Category: Photos

Rhys got plenty of candy:

We even had snow:

And we all squeezed into the traditional family picture in front of the tree:

Grady sang with his preschool in their Christmas chapel. He stared intently pretty much the whole time.

In January, Collin did awesome representing his class in the school-wide spelling bee!

We had a blast at the Pinewood Derby, where Collin took first place in the Webelos den and Owen did great for his first time!

Grandma and Grandpa Smailes came for a fun visit:

Rhys took his first steps:

Then came Rhys’ first birthday, and he is just too dang cute!

This video is awesome, and make sure you watch to the end of the video. There is a fun clip after the credits 🙂

And here is Rhys dancing on the table:

OK, some more bonus videos from this winter:

Oh, and Aubrey learned to ride the RipStik. How cool is that?

Climbing the Grand Teton, Upper Exum ridge

I just got back from an amazing trip to Utah with my two oldest boys, during which time I went to climb the Grand Teton in Wyoming with my oldest brother, Jason.

We had an awesome climb, which is fully documented in this video that I produced:

And Jason posted a bunch of great pictures. Here is me on the summit:

Rhys at six months

We think he is quite handsome. He has a cute little dimple, and he always gives people a huge smile, so he is quite popular!

Click any of the pictures to see the whole web album:

From Rhys at 6 months (summer 2010)

And Rhys with his cousin, Tenzing, who is just couple weeks younger:

From Rhys at 6 months (summer 2010)

Some dang cute kids doing cute things

Here are just some cute photos of cute kids doing cute things, or simply being cute without really trying. You can click any of the photos to see the whole album.

Rhys:

From 2010 spring

Grady:

From 2010 spring

Wesley:

From 2010 spring

Owen:

From 2010 spring

Collin:

From 2010 spring

Collin and Owen came home with their class photos and individual photos. The class photos will be classics, I’m sure. I like how we had no idea it was class picture day and we sent our kids in black t-shirts, including one with the Bat Signal on it.

Classic.

Collin and I also had a great time a few weeks ago when we went rock climbing at Pilot Mountain. He loved every minute of it and really climbed up the rock like he’d been doing it for years.

From School pictures – 2010 Spring

From Pilot Mountain, 2010-04-17

Easter weekend beach trip

We had another really great trip to the beach, this time to Carolina Beach where we found a reasonably nice dive motel right on the beach. Our room was nice and roomie with two queens, and it looked right onto the sand. We enjoyed watching the sun rise twice. We drove down Thursday evening and checked out Saturday morning and were back in time to catch conference. The weather was absolutely perfect, but the water was still a bit cold to enjoy all the way. I did dive in Saturday morning after Collin took me up on the “you go first and I’ll go” challenge.

Click to see more photos:

From Easter weekend 2010 Carolina Beach trip

This is the view of the sunrise from our room Saturday morning:

From Easter weekend 2010 Carolina Beach trip

Snowball fight, pinewood derby, 2 weeks old

[Spoiler: There are more pictures of baby Rhys below, so keep reading.]

We had some perfect snow last week! And by perfect I mean it didn’t stick to the roads and turn to ice like it usually does around here, and it was perfect packing snow. All this meant that we had an epic snowball fight with all the boys in the culdesac. It was classic and a ton of fun. Even Grady got into the action!

You can check out all the pictures from the snowball fight here:

From February 2010, Rhys newborn, snow

Collin also had his Pinewood Derby, and got 2nd place in his Den, with his stylish BYU-themed truck. It was a lot of fun to work on it with him. With 5 sons, I figure I get to help build thirteen more pinewood derby cars over the next 10 years. No complaints here. 🙂

From Pinewood derby 2010

And, last but not least, our little Rhys is over two weeks old now, and he has been so fun to have. And we hate to jinx things, but he has been a really pleasant baby. Loves to just sit quietly and be held; hardly ever cries. He loves to sleep and eat is just content. It’s also amazing how he can sleep through all the commotion that is constantly around him. He’ll definitely grow up to be tolerant of noise!

Here he is at 2 weeks old:

From February 2010, Rhys newborn, snow

Rhys Carter Packham

It’s been a few days since we welcomed Rhys Carter Packham into our family. We are so thrilled to have our fifth son, and can’t believe how lucky we have been. He is beautiful and perfect.

He has some pretty thick dark hair on his head and he’s got some chubby cheeks. He was born at 9:41 am on February 2, 2002 (Groundhogs Day), and came out at a hefty 7lb 12oz (our biggest baby yet), and 20 inches long.

As for the birth story … Aubrey basically had her water break a little bit around 5:45 am, so we woke up and started getting ready with showers and getting dressed, etc. and started timing the contractions. We dropped our kids off at a couple of friends’ houses and were at the hospital by maybe 7:30am. Even though Aubrey’s contractions were coming fairly regularly, I don’t think she thought they were exceptionally strong, so she kept feeling lame for coming to the hospital, though I think deep down she knew the baby was on its way soon. Once we were in the room, her water more fully broke on the floor so we knew for sure it was go time. From that point, her contractions continued to strengthen on a steady basis every few minutes and seemed to get steadily more intense. After a few rather intense contractions, the baby’s head about visible then it crowned and a few pushes later his head was out. His cord was around his neck and they had to cut it before his body was delivered, and when he came out he was a bit “shocked” from the fast dropping into the canal (“precipitous” is the word they used). So, they had to jumpstart his breathing with some positive pressure ventilation, but it took less than a minute before we heard his first scream. That was a sound like no other after seeing him come out not quite responsive. Oh, and obviously when he came out I saw right away it was a boy, and I called out “It’s a boy”, and I wasn’t surprised at all. I guess I recognize the body part quite easily at this point after having all boys.

After they got him breathing, they took him off to the special care nursery to make sure he continued to breathe well, etc. so Aubrey and I were not able to just hold him for the first little while. I think we didn’t totally mind this time because Aubrey seemed pretty drained and exhausted from the intense work she had just done, which was awesome to behold. She has delivered five babies now (the last four with no pain medication), and each time it has been beautiful and powerful and frightening to watch, each time bringing tears to my eyes to see her in pain and yet so focused and determined and strong. She is truly amazing. I love that I get to experience this all with her.

For the last month or so, we had been pretty sure that we like the name Rhys/Reece if we had a boy, but we’d been struggling with the spelling and also didn’t have a middle name. At one point we were kind of leaning toward Reece and people kept asking, so I went ahead and posted on Facebook that we were calling him Reece. But after a couple days thinking about it and with the official birth certificate needing to be filled out before we left the hospital, Aubrey and I spent some time re-thinking the spelling. We just kept coming back to the more traditional but more unusual and different spelling of Rhys. In the end, we both preferred it much more and realized we’d regret not using that spelling if we went with Reece, which we thought was also nice but just lacked that certain something in our minds. For a middle name we went with Carter, which is a family name on both sides: Aubrey’s grandma’s maiden name (Laurene Grace Carter Smailes), and my great-great-grandma’s maiden name (Junietta Carter Wall). So … we decided on Rhys Carter Packham and we totally love it! We think it fits right in with the rest of our boys’ names and will be a great, strong, and unique name for him to carry through his life.

His brothers have been absolutely adorable with him. Although a couple of them were really hoping for a girl (which was cute), they were instantly excited to hear he was a boy. They all love stroking his head and saying hi to him and holding him any chance they can get. When they got home from school on Thursday to find us at home with Rhys, they all ran upstairs and climbed on the bed all leaning over him and saying “hi Rhys!” and stroking his hair. It’s definitely a proud moment to see older siblings so excited for the younger ones. They will be great examples in the younger ones’ lives — examples for good, I’m sure.

Ready for fall, start of school, great artist, and boating

I think we’re all ready for the fall around here. The weather has been very comfortable (perfect) the last few days, Collin has been playing soccer, the boys have started school, and we’re in September. Can’t believe it’s already September and we’re heading out of another summer.

Owen had a great 7th birthday party. We had just a family party at a local bounce house where Aubrey had some free passes, so it was just the boys and us and a pizza. We had a party room all to ourselves and it was so easy and inexpensive. Owen was desperate for a few certain Lego sets, so he was thrilled to get the one he wanted, plus one more! I guess we couldn’t resist.

From Owen's birthday and first day of school

And, of course Collin and Owen started school at the end of August. Our school had previously been on a year-round calendar for the last two years, but they switched it back to traditional, which we think is good since they get a nice summer break.

From Owen's birthday and first day of school

And here’s a funny story that Aubrey passed along to me: Wesley is a very focused kid when he is drawing pictures. He draws with precision and can literally draw for hours. Today he was using Owen’s Captain Underpants book to draw pictures of Captain Underpants and the Giant Turd monster. Owen said, “Why is Wesley always just looking at the drawing section of the book?”, and Aubrey said, “It’s OK, Wesley really likes to draw.” And Wesley said, “I’m a great artist!”

Another thing that’s been fun lately has been going to the lake for boating. Our whole family was invited out with another family, then I’ve gone out with just the guys a couple times at 6 in the morning. The lake is perfectly quiet and still, making for some really beautiful scenery and great wakeboarding on glass. I’m not that great, but I’m good at going for enough air each time that I usually crash, which for me is the only way to prove you’re trying to get better!

Here’s a few shots of me messing around on a wakeboard:

From Jordan Lake in the morning, August 2009

And here’s my favorite shot that I took of my friend John slaloming:

From Jordan Lake in the morning, August 2009

And here’s the best part of going to the lake with family lately: Aubrey has really liked going, which means she thinks it would be cool if we got a boat. So, we’re kind of planning ahead for it, thinking maybe a few years out when we’ve saved up and our youngest kids could handle the trip without much hassle. We figure it would be a great activity for the whole family and the lake is so close and the water is so perfect for much of the year. Woo hoo. Come visit us in 3-4 years and we’ll take you to the lake!

Oh, and Aubrey is almost 17 weeks!

Bear Lake 2009 and baby news!!

I’ll get to the news first: We’re having another baby! Aubrey is 13 weeks along, and baby #5 is due around February 13, 2010! We’re obviously very excited. It was fun for Aubrey to surprise all of our family in person during our trip. Aubrey made a cute t-shirt that said “bun in the oven” and she walked into the room wearing it. For some others, we had Wesley spread the word and he did it very cute, saying, “I have a surprise for you! We’re having another baby!” then running away while they processed what he had just said. Fun stuff. I’m very happy! And yes, I would be happy with either a girl or a boy 🙂

We got back late last night after a very bumpy ride from SLC to RDU and a long and tiring but very fun vacation to Idaho and Utah. We spent the first week on the eastern shore of Bear Lake on the Idaho side, where we rented a huge 7,000 sq. ft. house that easily accomodated all 26 of us (11 adults and 15 kids).

Here’s a shot of all of us in the t-shirts that I designed:

It was pretty posh with a climbing wall, ping-pong table, movie theatre and all the luxury accoutrements and styling of an upscale lodge cabin. My mom and all my siblings were there along with all the grandkids.

Matt brought his boat and we borrowed my uncle Brad’s two jet skis, so we spent every day down on the lake in the water. The water, by the way was crystal clear and bright blue, and was shallow for about 100 yards, making it easy for the kids to play in the water. I made a few runs on the wake board — I was feeling pretty comfortable and even got air a few times (right before face-planting usually). Boats are fun. Maybe in a few years it would be a fun pasttime for my family with all the lakes around Apex.

Grady wants to go out to the boat:

We also had a fun bingo game with prizes, outdoor olympics, morning calisthenics, karaoke and talent show, pinata, ping-pong tournament (Drew was “run-around” champion. I was traditional champ.), a surprise impromptu birthday cake for me (OK, it was a stack of creme puffs) and lots and lots and lots of food. And we had a lot of food. Did I mention food?

We went to Garden City during the Raspberry Days festival and got the famous Bear Lake raspberry shakes.

After a full week at Bear Lake, everyone took off and we drove straight down to Park City (on my 36th birthday) and went to the Olympic Park and Museum and training center. We watched the US National aerial acrobatics ski tream training on the aerial ramps in the pool. That was very cool. Then Collin, Owen, and I rode the alpine slide before heading out.

We spent the rest of the 2nd week staying with Beth and Bryce in Pleasant Grove, in Bryce’s parents’ basement. It was relaxed and we made some fun day trips from there.

We took the kids up to “hike the Y” and they were troopers, as the temperature started soaring and it was very steep and dry and long, especially for our poor little 4-year-old Wesley who hiked in his Crocs with no socks. Owen seemed to be feeling the effects of the altitude (6200 feet at the top of the Y) and the heat the most, and I carried Grady up and down the whole way. Hopefully they will have good memories of the event. Afterwards we took them to the BYU Bookstore for some school gear and the Cougar Eat as an early BYU recruiting trip. We’re pretty sure Collin would hardly consider any other school. Nice.

I also got to go golfing with Bryce, which was fun, and we had FHE with Aubrey’s grandma Smith, where Grady knocked his front tooth back. Aubrey pushed it back in place and it seems to be doing fine.

We also spent time visiting one of Aubrey’s friends from college, more time with Grandma Packham, and a picnic in American Fork canyon where we were lucky to get free rides on a zip line that is set up for church camps.