New Yard

This post is a little late, almost 1 year! But last year we put a lot of time and money into our yard. We were tired of finding broken sprinkler lines and our grass was overrun with weeds, not to mention full of holes and such which created a hazard for walking.
The route taken was the long, hard route. But at the beginning of summer we had a new yard that was beautiful and made us proud.
John started by killing all the grass the fall prior. Unfortunately the grass began to grow back in the spring! We should have just left it alone because the plan was to till it all in and the dead grass would be weed free and would make for a good ground fertilizer for the new lawn. Then we were told that we should cut the sod with a sod cutter and dig it up because we would break all the sprinkler lines with the tiller. So John rented a sod cutter and attempted to cut the lawn out. There was one problem - the lawn was dead so it did not cut right. After spending many hours trying to get the old lawn up John decided he needed to rent a bobcat tractor to dig it all up. This process worked great but the bobcat was very heavy and John made lots of ruts in the ground, thus tearing up the yard even more. Luckily we had lots of help from family who came to our rescue and helped gather the lawn, throw it in the back of a flatbed trailer, and haul it off to the dump.
We knew we needed to hire someone to put the sprinkler system in. John could have done it, but he really didn't know how and after years of frustration patching the system, he felt it would be worth the money to hire a professional. We are sure glad we did. The crew did a fantastic job putting a state of the art system in the yard and they brought in new dirt and leveled the ground. The yard was so pretty between the leveling and the sod John was seriously considering leaving the dirt as it was! OK, not really but it did look nice.
Before the sod was put in, John installed some really nice metal edging for the flower beds.

We then called upon family and neighbors to come install the sod. It is amazing how fast sod can be installed with 10+ guys! The lawn got in and we were off to our new yard!
Shortly thereafter, John purchased and setup a Lifetime shed that Ted helped us get for a fantastic price. We are really happy to have that extra space to alleviate the garage of storage duties as well as get chemicals locked up and away from the children. With the new Yukon it was impossible to get the lawn mower in and out of the garage without pulling the car out of the garage. Now it was nicely stowed in the back yard where it belongs. Our more accessible, less cluttered garage thanked us for it!
We are very happy with the yard and look forward to many fun years playing in the yard.

Home Away from Home

On January 7th, Paige's birthday, we purchased our first trailer. We have been talking about a trailer for about 6 years now. John grew up with trailers and Paige's family would rent them from time to time while she was growing up. We both enjoyed camping but can't stand sleeping on the ground in a tent. The Last time we camped was in 2006 in Island Park - 1 year before we had Eliza. Rich Williams lent us a crappy tent that leaked. We didn't know it leaked until we were camping and we had a bad rain storm on the second night there. The second night became our last night!

John doesn't handle sleeping on the ground for more than 2 nights and Paige doesn't like hiking to public restrooms or finding a bush. So the discussion for several years was that we would get a trailer some day. In september of 2010 we had a Gardner family reunion in Idaho. After the reunion we stopped by the Johnson's home in Rigby (20 minutes away) to see their new trailer. We quickly became a little jealous and started talking more about a trailer. We decided that we really wanted one, but first needed to get a tow vehicle. John's parents had a really nice 2004 Yukon XL SLT which they had agreed to sell to us in the future. So that was the plan for a future tow vehicle.

Last July we purchased John's parent's Yukon from them shortly after Leas birth. Fitting all three kids in John's Ford Edge and the Subaru Tribca was a bit challenging. So we told Michael and Mary Margaret that we were ready to purchase their car if they were still interested in selling it. They were ready and purchased a Buick Enclave so the Yukon was ours!

At that point we began researching trailers. We knew that we weren't quite ready yet with a newborn baby, but next year we would be. In the meantime, we visited several trailer dealerships and John did a tremendous amount of research to find the best trailer for us. We fell in love with the same floor plan as Heath and Tara Johnson, but we found the Jayco to be much nicer quality than the Keystone Springdale. We settled on the Jayco Jay Flight 26BH. It is a 26 foot trailer (29 overall) with a front bedroom, family room/kitchen with a table that converts to a bed and a couch that converts to a bed, and a rear bunk bed with a double bed and single bunk above. The kids really wanted a bunk bed. They turned their nose up to every trailer that didn't have a bunk bed. John was wanting to consider other models which were shorter and lighter - easier to tow - but we didn't find anything that fit our needs.

Through the process of looking for trailers we found that January was the best month to purchase a trailer. January is the slowest month for RV dealerships. They were ready to wheel and deal. When Blaine Jensen RV in Kaysville offered us a $22,100 trailer for $14,999 we knew it was time to buy. We got the model we wanted and they even threw in the electric tongue jack and power owning for that price. We recently purchased a 26" LED TV and a Blu-Ray player for the trailer for some fun entertainment.

So we purchased the bigger model that has everything we wanted. We are very excited to take it out camping.

Lea Mary Jacquelyn Lyon

Lea Mary Jacquelyn Lyon graced us with her presence on June 28th, 2011. That day was the only day of the week that was NOT a good day for her birth. John had an Office Depot district training in the morning and a large movie premier training event in the evening for which he still had a lot of preparation to do. Her arrival was nothing short of exciting. That morning John was preparing to get out the door for the training. As he was busily loading the last few things, Paige informed him that she was having contractions. "How far apart are they," he asked. "Twelve minutes" she responds. "Call me when they are five minutes apart. And call your mom." With that, John left feeling uncertain how things would turn out that day with so much riding on him. Yet, he did not want to miss the birth of his child!

John was a little distracted during his training, and apologized to all in attendance that he would have his cell phone on and would be possibly leaving in the middle. They all understood and thought he was crazy to be there when Paige was having contractions. Paige sent John contraction updates via text message. After the hour-long training John left the meeting. Feeling he had a little time he quickly went next door to purchase some last minute prizes for that evening's training. About 5 minutes after leaving the Office Depot and entering Best Buy Paige called to inform John she and her mom were heading to the hospital. Some neighbors were kind enough to watch Eliza and Julia on short notice.

John quickly left Best Buy and raced home to grab the camera and headed up to McKay Dee Hospital. Paige was settled when John arrived. Jacqui then left to pick up the kids and take them home where she would watch them the rest of the evening. Dr. Gary Silver, a family friend of John's parents, was Paige's Anesthesiologist. He did a really nice job with getting her comfortable.

Lea was born at 3:12pm. She weighed 6lbs 11oz. and 19.5 inches long. She is a beautiful little brunette! John is so excited that we have a little brunette in the family.

After 2 hours in the hospital John had to leave to go back to work. The training event was at the Century Theater in Salt Lake City for the movie premiere of Transformers. He had to work quickly to get all his things together for the training and get down there by 7pm. The event started at 8 with the training portion at10pm and the movie at midnight. Once the movie started John was ready to come home and go bed. It would be a long few days with John alone with the kids trying to keep them together while scheduling visits to the hospital in between.

The girls love their little sister. Julia is head over heels for the baby. She is just so excited every time she sees her. Eliza loves her too, but was not too warm to her in the beginning. She was struggling enough sharing time and attention with Jules, now there is one more body to get Mom's attention.

Through the last 9 months Lea has filled our home with much joy. She has an adorable face and an infectious smile that fills the room with joy. Eliza has always been an intense child. Jules was our most mellow child. Lea is our happiest child. When she sits in her excer-saucer she squawks at us to get attention. Lucky for her she has two parents and two sisters who adore her. Julia has always loved Lea. She gets so excited to see her each day that most morning she wakes her up by getting in her crib and cuddling her. Eliza has warmed up to her. Over the last 3 months she really loves spending time with her and has become a good little helper for her parents. She now feeds Lea bottles and gets her binkis when we are in the car. Eliza is always trying to carry her little sister around the house – much to her parents’ disapproval.

Lea loves being doted on. She is fully capable of holding her own bottle, yet she refuses to hold it herself. She just enjoys being fed. Lately she has been sitting up while drinking from a bottle. Her favorite food is puffs, little cereal-like treats that are very light and quickly melt in her mouth. When we pour puffs on her food tray she quickly grabs s hand full before we can even finish pouring them on the tray. It reminds us of the game hungry-hungry hippos!

Night time has always been a challenge with little children. Lea has been the easiest baby. She sleeps the best of the three. It’s nice we have a pretty good sleeper. She allows us to get some rest at night!

At 7 months Lea was showing us signs of being ready to crawl. She would get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth. It was quite comical to put her down to bed and check on her with the baby video monitor and see her rocking back and forth rather than sleeping. By 8 months she was ready and began her crawling. Within 3-4 days she was tooling around the house exploring her new world. Her desire to be held decreased once she began crawling. But she is still a very sweet and enjoys being held and grabbing and pulling hair.

We love this little sweet chunky child. We are so fortunate to have her part of our eternal family.