These are the days of our life...

We've been having so much fun with our two little boys that we haven't taken any time to write. Here are a few pics of the things we've done. Tried to get some video on, but had no luck.

Ivin loves to color and look at books. He's really not sleeping here, he's coloring. We haven't had too many incidents of coloring on objects other than coloring books. He does a great job.

Though William has outgrown his cradle, he apparently still likes it. We'll go in sometimes to find him hanging on to the rails and having a ball. He gets his leg stuck between the rails every once in a while. I think that means its time to change him over to the crib with Ivin. That'll be an adventure. Ivin is doing good with the times we do have William in there and he seems excited to share the room with him.


We went to the State Fair, which is kind of a tradition that we look forward to. Ivin really get's his garb on for it. I don't know if this is just how we dress for the fair, or if he remembered how his friend Benjamin (pictured below) dressed for the Davis County fair a few weeks earlier when he got his picture taken for the paper - he was on the cover of The Davis County Clipper in similar garb.
Ivin and Benjamin were having a blast walking hand in hand through all of the animals. I should have got this on video, but they seriously walked together like this talking about all of the animals for at least 5 minutes through the cows, goats and sheep. Funny how they can be great friends, but fight quite well at the same time. Friends will be friends.

On Labor Day we went for a hike with our friends the Griffiths. All the kids walked by themselves - except the little ones - up to this lookout point. There we had some snacks and drinks then went down to play at the park.

William and Tucker were born just a week or so apart. They are both super cute and quite similar in size in this pic.
NO, we don't have any new building projects going on. Thank goodness. Ivin does love getting his gear on to fix stuff up though. He is a great helper when daddy is working with tools.


We've been having so much fun with our two little boys that we haven't taken any time to write. Here are a few pics and some videos showing a few of the things we've done.

Ivin has taken up Sushi. He loves shark and clown fish as you can see.

The BIG Day

Hey everyone! My little brother came to play with me on Monday afternoon! I'm glad he's finally here, he's super cute. I'm being a great helper and taking good care of him. Let me tell you the story.

On Monday, Mommy and I went for a walk up to the neighbors house. She wasn't feeling good and wanted to make sure I could go and play with my friends Fred and Benjamin for a few hours if she needed some help. While we were up at their house mommy decided that she needed to leave me there to play while she went home to call Daddy. I was happy to play with my friends to whole afternoon. We had a great time playing trucks and riding bikes - I'm getting super good on my balance bike.

Mommy called Daddy and let him know he needed to come home from work to go to the hospital. So, Daddy drove our race car home super fast to get Mommy. After they got their things together they drove even faster in the race car to the hospital. They got there around 11:00 a.m. After they got checked in things started going really fast. Mommy was a trooper and showed how strong she was by not taking any medicine. She has been practicing yoga a lot, I think that helped because she used her breath to relax through all of her contractions. A few hours later my little brother came out.

Here's a picture of him right after he came out.


Oh, wait. Sorry that's not him. Daddy says that picture is just for his big brother. For some reason he thinks its funny to put a picture of the placenta on the internet. Did you know that I'm a big brother now, too. Here is a picture of my little brother right after he came out of mommy's belly.


He's got a pretty cool hat, eh? I think they put in on him to keep his head warm, because he doesn't have any hair. I have lots of hair though. Grandpa Register keeps on threatening to cut it as short as his hair is. He doesn't have any hair though - just like my little brother. His name is William James Holt. He's got a puffy, scrunchy face - see.

He's just a tiny guy. Mommy says I need to be really soft with him because he's so small. I don't really know if she's right or not, but Mommy says I used to be as small as William is. He was 8 lbs 5 oz and 20.5 inches tall when he came out. I was bigger than him. (I was 8 lbs 7 oz and 21 inches tall).


I like to hold Baby William on my lap. It's pretty fun. He's a cute little guy. See for yourself. I got to go and see him the afternoon after he was born. Mommy stayed at the hospital for the night and I went home and had a night with just Daddy and I. I slept really good, because I was so tired after taking care of William all afternoon.

Now our family has four people. Two big people and two little people. It's an even game now. Mommy came home after just being in the hospital for one day. She'll have to write to everyone about her experience, but going totally natural from my point of view (and Daddy's) Mommy is very happy and healthy looking. She's but up and about. We even had Grandpa and Grandma over for a BBQ last night.

I'm excited to teach my little brother all my tricks so William and I can have more fun with Mommy and Daddy. Now that he's home I've been giving him drinks from my water bottle, showing him all my cars and trucks and taking good care of him.

2 years old and growing

We've had an eventful week full of birthdays, airports, sunny weather, and some really wet snow. This is the only way March - the best month of the year - should start.

Much to our surprise, Ivin's favorite toy seems to be his toyset that we got from Grandma and Grandpa Holt. They were getting rid of it and asked us if we wanted it. We took it with every intention to drop it by the DI on our next trip. The deal was pretty well sealed when I broke the leg of the thing as I got it out of the car for work one day when I needed the back seat. So, the thing sat in our garage all winter, collecting dust and who knows what else is out there.

We decided to give it a try when Ivin started following Daddy around the house to fix things - especially the 100 week bathroom. That little light bulb that oh so rarely pops above my head came on and said, hey maybe instead of ditching that little work bench you should clean it up and let your boy play with it. So, we got it fixed up with some gorilla glue and SHABAM! As you can tell, he loves it.

The gift we thought would be #1. Which may become #1 really quick as the weather stays really nice this week. Daddy might have been more excited for this one than anyone. We wanted to get Ivin a great bike to play on this summer and have loved seeing all the kids in the neighborhood learn on these balance bikes. The idea is to learn the balance then throw the pedals in later, instead of learn to pedal with training wheels and then learn to balance. It has proved to be great for our friends, we'll see how Ivin takes to it.

The first few days we let Ivin buzz around the house on it - he picked it up really quick. He was feeling pretty crappy with some ear infection gunk and we didn't really let him go out, but wanted him to enjoy the bike. So, when the weather got nicer and he was feeling better we took the bike out. Now, he always asks to bring his bike in. That doesn't happen.

Everyone knows story time is always better with the bike in tow. He even cuddled with the bike a few times. He's got daddy and grandpa's blood in him. Cute little guy.


Grandma and Grandpa Holt left a week ago to the Philipines. It only took them 31 hours to get there. I don't know, that might actually be the plane time minus the layovers etc. Luckily, Ivin has been able to spend a bit of time with them the past few months to get to know them better. He'll be riding a big boy bike and playing tee ball when the get home. It's been fun talking to him about where Grandma and Grandpa are. He can go down to the map on the wall and show us where they are. He's a smart little guy - thanks much to Kelly's great teaching skills.

To celebrate Ivin's birthday, mostly due to some great timing, we went to a big puppet day at the Salt Lake City Library on Saturday. We've been able to see this puppet lady a few times, and Ivin loves it. So, we hopped downtown and saw a couple shows and took a little time to play in the water outside because it was a beautiful day. It is so fun to watch all of the kids come to life with the puppets and get into the story and interact with it. We'll definitely keep going to things like this. We had Grandma and Grandpa Register and Katie with us, as well as some of our good friends the Philpots and McQueens with us. It was super fun. Thanks for making it a fun day. Afterwards we went to the Pizza Factory for some dinner and watched BYU get their butts kicked. As much enjoyment as you think that would bring to me, I actually wanted them to push through. Oh well, all good things must come to an end. We'll see how the tournament goes - but if you're questioning my bracket, they aren't getting past round #2 (St. Johns by 15+).

Baby #2 is coming well. Kelly's made it through the sick trimester, the comfortable trimester, and is getting into the uncomfortable trimester. Hold on tight 1 on 1 time will be here sooner then we know it. We're excited, but daddy is nervous for 1 on 1. I never have been any good at basketball.

Finally, the weekend project is complete!

Some of you that for some reason remain diligent in reading our sporadic BLOG may remember this picture.



Yes, that is the main bathroom in our house. You may also remember a post about 2 years ago that mentioned the water issue in the bathroom that made everything start falling apart. If you remember that far back, I'm pretty sure you didn't forget master of the house Jeremy saying he'd have the whole bathroom renovated in just a weekend - no big deal. And you probably remember him talking to various people that know what they are doing when it comes to home renovations - especially bathrooms - and scoffing at the exorbitant amount of cash it would take for one of them to do it for us in a few weeks.

After only 100 weekends of semi-labor, some more laborious then others, we are happy to unveil the new main bathroom in the Bountiful Holt's house. Yes, for you arithmeticians out there crunching numbers that is just shy of two years. We broke the walls out over spring break nearly two years ago and we took the first showers in the new bathroom this past week. Yippee-ky-eh!

Here's a look at our labors. We feel they are pretty good for being rookies. Thanks so much to everyone that put in their time, expertise and really cool tools into this project. Really big thanks to Cameron Kent who always entertains my random calls pulling from his crafty brain. Without him, I'd still be sitting in the tub getting sprayed by the thing that usually turns on the water - except when there is the turny thing there and the water just shoots straight into your face (those of you that remember that story, I hope you got another big laugh out of that one). Thanks Cam, you are the best. Big thanks to Fred Philpot also. Fred always seems genuinely interested in my random projects and acts like my concerns and issues are valid. The funny thing is he always has a simple fix to the problem. Thanks Fred. If only my projects turned out as beautiful as the ones you do.

The towel hangers. The same guy we had before, just fixed up a bit to match the new decor.

The new shower. Highly improved because now I can stand straight up at any point in the shower without knocking my head on the ceiling. Also, highly improved because the water comes down on my head while I'm standing up. Before it was easier to kneel down and shower, or just get a nice pain in my back from crouching over so far.

I like this because it shows all of the "fancy" tile work we did. The counter-top is made from the left over mosaic tiles we had from the shower. I know, I'm a great estimator. Actually, we originally planned on doing quite a bit more of these tiles in the shower, but when we got them home and looked at it, it just wasn't right, so because these we on clearance we were stuck with them.

The floor tiles are from the left overs from the shower, and two different places. One ladies left overs and a few new ones from a tile clearance rack. Luckily, they are pretty similar in color so you can only tell if you look really hard. Come try to find them, I dare you.

The vanity is actually kind of cool to. Many of you that might have experienced the old bathroom remember it was made for little people. Because I'm not a little person, we raised the vanity up 6 inches by adding in a second set of drawers. This proved to be a little advanced for my skills because it required us to fix the plumbing and do some fancy woodwork. We also fixed the duct work that used to take up the whole space underneath the sink. This was the time that I actually got stuck from the shoulder down my whole arm in the duct work. I can't actually remember if Kelly had to help me out of this or not, but it was a little scary.

Another view.

The fancy tile work that doesn't look professionally done by any means. We like it though.

So, there you have it. My weekend, or 100 weekends of work, finally to a finish. Now, we need to put some pictures on the wall or something like that. Come on over and check it out. Heck, you can even take a bath if you'd like.

The DIRTY Dirty Dash

Holy Schmoly! Now I know what a pig feels like. Let's hope that reincarnation never comes into play, because if it does - I'll be jumping at the gun to get my shot at being the first Christmas Ham.


This race included everything from swimming (I think that wallow is the correct term)through a mud hole to hopping over a series of hay bales. Let alone wrestling with a bunch of other pigs (I mean people) to get through the course. Needless to say, it was a great morning up at Soldier Hollow. The weather and setting were nice too.


(I couldn't see anything here and I smelled like sheep stuff. I honestly was picking chunks of mud, that looked like little worms from my eyes the following day.)


(The team after having conquered the course and even taken a little time to make some mud angels in the swampy mess.)

Fireman in Training

Kelly, Ivin and I recently went on a super fun trip up to Sun Valley with a few of our best friends and neighbors. Amongst other things, Ivin enjoyed calling out the fire brigade with the bell on top of this fun little fire truck. Needless to say, with the price tag on the thing, it is still up in Sun Valley awaiting our next trip.

More Water Adventures

Watch this first... then read on below.



This morning I was lucky enough to work from home with Ivin. After breakfast we sent mommy off to work, then went in the backyard to check on the garden quick and to let Ivin run around and play on his bikes. As we mentioned last week, Ivin loves the hose. So, we decided to water the garden a bit and wash out his swimming pool. You can see how well he is doing with the hose in the video above.

I like to think that just after the video was taken Ivin's next steps were done on accident, but judging by the laughter coming from his mouth I'm pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing. Just after I turned off the camcorder (sorry about the quality, it was from my phone) Ivin turned around with the hose and got enough water on daddy to make me scream a bit out of shock and run away to save myself. Ivin giggled a little about this, then went after me again.

This one-sided water fight continued for about five minutes. Daddy running back and forth across the back yard trying to dodge the stream of water that was in hot pursuit. The story is incomplete without the sounds of laughter and total accomplishment/satisfaction from the 17 month old and the screaming from the 31 year old.

I got a little glimpse further into being a father playing with my boy this morning. I love this game.