Cool in the Pool

Despite the above 90 degree temperatures lately, we hadn't had time to pull out the pool. Until last week that is. After walking around the Hill AFB Museum, the kids decided they needed to cool down quick. So we inflated the pool, set up the awning, and let them have a blast.

Do they look like they're having fun or what?


We couldn't resist pulling out the pool noodles, even though they were really intended for much bigger pools. The kids had a blast with them.


Since this was our first time with the pool, it meant the first time in the kids' new swimming suits. They were so cute, I couldn't help taking a few pictures of them. Here's Hailey in her princess suit.


And Zachary in his big boy swimming suit. He's getting old enough now that he has a hard time deciding if he wants a character suit or one like his Dad's that's just plain and like he puts it "like the big boys wear." He decided on the plain one this year, so we had to choose a fun shirt to wear with it, which makes him more than happy.


What a fun afternoon of watching them play in the pool. I'll admit that there were a few splashes and squirts from the water gun that kept us adults nice and cool as well.

Welcome summer, we're looking forward to many more hot and sunny days that require us to cool down with some water!

I Love To See The Temple

Yesterday, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. It was absolutely beautiful! We were lucky to choose a day when not many other people were there, so we were through the whole thing in a little over an hour. A big contrast to our Draper Temple Open House experience of 4 hours! We'll never go on a school holiday again, that's for sure.

We are lucky enough to have Jeremiah's parents and brother visit us this week and decided it would be fun to go all together to the open house. Our kids are usually very active and loud, but they must understand a little bit about the importance of the temple, because they were very good, reverent, and quiet during both this and the last open house we went to. We were very proud of them and gave them a cookie at the end for being so good (ok, they would have gotten a cookie at the reception afterwards anyway, but they don't need to know that).

It was a beautiful day yesterday and the sun was shining. After watching the video, touring the temple, and enjoying a cookie and some water, we headed to the front of the temple to take some pictures. I had seen some beautiful family pictures from our friends' blogs right in front of this fountain and really wanted one of our family there too (thanks for the great idea everyone!).

How beautiful is this temple?


Here's our whole group


I also got a quick picture of just our little family


I don't know what it was about this fountain, but I absolutely loved it.


This is Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Troy


And they wanted one with them and the kids too


The flowers were beautiful and as we were waiting for another group to get done taking pictures, I grabbed this quick one of the kids, it's one of my favorites from yesterday


This is the side of the temple, it looks so majestic standing there


I love the cornerstones of the temple, I guess it has to do with the fact that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our religion, the symbolism is just so strong to me


Hailey and I sat in the back of the car and I snapped this quick picture of her with her little legs crossed - too cute!


Then she caught me and smiled big for the camera


Not to be left out, Zach wanted one of him taken too. He was in the middle seats between Grandma and Troy, so it was hard to get the focus just right



We had a great time and the kids were so good. We're so blessed to have so many temples so near us. What a spiritually uplifting day it was for all of us!

Lehi Round-up Parade

I have bad luck with my camera. Most of the time I forget to grab it when we're heading off to fun places where I'd like to have pictures. Other times I remember it and either forget to use it or the batteries die on me. Never can tell, but this post will be one of much words and few photos since although I did remember my camera, the batteries died on me after two pictures. Just my luck.

Anyway, last week was Lehi's big celebration - The Round Up. It all revolves around the rodeo Thursday-Saturday, but has grown bigger every year. It now includes kids activities, fun at the park, and even a movie one night of the week. We usually don't do a whole ton since the kids are still little, but we do try and do a few things we think they would enjoy.

Jeremiah took them to a Magic Show and Dinosaur Puppet Show on Monday and Tuesday while I was working (long story). I forgot to send the camera with him, but he said they had a wonderful time! Hailey didn't quite understand what was going on at the Magic Show and apparently kept asking "what's taking so long here?" the whole time. But Zach loved it. They both loved the Dinosaur Puppet Show as well since they had all sorts of characters the kids know and love.

On Saturday, we took the kids to the parade. They had a blast watching the floats and grabbing candy that was thrown to them - and there was A LOT of candy thrown to them.





These were actually taken before the parade started. We were there a good half hour early and the kids loved just watching everyone around them while we waited. I fully intended to take some pictures of them grabbing candy, watching the parades, and even some of the beautiful floats, but my batteries lasted through these two pictures then died.

In the absense of pictures, I'll just say that Hailey's favorite part of the parade were the princesses - or city, rodeo, and such royalties that came by on different floats. She also like the dance, gymnastics, and cheerleader groups that came by at different times. She's so funny, she would always point to something and say "Mom look!" Almost as if she'd never seen anything like that before, even though something very similar had just passed us by. Zach's favorite part of the parade was the UVU mascot and the bands that played music. He loved the UVU mascot because he was zip up and down the street on a little motorized scooter and he thought that was the coolest thing ever! He also like all the other things that got thrown out - frisbees, shirts, squishy balls, and even toothbrushes. We came home with a few things, but mostly just candy.

In all, it was a fun week. We had plans to make it to the rodeo too, but with rain and other things that came up, we didn't quite get there. We'll have to make sure that do it next year though. We've all decided that Lehi is a pretty fun place to live.

Hill Air Force Base Museum

This last Wednesday we headed to Ogden for some fun on our family play date. We started out by stopping by Kylie and Jedd's new house - ok, it was just a poured foundation at this point, but it was still exciting to see where their new house will be and to see it actually being built. After that we headed to park down the street for a little picnic lunch and some playing on the playground.

Things got a bit hot, so we decided to head to our main destination - the Hill AFB Museum. The kids just love this place and we love the fact that it's free!

Hailey kept saying, the planes are bigger than me! She was definitely right!


Here's Nana with the kids in front of the "camo" plane - for some reason the kids were on a special look out for the planes painted camoflage.


Our two buds who love to do everything together. They thought this was one of the biggest wheels they had ever seen!


Reach really high and you can touch the propeller!


Once we browsed through the planes outside, we headed inside to see the planes in there. This helicopter was one of the favorite for the kids, so we had to get a picture of most of us in front of it.


Michelle had this double stroller she brought along and the two little ones loved being in it and being pushed by Aunt Kylie. I think she got quite the workout with the two of them in there!


Having worked for Pratt & Whitney for almost 10 years now, I get excited when I see the name around the aircraft industry. It was neat to see it on quite a few of the planes at the museum. I had to take a picture of this plaque and actual engine.


It makes me proud to know that we have so many engines out there flying on military aircraft. All the hard work of employees like me actually get these planes off the ground and flying - how cool is that?



We had a great time and can't wait to go back - the kids never get tired of seeing all the airplanes up close!

Primary Carnival

The Primary Carnival was such a big hit last year that we decided to do it again this year for all of the primary kids. Last year was warm and sunny and we were able to do it out in the church parking lot. This year it was cloudy and rainy, so we had to move into the gym last minute. But, despite the change in location, the kids still had a great time.

Here's Zach and Hailey doing the "cake walk." They were so excited to do it and Zach was excited to walk around on the numbers, after a year of preschool and a year of kindergarten, he knows his numbers well and loves that he can do it all by himself.


They were the only two playing at the beginning so guess who won the first two prizes? Yep, Zach and Hailey - yummy cupcakes!


One of the favorite booths was the balloon animal station. Who wouldn't get excited about getting a balloon animal when the person doing it looks this fun?


He's our neighbor across the street and is absolutely hilarious! The kids loved the animals he made, but I think they loved his hat and bowtie even more!

In addition to the cake walk and balloon animals, we also had a penny pitch, bean bag toss, duck pond, plinko, guessing jar, train ride, and two different stations were the kids could memorize articles of faith or write thank yous to their teachers to earn more tickets. The other favorite booth for our kids was the face painting booth. Zach chose a snake and Hailey chose some cherries - this isn't the best picture - my batteries were running out and I couldn't get the flash to turn on - but I love the look on Hailey's face.



Unfortunately, due to my batteries going out, I didn't get a picture of the on the train, but they had a blast riding around in the parking lot during their train ride. Even though it was sprinkling most of the time, it was still fun and they had a blast!

You Know You're a Good Uncle When ...

You let your niece do your hair.





Hailey and Zach absolutely love their Uncle Taylor. And he's so good to indulge them in whatever they want to do. Whether it's playing catch, jumping on him, or even doing his hair, he's always willing to let them do whatever they want.

Thanks Uncle Tay - we love you!

Dinosaur Museum

We have a lot of fun activities planned this summer and one of the first on our list was to visit the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum. We've lived in Lehi for almost 4 years now and we've never made it to the Dinosaur Museum. It's been on our list forever, but we've never actually made it. Well, we can now finally check that off our list because we went and finally experienced in on Friday. We decided to make it as one of our fun family "play dates" so Nana, Aunt Michelle, Ashton, Branson, and Aunt Kylie (in spirit because she had to leave early) were with us too.

This museum is supposed to be the "largest dinosaur museum in the world" so you can imagine how excited we all were. We probably didn't even need to go into the museum, the kids had so much fun running around the lobby and seeing the dinosaurs bones there. Of course we didn't limit them to just that, we did actually take them inside!

This was one of the first "big" dinosaur bones we saw and they were all able to tell is was a leg.


The museum takes you through different periods in history and one of the very first was talking about the small water creatures they think existed. At one of the displays, they had a little pond with some water and actual goldfish in it. Ironically enough, the kids were more excited seeing the goldfish swimming than any of the dinosaur bones in the surrounding display. Silly kids!


As excited as they were with the dinosaur leg, you can imagine how excited they were when we got to the big, full dinosaur skeletons. They were so big, I could barely get a portion of the dinosaur in the picture and still see the kids.


The T-rex exhibit was definitely one of the favorites since they were dinosaurs the kids recognizd. They're hard to see in the background, but the kids stood for about 5 minutes just looking at them. One of my kids' favorite movies is "Night at the Museum" so Zach was excited to see dinosaur skeletons like he remembered from the movie.


As exciting as all the dinosaur bones were, by far there were 2 different areas that were the favorite. The first was the erosion table. They had a big table set up with sand and water (and even some toy dinosaurs and trees) for the kids to play with. They each got an apron and were able to play in the sand and water.


You can imagine how fun this was and we spent a bunch of time just letting the kids play.


I had a hard time getting pictures of the kids with them actually looking at me! They were having such a great time that it was hard to get them to pause and look up - needless to say I got a whole bunch of pictures of the top of their heads!


We ran across this metal dinosaur and after some convincing that it wasn't real, we got the kids to sit on it for a quick picture. I took about 3 or 4 and there was always one of them not looking at the camera. I decided to post this one because it's the best of the other 3 and one with the best focus.


The water mammals exhibit was definitely interesting too. This shark exhibit was really fascinating as it was built "to scale." Gives you a good idea of what some of their prey feel like right before they're eaten doesn't it? Zach and Hailey, my brave kids, ran right up there for a picture, but poor Branson and Ashton didn't want to get anywhere near it. I don't blame them since it was very realistic!


The other favorite spot was the dinosaur bone digging area. I don't remember exactly what it was called, but it was basically a big sandbox where the kids could use brushes to uncover buried dinosaur bones. The had so much fun digging around and brushing the sand off of the bones. They were having so much fun, I couldn't even get Zach and Ashton to look up, Hailey was the only one that smile for the picture.


Well, I guess you can tell that we had a wonderful time! The kids were fascinated by all they saw and were able to play with. Thanks everyone for coming with us, it was fun to experience it with family! We're going to have to come back again!