plethora of posts so that I don't have to hear any more complaints about our sad little blog. To be honest, Grant was the only one complaining. So this is all for you, man. I want everyone to know that Nicole kicked me off of the blog about the same time the posting stopped. So I blame her. I retook control and fired her for that and for losing our camera, another contributing factor to the shortage of posts. She also forgot to bring the new camera we bought to Family Camp so I am going to need a little more time to get a few remaining posts up here before we are completely up to speed. I am really sorry if these posts are lame, as I have been doing this non-stop for 3 and 1/2 hours straight plus I have my own blog I need to keep updated. Geez, I cant feel two of my fingers right now so I am going to bed. Hope you enjoy.

Mommy, WOW! I'm a Big Kid Now!

I guess it's time for us to have another baby cause this guy is all grown up. I can't believe he is going to be two in a few months. Here is a little bit of info on Oliver. 

He loves to say, "hi," and, "good bye," to everyone. He'll say "goodbye" to the cashier when you are walking out of the store. His other favorite thing to say in "all done" weather that's with dinner, or his bath or he is sick of being inside the car. 

Oliver's favorite colors are yellow and orange. He will take the yellow and orange items out of any group of things, such as his blocks or his flash cards. His favorite toy varies based on his

attention span at the moment, but he loves his Lego's most 

of the time. 

His favorite dinner is spaghetti, but it is also the messiest. He loves grapes and raisins, but we can only give him those in limited quantities for obvious reasons...it affects his pooper. Oliver only drinks soy milk and I call him a Hippie all the time for that. But he doesn't care.

Oliver loves watching his Baby Einstein DVDs more than anything just about. I have a few of them on my iPhone for emergency situations, such as eating at a restaurant. Oh, Oliver's least favorite thing to do is eat at a restaurant. More than anything, he simply doesn't like being strapped down.

He loves bath time. He really enjoys splashing so much in the bath that we have to wipe down the walls afterwards and put towels on the floor to soak up the water. 

At night when he goes to bed he loves to read a few stories, his favorite of which are Good Night Gorilla and The Going to Bed Book. He has almost completely graduated from his pacifier, he only uses it when he goes to sleep.

I know this is a pretty sappy post, but even though I miss the baby stuff sometimes, I am so glad that he is getting to that age where we will be able to go play frisbee golf at the park or ride bikes or go sky diving. He is a really fun kid to be around. We love him very much.

Happy Late Fourth

We had a nice mellow 4th of July. I was a little bummed that Oliver didn't make it to see the fireworks. But since it didn't get dark until 10:00PM that night, it was probably a good thing he wasn't awake. Nicole and I did stay up and watch the Thanksgiving Pointe Fireworks. It's a great show...not as good as Disneyland, but still great.

Learning to Communicate

Oliver is a fun kid, but he's pretty weird. Not weird like a nerd or anything. He's really quirky and way too picky for a 21 month old. But don't get me wrong, he's super cute. 

He's doing a great job picking up new words and saying them. He does really good with the sign language that our wonderful friend, Dr. Baby Einstein teaches him. But I am always surprised when I get home on the weekends and he has learned a new word that I don't know about. 

One weekend, I came home and Nicole had somewhere to go, so I was watching Oliver during lunch. I opened the fridge to get his usual string cheese and raisins and he says, "Apple!" Then he opens the fruit drawer and pulls out a Washington Red and starts chomping away. I was astonished and proud of his new word. The way he ate it was so funny. He looked very similar to a chimpanzee eating an apple. Anyway, Oliver has had apples before, but we always cut them up before we gave them to him. So I took the apple, cut it into slices and put it on a napkin and gave it back to him. When he saw what I had done to his delicious snack, he screamed and cried and pushed it away. He walked back over to the fridge. I opened it up and he pulled out a new apple and started to eat it. 

Weird, right? A that moment I wished that he was fluent in English so that he could explain to me why it was such a problem that I had cut up his apple. Oh well. I took this picture of him munching his second apple.

Summertime

Winter dragged on and on and on this year here in Utah. We had the usual 2 weeks of Spring at the end of May/beginning of June and then came the heat. Now all Oliver wants to do is go outside and play which is a problem for us because we don't have a fence or window well covers. Sometimes he will spend a few minutes in the morning just staring out the back door. Poor kid.                                                                                                                                                                

When we do make it outside, we make it fun...well fun for Oliver. I will work on the yard and Nicole will wash the cars. Oliver loves getting hosed down. We need to get him a Slip-N-Slide for next summer.

Stupid Lakers

This was us on our way to see Game 1 of the NBA Finals...

We were too sad to film anything on the way home. Stupid Lakers. We got dressed up for a few of the other games, but there wasn't much cheering involved. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

The Last Elder LeSueur

Brady is the last of eight boys in our family to go out and serve a mission for the LDS Church. We were happy and sad to see him leave the beginning of April of this year to go to Cape Town, South Africa. But he didn't leave us without a handful of new stories to tell. For those of you that know Brady, you know that he is a character that if you could get on paper and into a TV series, you would make millions. He almost slept through his farewell talk at church, walked into the chapel 26 seconds before he was supposed to start his talk and somewhere in the midst of it all said over the pulpit something to the extent of "the LeSueur's are the bomb." Those of you that know Brady may be surprised to hear that he gave one of the most flawless and motivating talks about faith and the simplicity of the gospel. It was very inspiring to see him leave, not only because he completes a legacy of missionaries for our family, but also because he did it whilst leaving a huge impression on many others, including myself. When I left on my mission I was crying and blubbering all over myself. Brady went out strong and poised. We all miss him and wish him success.

Easter 2008

Nicole and Oliver came down to visit for a few weeks in March. There were a few events going on (see next few posts) and Grandma was in town. I was already down there for work, so I didn't fly home for a weekend. We had a really good time. On Easter Sunday, we had a little easter egg hunt for Oliver. There was a lot of pointing and clapping for a few minutes and afterwards I got to eat all of his candy, which wasn't a bad deal for me since I didn't have to do any of the setup or the hunting. 

Nicole got Oliver a little toy guitar that he liked a lot until we got back home and he remembered there was a real guitar there that he's not aloud to touch. I haven't seen that little toy guitar since.

Sk8ter Boi

Whilst in California, we were lucky enough to participate in a little gathering of friends from my old Stake. We got together at the old Skating rink where we grew up for a night of family fun. It was really good to see all of my old friends. I never expected to really move away from Orange permanently. One day I was simply gone. It was really good to catch up with them all. 

Nicole and I were very concerned about how to keep Oliver happy at such an event. Bildo and I came up with the great idea to push them around in their strollers whilst we skated behind them. 

However, we quickly realized that although this might seem fun from our perspective, it was ranked by the kids as "a little more fun than a regular stroll and a little less fun than riding in a car seat." As you can see Oliver was thoroughly bored with it. So we threw caution to the wind and let the boys roam free on the floor, trusting that all of the other sk8ters were responsible enough to not run them over.

And that's when the real fun started for Oliver and William who then proceeded to dance all night long. William's signature move was a simple knee bounce, but he surprisingly kept a prefect beat to his bounce. Oliver's moves were much more Mia Michaels inluenced (did I just out myself?). His favorite move was holding his head down and running in a circle always trying to keep his head in the same place.

Oliver's First Taste of Soda

This one is a little late, but the picture sequence is too good to not show.

We were eating some lunch at a Pizza place near our house sometime in February. I got an Apple Beer to drink as we waited for our food. Of course, since Utah food service workers usually are comprised of 14 to 16 year old kids who have no idea how to serve food, we waited for a good 15 to 20 minutes for our food to get out. And of course, Oliver's patience ran out about 3 1/2 minutes into our wait. He kept pulling at my cup and I got sick of it, so I got out my camera phone and let him take a big old sip. The funniest part (which I sadly did not get on camera) was when he kept scratching his tongue to get the fizz off.

...and of course, he went back for a second swig and we repeated the whole experience.

Happy Birthday Nicole!

Since I was busy working in Simi Valley in March, Nicole and Oliver came down to California during Nicole's birthday. Both of them had pretty bad cabin fever after the ridiculously long winter in Utah. Plus, Nicole, the true California girl that she is, needs a certain amount of sun every so often or else she will implode. It was especially nice because Nicole's grandma was there to see Oliver. 

Nicole's dad threw nicole a little birthday party/bar-b-que in the park. Oliver was not that excited about wearing the party favors, but was very happy to taste cake for the second time in his life.

THERE! ALL CAUGHT UP ON OUR BLOGGIN'!

Greetings from the OC (don't call it that)

We are in California right now for a little trip to see family and soak up some sunshine. Its been fun to go to the beach and the pool, although Oliver wishes he was bigger and could swim on his own. He gets very mad when I have to hold him in the pool, he is just a little too fearless for my taste. Why is he not more like me and afraid of everything?


For those of you who know me well know that I am very OCD about having a clean house, clean husband and clean son. Its so hard for me to just plop Oliver's food down on his tray and let him go at it. Well here is evidence why I hardly ever do it. The food goes immediately from the tray into his hair! I am not sure if he is happy or sad in this picture but his potato salad hair is rockin!

Hello Again

Well hello there. After much pleading and begging I am back. Okay I don't think any of you really actually begged but I know you missed me. I can't believe I haven't posted anything in two months. To be honest I was going through a blog funk. I would look at all your blogs and go "Oh look they just went on vacation, oh look she is so crafty, oh look she is such a fun mom," and on and on. Needless to say I was feeling like I didn't have much to offer the blogging world. Also contributing to my funk is the fact that I live in the land where winter never ends! Anyway it was actually above 70 one day this month so I am thinking about coming out of hibernation. I am not making any promises though. Here's a brief over view of what we have been up to the last two months: Dusten went back to work as an electrician. He works out of state so he travels four days out of the week. Its not as bad as it sounds, some days are just longer than others. I celebrated my 28th birthday. 28 feels just like 27, nothing different. Oliver and I have been to California twice and are planning another trip in two weeks. That is one of the good things about Dusten being gone, Oliver and I can come and go as we please. Oliver is 17 months now and has donned the nickname of "The Beast" or "Rascal". He has so much energy and is very independent. He is so much fun and I love watching him experience new things. Here are a few pictures from the petting zoo that we went to the other day. Oliver LOVED the goats! He was so fearless and let them eat out of his hand. I on the other hand stood in the back ground making sure none of the animals made eye contact with me. I am not so much a fan of the animal kingdom.










Oliver wanted to say thanks to Auntie Em for coming with us to the zoo. She is the best aunt a little boy could ask for. I don't know what I will do when she moves away!


This is Oliver's cousin Dot. She had just had a sad run in with the mud and was less then thrilled to be perched atop a pony.


Oliver on the other hand loved the ponies. He is a true Lehi cowboy. I am sort of saddened by that.

P.S. If you hadn't noticed my heavy coat and Oliver's red face it was freezing this day. It is the end of April for goodness sakes! That's it I am going back in hibernation. See you in another two months.

Good Times

Well, it has started. Oliver is a full fledged toddler. I was sick with the flu earlier this week and so was laying on the couch all day. Oliver is such a good kid and kept himself pretty entertained. I was starting to feel better so I was trying to get the house back together. I was cleaning up something on the floor and I noticed this lovely addition to our couch. Its not a very good picture but Oliver had taken a pen to the back of our couch (this is only a small portion of the whole masterpeice). I couldn't believe it! No wonder he had been so quiet all day! Well after a slight freak out followed by a laugh ( I mean come on, you know he had a good time) I took a damp cloth and just lightly rubbed the marks and to my surprise it came right out! If you are in the market for a new couch I highly recommend microfiber. This couch has seen alot and still looks new, its the best for familys with young kids or husbands. So this crisis was adverted, hopefully we will be so lucky next time. Of course I never found the pen so who knows what Oliver is dreaming up for his next piece.

Following the couch incident we had yet another storm the other day. It was crazy. The wind was blowing so bad and blowing all the snow around that they had to close down the freeway right by our house. People were camping out at the gas station with nowhere to go. People who were stuck on the freeway ran out of gas because their cars had been idiling for hours and had to be evacuated. Crazy. We were lucky to be home when the storm hit but our power went on and off all night. We finally decided to go seek refuge at out friend's house. While we were loading up our stuff for the sleepover Oliver was running around with this light on his head. He loved it! Kids are great.

Snow Snow Snow

Greetings from Snowy Utah!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but there has been nothing going on in our lives. It literally snows every day and Oliver and I rarely venture out into the frozen tundra. Also contributing to our Hermit life style is Oliver's new schedule. He is down to one nap a day and it is from 11:00 to 2:00. I am a prisoner in my own house. By the time I get him up, feed him lunch and get out the door its 3:00 and we need to be home in a few hours to get dinner going. I don't know how you other moms cope with this nap in the middle of the day stuff but I really don't like it. Of course you might be the kind of mom that is up and dressed and out of the house by 9:00 to run erands. That my friend, is not me. Anyway here are a few pictures of our snow covered yard. This is one of those rare days we went outside.

You can see how the mailboxes are barely poking out of the snow. Crazy!

Most days we just do this. Sit around in our pajamas and play with toys. Who am I kidding? We are livin' the high life here. (For the record, I don't make Oliver play in the closet. That is just his favorite place to sit.)

P.S. Oliver's sweet face is glistening with drool in every picture. Will it ever stop? Did I mention he already has all his teeth? Why the constant drool then? I need answers.