First Fish!

So as a dad you get some moments that you love and look forward to.  I am not a huge fisher myself.  I loved to go fishing with my stepdad growing up and have plenty of great memories with him.  So the other day Zachary and I got to go fishing for USSynthetic fishing day.  The company puts together a day each year for people to go fishing and have some lunch.  Rachel was tied up with Youth Conference for her calling so I decided to just go and I take Zachary along for some father and son time.  I figured that we maybe would get all of 20 minutes of fishing before he gave up but oh well, right?

So we drove down to Salem Pond and I casted out.  Not 10 seconds later I had a bump and Zachary got to reel in his first fish.  He was excited and kept telling it "Hello Fishy!"  We took some of the obligitory pictures that ended up being cute.

When it came time to leave Zachary wanted to hold his fish for the ride home.  Luckily our lunch came in a box so I threw the fish in for the drive home.  

Back home I explained to Zachary that we needed to gut the fish so we could eat him.  He was a little worried about me cutting his fish up but in the end he was okay with it.  We will probably cook the tiny fillets tonight and split it between him and I.  Rachel still won't eat trout.  

Ahh.  The joys of being a dad.  I love it.

Seriously.  Look at that kid!  He was so happy!  I am so blessed to be able to have these little moments with him.  They remind you why you suffer through sleepless nights of crying and tantrums.  I love this kid.

Starting Summer

Uhh, so I guess this blog is supposed to be closed but I still think that we will post occasionally. Or maybe just me. Either way I am posting again so here we go...

So we have been having fun this year as summertime slowly comes around.

So of course I have to talk about Zachary.  The kids is stinking cute.  This was his favorite sitting/hiding place for a little while. 

It has also been quite a while but I should probably also mention this next picture:

This is Tori from my work's cafeteria.  Yes, Zachary is buddies with everyone there and he had quite the friendship with Tori.  He used to always find her when he came to lunch and would help her hand out change from the register to people paying.  Unfortunately she is no longer there (she had another baby and wanted to be a mom full time) but Zachary is still buddies with Luis the grill chef and also love to stop buy and visit Shuryne and Lacy from HR when he comes and visits me.  They make sure to load him up with obscene amounts of candy before he leaves and he absolutely loves it.

Yes, this picture looks random but I just had to comment.  This was done by Zachary as he was playing one day in the kitchen.  What is this?  He told me that Ramone is "pooping."  I loved it.



This is Zachary's favorite activity.  Occasionally I will bring home some liquid nitrogen to make ice cream (which is awesome by the way...) and we always end up having to play around with it a bit.  He loves watching it disappear into the carpet and then running around over it and feeling his feet get cold.  He actually remembered the name of it this last time too.

So Memorial Day weekend we went up to the "Day out with Thomas" up in Heber.  I swear to it Zachary was SO excited leading up to it.  He constantly was asking Rachel and I how long he had till he could go see Thomas.  If nothing else the anticipation was worth every penny we shelled out for the tickets.  So we got to take a "ride" on Thomas.  I use that term loosely because really we kind of rolled down the tracks some 300 yards or so and then went back.  Zachary loved it though and he loved seeing the trains.

Here is Zachary stuffing his face with cotton candy (he loves the stuff, what kid doesn't?!?) and showing off his Thomas tattoo on his face.  He also was sporting a James tattoo on the other cheek for the next couple days and he absolutely loved them.  In the end we had to take him swimming at the pool to strategically remove them. 

We had an awesome time.  Zachary's love for Thomas the Train has been fun and it is perfect timing for this thing.  We will see if he even cares for it by next year...

Every year we get hooked up by Rachel's sister Andrea with tickets to the Shriner's Hospital Dreamnight at Hogle Zoo.  It is super fun to go each year and we really have started to look forward to it.  This year Rachel's other sister Cheryl and her family went along too.  As you may know Zachary loves Cheryl's kids so it made for a fun night with them.

This is Zachary in his "Shoot Shoot" pose.  He occasionally thinks he has a laser in his arm like Buzz Lightyear and goes around shooting people and things.  We really need to get it on video.