Thinking Ahead

Just now I took Emily with me to Wal-Mart, where I bought a large tub of ice cream.
On the way home, Emily said, "I want a treat.  What's something we haven't had in a long time?"

I said, "Emily!  We just bought ice cream!"

She said, "I know.  I was just thinking ahead."

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This evening I was standing in the kitchen fixing dinner, and was starting to get annoyed by the constant honking of a car outside. My kids were all in the living room doing nothing, so I thought one of them could look out the window and see what was going on.
I yelled, "Who's doing all that honking?"
But instead of looking, they each gave me their usual answer.
"Not me!"

Birthday Girls

A couple years ago, Emily had her tonsils out right before her birthday.  She still couldn't have cake, so we cut out some Jello Jigglers, piled them up, and called them a birthday cake.  I thought it was really sad.   But I must have done a better job than I thought at saving that birthday, because this year she asked for another Jello cake.  Go figure.

So I made three pans of Jello Jigglers, and the kids "made" the cake.  I put on a little Cool Whip and the candles, and took the picture. 

 

The cake went over well, but I made a mistake on her presents. 

She asked for books, and I had her open them first.  Big mistake!   Because of course she wanted to begin reading immediately.  It wasn't that she didn't like her new outfit or her charm bracelet, but she was glad when we stopped bugging her (with more presents) and let her go read her book in peace. (Fablehaven 2 & 3, in case you were wondering.)

My mom's birthday is on the same day, and she got a brick! Actually lots of bricks.  Doesn't seem like a great present, I know, but actually she was quite thrilled.  They have a yard to put in this year, and bricks to put around a flower bed were what she really wanted.  She also got a rake.  Lucky dog!

She didn't get a Jello cake, though. Poor girl. She had to make do with a super yummy pineapple cake.

Happy Birthday, Birthday Girls!

Easter

Our Easter was lots of fun this year. We colored eggs a couple days before this, and I did take pictures, but they seem to have disappeared.
Anyway...
Since General Conference was on Easter this year, we didn't have to get ready for church (which was nice), but does that also mean we can look for Easter eggs in our pajamas?  The older girls were all in favor of  any excuse to wear their new dresses, and the little girls are always ready to dress up, but the boys...
Well, we talked them into changing out of their pajamas, but that was about it.
They had fun looking for Easter eggs anyway.  
















 It's never fair that the big kids run ahead to find the easy eggs, and leave the hard-to-find eggs for the little ones.  "They told me there was an egg over here...."


At least Robyn was nice enough to grab this egg from the tree.


Later we went and had another Easter egg hunt at my parents' house with all the cousins.  But there have already been lots of pictures posted from that one. So Happy Easter everyone!

Territorial Statehouse

We finally had a good trip to a state park! Hooray! I can't tell you what a relief that is.

We went to the Territorial Statehouse in Fillmore. I think it was better for a few reasons. First, because we had a shorter drive (and a quieter one), and it was also gorgeous weather.

The State House was pretty cool in itself, too.  For those of you not familiar with it, Fillmore was going to be the capitol of Utah, so they started building the Statehouse here.  They only got one wing of it done, which is what you see here.  The thing was supposed to be huge!   But the capitol was moved to Salt Lake City, and this became Utah's first state park.

 

The kids always like going to museums, even though it usually stresses me out.

There were lots of pictures to look at, and even though the lady in charge was really grouchy, we still had fun looking at them.  We even found a relative or two!

In fact, we not only found some pictures of relatives, we even found the headstone of one!  I have to say, I wasn't expecting that one.  Not that he was buried there, of course.  He's buried in the Fillmore Cemetery, and he has a new headstone to replace this old one.  I guess they didn't want to get rid of the old one, so they put it here.

I think the kids' favorite part was this big upstairs room.  So nice when there's not a lot of furniture to clutter things up.  The state legislature met here once, and it has since been used as a ballroom, among other things.

  

And, of course, if there's dancing to be done you have to ditch the tennis shoes.

We had a picnic lunch, and a great day!

Thank goodness!

State Park Adventures: Part 2

On Apr 2nd, Jef had to take a student to the airport.  (Why do so many of my posts start this way?)  We decided to go along and catch a couple of state parks.  So we visited the Great Salt Lake State Marina first, since it's closest to the airport.  I honestly can't remember ever having been to the Great Salt Lake before.  (And no, I had no memory of seeing it before brain surgery, either Jamie!)  And I'm sure I would've remembered that smell!  Pee-yu!  We usually have a picnic at the state parks, and these two old ladies told us they had just had a picnic down by the lake, and directed us to the spot.  I'm still trying to decide if those innocent-looking, nice old ladies could have been playing a malicious practical joke on us.  It stunk even worse down there!  Smelled like an outhouse.

Could they really have eaten their lunch in an outhouse?  I still can't decide.  Does your sense of smell fade in old age along with your sight and hearing?
Anyway, we decided to have our picnic in the middle of the lookout platform.

It was great until a tour bus pulled up.  Then suddenly we were surrounded!  None of our picnic guests seemed to mind that we were there. They just walked around and ignored us.  It was a little uncomfortable, but we just tried to ignore them back.  They were nice enough, though, to demonstrate what this platform was supposed to be used for, and as soon as they left we followed their example.

After that amazing experience, of course we were all ready to hurry to the next state park.  So after Jef dropped his student off at the airport, we headed for Antelope Island.  That was our first mistake, right there.  If we were smart, this would have said, "...after Jef dropped his student off at the airport, we put fuel in the van, then headed for Antelope Island."  Unfortunately, we just headed straight there, so we had just enough gas to drive out to the island (on a way cool causeway), get out for a picture, and drive back to a CNG station.  Thank goodness there was one that wasn't too far away.  As for the island, I think it would be a cool place to explore if it wasn't freezing cold.  We also picked a day when the visitors center was closed, the ranch was closed, and all the buffalo were calving and thus hiding themselves away somewhere.  So this park might be a good one to come back to on a better day.  The only buffalo we did see was this one, which Ben announced with authority had been "shot with a bazooka."

Actually the holes created a cool picture of an Indian hunting buffalo.  But the bazooka idea made it popular enough for everyone to be willing to take a picture.  Most of the kids headed straight back to the van as soon as my camera had clicked, but a couple of the braver souls walked around a little bit.

You can see the causeway in the background, so obviously we hadn't gone very far.  This State Parks adventure hasn't been the most successful thing we've ever done so far, but we haven't given up yet.  Hopefully it will get better!

Vampire

Since beginning kindergarten, Cannon has started a bad habit.  He likes to chew on the neck of his shirt.  Maybe it's the pressure of public school?  I don't know.  I didn't think kindergarten was supposed to be that stressful.  But he always has a wet, chewed-up collar.  Today I found out that he's expanding his habit.  He was sitting watching Ben play a computer game, and he started chewing on the nearest available shirt.  Turns out, it was Ben's shirt that was closest.  And it wasn't enough to get Ben's shirt all wet and wrinkled.  Cannon got a little carried away, and started chewing on Ben, as well!  And Ben's shoulder didn't just get wet and wrinkled, it got teeth marks! 
It was at this point that my children decided to take matters into their own hands.  I thought they were rather clever. They used their own money to go and buy Cannon some gum.  So now he can chew the gum instead of his shirt.  Of course, that won't work at school, but we'll see how he does over the weekend.  My little vampire. 

State Park Adventures: Part 1

A few weeks ago, I got a cool little State Parks Passport in the mail.  I don't know why.  I haven't found anyone else who received one.  But it had information on all the state parks, and had a place where you could get a stamp at each park.  I just happened to receive it right around the same time that we got our CNG van.  I must have been feeling very ambitions, because I said, "Hey! We should visit all the state parks!"  Everyone thought that was a great idea, and so it began.
There are 43 State Parks.  We want to visit them all before the end of the year, which at the time gave us 41 weeks in which to do it.
Our first park was Snow Canyon State Park.  (Where it's warm.)  So on March 20th we set off for sunny St. George.  The first two hours were great.
Lydia is good as gold in the car when traveling anywhere.  As long as you're not going more than two hours.  Because at exactly two hours into the trip, she will lose it.  She will scream continuously until she is let out of the car.  Since St. George is three hours away, that means the last hour wasn't very fun.
But we finally made it to Snow Canyon, and everyone thought the sand dunes were great.

 Everyone loved the sunshine, and got very very sandy.

Jef said he saw a snake, and left me up on the hill while he and Ben went to "take care of" the snake. 

 

I was pretty sure it was just a stick, but Jef and Ben put on a good show of attacking the "snake."

They're so brave.

So after playing in the sand for a couple of hours, we headed back to the van.  Yes, we have everyone shake the sand off, and empty their shoes, but that doesn't really take care of it all.  So there was a lot of sand in the van.  Also, as soon as everyone was in, Emily threw up.  All over the place.  Now why couldn't she have done that while she was out on the sand dunes?  No idea.  So then the van was sandy and smelly. Good times. 

We still wanted to go on a hike, so those of us who weren't feeling queasy went on an extremely short hike.

We finally headed home in our sandy, smelly van, having one stamp in our passport, and 42 to go. 

As you can imagine, our enthusiasm had diminished somewhat.  

We spent the next week and a half passing around the stomach flu and I wondered if the Great State Park Project was over after one outing.  I hoped not, but we certainly didn't visit one the next week!