Utah Finale

Our last Saturday at my sister's house, their ward was having temple night. So the older girls watched all the kids and I was able to go with my sister and brother-in-law to the Draper temple.  That was so nice.  My sister and I were even able to do work for two sisters from Ohio!  That was neat, since we are sisters from West Virginia. :)  The temple was beautiful and reminded me a lot of the San Antonio temple. 

On our last day, we wanted to do a Pinterest Day.  My neice and I had come up with a few things that were easy that we had both pinned and wanted to try.  We made jersey knit bracelets, which were a bit confusing at first, but once we understood how to make them, they were super easy and we made a ton. I think we probably made at least 5 for each of us, then the littler girls all wanted some, so I know we made at least 10 more.  Then we worked on the five-strand braided headband out of jersey as well. My sister had some old t-shirts she let us cut up, and when we wanted different colors, we ran down to DI and found a few more.  The directions for the headband that we had pinned were in Chinese and the pictures weren't really working for us, so we found a YouTube video and watched a few seconds of it that showed us how to braid the five-strand.  I think they turned out pretty nice.

 My sister made some marshmallow popcorn as her contribution to Pinterest Day. She looked through her pins for some yummy treat and it turned out yummy, for sure!  It tasted a bit like caramel popcorn, but didn't harden. It was just sticky and yummy.  Another thing I learned from them from Pinterest was to pop popcorn in the microwave in just a regular brown paper lunch bag. No oil needed and it tasted great, just like air popped.  And a lot cheaper than buying microwaveable popcorn. 
I had picked up some sparklers at the dollar store, so we did those our last night there.  I love sparklers and was having a hard time finding them.  I love the dollar store sometimes!
The kids were a little scared of them at first, but they enjoyed them by the end.

Our trip home was pretty uneventful until we were almost to Colorado.  We could see the wildfire smoke in the distance and saw where some parks were closed.  Once we made it into Colorado, the smoke was so bad, my eyes were burning.  We stopped in Fort Collins and it was pretty bad.  It was dark and gray as if there was a storm coming, but it was just from all the smoke from the wildfires.  I had to keep the AC off in the car because it just kept burning my eyes.  Then, of course, we hit traffic in Denver, so it took us an extra half hour to get home, but that's not bad. We were so glad to get home, but we did have a great trip.  I love my family!

Utah, Part Deux

Wednesday we got to spend the day with one of our favorite aunts. It was so fun to catch up. She is so sweet and fun. We all love talking to her and spending time with her. She is one of the sweetest people I know. She even brought me a little present of a dishrag she had made and jello molds. I told you she was the sweetest, didn't I? I'm so glad she had time in her busy schedule to come and visit.

Yesterday we went up to Salt Lake City via the Utah Trax.  The kids loved riding the "train."

Our first stop was to the Church History Museum.  Bucko thought it was so cool to see some actual manuscript that Joseph Smith has translated from the golden plates.  He said, "That proves Jesus is real!"  It was so cute.  They loved the children's area. Goofy liked the tortilla toss and spent a lot of time there.  They all liked the dress up but were a bit embarassed to practice the dance. They even had a real log house set up outside that was pretty cool.  The kids liked "holding up" angel Moroni as well.

Next we met up with my brother-in-law.  He works on Temple Square two times a week.  We took pictures in front of the temple and then headed over to the Conference Center.

The kids liked seeing the Conference Center.  I really liked the Book of Mormon pictures. I remember that from going there five years ago. The detail on those original pictures are just amazing.  Goofy loved all the water fountains. They couldn't walk by one without getting wet.  Our tour hostess even got in on the action and kept splashing the kids!

We ended at the City Creek Center for dinner.  The kids liked the play area.  A bunch of other kids kept following them too. You can see in the bottom right picture how they are all piled onto the pink dinosaur.  What was really neat was as we were walking out of the mall, I hear my name and look up to see a friend from our ward in England!  They were just out here visiting as well. I love it! It was so fun to run into them.  The kids were exhausted by the time we made it home, but we had a great time.  I even got my sister and brother-in-law to start watching the BBC Masterpiece Mystery series, "Sherlock."  :)

Utah!

Saturday we went up to the northern part of Colorado to attend PC's nephew's baptism. That was great.  Always great to be with family and see other "family" we haven't seen in a while.  The kids and I spent the night there and then left the next morning for Utah to visit my sister.  Yes, it was a long drive.  Thank goodness I don't have any babies anymore!  They all did great.  (The dvd player we borrowed from Nana and Papa helped out a great deal as well!) 
This was our first pit stop, right after we crossed into Wyoming.  The kids wanted their picture taken with Abraham Lincoln (except for Goofy who did NOT want his picture taken).

It was so great to get to my sister's house safe and sound.  The kids just love their cousins, aunt, and uncle so much. It was fun to see their new house.  Minnie and Bucko both told me how much they loved being at their house!  Which was good to hear because Minnie was having a hard time leaving Daddy.  She did not want to come without him, but it was just not possible to bring him with us.  We sure have loved having him all to ourselves for six months, though!
Today we spent the day with mine and PC's good friend, Shorty.  She's the one I did the blog partnersintime.wordpress.com with while PC was deployed.  It was so fun to see her and her sweet children!!  We always talk about how fun it would be to get our kids together, and it finally happened! It took a little bit for them to warm up to each other, but once they did, it was so much fun!!  We played in the backyard with water guns and slip-n-slide, etc.  It was so much fun to just get to talk to Shorty in person and see their day to day life that I hear so much about.  Shorty treated me to Cafe Rio for lunch.  Yum yum yum!! And we also walked down to their little pond by their house.  It was so much fun.  A day I will never forget!  Our only regret was that our husbands couldn't be there.  Next time though! For sure!

Memorial Day

We had a wonderful community pancake breakfast and car show at church to celebrate Memorial Day.  Papa took his bike to show and PC cleaned up his car to display as well.  The kids all took their bikes for a bike parade. They decorated them and rode them in the parade. They all had fun. 

Cousins came over and played in the afternoon. We had a yummy barbeque and enjoyed the nice weather.  Tink and I played Rummikub with Dan and Shar and then convinced Dan to play Quelf with us.  That was fun and weird, like usual with that game.  We ended the day with a fire and smores.  Yum!

Note our table decorations here.  Nana and I put this together for the breakfast.  I thought it turned out great!

Graduations

We had two graduations back to back a couple weeks ago.  Yes, my kids are already into their second week of summer break! And I'm just now catching up!  Minnie had kindergarten graduation on Thursday and then Tink graduated from elementary school on Friday.  There were five kindergarten classes graduating, so it took quite a while.  The funny part was when they had all the kindergarteners stand and get the wiggles out.  They did it once because it was getting kind of loud in the gym, but then they did it again a second time and this time added on singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."  One of my friends realized something was up, so she got up and went to see what it was.  Apparently, one of the kindergarteners stuck her head through the hole in the back of the chair and got stuck.  I heard that they had to cut her out, but I'm not sure if that part was true or not.  It just reminded me of the time when PC and I were newly married and just had one child (oh, wasn't life so different then!)  and we were attending the University ward.  There weren't too many children in that ward since we were all students, but one time there was a boy who stuck his head and arm through the hole in the chair and got stuck. I remember our friend who was speaking that day, just stopping and looking helpless for a second and then coming around to help the kid's mom.  It took a while and a few men to get him out, but made for a memory, that's for sure. 
But I digress.  Back to Minnie's graduation.  They sang a cute song, and I just love watching Minnie sing.  She sings with all her heart and soul.  I love it!  I think it's because for soooo long she would not talk to anyone in public.  She's still very quiet (Uncle Dan says she sounds like a little mouse) but when she sings, she belts it out and I feel so proud of her when I hear her!
Tink's graduation went a bit smoother.  We were all very proud of her when she received the Math Award.  She is loving math these days. 
We signed Bucko out of school early that day and we all went out to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  (Bucko had a hard time saying goodbye.  They will be switching schools again because we'll be in our new house by the time school starts, so they will have to make all new friends.....again.  I didn't expect him to be so emotional, but we did love his teacher and he made some great friends.  Some who we will still keep in touch with even if we will live a few blocks farther away than we do now!)

Child-isms

PC and I have had this great opportunity to help out in Primary for a little while. We've been teaching the 5 and 6 year-olds.  Not only has it been nice to serve with my best friend, it has been so much fun hearing the answers these sweet kids give.  For example, one day we were discussing temptations.  One little girl in the class has something to share. She said that "one time, Satan gave [her] brother a temptation to kick [her] in the crotch."  Too funny! That same day she made a comment that sometimes her dad doesn't feed her.  Totally straight faced.  PC and I looked at each other and it is so hard to not crack up laughing, but we do pretty well and I just try to write them down so we can remember them later.  (We both know her parents don't starve her.  But I can understand how a child would feel like that, because as a parent, I often tell my kids they can't eat a snack right before dinner or they need to wait for some other reason.  It was just so funny.)
The other day, Bucko was helping Goofy say prayer at dinner.  (Goofy used to say the best prayers, but then he started to refuse to say them at all.  It's been just recently that he has agreed to say them again as long as someone tells him what to say.  Not sure what happened, but at least he's trying again.)  So Bucko would say something and Goofy would repeat it.  It was going well, until Bucko said, "Thank thee for our bodies."  Well, Goofy repeated it, "Thank thee for our potties."  I held it in for a couple seconds. Literally...I was holding my nose and trying not to breath so I wouldn't laugh, but alas, a giggle escaped and I was beyond saving at that point.  Luckily, Bucko ended the prayer soon after that.

Tink's Camera

We bought Tink a camera for Christmas.  She was showing me her pictures the other day and I finally put them on my computer. Some of them were so cute, I just had to share!

Pictures of some of the family over at Christmas.

Christmas morning--opening presents

Playing with cousins

A glimpse into normal days:  Bucko doing something awesome on his DS and his first day at Cub Scouts; Goofy "reading" at bedtime; me in the kitchen; Minnie posing.