A Taste of Austin

GramZ, GrampZ and Uncle Matt stayed with us for the week that followed Dallin's blessing (Sept 2-5). We had an awesome time together! On Monday, we gave them some tastes of Austin MN by taking them to the Grush Farm and the Spam Museum.

Grush Farm

The boys played horseshoe for about 2 hours. Jeremy cannot get enough of it!

The Grush girls loved playing and talking with Grandma.

Tanner was excited to help collect veggies from the garden. We came home with lots of food!

SPAM Museum
Every visitor that we get must be taken to the Spam Museum, whether you like or not! So far, everyone has had a great time. Funny thing about this trip- MomZ spent so much time in the first exhibit room that the family ran out of time to see the last portions of the museum. When Jeremy asked her why she was going so slow through the museum she said "Well, I thought the place was going to be really small, so I figured I should read every sign or else we would be done with the place in 20 minutes. I had no idea there were so many exhibit rooms and so much to learn about SPAM!"

Full House

During the Blessing weekend, we had a lot of fun with our guests! It was cool to have enough room in the house for everyone to stay with us. On Sat, Jeremy BBQ'd hamburgers and we all watched BYU football and visited. 

 On Sunday morning, we had church and the blessing (see previous post). When we came home from church we had a big dinner in our new dining room. We ate Hawaiin Haystacks cuz I was able to have it ready ahead of time. Then we hung out and napped. It worked out nicely having 2 kids and 2 sets of grandparents because everyone always had someone to play with! And of course, we loved being with Uncle Matt, too.

In the late afternoon we took everyone to the Nature Center for a nature walk. Jeremy, Matt and the Grandpas tried playing catch along the path, which included a lot of silly passes over towering trees and prairie grasses. It was a gorgeous evening. I took pictures, but I think they got lost with the anniversary shots. (So sad!) Then, we came home and played games. We plugged the kindle into the TV so everyone could play the States game and Pictionary. I was surprised at how fun it was, and everyone giggled a lot and seemed to have a great time!

One highlight for Tanner both nights was after family prayer. He loved going around the room and giving each Grandma or Grandpa a big goodnight hug. It was really fun watching how each grandparent interacted with Tanner and Dallin in their own special way. My two boys are SO blessed to have 4 amazing grandparents that could all be at our house at the same time!!

Dallin's Blessing Day

Dallin was given his special baby blessing at church on Sun, Sept 1. He was 15 weeks old. Jeremy holds the priesthood, so he was able to perform the blessing. Dallin was so SO lucky to have all four of his grandparents and his Uncle Matt there that day (which is no small feat now that we live in MN)!

The blessing (which is different than baptism 'cuz that happens at age 8 or older) was beautiful and mentioned a lot about Dallin's love for the gospel, his family, and others. I didn't hear all of it because Tanner decided that he was going to hum loudly in my ear! The little punk. It's a good thing my mom wrote down almost everything Jeremy said as he gave the blessing. 

(Zavoral parents-Gramz and Grampz)

(Robertson parents-Nana and Papa)

(Uncle Matt)

One purpose of the blessing is to present the baby's name to the Lord. Since lots of people have asked how we came up with his name, I thought I'd tell about it in this post. Choosing names for our children has been one of the most difficult things that we have ever done! Part of the difficulty is that we have a lot of criteria for acceptable names. 

The name must: 

• Have 2 or more syllables
• Sound good with Zavoral
• Not be too unusual or too common
• Be easy to spell and pronounce
• Cannot be easy to make fun of
• For Tanner, we wanted a name that ended with ER
• For Dallin, we wanted a name that ended with ON or IN or EN
• We knew we wouldn't decide on his name until we could hold him

The day before Dallin was born, I was looking for something in our computer room. My eye caught the cover of a church magazine that had a picture of the apostle Dallin H Oaks. I kept rummaging around and then I froze. I said the name in my head. Dallin. Then I said it out loud. DALLIN. Now why hadn't I thought of this name before? 

I kept thinking. Does it fit all our criteria? I think so! Dallin. That might work. That might really work! I'll have to tell Jeremy the next time we talk about names.

The next time that we talked about names was in the hospital right after the birth. As soon as I said Dallin, we were both like, "Whoa, that seems like a fit!" It was even cooler when we found out the name means "from the valley" because the hospital was in Fountain Valley. 

So after lots of thought and prayer, Dallin it was!

One interesting thing is that we are quickly finding out that lots of people have never heard the name before, which was especially surprising to Jeremy. He has 3 childhood friends with the name. For anyone reading this who is not sure how to pronounce Dallin, it sounds just like Dallis, Texas, except an N at the end.

Dallin's middle name, Jerold, is in honor of my Grandpa, Jerold Robertson, Dallin's great-grandpa, who passed away while I was 4 months pregnant with Dallin.

 At grandpa's funeral, I thought a lot about how close my baby was to meeting grandpa. I wanted my baby to know how amazing Grandpa was and is. I felt really impressed that if I named him after grandpa, it would be a perfect way to bring the two of them closer to each other. I also hope it will encourage Dallin to acquire some of the amazing characteristics that my grandpa has.

(the men that participated in the blessing)

The wind helped show off Dallin's hair!

Tanner was super wiggly for the pictures!

 Here's our little family on such a happy day!

Nana and Papa's Visit

"Gwamma Nana" and "Gompa Papa," as Tanner calls them, got to spend time with us the week before Dallin's baby blessing. It was really cool for them to see how much our house changed since the last time they were here! This time, they didn't have to work (okay, so Mom did a bunch of cleaning and Dad installed a few things) but they mostly got to hang out and enjoy the boys. 

Jeremy and DadR went golfing with a T time in the middle of the day, super hot. They saw wild turkeys and enjoyed the parts that were in forest areas. While they were gone, Tanner and Nana played with water toys....

painted the fence with water...

and gave Dallin a bath!

In the evenings, we chilled out in the family room... 

Of course, Dallin got a lot of attention this visit.

On Saturday, we went inside the Hormel Nature Center...

and climbed a big rock!! Go Gompa Papa!!

We love you, Grandma Nana and Grandpa Papa!!

Anniversary Trip

Jeremy and I took an overnight trip to Minneapolis to celebrate our SEVEN year anniversary!! Desha took care of Tanner and Dallin for a complete 30 hours. That was extremely nice of her. It was the perfect getaway for us!

We took some neat pictures, but somehow they all got lost in one of our uploads or downloads. I'm SO bummed. Very ironic, considering that I consciously took a lot of pictures because we don't have that many from our last 2 anniversaries. I've posted some pics from google so you can at least see what I'm talking about.

We stayed at the Foshay Tower, which was built in 1929. Now it's a super swanky hotel with lots of history behind it.

We ate Friday night dinner at a very fancy restaurant. It was fun to get all dressed up for a nice date! At first it was hard for me to be away from Dallin. I wasn't expecting to miss him so much, but then Jeremy reminded me that the first time I left Tanner overnight was when he was 14 months old. Dallin was only 3 months old! Also, he doesn't take a bottle very well, but Desha got him to happily survive most of the whole time we were gone.

Here's a cool building we could see from our hotel room. We took lots of pics with us in front of it, but can't find them now.

 

On Saturday morning we ate breakfast at Hell's Kitchen, one of the best places we've ever eaten at!

 Then we went to the museum and observation deck of the Foshay Tower. It used to be the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Funny how it's now trumped by all the other skyscrapers.

Then we went to the St. Paul Temple! Since it was our anniversary, we did a sealing session, which is where you participate in a ceremony where people are spiritually sealed together in a family unit for eternity, making family marriages and family units last beyond the grave! It was a really neat session.

This was a much needed trip!! Jeremy, you are so wonderful to me and our babies. You are my one true love!