Spring Break fun continued

Thursday we headed to visit some friends of ours in Orem.  I took my camera so I could be sure to get pictures, but once we got there and the kids were playing and we Moms were visiting it completely slipped my mind!  It was a great visit and everyone had a great time.  I love getting to see friends that we don’t see often—especially when they are the kind of friends that you can be instantly comfortable with and it seems like no time at all has passed since the last time you saw one another. 

Friday I seriously can’t remember what we did!  I know we did something…I’ll ask my kids—they’ll remember.  (am I too young to worry about forgetting things all the time?) Okay, Emily reminded me that we went to the park for our weekly playgroup (I dragged the big kids along with us).  Actually there were several other kids their age there too so they did have fun. 

Saturday we headed down south for a quick trip to Arches National park. This picture is in front of balanced rock. 

The drive down was great and even Liam was well behaved in the car.  We spent all day “hiking” the different trails and it was really gorgeous!  I thought this was a fairly decent one of Jason and I.  Em was our photographer.  The kids had a blast climbing to their hearts content. Jason was especially a daredevil. Liam tried to climb and follow them a little too much for my comfort.  Thankfully he was usually pretty far behind them so by the time he got there with Daddy they were on their way down.  This is Jason up way too high looking at one of the arches.  This is the picture he took because he “had a great view Mom!”

Liam was generally much more interested in the dirt, bugs, and rocks on the ground by his feet than the cool arches.  I think he spent more time sitting down in the red dirt than anything. Thankfully it came out of his clothes.   We only did the short trails since we had Liam, but it was still lots of fun especially when he could convince someone to give him a piggy back ride.  The twins and I took a little bit longer hike while Daddy and Liam hung out and looked for bugs.  It was still a pretty easy one, but it was just too long for Liam’s little legs.   This is on our longer hike.  This one is Jason climbing a huge rock on our longer hike.    We didn’t brave the hike to the famous delicate arch because we knew we couldn’t make it with Liam.  In a couple years when he doesn’t have to be carried we’ll go hike that one, but there was a lookout where you could see it from and that’s where this picture was taken from.  It was beautiful even from far away.    It was a great day and we were exhausted when we got to our hotel, but the kids weren’t too tired to swim!  They had a blast and I just tried to keep Liam from drowning himself by jumping into the pool when no one was ready to catch him yet.  It was a great day. 

Spring Break fun

Monday the kids went with friends to see the movie “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” the verdict was it was a good movie, but nothing like the book that they love. 

Tuesday we spent the day watching our sewer pipe get fixed.  What’s more exciting that watching a tractor dig a big hole in the front yard and watching guys jump in to the hole and still be able to get back out?  The neighbors even came over to get a peek at the action.  :)  Once the pipe was fixed they had to fill in the hole.  Even with a big tractor to help they couldn’t get all the dirt that came out of the hole to fit back into it.  We still have a nice lump in our front yard that is supposedly supposed to go down with time as the soil settles.  I hope it goes down soon because it looks weird! 

Wednesday we headed to the Lehi legacy center to swim.  Jason had gone with a friend over Christmas break and said we needed to go.  I liked that there was a place for Liam to play that I didn’t have to hold him unlike the Springville pool.  we all LOVED it and I really wish they’d build something like that closer to us.  Liam LOVED this area and ALL the slides.  Em and Jason each brought a friend with them so they wouldn’t be “bored”.  They had fun taking Liam down the big slide, and playing with him in the water.  He was fearless and jumped into water that was too deep for him to touch a couple times.  Luckily Em was right there and grabbed him.  I have to watch him closely at the pool…should make for a fun summer.  :)

Wednesday night Em had a little party that she threw with her good friend Ashton.  They planned the whole thing on their own which meant that we had some last minute helping to do as Mom’s with things that the girls didn’t think about for the party.  Everyone had fun though and I think it was a success! 

This post is getting long so I’ll finish up our Spring Break fun in another one coming soon!

Chaos

  is what we have been living with since late Wednesday night when our sewer backed up into our basement bathroom and laundry room. Thursday was spent finding out that our sewer line had a “separation” in other words it was broken, having a nice guy named Adam come clean up all the gross mess and sterilize everything that could be and tear out the rest, and crossing our fingers that our home insurance would help us pay for this expensive mess.  We lived with loud fans in our basement all weekend.  The first time I went downstairs it reminded me of the end of ET when they have the house all tented…

They came and took the fans out and took away the cool plastic zipper door yesterday.  Toilet in the shower…not sure if that kind of multi-tasking will work ;)  sorry, I couldn’t resist.  Oh the joys…we’ve elected to live with this chaos until next week so the kids and I have a chance to have some fun this Spring break that doesn’t involve waiting around our home for someone to come fix something.  (I will be so happy when this is all a distant memory)  

We are off to swim this morning so hopefully I can get some pictures to share with you later. 

A white Easter

No, I’m not being racist…we woke up Easter morning to several inches of snow!  I couldn’t believe it.  I think it might have been more snow than what we had at Christmas.  I am SO ready for REAL spring! Liam finding his basket Candy! Finding more eggs.  Once he figured out there was candy in the eggs he had a hard time not just opening them all and eating them right there.  Which is a problem when you have two other kids that are interested in everything being “fair” (meaning equal to them).  We made it without any meltdowns from anyone and without too much sugar for the kids.  I can’t wait for it to be warm enough for Liam to wear his cute new outfit!  The big kids are getting  new bike helmets as soon as we can get out to go have them try them on and find one that fits.  Very low key here at our house for Easter.  We didn’t even color eggs because I had too many visions of Liam getting frustrated and throwing  the cups of dye across my kitchen.  I’ve had enough disaster cleanup lately and don’t want to do anymore than I have to and I made myself feel better with the fact that he’s only two and didn’t care anyway.  Plus now we won’t have a bunch of hard boiled eggs in the fridge that we have to find a way to eat before they go bad.  Wow, I’m totally not feeling the fun holiday Mom thing—nothing for St. Patrick's day and now this.  :)  My poor kids…

Daddy’s new toy

Saturday was a day Daddy had been waiting for.  He was waiting for his new toy to arrive.  He shouted for joy when he saw the UPS man pull up in front of our house.  What is this new toy?  An ipad.  Weeks of anticipation led up to this day and he couldn’t be happier!     Look we even captured on camera the joyful face.  Jason was almost as excited as his Dad.  New toy in all its glory.

I have to admit that to me all of these electronic gadgets are pretty much the same, but even I can tell the difference with this one.  It’s got some really cool stuff on it.  Saturday night we played a game on it.  It was a board game and we didn’t really know what we were doing, but it was still fun and we had a good time and it was all on there so no pieces to lose.  It has this cool thing for the periodic table of elements and when you pick an element it tells you all about it including a 3-D rotating picture of the element and what it’s used for.  It’s cool…I admit it and I am glad that Daddy got a birthday present that he is happy with.  Enjoy your new toy, Daddy.

Taste of Home cooking show

For the past several years I have seen advertisements for the Taste of Home cooking show and thought it would be a fun event to attend, but somehow every year by the time I got around to trying to get a ticket they were sold out.  This year I got an email about it and decided to order my ticket right away so I could go.  I found a couple friends to go with me so it would be more fun. Thanks for coming with me Candice and Denise! I had a great time with my friends, but with all the entertaining cooking shows out there I found the chef that was making the recipes a little bland and lacking personality. It kinda felt like watching a big commercial with all of the product endorsements too.  In spite of that I had  a great time and got some great ideas.  They had tons of giveaways, but unfortunately we didn’t sit in the right place or luck just wasn’t with us because none of us won anything and only one person close to us won. I was hoping to win some of the food they cooked because the serving dishes they put them in were beautiful.  I should have brought my lucky husband with me.  :) 

Mother Daughter Day

Saturday Em and I had a fun Mother Daughter day.  She had some friends in local children’s theater play Wizard of Oz so she wanted to go watch them.  It was a pretty good production.  Em wants to do it next year.  She wasn’t too excited about taking pictures, but I made her take one self portrait of us.  I’m terrible at self-portraits…but I wanted some documentation of our day.  When the play was over we went to get some frozen yogurt, but then we had to hurry home so we could attend the General Young Women’s broadcast for our church which was a big deal for her since this was her first one.   It was  nice to listen to it live.  The talks were fabulous.  I laughed though because on the way home we were talking about what our favorite talks were and Em told me who gave her favorite talk  but when I asked her what about the talk it was she liked she couldn’t really remember what it was about .  :)It was a great day spent with my daughter and I loved it!