Utah 2012 - Part 1

We spent the last two weeks visiting family, temples, and shopping malls in Utah.  I was anxious about the 17 hour drive with three little ones but apart from a couple of frustrating incidents the kids were amazing and the trip there and back went smoothly.  We spent the first week in Brigham City, visiting Salt Lake, Ogden and Logan during the days.  The kids, however, would have spent every moment in their Uncle Rick's pool if we had allowed it. 

Salt Lake City

We made a day trip to temple square to meet up with my Uncle Mike and his family.  While there we visited the Church History Museum.  It was so exciting to look through the museum and have things that the kids could see and touch that went along with what they've learned at home about Joseph Smith and the early saints.

This was a replica of the bunks that would have existed on the boats that brought the saints from England to the United States.  One family of 5 or 6 would share one side of the bunk!!  I guess I should stop complaining about a cramped van.

Temple Grounds and City Creek Center

An unsure Emma encouraging her baby brother to give the sporadically spraying water a try.

Logan

This little park is where my dad proposed to my mom.  It's a tradition to go there each trip and play in the icy cold stream and eat at Frederico's, a restaurant that makes yummy pizza and the best cheese and ham salads EVER!  Lillian was the only one that could bear having her little feet in the stream for longer than just a couple of seconds.

Hanging Out

One of the best things about summer holidays is all the time there is to spend visiting and playing, even if you are nearly 30 years old.

Watching Sesame Street with "baby Eli", not much of a baby anymore.

Great Grandma Broby

Flying Airplanes with Uncle Ricky

Uncle Rick has promised Walker that as soon as he is old enough he'll teach him how to make and fly these airplanes.  I have no doubt that Walker will hold him to it.

Happy Birthday Lillian!!

Our beautiful baby girl turned the big 1 today!!  The last year has flown by and every moment (nearly) has been wonderful.  She has such a sweet disposition and has brought so much fun and joy into our household.  I keep a journal for each of the kids and on the day Lillian was born I wrote...

"Mommy knew that I would be a little girl all along and she was so excited to see how much thick black hair I had.  For the first time ever Daddy got to cut the chord but he wasn't sure if he cared for it very much.  He thought I was just as beautiful as could be."

I can't believe that was a whole year ago.  Every day she gets more and more bright and beautiful.  She is such an incredible addition to our family.

Here are a few pictures of the birthday festivities tonight.

 She had LOTS of help opening her gifts.

Much like our older children the cake was her favorite part.

This is the face of a baby who has had her birthday gifts stolen all night.

                                                            Happy Birthday baby girl!!

And while we're on the subject of Lillian, everytime I open the fridge she frantically crawls toward the open door to try and climb inside.  Generally I catch her before she gets there, much to her disappointment.  Yesterday I cleaned the fridge out so the door was open for quite some time and she was in heaven getting into everything she's always wanted to.

She was especially excited about the open bottle of chocolate sauce that she found on the lower shelf.

Fun in the Sun

In my desperate attempt to prepare for our upcoming Utah trip I have neglected to post anything  new.  It has been crazy hot here and we have been trying our best to stay cool.  The days have been fun playing in the water and the shade outside, it's the evenings that we have been struggling with trying to keep the kids cool in their beds.

I did my best to keep the kids out of our sweltering home so we tried finger painting one afternoon.  The kids LOVE fingerpainting but I have a love-hate relationship with it.  I love watching the kids create with their hands but I hate cleaning up the mess afterwards.  Clean up was a piece of cake this time around though because I could let them do it in the sprinkler.

Lillian lives for being outside.  The second I leave her on the ground she heads directly to the dirt and stuffs handfuls of it in her mouth.  It makes me CRAZY!!!

(notice her big teeth?! She has 6 of them now.)

We had a huge hail storm that destroyed a good number of our pretty flowers so I thought I should post a few pictures of them as proof that they did exist.

Summertime Spring Cleaning

Why is it that when I make one room look like this...

Another part of the house ends up looking like this!?!?!

First Day of Freedom

 Today was Emma's first day of summer holidays.  While I have been looking forward to this day for the last several weeks I still found myself feeling heart broken yesterday as I dropped her off at the door to be welcomed by her incredible teacher Mrs. Semeniuk for the last time.  I felt almost as heart sick as I did the day that we dropped her off for her very first full day of kindergarten.  Each of these little milestones just mean that she is getting bigger and more independent and I can't imagine that I will ever get used to that.  Despite yesterday's feelings I woke up this morning filled with relief that we didn't have to be on the afternoon kindergarten schedule.  I was so excited to have a day dictated entirely by what we wanted to do and not by where we had to be.  So, we did a couple of things that we have been putting off because they conflicted with school.

First we made it to the library for storytime.  The cute library assistant with her bright purple pigtails and purple hoodie was so fun to listen to with her funny voices and added commentary.  The kids were completely enchanted and she held their attention with every word she read.

Walker slowly migrated from his chair to Emma's lap, regardless of the fact that he's nearly as big as she is.

Then we made it to the dog park to take Bridgett for a walk before it got too hot.  The dog park is the easiest and fastest way for me to take all four of them for a walk at the same time and it exhausts the kids as well as the dog.

I can't wait to spend every day of the next two months doing exactly this!