The Week That Kicked My Butt

Okay, so every time I talk to my mom she reminds me that I am pregnant and that I must slow down. My response? I am not disabled, just pregnant, I'm fine. Yes, I am stubborn. I like to be busy and have a hard time with slowing down. So, this week was definitely not any different. Being the last week of "summer" (before school starts), I had to squeeze in as much fun as possible, right?
Last Sunday night I spoke to Adrianne and Sara about planning out a week of fun, including squeezing in another trip to the zoo. We decided to go the next morning. So on Monday we headed to the zoo-we even brought along Skylar's buddy, Camille. Having passes this year and having seen it all, we figured we'd get there early, stay a couple of hours, even skip a few things, and be out of there before it got hot. Of course, things don't always go as planned so we really didn't get there until 11, and then we took in some of the shows, went on both the carousel and the train, and ending up staying at the zoo a whopping 4 1/2 hours! Afterwards I was basically beat! We had a fun time though. You always see something interesting at the zoo. This time it was me being attacked by flying birds of prey during the bird show! I don't know what it was, but I was hit a total of three times by the birds flying overhead! One time was a basic slap across the face that really hurt!! I think I may avoid the bird show next time we go!
On Tuesday we decided to take advantage of Thanksgiving Point's Dinosaur Museum $2 August Tuesdays deal, along with a thousand other people! It was so crowded!! We waited in line for about a half hour just to get in and once we were in it was hard to even move around because it was so crowded. We did our best to see it all and we did have fun but it so much better without the crowd!
To top of Tuesday we went to the Owlz game. The guy next to us caught a home run ball which was definitely cool for the kids to see!
Wednesday, Adrianne & I and the kiddos headed up to SLC to the Children's Museum at the Gateway. Adrianne has a membership there so was able to get all my kids in free-thanks Adrianne! We'd never been there before and the kids loved it! You seriously could stay there all day long (which we almost did) and the kids would not get bored. There was just so much to play with and so many hands-on things. The kids especially loved pretending they were on the news and playing in the helicopter. After we had some lunch, we headed over to the water fountains there at the Gateway. I've seen this on TV but never been there. The water was cold but the kids had a blast!
So, now it's time for Thursday and I had planned on this day being a pretty mellow day. The kids and I have been going to the Scera movies all summer which are basically kids movies that have been released in the last year or so back on screen. Thursday was our last movie and so I figured we'd do that, run a couple of errands, maybe hit the park, nothing huge. Good thing I did. Thursday morning I woke up feeling basically lousy. So I got a couple of errands done, suffered through the strangest take on the 10 Commandments I'd ever seen, and came home and basically collapsed. By the time Ben got home I had a fever and was sick as a dog with I'm guessing the same flu the boys had a week ago! I guess the busyness of the week and staying up until midnight every night watching the Olympics on top of being pregnant kicked my butt. Needless to say, any plans on Friday were knocked out and replaced with lots of TV for the chillins and sleeping all day for me. What a great way to spend the last day of summer!!

Saturday I did feel a bit better-I at least was able to finally get some food down. After getting some stuff done around the house we went to see the Clone Wars. I don't think Kade knew we were actually seeing a Star Wars movie and he was extremely excited when Yoda came on screen. He yelled out "I love that guy! I love Yoda!!" Cute kid. I'd have to say the movie wasn't that great but it was good. It totally is geared towards kids and the upcoming series on Cartoon Network so I think it accomplished what it was meant to do. My kids were stoked about it. I do have to admit that I actually dozed off in the middle of it and Ben had to wake me up. I've never done that in a Star Wars movie before! But then again, I've never gone to see a Star Wars movie while I was pregnant and recovering from the flu.

So here it is, Sunday night, and the night before school starts. I am not as apprehensive as I was last year about Skylar heading off to school. But this year is still a bit hard. She's going to be gone all day!! We are all definitely going to miss her! She is soooo excited about it all-the all day thing, eating lunch at school, just being in school, period. I'm just thinking about how quickly time is passing. My little girl is almost 7 (crazy!) and is now considered a big kid. It's fun to see the person she's turning into and get to watch her grow up but if only they could just stay little!! I love you Skylar and I hope you have a great year being a big first grader!!!!

Cute Kid Quote

"I really don't see why we have summer break. We have school off on Saturdays and Sundays and that's plenty of time off."

~Skylar

Can you tell that she's ready to go back to school? She can't wait!! I figured I'd keep this quote and show it to her in a year or so. She may have changed her mind by then.

Free Kittens to a Good Home!!

Okay, so as cute as these little buggers are I'm ready for them to go! I don't know if it's that I'm pregnant or that there's so many of them this time around, but I am definitely ready to be done with kittens for awhile. It just seems as though they are taking over the house at this point! They are all eating mostly cat food now and pretty much litter trained-at least one culprit hasn't perfected it yet! They are 7 weeks old today and I told Skylar I'd keep them until school started-so one more week-and give her a chance to show them off (and hopefully find some homes). Anyway, they really are cute and fun but it's time to go back to just one cat (or two if Skylar talks Ben into replacing poor Q-tip-as if he could be replaced!) Any takers??!??

Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

So the last few weeks they have had free (although not completely healthy) breakfast and lunch Monday through Thursday at our school. You would've thought I was taking my kids to some 5 star restaurant for how excited they were about heading across the street to school to eat!! We didn't go every day but we went often! It was sooo fun for the kids to get to eat with all the kids from the neighborhood. It was super nice for me to not have to worry about preparation or cleanup-I felt a little lazy! But, hey, I'm seven months pregnant, I guess I deserve to be a little bit lazy!!

Their skills won't pay the bills...yet!!

It's been all about sports the last week. Last Saturday (after finding about poor Q-tip) Skylar & Nick had a little something to cheer them up. They went to the Orem Owlz Baseball Clinic for the Jr. Knight Owlz, the kid's fan club they are in. They have been looking forward to this all summer and were so excited. They got to go learn some skills from the players and then got to get their autographs. They thought this was the coolest thing ever. Ben went with them and I stayed home with a very distraught McKade who just has the hardest time being "too little" for things like this. They had a great time though. Later that night we also got to go to a game. It was such a beautiful night. We had a nice time.
Unfortunately, the next day both of our boys were totally sick. The yucky, throw-up, poopin everywhere sick. The kind of sick you get in the dead of winter, not summer. So not fun. Needless to say, Sunday and Monday were basically veggin in front of the TV days. I'm glad it hasn't been passed onto the rest of us because it was not pleasant for anyone!
This week Nick was signed up for a Sports Skills at the Rec. Center. He had to miss Monday since he was sick and was so disappointed. The rest of the week he was loving his class. They learned a few soccer, t-ball, and basketball skills. It was fun to watch Nick in a class like this. He is quite the talker, which I had never realized. Around our house, he is the quiet one so I really haven't seen him like that. Unfortunately, his chatting meant he didn't pay too much attention to the teachers so when it came to the actual playing of the games, he was more often doing this:
That picture is not that great but it's Nick laying down inside the goal during the soccer game. Crazy kid! The whole class was a little entertaining since the kids are all 4 and have no clue how to play a team sport. They all huddle together and the whole concept of taking the ball away from someone else is probably pretty confusing considering that they have been taught taking away something is not nice. At this age it's all about having fun though. It was fun to watch and Nick had such a great time!!

We'll Miss You, Q!

Our sweet little Q-tip died yesterday. The hardest part is that we don't know how or why. Our neighbor found him in his yard and it didn't look as though he had any major trauma so we don't know what happened. Our family was all pretty upset, especially Skylar. He was one of Soffee's kittens from her first batch and wasn't even a year old yet, so it wasn't expected and very sad. Our kids had a lot of tears and a lot of questions. It was nice to see their sweet little testimonies surface as they talked about how he was with Heavenly Father now and how we'd see him again someday. I'm so glad that we have the gospel so that even in the case of a death of a pet, my family can be comforted with the knowledge that this life is not final. The kids wanted to have a little funeral for him and Nick was very insistent that we say a prayer. It was very sweet. We loved Q. Just the other day I was thinking how he was such a perfect fit for our family from the very beginning. He was such a beautiful cat with a big heart. He was so affectionate and loving to us all. He was also very tolerant with our kids. He'd never known any different so he took their (sometimes rough) playing as a sign of affection. He was always in the mood to cuddle and brought great comfort to our family. He was really a great pet and we will miss him.

Our Idaho (MT, WY) Trip

We took our (sometimes semi) annual family trip up to good 'ol Island Park, Idaho last week. This year's group consisted of our family, my parents, and my sister, Steph's, family. Ben and I decided to forego the crowd staying at the 2 bedroom condo and opted to have our family stay in the old family cabin down the road that was built by dad and uncles many years ago (I forgot to get a picture of it!) It lacks many comforts of home but it's a little fun to rough it once in awhile, right? The cabin has two bedrooms downstairs and then a loft up some very steep scary stairs where there's a bunch of beds. We planted our family downstairs and forbid the kids upstairs without our help-we were totally picturing many falls down the stairs, especially from Kade, but the kids were pretty obedient and we all came through in one piece. The kids all packed into one bed (besides a night when Skylar slept at the condo with all of the girls) and despite the many spiders that discovered poor Nicky's leg, we had a pleasant stay.
We arrived late on Saturday, the 19th. Sunday morning we headed to Sacrament meeting at the church and arrived to a small crowd-only 1100 people!! They reported that there was 1400 just two weeks before and were expecting that many the next weekend as well so we actually had a little elbow room-ha ha! Needless to say, it is a very popular destination for us LDS folk.
After church we all hopped into the car-my parents in ours (we got that minivan just in time!) and headed for Yellowstone for the day. My family is a little spoiled when it comes to the park-we've been there so many times! We went first to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the beautiful waterfall there. After that we stopped for some lunch nearby and found some awesome teeter-totters that someone had constructed out of logs and stuck them between some trees. This supplied plenty of entertainment for all-including my parents who even took a turn. Later on we drove up to Tower Falls and then headed back down to see Old Faithful. Of course, we showed up minutes after it had gone off and had to wait around for another hour to see it. We had some ice cream and hung out in the lodge. After watching Old Faithful, we headed back to the condo for a late dinner. We didn't have any time to stop for the stinky geysers along the way but it was a fun day anyway. We never made it back to the park this trip. We always try to get a day in swimming in the Firehole River but I guess they've outlawed it now and my brother, Jerry, had just gone up and had gotten a $150 ticket for swimming in it so we decided not to risk it. That's kind of sad because it's one of our family's favorite things to do up there.
On Monday, our family split up for different activities. Ben, Skylar, and my sister's family all headed up to the Lewis & Clark Caverns. Steph's family had never been there before but Ben and I had. It's seriously a cool place to go. I wish I'd been up for it, but besides the hike up the mountain, there's parts in the cave where you have to get down and sort of crawl and my body just does not bend anymore!! We also didn't think the boys would do too well in the caves either. The boys and I went with my parents up to Virginia City and then took a train to Nevada City to see the ghost towns there. The boys thought it was cool to go on the train and see the old houses. Anything that they can explore is fun for them. We had a nice time. I don't have any pictures because Ben had taken the camera with him. The caverns crew all had a really fun time too. Skylar loved it! We all arrived back at the condo later for dinner and some hanging out.
Tuesday we hung around Island Park and did some swimming at the condo's pool and a lot of fishing. Grandpa's really good about bringing his pole over to let the grandkids reel in his catches and they each get a turn but Skylar wanted to do it completely by herself this year. Ben helped her a little bit until she got the hang of it and then she was doing great! She caught two all by herself!! She was especially proud that they were rainbow trout since rainbow is her favorite color right now. We had a great time and came home with some yummy fish to eat!
Wednesday morning we did a little more fishing and then Steph's family headed for home. We were sad to see them go. We had so much fun and the cousins loved being together. We, with my parents, headed to Jackson Hole after they left. Ben and I had our honeymoon there so it's always kind of a special place for us to go back and visit. We hadn't been since we've had kids so it was fun to go. We did a little bit of browsing in the shops, ate some dinner, and then headed up to Grand Teton National Park for awhile to see the beautiful Tetons at Jenny Lake. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world! We wished we could have stayed longer but we wanted to get back before dark since the mountain pass is very scary with its 10% grade.
On Thursday we packed up the car and headed for home but a trip up to Idaho has now been deemed incomplete without a stop at Bear World. My parents joined us again and we were awed by the bears walking around our car! It's so cool to see them so close! After a couple of drives through the bear section, my parents took off and the kids got to go to the petting zoo and hit the little rides they have there. We had a lot of fun! We decided to drive through the bears one more time and the last time we got to see a wolf! It was just chilling next to the bears. It was really cool to see!
We spent the rest of the day driving home and perfectly arrived in SLC about 10 minutes before the Pioneer Day fireworks at Liberty Park were set to go off. We decided to stop and watch them and were able to see a great show. The kids thought it was so fun to watch from the back of the car! We were even able to beat the crowd out! It was nice to have somewhat of a celebration even though we were out of the state most of the day! It was so nice to be able to get away for the week and have a break from the everyday stuff. I'm so glad that my kids have the opportunity to go up to Island Park and enjoy the beautiful nature and all the fun things just like I did as a kid!