Rocking R Cabin

 My good friend Jodi's family has a cabin near Zion National Park and invited us to go up there with her this weekend since the kids were on fall break.  There are actually 3 small cabins but I wasn't thinking and didn't take a picture of the one we slept in.  The one below is the "main cabin" with the kitchen and sleeping area.  Kent wasn't feeling well, and he also had some winterizing yard stuff (and a BYU football game) so he ended up staying home.  Jodi took her 4 kids up and Jodi's sister Jennie was also there with HER 4 kids.  So, lots of kids, not lots of adults.  It was still lots of fun and we really hope Jodi will invite us again sometime (hint hint...)  And maybe if there is a next time everyone will be healthy and there will be NO puking or fevers, right Jodi?

 The main cabin was built by Jodi's grandpa who was a contractor and got a bunch of leftover stuff from jobs and brought it up to his property on the mountain and turned it into a cabin.  It's super rustic with no electricity and no running water.  Just a couple steps up from camping.

 Emilia was walking around with a roll of toilet paper because nature was calling and she was looking for a place to answer the call. While exploring she got sidetracked by a tree house and ended up packing that TP up and down the steep ladder.

Elise had a good time despite her bored face in this picture.

Hiking with a bunch of kids.  It was beautiful and adventurous!

Fun swing! 

Crazy bent tree

This was the cutest thing that Emilia built. It was a mini-fort that she built in the forest by the cabin.  She even built a tiny little fire pit with a little teepee fire made out of pine needles.

And of course, I had to get a picture of our favorite smelly place.  Nothing says togetherness like using an outhouse with your kids.  

And, on the subject of outhouses, Adele was the only one (besides myself) who consistently used the outhouse.  I was worried that she would be afraid to go in there and would freak out to have to go to the bathroom over a hole.  I guess for her no flush = no fear.  The other kids found it VERY exciting and entertaining to answer the call of nature IN nature.  They giggled and laughed at going to the bathroom in the bushes and in the forest behind the cabin.

Llama Vest & Ugly Pants

I was shopping at Kohl's last week and I think I may have possibly seen THE ugliest pants ever. WOW.  If this is the new trend count me out.

The llama vest was pretty awesome too.

Family Photos 2012

My good (and very talented friend) Kirsten A. agreed to take some photos of my fam so we'd actually have something for our Christmas cards and something to replace the 2.5 year old photos on our wall.  She did a great job and I am so glad we got everything I hoped for!

Horse Class

The city parks and rec dept. sponsored a class called "Horses Up & Close" and I enrolled Elise since she LOVES horses.  There were 4 sessions of the class and it was really fun even though it got off to a rocky start.  The first day of class the instructor didn't show up because she got stuck in Florida due to a hurricane.  She called the parks and rec manager who didn't pass the message on to any of the parents.  So we all showed up and there was no teacher and nobody could figure out what happened.   The class was supposed to have 8 kids but since many of the parents were disgruntled and demanded refunds, only 4 actually showed up for the rest of the classes.  This meant that each of the kids in the class had their own horse to ride the whole time during the 3rd and 4th classes.  It turned out great for us even though it was crazy at first.  Elise hopes to take the "advanced" class if the series is offered again.

San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo is in a park in the middle of San Diego and it is very tropical and lush.  The zoo was huge and so amazing!  We especially liked the double decker bus tour that drove us around about half of the zoo.  We wouldn't have had nearly enough time to see all the things we saw if we would have had to walk the whole time.  

The hibiscus flowers at the zoo were amazing.  It was really a tropical paradise.

The kids wanted to get in on some of the animal behavior and had a little scratching battle.  Faces have been cropped to protect the guilty.

Feast or Famine

Usually it's famine.  I am talking about blogging.  Feast of craziness. Famine of writing about it.  Maybe that is good.  It seems like I blog about once a month, covering all the big events and trips and stuff. At least that is how it has been during the summer. I hope I can get back to more regular blogging.  I kind of miss having a place to come vent and talk about some of the quirky things about life.  It has been a long time since my IBV has been active.  I need to start listening because crazy stuff happens all the time.

California - Legoland

I have to admit I never knew what the big deal was about Legoland. I have a few friends who have been there recently and I wasn't really even considering this theme park as a vacation stop for us.  I figured that spending an entire day looking at legos could perhaps not be the funnest thing we could do in Cali.  Somehow I finally figured out that Legoland is actually FUN and they have rides and stuff.  Then I looked it up online and realized it was an AMUSEMENT PARK!  (No kidding!)  So we decided to go there.  We were trying to do some new things on this trip and were staying exclusively in the San Diego area for this trip.

Apparently there is a cross-over in Lego lovers and Star Wars lovers.

Look at our cute matching backpacks.  I made those for our trip.  So cute.  Someday my kids will make fun of me for doing that.  I just did it because I didn't want to carry all of their stuff.

My cute little fam at LEGOLAND!!!

I have to mention that my very good lifelong friend AMY joined us in Cali for our awesome vacation.  We got to party with her for 4 days and it was so fun to have her there with us!

I was just noticing that all the pictures I posted were actually of Lego creations.  You will have to take my word about they rides.  They even had some fun roller coasters.

California! Part 1

 I know there have been many, many people who have been DYING to see the pictures of our trip to California.  Ok, well, at least my in-laws are interested.  They have to be interested- they are family.  Maybe someone else still reads my blog.  Who knows.  It's been slow around here.  On the blog that is, not in life.   It would help if I wrote more regularly. It seems that my Inner Blogging Voice has been replaced by my Inner Try-To-Keep-Track-of-Everything Voice.  And the voice that reprimands me for forgetting things like orthodontist appointments that I scheduled a month ago and didn't get the email reminder for until I became a delinquent no show.  Anyway, I will stop digressing and get back to California.

We wanted to take a trip to Cali this summer sometime and debated when to do it.  We finally decided to go in September when it would be less crowded and cheaper and when we didn't have a bunch of other stuff to do.

Whew, that was a lot of pictures. If you think THAT was a lot you should have seen what was on my camera.  That is why it has taken me a week to even attempt blogging and photo editing.

As you can see, we had a blast at the beach.  The kids loved it.  I loved it.  Kent enjoyed taking pictures.  That is why there is a disproportionate amount of pictures of me compared with pics of him.  I was playing.  He was photographing.  I REALLY wanted to go back to the beach the last day we were there but I could not bring myself to become all sandy again.  That's the only bad thing about the beach.  Leaving covered in sand.  There were no outdoor showers (that we found) so we took a lot of sand back to our hotel.  A lot.  I hope they have sand traps in the showers.

First Day - FINALLY!

The first day of preschool FINALLY came! It is just torture for the littlest kids to have to wait a couple of weeks for their school to start after the big kids start.  All summer long Adele talked about "Mrs. Smiley" and even broke into tears a few times because she said she missed her so much.

Haircut #6. Or is it #7?

I sigh as I blog this.  I am not furious like I was yesterday.  Today I am just accepting my fate to forever be a parent of a very mischievous child.  I was at JoAnn fabric store with Adele yesterday and noticed that her hair looked mighty crooked and mighty chopped.  So I asked her if she cut her hair.   She said that it wasn't HER but that her friend Gracie had cut her hair. (They have done this in the past on more than one occasion.)  She had the whole story down from when it happened to where they hid the hair.  It just didn't fit together.  She was telling me they cut it a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn't figure out how I wouldn't have noticed.  Finally I was able to get a confession out of her.  She did.  Sunday night.  I thought we were over the haircutting.

I have been trying to decide what to do about the short part of the hair.  Should I try to fix it by getting it cut or will that just make it worse?

Will it end up like this litte girl?  The bowl cut with a mullet?  I decided to leave it long, put it in pigtails every day and then in a couple months when it grows out a bit have it evened out.  It makes me sad because I'd love for Adele to have cute hair but she keeps whacking it off so we are always in that "awkward stage" with it, trying to grow out the last bad haircut.

Her new hairdo for the next several months during the regrowth.  Much better than the bowl mullet.

Kent- 36!

August 23, 2012
Happy birthday to my sweetie Kent!!!

Having a little chicken cordon bleu.

Only one candle in the dessert bowl.  36 would have been bad. 

I had a shirt made for Kent

Pinata fun with the kiddos.

School (At last!)

August 16, 2012:  The first day of school. 

 Lest they should make me sad and wish they weren't going back to school, on August 15 there was lots of fighting, whining and overall uncooperativeness (is that a word?) and grumpiness.  It wasn't just my kids.  We had a lot of friends (mostly younger ones) come over to play that day.  Several of the friends were the same way.  The kids all fought.  The boys teased the girls, the girls teased the boys.  I decided that  they were behaving that way because they were READY to go back to school.  (WOO HOOO!)

The pictures where I told them to smile.  Elise was making her "Hurry up mom, I gotta go to the bathroom" face because she had just told me to hurry up because she had to go to the bathroom.

How they really felt:

 Ian:  YAY! (mostly)  Elise:  BLAH!  (mostly) and Again, "Hurry mom, gotta go..."

Emilia:  HOLY COW!  THIS BACKPACK IS SO HEAVY!