Hawaii, this summer

This summer, my grandma took us all to Hawaii!! Even the kids! It was so wonderful! I will have to post more pics, but this is just my speedy update since I really need to get studying! The kids loved having a place on the beach. They woke up and went right to the beach!

Xander's Goggles

My sister and her family gave Xander an awesome gift for his birthday. It was a tool set and it had these fun goggles in it!! He loves them and looks so cute...especially when he tried to put them on himself and ends up with his eyes scrunched funny

Ellie's Water Talent

Ellie loves to use the bath soap and make some really gigantic bubbles. She says that she has a water talent like the different fairies from the tinkerbell movie! She actually makes some really cool bubbles and keeps her brother and sister happy.

Aeryn's first day of Preschool

aeryn randii peterson. sausage. whistle. swing. (Aeryn wanted to type :) )

This is Aeryn's first day of preshool...back in August. I am just a little behind in updating my blog. She chose her outfit and looked really cute! She even wore one of her flowers from Hawaii in her hair!!

First day of 2nd Grade!!

My sweet nephew singing!!

Make sure to press pause on my music (down on the right) before pressing play on this video!!

Summer is!!

My fantastic sister-in-law took a lot of pictures on our hawaii vacation and I had her do some feet pictures of my family....look at how cute this turned out. I am going to blow it and put it up in my room :)!!

Hawaii, here we come!!

In a little over 14 hours we will be heading the SLC airport to go vacation in hawaii!! We are so excited!! I can barely wait!!

Temple Square!!

We took the kids up the Salt Lake City temple so that we could help my sister with her kids while she was at a wedding. We walked around with the kids and explored all that we could find!! We spent a while exploring the visitors center. It was air conditioned inside the building and boy did that feel good since it was so hot outside!!

There was a really nice water fountain that the kids enjoyed looking at. The color of the water made me just want to jump in right then! But I didn't get crazy and swim in the fountain! :)

In the Visitors Center there is a lot of areas to explore! The kids wanted to spend a lot of time in the space room as they called it. This was the space room and there was this very beautiful statue of Jesus Christ. The kids wanted to just be there, I wonder if they felt the spirit. And then they realized that if you stood closer to the statue, everything you said would echo. That started to get out of control. The kids were making louds jokes to hear them echo. Good thing allison and richard finished up and we left!

Finding Xander!!

So tired he just fell asleep in his chair!!

So tired he fell asleep eating his dinner!! :)

Watching fireworks!!

We love lighting fireworks at my sister's house. We have so much fun. We just set up chairs in her driveway and let the men set off the fireworks. We often start before it gets really dark because the kids start to get really tired. This picture of Xander is after he got really dirty in the mud and finally was clean. Doesn't he look happy!!!

Xander even fell asleep mid firework lighting! He didn't even wake up when they would go off!! He is a sleeper like his mom...yes I love to sleep!!

Our little firework!!

Always finding the mud!!

My sister and her husband have been preparing to landscape their backyard. And on the 4th of July we went over to celebrate and they have dirt and the kids decided to turn the water on and make a little mud!! It was funny and boy they sure got muddy!!

Look at this cute little muddy face...poor guy got hosed off in the backyard and really didn't like that.

Off to Cali!!!

Ellie has celebrate all of her birthdays at her great-grandma's house (Nana) and it has been a very special memory. All the Au side of the family gets together for a summer kick off party. We have food, swimming, and lots of hanging out. Ellie begged us to take her back to California to celebrate again. We couldn't resist and decided to go again. There is nothing better than a child to be able to have the love and influence of a strong family!!

Xander loved hanging out with grandpa...he even fell asleep in grandpa's arms....there is nothing better!!

This is fun Uncle Peter who made all the kids laugh with the new puppet that Ellie got from Nana!!

Ellie was soooo lucky because her great aunt debbie wrote her a song for her birthday! A song about ellie. What was really fun was that Ellie's first grade teacher from Provo, Utah happen to be spending the summer in California and her in-laws were friend with aunt debbie. So Mr. Fackrell, as Ellie calls him, joined in with the song. It was really awesome!!

This is Ellie's best friend from kindergarten in California. It was so wonderful that Anna and her mom could come celebrate with us!! These girls had so much fun, they barely missed a beat!! You would never even know that we moved away!!

So fun!!

Ellie's 7th Birthday

Ellie turned 7 this summer. I can't believe how grown up she is getting. It seems like just yesterday that I was waiting and waiting and waiting for her to be born. She sure has been a little firecracker in our house. She really wanted her party and build-a-bear. We took a couple of friends and bought a whole bunch of bears....crazy, but it was really fun!! She also wanted a key-lime cheesecake for her birthday from Costco. Her grandpa, whom she loves, loves key-lime which is why I think she chose this :)!!!

Another Cute face

Xander so loves to get dirty and I just love this sweet smile!! I know that I am finally getting caught up on my blog and so this will be a long run of pics!!

Super Cute faces!!

Don't you just LOVE that dirty face!! I sure do :)

80's Hair Color!!

I had some leftover hair color from halloween...you know the spray on color that washes out. Well the kids found it and really wanted to color their hair. It was on a saturday and we didn't have really anything important to do that day, so I said sure :)!! I think we put all the colors in each of their hairs!! It was really fun!! We even put some in Xander's and gave him a mohawk!!

Look at that little hair-do!!! I wish he more hair...it is growing in so fine and slowly!!!

My favorite is this picture...it looks like something out of a catalog. These were supposed to be shorts...but between the new style being really long shorts for boys, his short little legs, and that these pants were a size too big and so they were hanging down...he looked like he was wearing jeans that were flooded!!

March of Dimes Walk!!!

We were able to have a lot of fun at the March of Dimes Walk to raise money to decrease the incidence of premature births!!

Ellie really enjoyed having her bike there. There were a lot of people though and then it made it really hard for her to ride along the path. We eventually put the bike back in the car and that made it a little easier to get through the crowd!!

Xander is just our cutie! He really enjoyed hanging out the stroller as we walked.

I was trying to get a cute pic of Aeryn and I but she wasn't really interested. She was more interested in the donuts and juice that they had for everyone who was walking that morning!

After we did the walk, they had a lot of fun things for the kids to do. Xander really enjoyed getting a monkey holding a banana made by the balloon guy. Xander just kept saying..."nana, nana" and really wanted to eat a banana when we got home.

They also had this professional face painter who did amazing jobs. I think we waited like 45 minutes to have the kids get their faces painted. But amazingly, they were very patient throughout the wait. They wanted this SOOO bad. Ellie chose a rainbow and a frog...it was really cute.

Aeryn wanted a rainbow butterfly. It was cool because the lady used a sponge/crayon thing that had all the colors on it and just brushed it along their cheeks to make the rainbow effect. The kids already are excited to go back next year to do it again.!!

Trampoline Time!!

My kids enjoy jumping on the trampoline so much. The girls are so nice and let Xander come and jump with them...they know that they can't really jump when he is on. But he loves them to bounce him. He giggles so much!! You can see here that after a while he was just tuckered out from all the bouncing. But if I tried to get him off he would get so mad...so he just got really tired jumping and jumping!!






Isn't this just the cutest picture of how much they love each other.... Funny thing, that lasts for 5 minutes and then the argument begin and I was lucky to catch it on camera!!


My kids enjoy jumping on the trampoline so much. The girls are so nice and let Xander come and jump with them...they know that they can't really jump when he is on. But he loves them to bounce him. He giggles so much!!

Green Beans!!!

Xander LOVES to eat green beans...you know the kind right out of the can. I will make up a can for me and he comes right over and wants to eat it. He will even refuse ice cream over green beans. I love how cute he is when he is happy!! What a sweet boy!!

Daddy's Helper!!

Travis has been so wonderful and spending the summer working on a remodel for our house. We are adding a pantry/laundry room that will be connected to our kitchen. My favorite part is that Xander loves to help out his dad with all the work. Xander has his own set of tools and loves to use those to fix his "handy-manny truck" that Grandma and Grandpa got Aeryn for Christmas.



But you better watch out when you put REAL tools down somewhere. Travis will put down a tool just for a moment to work on something, and Xander will get it and start helping out with whatever Travis was doing...or maybe even start his own project!! Here he is using some sort of scrapper tool to help Travis pull out the stairs.


No matter how hard I entice him to do something else....he always goes back to his dad!! What a cute little daddy's boy...and Travis doesn't mind one bit :)

To my mom!!

I am really lucky to have such a wonderful mom!! She has always been such a great example to me....she is a woman of great love, a woman of great faith in our Savior Jesus Christ, a woman who cares for her children, a woman who is organized and knows how to keep a clean house :), a woman who is willing to help others, a woman who is a wonderful wife, and most important, a woman who is lives a righteous life based upon the principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!! I am grateful for mom and the wonderful friend and mom she has always been to me!!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!! I love you!!!

my mom and dad

my mom as a super cute teenage girl!!

my mom (and her dad...poppa) on the day she got married...so beautiful!!