Aviary

We went to an aviary - the kids had a lot of fun playing and occasionally looking at birds :) I am constantly forgetting and remembering how hands on and very into active play this bunch is. Creating, moving, playing - those are the times that we are all at our best in this family. When we try to go for quiet, observant and sitting everyone is miserable.

Summer concert

We went to one of the free city concerts that the city puts on. It was pretty fun. The kids liked dancing around for awhile. We will have to try a few more next year.

Battling the sprinklers

Matt was working on the sprinklers one day after Hailey's birthday so the girls were out there with her helmet and umbrella............ It was pretty funny watching them use the umbrella as a shield.

Hailey is 6

Hailey wanted a unicorn in a forest cake and when the time came I really only had neon colors and she was perfectly happy with a rainbow forest :)

Maggie giving her funny suggestions :)

She really wanted a picture with her cake showing that she was 6. She likes to put her own spin on things :) She is such a fun little girl. It's amazing to watch them grow and see the things that they are interested in. She loves to make little projects out of paper, tape, glue, and coloring stuff. She is always giving me little notes and pictures and constantly wants to give notes to other people (but her handwriting could use some work so they are very hard to read!) She loves to ride bikes, play with dolls, play outside and definitely play with friends.

She loves 1st grade and is starting to read fairly well. She likes to help me out - especially with cooking. She used to ask me for money whenever she helped with a job but I told that sometimes we help because we are a team and it's nice, for those jobs she will get paid with a hug and a kiss :) 

I need to take more pics of their presents - it's fun to look back and see what we gave them because it reminds of their interests at that time. I know she got a unicorn bike helmet, a bike basket and an umbrella.

Boys room - city wall

This is the city outline that I painted on the wall in the boys room. I just taped it off and painted in the different colors..... I finally painted on some windows so I guess I should take another pic. It goes with Caleb's superhero stage right now. The boys share a room - so I have tried to give them each a portion of the decorating that is directed towards their particular interest. Jackson has some Minecraft decorations, a robot sign and I have plans for a robot clock :) I guess I need to take pics of his part and add that too.

WA trip 3

We stayed with my parents for a week after the ocean part of the trip and did a lot of river swimming :) The water was pretty cold but once they got in and started playing they didn't really mind. We try to time our visits so we are there at the same time as some of my high school friends. It usually works out well and all of kids play while we get to visit. Especially now that the kids are getting bigger.

And look a picture of me..... that doesn't happen often..... but still no pics of the grandparents. Hopefully, this will help me remember to make sure I start to do that more often!

Jackson stayed behind for an extra week on his own with the grandparents this year. I think they all enjoyed it :) He loves to play video games with the older cousins - who are 15 -23 ish. They are great and make sure they play games that he can play too - like Minecraft. He had a good time with my parents and wants to do it again this year but maybe Maggie will take a turn...... we will see. My parents drove him all the way back down to us and we got to visit with them for a little while here in Utah.

WA trip 2 - Grand Coulee

As we drove across the state from the ocean to my parents house we stopped off at Grand Coulee Dam for the night. They do a pretty neat laser light show on the spillover water of the dam at night. It's a history of the area and the impact the dam has had.
We camped for the night with my parents. Somehow I really, really have to get better at taking pictures with them in it!!
The visitors center there has a number of interactive exhibits so they kids had a great time checking all of it out.

WA trip

We had so much fun on our trip to WA. This is only a small portion of the pics that I took. The weather wasn't great but it didn't stop the kids from getting wet in the ocean every time we got close to it! The waves are pretty rough in this area so we really didn't let them out very far. We planned to be there over the sandcastle festival and that was a lot of fun. Lots of talented, creative people. The kids played forever in the pits they dug near the castles where they would gather water.

We also flew kites quite a few times. It's nice to have good wind that takes them right up :)

We were there with quite a bit of my family. It was fun to see everyone and spend lots of time together in close quarters. We stayed in a vacation rental house. It was great and worked out really well for meals and such.

Looking at these pics makes me want to do it all over again. I guess that's the sign of a good trip :)

I was so glad were staying somewhere that had a washer and dryer - we put them to very good use over the week we were there. The kids were constantly wet and covered in sand so they were always changing and needing clothes washed.
They thought it was great that we could drive out on the beach too. I should show them these pictures again so they remember all the fun we had :)

Summer fun (and hives)

A whole lot of the above, led to a whole lot of the below. At least that's the best cause we could come up with. He has been sensitive to things before and has gotten hives a few times but it's been years since the last bout and none were as bad as this.
He was miserable. We treated it with benadryl and lotions, etc for about a week - then finally gave in and got a prescription from the doc. Which helped (short term) but made him have to go to the bathroom almost every hour of the night! They came back about 6 weeks later and again 6 weeks after that and then almost weekly for a few weeks though not nearly as bad. I think it just took forever for his system to regain control. He was tested for allergies and grass came back positive so this is my theory....... when they first started the slip 'n slide, it was too short and they were sliding onto the grass, I think all those little nicks combined with the soap they used to make is slick were just an awful combination.

He's been fine for the past month of so - other than small patches coming up if he itches or rubs for whatever reason. As we head into summer and grass exposure again we will see what happens.

Air show

We went to an air show in Ogden. We weren't sure what time the Blue Angles would be performing so we went early - they had a lot of other planes doing stunts too.

It was fun to get inside some of the airplanes. Sometimes the crew would be inside also and you could ask questions. That was pretty neat. It was very, very crowded and a lot of the planes had long lines so I think we only went in 2. I really don't like lines :)

Since it was so crowded and the Blue Angels weren't actually doing their part of the show until later we decided to leave. We ended up getting lunch and then finding a park that we thought we might be able to see the show from. It was an excellent decision. We were just over the hill from the Air Force base and the planes flew right over our heads. The kids played on the playground and watched when they wanted to. Next time we will do this plan on purpose instead of by default. It was great.

Cheer camp - July 2014

One of the girls friends invited them to cheer camp this last summer. It was just a quick 3 day camp with a 4th day performance. It was very entertaining :)

They liked it but decided that they like other things better...... although every once in awhile Hailey asks to take cheer classes. She likes the stunts they do :)

Apple tree

This was pretty cool. I was cutting an apple open and noticed that a seed had started to sprout so for the fun of it we placed it in a moist paper towel inside a baggie. It started to grow and root so we planted it. Now it's over a foot tall. We never did get it planted in the ground so if it survives the winter we will do that in the spring. I hear that there is a good chance it won't produce apples which is kind of sad but it's been fun to watch it grow.

Bird

Somehow they caught this bird..... and of course Jackson wanted to keep it. He has always wanted to keep every animal he catches - frogs, turtles, mice, birds - to the point of tears when we would tell him no. This time, though, he has a little more understanding for the wild and he was willing to let the bird go.

It might have been around this same time that there was an injured killdeer making it's way around the neighborhood. I heard stories of it from neighbor kids. Next thing I know Jackson has it. The poor bird had a broken wing and a leg barely hanging on at the top and unusable. He couldn't believe that no one had helped it and that they had turned it loose to die. I did not want to keep that poor bird around and have Jackson watch it suffer. He is so tender hearted and still cries, years later, over pets that we have lost. We live right by a bird refuge so I called to see if they could help and they gave me the number for an animal rehab center. We loaded up and took the bird there :)

Capitol Reef camping

We haven't camped as a family very much so I was a little nervous about this trip. Mostly about the food. I didn't want to take a cooler and worry about keeping it filled with ice so I planned everything accordingly. It went really well and was not a big deal at all :) Next time I won't waste my time worrying!

The landscape was amazing. It's pretty neat how much things can change in a short distance. This park is about 4 hours from us. A lot of Southern Utah is similiar to this park.

This was a hot, dusty hike - about a mile in and another mile out. It wore the kids out but the scenery was amazing. Most of the whining came from Caleb (although Maggie did her fair share - her face says it all) whose legs kept hurting - from his asthma, I think. I kept giving him piggybacks but he was totally done in and not a fan of hiking after that. The second he stepped on the next trail and realized we were going on another hike - he had a total meltdown. Once I got him calmed down and he realized it was more playing in the water than hiking he loved it :) The trail criss crosses a shallow creek. They all loved that. I wish we had discovered that one sooner. They were all wet and muddy so they all had to change for the drive home. 

So fun to climb and explore!

A neat, old village we drove down to explore.

This was at our campground. In the woods right behind our spot. The kids loved playing in it and adding to it.

Strawberry rocks

One Sunday afternoon we painted rocks to look like strawberries..... I had read that it was supposed to confuse the birds and help to keep them from eating your real strawberries. I don't know that it helped since our strawberry crop left a lot to be desired anyway..... but the kids had a great time with it. I love to see them get so into projects - I wish I did more with them. I also wish I would have had Caleb change out of his church clothes...... :)

Doll bunkbed

Another salvage pile build..... I found a bunch of 1x2s in the pile so I looked up the plans for this doll bunkbed on anawhite.com - completely awesome wood building site with free plans for all kinds of things. It took about 2 hours and then I had some very excited little girls. Now I just need to have them help me make some mattresses and blankets for it...... and maybe we should paint it.......

Nap time

Sometimes they get timeouts for behaving badly only for me to realize that I should have been aware of the fact that they were just REALLY tired......... 

(on a side note - yes, that is a slide down our stairs. This is the first house we have lived in that doesn't have a wall right at the bottom of the stairs so I convinced Matt that there should most definitely be a slide there. He came up with the plans and built it. I married a good one.)

Caleb turns 4

I am going to try to get all of last year caught up before the end of the month! Lots of posts.......

Caleb is 4!! We went to a motorcross event months ago and Caleb has been obsessed with motorcycles ever since so that's what we chose to do for his cake :) It's been fun to make cakes according to their interests over the years. He loves the attention of a birthday. He gets so excited.

We ran out of birthday wrapping paper and the girls were so excited to decorate this present for Caleb that we may just need to do that all the time! They had fun drawing all the things he likes on it.

Matching  boys. Someone gave us some extra clothes that happened to have these two spiderman shirts in it. The boys were pretty happy.

It's the little things

We went to a splash park at their favorite playground in Ogden. The water was freezing so they really didn't last long in it at all. There were numerous other kids having a great time but ours hate to be cold (maybe just maybe they might have gotten that from me) but I let them each buy a bag of chips from the vendor guy and that made their day. They were all sitting in the sun, eating their chips and talking about the cold, cold water and their awesome bags of chips :) Kids are funny.

Lego Lego Lego

These were brown, broken dressers I found in the salvage pile. I added a shelf and painted them green so that we would have somewhere to put the Legos in the boys room. It's not perfect but it works much better than all over the floor! As time goes we will try sorting them a little more. (This was in June - around Oct/Nov we bought a few more buckets for the other side and sorted most of them by color. It helps somewhat but they build and play fairly random so I'm not sure that it will last. They like to just pull out a big bucket and take it wherever they are playing and build from whatever is in it.)
Now the girls are amassing their own collection of Legos that need some sort of organization. This is a toy they all play with pretty much everyday so someday it would be nice to just add them into the playroom now that we don't have babies around.......

Scootin'

I finally let Caleb try out Jackson's electric scooter one his own. This was also in May. He crashed right away but tried again and handled it like a pro. He loves it!

Swing Caleb Swing

In May I challenged Matt to get a swing set done before the end of the month. He did it and about two days later Caleb learned to swing on his own!! Have I mentioned I love that milestone? :) It's just an A frame swing set with 3 swing spots. It has a 10 ft high swing beam though so it works for the bigger kids too. They have had a lot of fun with it. I'm happy to be adding some more fun to the backyard. (We also have a trampoline and a treehouse with two slides but since this is about May and the treehouse didn't come until Oct. it will have it's own post later.)

I also love that Caleb is in a Ninja Turtle costume - that boy still loves all things SUPER. It's definitely hard and exciting to see your youngest hitting these milestones. He's growing up!!