Bowling - June 3, 2014

Tuesday - June 3rd

Roger took the kids bowling.  they had free passes that they have been dying to use.  They had a lot of fun.

Our Little Pool in The Living Room - June 2, 2014

Monday - June 2, 2014

Alissa was really sad today, because her friend, Malaiyha, had to leave to spend the summer with her dad today.  They had just started to hang out together a lot more than before and were just realizing how much fun they both thought each other was.  Alissa wishes so much that Malaiyha would be here so they could hang out all summer.  Anyways, I set the pool up in the living room, with the idea that it would be a lot of fun if we filled it with balloons.  I thought it would be something fun that could help distract Alissa from the sadness of her friend leaving.  It turned out to be not as fun as I thought.  The pool took up a lot more room than I had expected.  It was just something different for us to enjoy all day.  Mostly, the kids sat in the pool and played video games.  Malaiyha didn't have to leave until 4:00pm, so she came over and played for a while, then Alissa went to her house and they played outside until it was time for her to leave.

Parker and Roger Blow Out the Candles - May 27, 2014

Tuesday - May 27, 2014

Since we neither Parker or Roger had a chance to blow out the candles on their birthdays, we decided to sing to them and let them blow out the candles now that we are home.  We had a Marie Callender's Pie.  We put some candles in it, sang 'Happy Birthday',Roger and Parker blew out the candles, then we got to enjoy some yummy pie!  The pie was really good.  Sadly, Roger had to go to work as soon as he finished eating his pie.  It is so hard to get back to regular life after a vacation.

A little about our day: Brinley and Parker both stayed home from school today just because.  The last week of school always seems so pointless, so we aren't very strict about making the kids go.  They both wanted to stay home, since we got home so late last night and we were all so tired from all the hiking and driving that we did.  Alissa was tired, but she wanted to go, so she could finish all of her late work, so she'd be able to participate in all of the fun end of the year activities this week.

Alissa called from the school around lunch time and asked if she could stay after school to finish her work, so she won't have to miss out.  Roger took the truck to get an oil change, so I had to ask the Beverly's to pick her up.  Two hours after school got out, I still hadn't heard from Alissa.  I called the school and nobody answered.  I got really panicky when I realized that I had no way to get a hold of her and make sure that she was okay and still at the school.  Roger was still gone, so I couldn't drive over there to check on her.  I called the Beverly's, feeling super panicky, and asked if they would go look for her.  Lucky for us, the Beverly's are such nice people.  They went to the school to find her.  She was still in class, but just finishing up.. She was so focused on getting her work done, that she didn't realize what time it was.  I was extremely relieved when she finally came home.

Another funny thing from today is this news story.  This guy cracks me up!  I can't believe that he was able to fool so many people.  I love the big foot stuff and I was excited when I saw the story that he had killed a real big foot.  I was so excited to see if it was the real deal this time.  It would be awesome if someone found proof that big foot is real.  I love the whole big foot legend and stories.  I just really love unknown and mysterious type of things.  It's sad that it wasn't real, but hilarious that he fooled so many people.  My favorite part of the story is at the end, where after apologizing for lying (twice!), he promises to never lie again, then he claims that he has new evidence that big foot is real.  I love it!  I wonder if anybody will fall for it this time.  I watched a show about big foot that shared stories of people that loved to bring life to the legend of big foot by planting fake evidence and making big feet prints for people to find.  It was their hobby and they did it as often as they could.  There are so many different fun and interesting types of people in this world.  Anyways... I just think it is fun to imagine that Big Foot is real.  It makes all of our camping trips way more interesting when we have Big Foot hunting on our minds.  We watch a lot of 'Finding Big Foot'.  It is good fun!

Wednesday - May 28, 2014
The whole 2nd grade had a field day today.  They all walked over to North Park park to play.  The parents were asked to volunteer to come and help.  They wanted us to come with a game or activity to play with 6 - 10 kids at a time.  So, I decided to bring the bubble solution and a ton of different kind of bubble wands, like I had for Brinley's class.  I'd heard that some of the other second graders had seen us doing our activity and they wanted to try it.  It was pretty hectic doing the activity with the whole 2nd grade.  I had another mom there to help with the bubbles, so that was nice.  We were out there for almost 3 hours.  The kids rotated from station to station doing the different activities.  I was surprised at how long it took to get through all of the activities.  When they finished playing all the games, they all ran over to eat lunch under the bowery.  I hurried and cleaned up the bubble mess and put everything away.  Then I went over to see Brinley.  She was eating lunch with her friend Onnika, Onnika's sisters, and mom.

Friday - May 31, 2014
Here are some pictures I took of Parker and Brinley playing in our little pool on the patio.  It was really tricky to try and fill up the pool with out a hose, but we figured it out.  We set the pool up right next to the spout where we would hook up a hose if we had one.  I made a little slide and used aluminum foil to help keep it in place.  It fell if the water was turned on too high, so it took a long time to fill it up, but it was definitely worth it.  We love playing in our little pool.

The Hardest Hike We've Ever Taken the Kids On - May 26, 2014

Monday - May 26, 2014
We woke up, packed up our things, and headed to the nearest gas station to buy some milk for our cereal.  We planned on spending most of the day hiking.

Here are the maps of where we planned to go adventuring.  We are going to the slot canyons.

It was a long drive on a dirt road to get to our hiking destination.  These pictures are of us getting ready to begin our hike.  We had to pack our hiking backpack with lots of water.

The start of the hike was pretty scary.  Brinley was almost too afraid to try, but Roger and I stayed close to her and we made it across with out any problems.

We reached the first slot canyon.  It is called Dry Fork.  I loved hiking through this area.  I took way too many pictures.

We made it through the first slot, but we couldn't find the trail that would lead us to the next slot canyon.  We followed a trail for a while and the trail got smaller and had fewer and fewer foot prints on it as we went.  We turned back and found another trail that we thought might be the right trail,but we didn't have enough water with us to be hiking for too much longer.  If we took the wrong trail again, we would have been in trouble.  so, we just headed back the way we came.  So the next few pictures are of us hiking back the same way we came.

Climbing back up the mountain was way more difficult than I had expected.  It was much hotter by this point and a big part of the trail was sand.  The sand had been fun to go down, but it made going up much more difficult.

These pictures are from the drive back from our hike.  It felt like we were on that dirt road forever!  It's one of those situations where you know how many miles you have to go and you think, "That's not bad.  It shouldn't take us too long."  But the dirt road makes it take much much longer than expected.

I had read on a website before we left, that the drive between Anasazi State Park and Escalante is a thrill in and of itself.  I hadn't heard of it before, so I had no idea why or what could make a drive through an area like that so thrilling.  I really wasn't expecting much and I had kind of forgotten about what I had read, until we reached the top of this mountain and all of the sudden there are big drop offs on either side of us.  There was hardly even a shoulder on either side of the road.  Also, there were no guard rails.  It was definitely thrilling!  I was scared, but also impressed with the scenery.  It was a very exciting drive.  I didn't want to look down even for a second to grab the camera and take pictures.  I hoped we would drive this away again on the way home, so I could take pictures then.  We did drive home this way and that's what these pictures are from.  It was still an awesome drive, but I think it was way more exciting when we first drove over it.  Probably because we weren't expecting it.

Roger was starting to get tired and I needed a bathroom break, so we stopped at a rest stop in Dixie National Forest.  Roger said he wanted to try and take a little nap, so the kids and I decided to hike around and play outside for a while.  It was very beautiful and we had a lot of fun.

The girls kept trying to quickly put their hands in front of the camera before I took their pictures.  They thought they were hilarious.

Taking some selfies.

Getting creative with camera angles.

Alissa decided to pretend that she was an old lady who had fallen and couldn't get up.  For some reason, this really cracked me up.  I couldn't stop laughing.

I laughed so hysterically at Alissa pretending to be an old person who had fallen, that Parker decided he would give it a try.  I thought Parker was pretty funny also.

Now the kids each took turns running toward me while I snapped pictures.  I forgot about putting it on sport mode until Parker reminded me.  That's why there are only a few pictures of Alissa running and a lot more pictures of Brinley and Parker running toward me.  When the camera is in sport mode, it snaps like 10 pictures in a row.

Alissa had a funny idea to have me take a picture of her smiling, then take another picture from the same spot, but this time, she'll balance a pine cone on her head and make a hurt face, like the pine cone just fell from the tree and hit her.  We loved that idea, so Parker and Brinley tried also.

Parker wanted me to take a picture of him laying in the road like he had gotten run over.  After I took the first picture, the girls ran over to join in the fun.  They thought it'd be funny if they had pictures of them looking like they were stepping on him.  We just had too much fun goofing off.

I thought the sky was very beautiful.

Roger woke up.  He took about a 40 minute nap.  The kids and I were walking around and goofing off for about an hour.  We did good.  Roger felt well rested after that and we were able to head home again.

We didn't plan very well and ended up being in the middle of nowhere when it was time for lunch.  It took clear until 4:00 until we were somewhere that had a place to buy food.  We weren't too far away from Nephi by that point, so we decided to be strong and hold off until we got to Nephi.  We were starving by the time we finally got there.  We were very happy to have some food in our belly's and have another bathroom break.  We drove straight home from there with no more stops.  We were exhausted by the time we got home.  Parker and Brinley decided to stay home from school the next day, so they could sleep in.  Alissa needed to turn in some homework, so she could participate in the fun end of the school year parties, so sh woke up early and went to school the next day.