Super Saturday

We are in Utah for our much anticipated family reunion trip.  As it turned out, the morning of family reunion #1 was the ground breaking service for the Brigham City, Utah temple.  A temple in my little home town.  Wow!  My parents were able to get two of the 2000 tickets and Dad graciously gave me his ticket and stayed at home with the kids so that I could go with Mom and my brother and his wife.  There were even more people on lawn chairs and standing in the back and across the street on the tabernacle lawn.  It was a wonderful morning.  You can read more about it in the Deseret News.  The talks were short, but full of good things to hear.  President Packer advised us to use the time during the temple construction to build our lives spiritually to prepare to serve in the temple.

We arrived early before the sun was over the mountain and fortunately the shade from the trees that line main street and a few clouds, perhaps a little divine intervention, helped keep the crowds comfortable on a beautiful morning.

(So do we look alike, just a little?)

After all of the church and civic dignitaries turned their shovel full of dirt, the kids were called up and a crowd of camera toting mothers followed.  After the kids anyone could come in for their own photo op.  It was fun, so here were are, shovel in hand.

That afternoon we headed to Cherry Hill Campground for our reunion.  The kids and I had a great time.  I got to see and talk to cousins I hadn't seen in many years.  It was a lot of fun.  The water slides and pirate ship didn't hurt.

Back tracking just a little bit, we stopped at Temple Square on the way home from the airport.  The kids had never been there before and I hadn't been there in a very long time.  It was a great experience.  The kids especially loved the scale model of the Salt Lake Temple, the seagull monument, and of course the statue of Christ in the North Visitor's Center.

We have only been here a couple of days, but these days will be tough to top.  We have more fun planned including a visit to a REAL cowboy to see his horses and cows.

O Pioneers

We have had a fun week with cousins visiting.  It was great to see them.  My parents and brothers and their families are now all in Utah and Idaho so we don't get to see them very often.  We spent a day with them at the beach and some days just relaxing, swimming, playing at the park, and having a good time.  Unfortunately I forgot to put the battery in the camera so no pictures other than a few stuck in my phone.  We skipped the marathon to the aquarium.  We'll go later when no one is tired or needing a nap.  They enjoyed the fish and the farmers market.

This weekend was the Stake Pioneer Day party.   That morning we read some pioneer stories from our little Church history picture book.  Buddy Boy's favorite part of the stories we read was the seagulls and the crickets.  There was a Primary parade through the parking lot for the kids.  Buddy Boy was excited to be in the parade so we decorated their bike and scooter and had fun.  They wanted to be Sherrifs so we pulled out vests and added horsey heads.  Someone had a real full sized handcart for the parade.  They gave kids rides around after the parade. My favorite part, after the parade of course, was the music, a little bluegrass, a little classic Western.  We have a very musically talented bishopbric.  The two in the middle are the counselors in our bishopbric.  Another is also in our ward.  The kids and I loved it.  For the rest of the afternoon Buddy Boy was singing "rollin' rollin' rollin'...raw hide!" as well as a little yodeling.

Wanted!

Buddy Boy has really been making a lot of signs including wanted posters for Police Jones.  They are all pictures of robbers and a few jails.  He is thinking a lot about good guys and bad guys and all the bad things that could happen in the world.  He is processing a lot of this through his posters and play. 

My favorite was the under side of the chairs.  He did ask first and since it is just chalk I said OK.  He wanted arrows from the robbers to the jail so that Police Jones would know what to do, take the robbers to jail.  He had an interesting choice of media.  You can see more wanted posters on the Police Jones web site.

the sign maker

Lately Buddy boy has taken an interest, or really his interest in signs has exploded.  He has always wanted to know what signs mean.  Now he wants to make his own using stencils.  Of course he wants me to make him custom stencils.  So I do.

We have signs for "no cats", "no girls", "Police", and "Mail only" just in case the mail carrier wanted to put something else in his diet coke mailbox...in the hallway.  He even wanted a sign that said "no moms taking friends away from the park before they are ready to go".  Yea, that was an emotional morning.

I'm glad he is doing more writing, drawing, and art work.  For just a long time he just wasn't in to it.  He is even using his art and stencils to express himself.

Little scientist

Buddy Boy asked me if I was a scientist.  I told him that I was and he seemed pleased with that answer.  For some reason it mattered.  This has been one of his favorite books lately (My First Science Book by Angela Wilkes).

We have done a few of the experiments out of it.  This is where the shadow puppets came from.  Here is our version of the different liquids.  They are honey, colored water, and vegetable oil just in case you wanted to try it out.  He really thought this was cool.  We put the honey in first, then the oil, and the water last.  It was fun to watch the oil and water separate themselves.  We dropped all sorts of things in from plastic frogs and pennies to Legos and pistachio shells.  Interestingly enough they all eventually sank below the oil layer.  Our honey was a little dark and harder to see through, but you could see the object when I shone a flashlight through it.  Fun book and fun projects.

Happy Father's Day

Days like this are pretty low key around here, but here is a card Buddy Boy did at school a few weeks ago.

It's Dad in a police car catching bad guys.  I love it.

The swimming hole

After a very cool spring, summer has finally come. Buddy Boy wanted to go swimming, but I wasn't in the mood so we did this instead. I think they had just as much fun.  What do you think?

Graduation day

Buddy Boy graduated from preschool.  The first of many graduations I hope.  We had a great time playing at the park, but when it came time for the graduation Jack had other ideas.  He didn't want to participate in the graduation ceremony so he participated in his own way by sitting next to me and taking pictures of his friends.  When it was over I tried to get him to at least go sit with the rest of the kids, but he got side tracked by all of the cameras pointing his way and stopped.  His best buddy ran up next to him and we got this shot of the two boys.  Very cute.

Butterfly dress

The dress... and an action shot.

I made this cute little dress and matching bike short bloomers from some fabric that I have had sitting around for a very long time.  I had originally planned to use it for myself but never got around to it.  So here it is in a little dress.  I got fancy and painted the butterfly and flowers on the front.  She loved it because it was "pink" (coral really) and had a butterfly with "sprinkles".

My favorite present

This week was my birthday.  It was a pretty low key day, a playdate at the park in the morning, baking a cake and balloon flowers and bugs in the afternoon, and dinner at our Mexican spot in the evening.  The balloons were a lot of fun.  We made various plants and flowers including a venus fly trap.  The bugs included butterflies and a blue ladybug.  And for some reason a pink guitar was requested by Baby Girl, so I made one.

This was my favorite present.  Baby Girl drew this and gave it to me.  She said, "For you!  Your birthday!"  That made me smile all over.  I asked her to tell me about it and she said that it was "dot-dots and polka dots".  Yup.  That's what it is.  There is even a little smiley in there.

I had to explain to Buddy Boy many times over that it was MY birthday and so I got to decide what kind of party we had and what shape the cake would be.  He thought I should have a Blue's Clues party and cake.  I didn't invite all of his friends to my party, nor did I make a Blue cake.  I made this one.  I got suckered in by the picture.  I don't usually like white cake, but I tried it anyway.  I liked the idea of the lemon curd filling.  Mine didn't turn out as well.  I didn't let the filling set up enough before assembling the cake.  I thought the softer filling would moisten the cake but it didn't work out that way and let's just say it deconstructed itself. The cake was a little biscuit-y for a cake. It still tasted pretty good.  I don't know if I will make it again.  It took a long time to make and did you see how many eggs and how much butter is in there?

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/