Summer Pictures: Part 2

One of our very favorite summer fun things to do: watch the Lagoon shows. Here's the "silly" boys singing Bad Romance. It's an eye opening experience to hear your 4 and 2 year-olds singing a Lady GaGa song.
Gwen's favorite singer: Michelle. She once gave Gwen a high five even though Gwen had sticky hands from eating cotton candy. That made a huge impression on Gwen.

Gwen loves meeting the Lagoon dancers after their performances and running into them around Lagoon. She clams up when she's face-to-face with them but won't stop talking about her "friends" after they leave. One evening we ran into a bunch of them and I told them how they were her favorite part of Lagoon and one of the guys told her that she was his favorite part of Lagoon. She was so excited about that. She wants to be a Lagoon dancer when she grows up. She told one dancer that she was getting so good at their dances that they should let her on the stage and she would be in the show for them.

Gwen took this next picture of herself with our new waterproof camera at Lagoon-a-Beach.

Emily found a cool-er place to hide at Lagoon-a-Beach. Our kids love the water and the water park is a big hit with them. The problem is that it's such a hassle to pack all our swimming stuff and change at Lagoon. It's so easy to just visit the pool in our condos that we only gave in a few times and went to Lagoon-a-Beach.

Emily hiding in the tubes. Such a cute little girl.

Emily and Gwen are fearless in the water. They love the slides. We made Gwen wear a life vest the first time we went but it became pretty apparent that it just slowed her down. We did make her have an adult near if she wanted to leave the kiddie area.

One of my fishies.

Gwen goes down one of the slides. She was sad that she wasn't big enough yet for the faster and bigger slides. Maybe next year, Gwen.

One of Emily's favorite rides is the Jumping Dragon. She loves the fast rides. My little dare devil.

One of the nurses at my work has become a really good friend of mine. She has a little boy who is a year younger than Gwen and they're also good friends. His name is James and he has glasses. When Gwen found out that she needed glasses she was so excited because she could be like her little friend James. One day this summer we got to spend the afternoon with him at Lagoon.

The boys from the Lagoon day show. Gwen told us that she's going to marry Charlie - not pictured. Too bad that Charlie likes boys. We didn't tell her that though. Let the kid dream right?

Jonathan's favorite singer as Mary Poppins. Noah said he's going to marry her.

Gwen's favorite song from the day show is "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".

Cute little James getting all settled for the show. He wasn't nearly as impressed as Gwen had wished.

Summer Pictures Part 1

We got a new camera and it's waterproof! So here's some of our fun things we've been doing this summer:

Emily playing in the fountain at Lagoon. We've been so many times but it never gets old - for the little ones anyway. Some of us bigger ones have seen the shows so many times we have them memorized and know all the performers by name.

Riding the wooden horsies at the zoo. This one is the "Mommy Horsie" and the other one is the "Daddy Horsie" according to Emily.

Playing with or in or around water is always a big hit for my kids.

Gwen's beautiful reflection in the world ball at the zoo.

Swimming in our pool. Emily is braver than ever. She jumps in from the side yelling "Cannonball". She loves to put her face in the water. We have to make sure she has her water wings on the moment we get there because she'll jump in without them on and then be grumpy when you have to jump in and save her from sinking to the bottom.

Gwen loves swimming without her water wings for the first summer ever. She spends all her time diving for toys and practicing swimming under the water. You have to keep a close eye on her too or she'll sneak a bit too close to the deep end.

Underwater camera!

See, I told you. My two little fishies.

More to come when we stop having fun for more than a minute so I can upload more pictures.

Renaissance Faire

Today I took my family to the Renaissance Faire up near Ogden, Utah. It was so fun, but I don't have any pictures because I'm pretty sure that Gwen took my camera outside during the last big snow storm like a week ago and never brought it back inside. I remembered this as we were packing up to leave this morning. I remember her leaving the front door with it as I was trying to do a work out video and had asked her to leave it inside, but I'm pretty sure she didn't. I don't remember seeing it after that either, so I'm probably thinking that my birthday present this year is going to be . . . a new camera! I really wish I'd had the camera for today though.

I've never been to a real Renaissance fair before. I've been to other fairs that have had lots of similar parts to it but nothing like this. My favorite part, by far, was the full contact jousting. You should check it out. Just google full contact jousting and watch the YouTube videos or check out the Knights of Mayhem website. There's even going to be a TV series about these guys. Seriously. I would love to do this. My older sister has this not-so-secret secret that she secretly wants to be an author and is even writing a book. Well, I have some secrets of my own. If I wasn't a nurse, or if I had more guts and time, I'd want to be either A: a kick boxer, or B: on a roller derby team, or now C: a jouster. I now want to borrow my sister's horse and learn how to knock people off their horse with a huge wooden stick. It was cool. I was even a little jealous that one of the knights chose my super cute little niece Jami as his lady to fight for. Then he beat the National Champion just for her. It was awesome.

The rest of the fair was pretty much people in costumes selling homemade trinkets or turkey legs. There were a couple other interesting parts. There was a guy dressed like Jesus going around blessing people. You see, today was supposed to be the Rapture according to this bible guy in California who got a lot of press. Well, it's now after midnight and we're all still here as far as I can tell. There was a lady walking a baby goat that Emily loved. They had a Candy Cannon - a cannon that shot taffy up in the air then it rained down on us. That scared the bejiebers out of my sound sensitive Gwen. There was a band that Gwen and Emily loved and spent about 20 minutes dancing to and the band even gave them tambourines to hold. There was a perfect Jack Sparrow guy. I got to see him eat a pickle and it was just how I'd imagine the real Jack Sparrow would eat a pickle. We made fairy wings and drank mead and all got a little sunburned. Too bad it wasn't the Rapture today because it was a great day with my family and we would have gone out with a bang.

Easter (Pictures By Gwen)

We celebrated our family Easter egg hunt extravaganza on Saturday morning this year. Daddy stayed up late to meet the Easter Elephant and help him hide the eggs all over the house for the girls to find in the morning. The Easter Elephant is the Easter Bunny's big helper. Since the Easter Bunny is busy Sunday morning, the Easter Elephant comes late Friday night to make sure that everything is all ready for those of us who do Easter egg hunts on Saturday. At least that's the story that Gwen and I made up to explain why we'd be hunting eggs a day early. Really we do it because I like to keep the churchy Easter stuff separate from the springy Easter stuff because it's already really hard for a 4 and 2 year old to understand the Easter story. Throw in a bunny that hides candy in eggs and everything gets really mixed up.

Gwen woke up Saturday morning and was so excited to find Easter eggs. She got Emily up and they both made it downstairs before Jonathan and I were awake enough to realize what was going on. They found their Easter baskets and loved the fun little toys that they got. Gwen and Emily have been practicing for Easter for a couple weeks now. They take turns "hiding" Easter eggs and finding them. It goes like this. When it's Gwen's turn to hide the eggs she puts them all in one place and then drags Emily to them and shows her where they're hidden. When it's Emily's turn to hide the eggs she puts them in the same place that Gwen had "hidden" them and then excitedly points them out to Gwen. I've been trying to show them how to really hide the eggs and tried to play "Hot and Cold" to help them find them. They didn't get it. So Easter morning was fun. The girls found all the very obvious eggs then Jonathan and I had to point out all the other eggs to them. We were done with everything in about 15 minutes. After that we got dressed and went to the gym then went to Lagoon (for the 4th time already this year) and spent a few hours with my sister Linda and her family.

On Sunday we went to my mom's house and all my sisters and their families came over for dinner and another Easter egg hunt for the kids. At one point in the evening, Gwen stole my camera and took 110 pictures. I went through them and chose my favorites for this blog post. There were about 50 of Noah - her favorite cousin.
I'm not sure if she took this one or had Noah take it. I bet Noah did it because she's not so good at the self portrait thing.

Noah's goofy smile. He's at that awkward stage where he can't give you a real smile if you ask.

Daddy.

Silly Noah.

Emily loves to play in Grandpa's big back yard. Sigh. Wish we had one.

I like this picture. Don't really know what it is or why she took it though.

Here's her self portrait.

Uncle Joel. She took about a dozen of Aunt Megan's bum. I think Megan would kill me if I posted those.

Grandma's new bird, Patches. Gwen's the only grandkid brave enough to let him ride on her shoulder.

Grandma.

Emily and Grandma.

It was a really fun night. Except for the part when I couldn't find my camera because when it ran out of memory Gwen tossed it in the next door neighbor's flowers. We did find it though and it was great fun to see all the pictures that she took. I had to leave early to go work a bonus shift so I didn't get to see how the night ended.

This Is The Place

On April 21st we went to This Is The Place State Park with some friends from our ward. There are only 2 four-year-olds in our ward, but there are so many 2 year-olds that they had to divide the nursery in half this year. Since it's still Gwen's spring break, the three of us (Gwen, Emily and me) went and had a fun morning out together while Daddy had a much needed break. The best part of the day for Gwen was getting to bottle-feed the lambs. If you can't have a baby sister named Rapunzel at least you can give a bottle to a baby sheep that you call Rapunzel.

They have a bunch of baby animals right now at the park. The kids got to write down names for the baby animals. Gwen wanted to name all the girl animals Rapunzel. There were tubs full of baby chicks that we could hold or even buy - 6 for $3! Sometimes I'm glad that Gwen can't read yet. Gwen and Emily's favorite part was riding the ponies, which they did three times in a row.

Gwen finally got up enough courage to hold a baby rabbit all by herself. Emily went around saying "awwww, toot" which means "awwww, cute" to all the babies.

They had fun playing in a kid size barn and house. Even though it was sunny, it was really cold outside.

They showed all their church friends how to do "bum-bumps" down the stairs.

They got all the kids to roll down the hills and even got goose poop on their clothes. Gwen fell out of the train that goes around the park and almost got run over. She stood up just as we hit a bump and out she went and landed on her back right by the tires. She jumped right up and started running after us screaming "Mommy!" I had Emily next to me but leaped out of that train without even thinking. Luckily, Emily stayed put and Gwen was just fine. It was actually terrifying for her and for me. We didn't go on the train again after that.

Emily tried to ride these baby lambs. Then she tried to carry the lambs. Then she gave up on the lambs and tried to fall into the little stream that runs through the petting area.

The lambs were so "toot".

Emily's favorite pony was named "Honey". She named all her ponies at home Honey when we got back.

We spent hours holding each chick for a minute then putting it back. Gwen never got brave enough to hold a chick. She did pet them though.

Now With Pictures

Our little Minnie Mouse. Gwen is teaching Emily the art of dress-up. It's serious business at our house.

Gwen at her dance concert. 6 weeks of practice for a 2 minute song. Frankly, I'm surprised that they learned that much.

This is at Hogle Zoo, one of our favorite escape places. We went yesterday and it was busy. I guess it was spring break for everyone and they all decided to come to the zoo. I let my kids play on these stairs which earned some rude comments from other moms for some reason. It's in this area next to the ape house and it's not like it's behind a fence or anything. I guess they felt it was too dirty or too "dangerous" to be playing on mildly sloping metal stairs that led down to a door that employees use. Grrr. Go away and let me enjoy our zoo the way we want to.

We renewed our membership and got a free pass to ride the rides.

Emily is a spider.

Gwen is stuck in the spider web.

Emily.

Emily the turtle.

Gwen the turtle.

Mason's birthday party was today. It was Mario Bros. themed. My kids love watching the old Mario cartoons with their daddy. My sister Linda always does such a great job with her kids' cakes. You couldn't buy one that looked this cute.

Emily using my phone to take pictures. Not really. She just thinks she is. She does call random people from my phone list all the time though.

Happy Birthday to Mason.

We got Mason a balloon animal making kit. I thought it was just perfect for my best buddy. I think I scored the "favorite Aunt" card again. We couldn't get him to put it down even though we were all headed to Lagoon for Sam's birthday party.

I figured out how to make a doggy. Andrew is holding it upside down or else it'd be easier to tell what it is.