Back to Reality

So now we are home and this is what I have to clean up today...



This was taken after I had already put away some stuff and done two loads of laundry. Thank goodness for large capacity washing machines or I would be doing laundry for days to get this all done.

Question: How does a person go on vacation and come home without so much extra stuff? I don't think you can. Even more so if you have kids. A word for anyone going to WY this summer. Take an extra trailer with you to bring home all the stuff you have left at Bruce and Linda's home over the years. We almost had to leave one of the kids behind to bring Brads stuff home.

Thanks for the good time Bruce, Linda, Christina, Ezra and Anika. We'll see you guys next week in Indiana.

Fun Day in the Sun

On Friday we went to the pool with Christina and her kids. Brooke and Kennedi thought they were too old for the "baby pool," but when it was time to go they were the ones we had to drag out of the water. The kids had fun splashing in the water and trying to coax Ezra to stay in the water and play.

Today was the Lovell fun run . I also convinced Linda, Christina, Brooke, Kennedi and Trista to join in the fun. Everyone had fun and clapped extra hard when Linda won for her age group.

In the early afternoon we walked over to main street so we could watch the parade. Luke really liked the horses. He kept saying, "I really like the horses, look at the horses, they are so great!"

Towards the evening Brad took the kids fishing in the canal where they each caught a fish except Brooke. She got frustrated and gave up after an hour and a half.

What to Do...

Everytime we get to WY we always ask ourselves, "What is there to do?" I told Brad since we probably wouldn't be coming up here again (at least for a while) that we should do some things that we haven't ever done. So, this is what we did:

We went to Devil's Canyon. It was a great! I love the view from here. I don't think the kids appreciated it as much. Brooke kept asking what everyone was looking at. She didn't get it.

We drove through the wild horse range. Brad told the kids whoever saw a horse first they would get a slurpee, so they started making things up. Every bush on a far away mountain was a horse. Then when I actually saw a horse the kids couldn't see them. They were kind of far away so they were hard to see, but they did get to see them.

We saw three different groups of horses for a total of around ten wild horses. It was cool. On the way back out of the range these horses were running along the side of the road. The grey horses are the females, and the tan horse is the male. This was also something I had never seen.




Later that day Brad and I took Luke golfing. He did pretty good for such a small guy.

What a great day!!

The Next Day...

We had to check out from the hotel at noon, and Linda, Kennedi, Christina and her kids were suppose to meet up with us to go swimming at the mineral pools. We ended up with some time before they got there so here are some of the things we did while we waited for them:

You may not be able to tell what the small brown things are, but they are buffalo. There is a road that you can drive on and see many buffalo.

We parked the car and walked around some small ponds that were made by the mineral water running through. The water looked dirty to me, but Trista and Brooke had to stick their hands in to see what it felt like.

This is the Swinging Bridge. The bridge is made to swing back and forth. When Luke first stepped onto the bridge he turned around and wanted to get of. He didn't like the way the ground moved underneath him. But before we left he was running back and forth across the bridge faster than Brooke and Trista.

On the other side of the bridge there was a small walking path that the kids had fun running on. They were excited about the catus plants that they saw, and that they could get very close to the edge because there was no fence to keep them in. That scared me a little bit because my kids have a hard time recognizing danger (like me) and don't know when to step back. Brad made the comment that we would never see that in Utah because everything is fenced in.


After we saw all these cool things we finally did take the kids swimming. They enjoyed the slides the best, but just being in the water was also great for them. Brad bribed me into going off the high dive which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and Luke asked me to do it again, so I did. When it was time to go the kids were all very sad, but also very ready to get to our destination and out of the car for awhile.

A Day in the Car...

On Tuesday evening our family left to visit WY one last time before Bruce and Linda move to Utah. We saw some interesting things a long the way. These windmills were new to us. I thought these were so cool. They kind of remind me of something you would see in a sci-fi movie.



Brad and I agreed that more places should have windmills as an alternative sorce of energy.

Later on in our trip we stoped at the South Pass Rest Stop to strech our legs.




After South Pass, when we were all back in the car, I turned around and this is what I saw:

Kids don't think anything of traveling anymore. Car rides used to be long and boring with nothing to do but stare out the windows. Now you just pop in a movie and before the kids know it an hour an a half has past by. I am so grateful for electronics.

From there we went to Thermopolis. We got there at 12:00 midnight and stayed at the Holiday Inn. The kids like staying hotels, seeing new things and having small adventures.

What to Read...

In my spare time I love to read. Where I can remove myself from the craziness of my life and just relax. My neighborhood has a book club that meets once a month. We talk about things that are going on, what our kids are doing, life in general, and then we talk about the book that we decided to read. This month we are reading Peter and the Starcatchers. A book that has something to do with Peter Pan, I think. It's suppose to be a great book to read with your kids. I love books, and am trying to expose my kids to the different types of books out there. Brooke and Kennedi really like to read The Fairy Magic books, and also the Magic Tree House and The ABC Mysteries but recently I bought a book called The Dollhouse Murderers and Brooke loved it. Kennedi really liked the first book in The Sisters Grimm series and can hardly wait to read the next one. I read a book for my history class ,1776, it was a great book, but my favorite book is Pride and Prejudice, and a series by Pamela Aiden: An Assembly Such As This, Duty and Desire, and These Three Remain. If you have any suggestions of books for kids of any ages that you or your kids have liked, let me know, we would love to read them.

A Day at the Dentist.

Last week the entire family went to the dentist. And we are proud to report that everyone in our family is part of the No Cavity Club. Everyone except for Brad. Ha, Ha, Ha. Just kidding. Brad has never had a cavity and didn't know what to expect, so I went with him to get his filling. I happened to have the camera in my bag from the recital so I took a few shots.

Brad waiting for the laughing gas...



Brad getting the laughing gas...



Brad getting his teeth drilled and not aware of the drilling because of the gas.



He was a brave patient. He decided that he didn't need to get the tooth numbed, and was just fine. I wish I was that brave. Because of this visit to the dentist Brad has decided to lay off the drink runs with his friends at work.

The Sleeping Beauty Ballet.

Before you start something you should always remember to find out just what you are getting yourself into. Last fall when I asked Brooke what dance class she would like to be in she decided ballet was the one for her. Her class practiced and practiced all year and this last month has been nothing but rehersals, two every week until last Saturday when they had a 4 1/2 dress rehersal that started and ended late, another rehersal on Monday from 2-4 back to the Reagan theater for curtain call at 6:45 and do it all again on Tuesday, twice. It was so much work, not only for Brooke, but also for me. The girls had to have their hair slicked back into a bun with a bun net (I had to go to three different stores to find this), a pair of $17.00 tights, and a face full of make-up with very specific colors, none that I already had. If I had known everything that I know now I might have not let her do it, but silly me, I have now signed her up for ballet 2 for the summer. She really wanted to do this because not many of the kids in her class were allowed to go into ballet 2 yet. This is encouraging for me because with all of the classes that any of my kids have taken this is the first time any of them have advanced. Way to go Brooke. Anyways, enough ranting. The ballet was a huge success, and Brooke performed her part beautifully (her class was fairy attendants.) So we'll probably do it all again next year. We'll see, at least i'll have the make-up.



I tried to take some pictures of her while she was dancing but the dely on the camera is terrible, so here's the best of the bunch.

Pop-Tarts, Coy Ponds & Paper Airplanes

Luke has found a new food that he really likes. The famous pop-tart. He is soooo picky about what goes into his mouth that it surprises me that he will put this in. He ate three of these things between breakfast and lunch, and he kept asking for more throughout the afternoon. What is it about these things that make him want to eat them? Wait, I know. They are packed full of sugar, and loads of other things things that are not so good for you. Oh well, eat them while you can. Right?



While Luke was eating his many pop-tarts, the girls went to their new favorite place to hang out. At the end of our street, before you enter the street where the houses line the golf course there is an old man that lives in an old house. He has a wonderful coy pond full of Chinese fish. The girls go there and spend hours looking at the fish and playing "Lost" on a deserted island. What a great imagination they have. They took these pictures today while they were out playing.

Sitting in the tree you can almost see them on the branch. Brooke has on a pink shirt and Kennedi is next to her. I think.





To distract Luke from wanting to go to the pond, we made paper airplanes. Kennedi's primary teacher taught her how to make them and we copied her plane. They fly pretty well and kept Luke happy while they were out.



These were Luke's favorite planes. How he can tell the difference between 10 0r 15 of the same design (we only fold them one way) is beyond me, but those were the ones he really liked.

A Finsihed Bathroom, Almost...

I know that it has been a year and a half since we started remodeling our bathroom, but when you only have evenings and weekends to work on a project this size it's going to take awhile to finish. We have been mostly done for about eight months, but it's the small details that are always the hardest to finish. You will be happy to know that we are one step closer to being finished. This mirror was hung yesterday and I couldn't be happier with the final product. It took us so long to decide on something that we both liked, and came in the size that we wanted (25x40). We looked everywhere around here, but were not willing to drop the hundreds of dollars the framing stores around here wanted, so we went to our source and this was the frame we found.



There it is, in all it's glory. I would like to thank Casey Childs for ordering the frame and also putting the mirror into the frame, he does amazing work. I would also like to thank Alan Childs for recommending Glass Images for the inexpensive piece of glass. I would also like to thank my husband Brad, without his help we would still have moldy blue carpet in the bathroom. So thanks to everyone for making this possible.

Here are a few more pictures of the project, I wish that we had some before pictures so you could see how far we have come.

All of the tile work was done by myself, my neighbor Molli Black and Brad's mom Linda Childs. Brad did all of the cutting with help from his dad.



The diamond pattern above was not an easy pattern, but we did it, and we love it. You can not really see it, but it goes around the bathtub also. The surround for the bathtub was built by Brad and his dad, Bruce as was the wall between the shower and the tub.





As you can see there was a lot of tile work done and we now consider ourselves professional tile installers.



This shower door was also bought from Glass Images. Doesn't it look great? I think so.

Things to finish: Baseboards
Trim around the top edge of the bathtub tile
Fix the drawer that is continually breaking (Luke likes to hang on it).

We bought our cabinets from Kitchen's Direct in Lindon and I would not recommend them to anyone.

Once again thanks again to everyone that helped. We couldn't have done it without you.

Trista has been asking for the last three months every time it was warm if we could take off the training wheels on her bike. This morning she asked and I thought, "Why not, she'll never be able to do it." So I took them off and to my surprise with only a small amount of help to steady her on take off she could do it.



This is Trista going up the street,



And this is Trista going down the street.



With only a small amount of help Trista learned to ride her bike in no time at all. My kids are always surprising me with the things they are able to do.

And because Brooke was kind enough to go with her, she was able to go all the way around our block.

WAY TO GO TRISTA!!!

First Day of Vacation

The temp is a 76 degrees, It's the first day of summer vacation, and the kids were sad that grandma and grandpa had come late and gone early (they were on their way to Hawaii, lucky). I was trying to think of something for the kids to do to take their minds off of them leaving. We went to the gas station and got drinks, a special treat for the kids, and when we got back we broke out the Triple Slide Slip and Slide. At first the kids were not sure if they liked this, but soon enough they got into it. All except Trista (she decided she's rather play the new Wii).

Kennedi was the first and it seemed like she was an old pro. On her first try she got herself all the way to the end of the slide. Something she couldn't do last year. She was excited, which got Brooke excited about trying it.



So Brooke had to try it. She opted for the run as fast as you can, drop to your knees when you hit the slide, and then bounce to your stomach. This method got her almost to the end of the slide, and left her wanting more.



Luke, being much smaller didn't try to run and slide, but he and his cousins Olivia and Gwen had a lot of fun running up and down the slide catching water in their faces. Luke also enjoyed crawling on his knees and pretending that he was sliding.



Over all everyone had a lot of fun as you can see by the smiles on everyones faces. Pictured below in order from L to R: Olivia, Gwen (cousins), Kennedi and Luke. Missing: Brooke.



Thanks Slip and Slide for a great afternoon.