Logan's Fireworks

When Mike asked what I wanted to do on Friday night after work I said, "go up to Logan and watch the fireworks and spend the night...." And he will do anything to make me happy, so we packed a bag fast and jumped in the car.

We surprised my family and watched the fireworks across from the stadium. The kids had fun, playing football, coloring with sidewalk chalk, throwing poppers and the adults were busy keeping Max out of the road.
(Nayvie, Adi, Grace & Grandma Kate)

Max loves to draw with chalk :) some times he even gets in on the cement.

Mike and Grace teamed up and sat on Bracken. Grace though this was hilarious!


By the time the fireworks started we were all ready. Max doesn't remember the ones from last year and he was mesmerized. For about 10 seconds - then he wanted to run! My little stink!

I guess Bracken forgave Grace for sitting on his head and the two of them watched together. I love the fireworks!

More Zooish Adventures

I know we go to the Zoo frequently, so I post frequently about our Zooish lives....but it makes my kids happy! This was our first summer visit with the kids this year - we got there right at 9 and it was nice and breezy! A prefect zoo morning.



We laughed when we entered one of the monkey houses, they had been toilet papered....still not sure why...



The kids watched the elephants, and baby Zuri is still playful. We watched as the trainer showed us how they checked her teeth and feet.

The kids played on the tiger statue...again....

I swear I have never seen the leopard before....I was just telling Mike that I didn't think he was really in there when all of the sudden he walked right past Grace, right next to the glass. It kind of freaked me out. He just sat down and starred.

We just love it!

31!

I'm 31. 31. 31. 31. 31. Can I be honest? Age doesn't bother me. I have never cared how old I am, and birthdays have never effected me. But, this year I simply didn't feel like celebrating much.

Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe. I'm guessing by the amount of gray in my hair - another 5 years and there won't be any brown left. Oh well.

We did do some fun things, for my birthday weekend - Saturday we went with most of my family to see Toy Story 3. It was good, but not my favorite. I really wanted Woody to meet up with Bo Peep. And now I feel bad for my 3000 Cabbage Patch Kids in totes in my basement. And I'm not a lover of 3D movies... Am I the only one?

Then on Sunday we had Oreo cake and homemade Oreo ice cream with Mike's family. I'm just going to say it was so good! We sat outside and relaxed and the evening was so nice.

And then on Monday, my actually Happy day to me we went to Chili's with my mom and dad. I had a free appetizer, a free dessert and $10 off my whole purchase. I love getting yummy deals!
I got some really fun things for my birthday, new summer clothes, a new camera and some Farmville cash :). It was nice just to be with our families. Here's to another year!

Isn't my daughter so talented?
Grandpa Todd was "resting his eyes" and Max thought he looked to comfy. He climbed up and made himself comfy too.

Stetson, I mean Max riding a bike at Grandmas. (I know only 1/2 family will get this, but don't you think he looks like Stets?)

The giant ball - or a source of great contention? Both! The kids had so much fun playing on this ball, they all wanted it, all at the same time. My kids are not great sharers.....

What do you do on a rainy day?

What in the world? I wish this picture would have turned out better. This is one of Grace's first pair of lace of shoes, and she is "learning to tie". In truth the laces are just wound around each other, over each other, under each other, and took mom more than three minutes to figure out, but she was so proud of herself. She asked me to take a picture. Why do kids bite their spoons? Every time I feed Max (which is rarely now that he is Mr. Independent) he thinks he needs to bite the spoon. I have a strong suspicion he only does it to bug me.... ugh! (notice one are Woody in the picture...)

Grace has recently discovered Scobby Doo - thanks to her cousins. I actually like Scooby so this gets a thumbs up in my book. In one of the movies Scooby and Shaggy play air guitars, and later Scooby plays a broomstick. Grace thinks its so cool so now she plays guitar and pretends to be Scobby Doo. It's actually pretty cute!

Mama's little cutters - who knew a $2 pair of scissors and scratch paper could keep munchkins entertained all afternoon? Seriously Grace must have cut for more than 2 hours the first time I let her go to town.

Grace actually does -pretty well, Max doesn't really get the whole scissor holding thing yet.

And the mess, well lets just all be thankful for a broom!

And the smile? That's one I'm very thankful for!

Flag Day

Yesterday was flag day, did you know? Thanks to the scouts fund raising drive you may have had a flag placed in your yard for the day, we did. For the most part it was a normal day - we got up, got ready and looked at the flag in our yard as we left for work. I dropped the kids off at their grandma's and went to work. It was pretty much a normal day - except I got free lunch, okay so that happens a lot too.

I finished my shift around 5:30 and went to get the kids. Traffic my direction was smooth, and I was glad I wasn't heading north because cars were backed up for miles - and that's normal too. I hurried and changed Grace and Max and then we got back in the car. The rest of the evening was not normal.

Every year the Newgate Mall hosts the Flag Day Ceremony. We work closely with the Veterans and work to get community donations for the attendees. This year we had it in the evening to see if it was draw more people, sadly it did not. Pepsi provided water and Chick-fil-A donated sandwiches to everyone there, and then gave a coupon for another free sandwich, we announced it on the speakers and had signs, but very few people stopped what they were doing and came out. But I'm glad we did.

It is a truly touching experience observe Flag Day. The Governor spoke, followed by the mayor and the Veteran leader. A band played and then a brand new flag was lifted into the sky. The sky was blue and the weather was perfect. Max and Grace were busy, and some times I was nervous they were bothering some of the people, but I was glad they were there.

After they raised the new flag they had a retiring flag ceremony, and I've never seen this before, Mike and I both had tears in our eyes. They read a poem about the flag and then discussed the meaning of each strip as they cut it apart. They handed a stripe to each veteran and then the Governor carried the square with the stars. They lit a fire in a barrel and then each veteran dropped a stripe in the fire. After every veteran had a chance they let asked people observing the ceremony to come up and burn one flag, Mike got to and it was a neat experience.

Then they did the fallen soldier portion, and I had tears. The Veteran President goes through the role call for the Veterans in their division and any who are present answer here. Those who don't answer have "fallen" this past year. They repeat the name three times and then ding the bell in remembrance. When they are done they bring the soldier's gun, boots, helmet and dog tags and place them at the front of the stage. The soldiers do their gun solute and then the band begins again.

It was not a normal finish to the day. I remembered to be thankful for all the normal things I get to do each day, and tried to explain that we live in America, and we are free to work, and to wear what we want, and to worship how we want. We live in America and we have soldiers fighting for our freedom, and the freedom of others. We have a beautiful flag that we can hang freely and that stands for ideas of a better place. I'm so thankful for those freedoms. I'm so thankful it was not a normal day. Sometimes I think we need to remember how blessed we are, even when bad things happen, even when those leading our country make decisions we don't agree with, even when we are down on our luck - we are so blessed to live in this country!

(Every time I tried to put the border around this picture Picasa cut her head off....so no border.)

Road Trip

I'm absolutely positive my mother will love me for posting this picture, but it's so cute, she'll just have to deal with it :)

Last week my mom and I took my sister Cassie down to Jacob Lake in Arizona to work for the summer. I know that I've made that drive in 6 hours from Layton - but lets just say it took longer than that this time. This is the longest we've ever had Grace and Max in the car and over all they did pretty good. I'm so thankful for car DVD players and I don't know how we lived without them! We stopped several times for the potty and ate dinner in Richfield. But the drive between Richfield and Kanab was LONG. Grace kept saying every minute that she wanted a hotel with a pool, and it was getting late. (I did not factor in that my mom drives the speed limit in my time tables....) and it got so late I was worried about the hotel's pool closing. Needless to say we finally got to Kanab at 9:45 and checked in.

The hotel people were nice and told us we could let Grace get in the pool after it closed - and that lasted all of 5 minutes. The pool was freezing so we got in the hot tub and she just clung to me. She didn't want let go of, she was nervous when I walked to the middle and after 30 seconds she said she was ready to get out. Oh this child makes me laugh! We swam the next morning again and she was still clingy - but to hear her talk about the pool when we got home you'd have thought we swam all day and it was the funnest thing ever! She keeps telling her dad that we need to go back to Kanab and go swimming at that fun hotel again.

Jacob Lake is about an hour past Kanab so we drove over and had lunch. I ate a Grand Bull and it was perfectly delicious. I have the recipe, I've made it at home many times, but it's just not the same. I saw a few old friends and left my little sister in the middle of the forest for 3 months. I hope she has as much fun as I had all those years ago, and hope she makes a few life long friends like I did!

Waterfun with the Cousins

What could possibly be the reason for this sleeping smile?

I walked in the room to wake Max up from his 3+ hour nap and I found him sleeping with the biggest grin on his face, I've never seen him sleep like this before. He was so content! I knew he'd truly had a "happy day".

Earlier in the day I took the kids up to Hyrum to my sisters house to play on the water slide with the cousins. The water was freezing, and when the sun went behind the clouds it was downright cold, but eventually the sunshine played along and it warmed up.

This picture was the first time Max went down the slide, he loved it so much! It was quite a sight heaving him up the stairs, at first he didn't get climbing up the middle at all. But by the end of the afternoon he was a pro!

Adi & Max - she's so brave and liked to be a little "mother hen" to Max, even offering to catch him at the bottom. She may be like 10 months older than him, but he is much "thicker" than she is!
He wasn't scared at all! A few times he bounded down the slide so fast I was worried he was going to hurt himself, but he got right back up and wanted "more slide!"

Nayvie

Adi & Grace

Libby being a superhero - so stinking cute!

And then there's Grace. What am I going to do with my little princess? It took forever just to get her to go in the pool at the bottom and no matter how hard I tried she would not go up to the top or down the slide. She was scared, and it was cold. She played and played and smiled. On the way home I told her I was sad that she didn't go down the slide. All the other kids had so much fun and I know she would have liked it. But she said, "Mom, I had so much fun at the bottom." How was I suppose to argue with that?

I just have to step back and realize that she is not my adventurous child, but that's okay. She's happy.

One more of Adi - It was nice just to hang out and talk with my sisters and cousins and to let the kids be kids! Looking forward to many more sunshiny wet afternoons :)