Children's Garden

I have been wanting to see the Children's Garden at Thanksgiving Point and since we had nothing planned yesterday we decided to go. Sadly, the Noah's Ark that everyone has been telling me about wasn't working (it squirts water at the kids and is always a big hit?).
But we did enjoy the rest of the garden. Some of the highlights were The bear cave


The one little fountain that was running.
The coy pond. Both the kids love fish and the viewing windows in the wall were a big favorite of theirs.
And the hedge maze. Kaitlyn had a great time leading us around all the paths. We will definitely have to put a corn maze on our lists of fun family activities this fall.

We had a great lunch - one of the most relaxing lunches at a restaurant we have ever had with the kids. This was due to Tyler being so tired he slept laying on the bench of the booth most of the time, and the fact that we finally found a place that has food our picky Kaitlyn will happily eat.

Back at home we visited/played with neighbors. Then, per Kaitlyn's request to roast marshmallows we built a fire and did hot dogs and smores. It was a fun day for all of us - and as all days like that, we were completed wiped out by the end of it.

I am so NOT Princess material

Tyler doesn't always like Kaitlyn's ideas. This is obviously one of those cases. Sorry Kaitlyn, Tyler will play dress up but he draws the line at a skirt.

A day out with Friends

Yup, this is another post about the Discovery Gateway. Camille and I keep missing the $2 Tuesdays at Thanksgiving Point so we went with Plan B and introduced them to the children's museum. We all had a great time. And no one was bored because the always have new things there. We all thought the little TV news station (above photo) was fun.

We also got to do a little origami workshop. Photo is of Kaitlyn (the back of her head), Tyler, and Camille helping Braedon. Baby Blake is in the stroller in the background. It's good I snapped this pic at the beginning of the activity because the boys soon lost interst and went off to play with some toys in the corner. Kaitlyn however liked it a lot and was very good about following the directions and making the dog, cat, and hat all by herself.
Braedon modeling the origami hat - he was the only one that would wear one, and it came off as soon as the photo was taken.After a quick lunch we let the kids play in the fountain. They were really brave this time and had tons of fun running through and around the fountain and neither one of us moms had to get in there and get wet :)

Just like my sister

The older Tyler gets, the more fun I have watching my two kids together. Kaitlyn takes care of him and he thinks she's the best. He has been copying what Kaitlyn does a lot lately and I think it's so cute (except of course when she shows him something dangerous - as if he needs any help with that!).

High School Tag

I was Tagged by Cheri, and also by Beau. Gee thanks girls! :)

1. Did you date someone from your school? Sure did, but only like the last 2 weeks of senior year. I ended up marrying him though :)
2. What kind of car did you drive? Lincoln Continental
3. Did you pass your driver's license test on the first try? yep
4. Were you a party animal? hahaha no
5. Were you considered a flirt? Nope
6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Choir, and is our school that was actually a cool thing to be in, or at least it wasn't uncool
7. Were you a nerd? hmm...I don't think anyone called me that, but I was in the brainy category
8. Were you on any varsity teams? Drill Team
9. Did you get suspended/expelled? No
10. Can you still sing the fight song? LOL no! I got the first half of it, thanks to the reminder on Beau's blog with the first line but I can't get the end. That's gonna bother me all week then at some point I'll wake up in the middle of the night going "oh yeah! THAT'S how it went!"
11. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. Draper and Mrs. Sylvester
12. Where did you sit during lunch? We would run grab something then eat in the car. And when we got back to school if we had a few minutes we'd all sit in the hall in front of our lockers.
13. What was your school's full name? South Summit High School
14. School mascot and colors? Wildcats and our colors were kelly green and white.
15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with? Hmm...would you believe I can't remember if I did or not? It's possible, but if so I didn't take a date.
16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? Nope, uh uh, dont' think so! I had a lot of fun, especially JR year but it was also my "akward" time and I wouldn't want to live through it again. Besides, I'm pretty happy with my life right now and I wouldn't change that.
17. What do you remember most about graduation? Sr party I guess - not that I had very much fun. I developed a giant headache and left by 3 AM.
18. Where did you go senior skip day? No idea - probably just stayed home because I was sick of Lagoon by that point.
19. Were you in any clubs? FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America), FHA (Future Homemakers of America) and um...I think there were a couple others. By senior year I was keeping pretty busy.
20. Have you gained some weight since then? sadly yes. Kids do that to you I guess. But I haven't given up hope of getting rid of at least some of it.
21. Who was your prom date? Junior Prom was um....Shane...somebody. Oh that's sad! This mommy brain thing had totally messed up my memory!
22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? Yeah I went
23. Did you have a job while in high school? Babysitting (for a service), worked for my neighbor's small graphic design business, and at the ticket window at the Park City Ski Resort

I tag Audrey and Christina - but only if you are bored, as I was :)

Mommy Musing: Messes

So, today is Monday and in my life that usually means a full day of laundry, straightening up the house and trying to get myself organized for the week. It also means a lot of time on the computer since I need something to break up the monotony so I have been blog hopping today and have become blog happy - thus the reason for 2 posts in one day. Anyway...

I was surveying my domain this morning and was once again struck with the realization that This is My Life. See that mess? That is what my house constantly looks like - though usually even worse! I am continually cleaning up one mess after another or getting the kids set up with something (food, toys, etc) that will be yeat another mess to clean up when they are done. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that this is how it is going to be for at least the next 4 years or so. Bleck!

But on the bright side, it does give the kids plenty of opportunity to "help" mommy and clean up after themselves. And I'm glad that for the most part they think that helping is fun. Tyler and I love the little hand vac. Though if I had known it would get this much use I would have sprung for the higher-powered Kone :)
And look at that face. Being able to stay home with those little monkey is well worth all the little frustrations and inconveniences.

Sweet Big Sister

This is all I have to blog about from the weekend since Sam decided to work Sat (mostly helping Czar weld - guess they had fun) and Sunday was a quick trip to PC for Sam and myself for lunch and errands while the kids hung out with my parents. BUT, I thought this little story from Sat night was adorable.Saturday evening Kaitlyn announced that she was going to make Tyler dinner. Fine with me - I didn't want to cook! :) So she pulled out the bread, spread on the jam, cut it into 4 pieces, put it on a plate and told Tyler to eat. And he gobbled it up! (If I knew it were that easy to get him to eat I would have had Katy doing the cooking long ago!) When he was finished, my little girl took his plate, rinsed it in the sink, and proceeded to scrub Ty down. Then they went back to his room to play, Kaitlyn requesting on the way that I get her dance shoes out of the closet for them. She put her tap shoes on Ty, put her ballet shoes on and set up her little tape player with the tape Mom made all the dancers for Christmas of the songs they do in class. They outfitted themselves with crown and fairy wands and proceeded to dance around. Surprisingly, Kaitlyn remembered at least some of the steps to each dance. Halfway through the tape the dances change to Tap, so Katy switched shoes with Tyler and they danced some more. That was about the time they decided Mommy was distracting them or something and they kicked me out of the room so they could be alone. But I did manage to grab this photo of them dancing to "Me and My Teddy Bear" before Ty shut the door in my face.
And a short video of the moment - silly memory card was in the video camera and the internal memory on the camera gets filled up fast.

Tyler's New Photos

I finally got them! Tyler's 18 month photos! Ok, so I didn't get him in soon enough and he was 19 months when they were taken...but aren't they cute?! I was worried that we might not get any decent shots, but I'm pretty happy with them. Of course, despite saying she didn't want any, when we got in there with Ty in front of the camera Kaitlyn felt left out and we ended up with a shot of her, and one of them together.

Raging Waters

The only Must Do on Sam's list for this summer was taking the kids to a water park. Sam decided to play hookey from work today and we headed to Raging Waters. We had lots of fun and sun. Of course, it being a water park and us more concerned with having fun not taking photos, I once again ended up with very few photos. Such is life 'eh?
We spent most of our time doing things the kids could do, but periodically Sam would leave me with the kiddos to go try out the really exciting rides and other things. This (above) was him crossing one of the deeper pools on the ropes. I would never have had the upper body strength for that.
The majority of our day was spent in the tubes. The kids - Kaitlyn in particular - LOVED the wave pool and the lazy river. Kaitlyn insisted on being in her tube by herself the entire time so Sam spent a lot of time hanging off the edge of it since Tyler wanted to be with me anytime we were in the water. They also loved the smaller slides in the kiddie sections - of which there were many, thank goodness.
Getting more daring in the water all the time, Kaitlyn loved to go down the slides by herself. And this was Tyler's absolute favorite thing of the day. I could not get him off that green dinosaur and when I finally just pulled him off he threw a royal fit.

All in all, it was a great day. The kids had a lot of fun (our definition of a successful day :) that, and the fact that we walked away with very little sunburned patches) and Tyler didn't start feeling the nap he had missed until we were ready to leave. He was fast alseep within 3 minutes of getting in the car. We stopped on the way home and treated ourselves to milkshakes (Sam and myself) and shlushies (Kaitlyn - it HAD to be blue) The rest of us are pretty exhausted too and now that the kids are in bed I'm looking forward to heading there soon myself.

Afternoon at the lake

We took the kids to Rockport Reservoir yesterday afternoon. Can you believe that is probably the first time we have made the time to do that? We managed to find a spot with some sand and spent our time going back and forth from floating on the water to playing in the sand. The kids had a lot of fun, of course. We'll have to try to go more often.

No Brothers Allowed!

This is the door to Kaitlyn's room. Why did I bother to post a photo of this? Because I think the story behind it is kind of funny.
Yesterday Kaitlyn had to go to time out for punching her brother (it was more of a love tap, but you gotta nip those things in the bud right?), who I think she was mad at for playing with one of her toys. When I went back to her room to get her to apologize to Ty, I found her on the floor busily constructing this sign. According to Kaitlyn it says "Tyler can't come in my room and play with my stuff." Sam and I couldn't help laughing (as opposed to being mad), and Sam thought it was amusing enough to help her tape it to the door. Here is a close up.
I came home today from my day out with The Girls to find that the other bedroom doors are now sporting their own signs. Tyler's says "no mommies, daddies, or Kaitlyn's in here" and ours is "only for mom and dad" LOL

Swimming Lessons

Kaitlyn just finished her very first session of swimming lessons. Because it was her first time, I had to be in the parent/child class with her. She did amazingly and had a blast. Every day she was SO excited to swim (I however, am glad they are over and that next time I don't have to go in the pool!). Sometimes that translated to her being extra hyper and having a hard time paying attention but most of the time she was pretty good. I was suprised at how brave she was. She will now put her mouth/nose in the water and blow bubbles without any problem and will even put her whole head under too. He favorite is the lazy river where she enthusiastically practices her arms and kicking - she insisted that we get a photo of it. Her only disappointment was that they didn't have the Big Slide running during lessons.

Our Little Party Planner

It was my dad's birthday on Monday. He's always too busy to celebrate so this year we had decided to skip it. But that wasn't okay with Kaitlyn. She insisted that we make him a cake and have a party. So she took it upon herself to plan it. She got Grandma to help her make the cake yesterday. Kaitlyn did all the sprinkles herself. Grandma wanted to sing Happy Birthday right then, but Kaitlyn said we HAD to have candles so we had to go back today for the party, bringing candles with us. As you can see, Grandma couldn't wait to try the cake and snuck a few bites, but that didn't seem to bother Kaitlyn. She happily added all the candles from the box.
Then we sang to Grandpa and Kaitlyn and Tyler helped him blow out the candles. It took a few tries because we had used the tricky sparkler candles - more fun for the kids that way!
One piece of cake wasn't enough for Ty. He would eat his own cake with the spoon in his left hand and use his right hand to intercept Grandpa's fork while it was on it's way to Grandpa's mouth. :)
Next on the party agenda: games! Kaitlyn had us play Hide and Seek; Duck, Duck, Goose (Tyler really liked that one and went around and around us saying "guck!" and bopping us on the head); and a water balloon toss. Then is was time for Kaitlyn's much anticipated "Show." This concept had been evolving over the week - at one point she even wanted to go to all our neighbors/friends to "sign them up" to see the Show and give them tickets. What we ended up with is Kaitlyn with a microphone on the grass "stage" having us ask her questions.
She would say things like "Grandma, ask me a question about fish." Then after Kaitlyn had given an answer she would say "good question. You get a prize!" and hand one of her paintings to Grandma. Then it was Grandpa's turn, and so on until we had all had at least 3 turns.
We finished up the party with a 4 wheeler ride back to the pasture to pet the cows where our timid Kaitlyn (this is the first year she has been daring enough to ride the noisy 4 wheeler) spent most of the time telling me to drive slower LOL.

Happy Birthday Dad! (You can tell he just loves those kiddos, can't you?)

The rest of our long weekend

Due to the holiday we ended up having a 4 day weekend. We took advantage of it by doing a lot of playing. On Friday we went down to the city to get Tyler's photos taken (turned out cute! but I don't have the prints back yet). Then we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to a fun park for the kids' first time playing miniature golf.
Tyler, as usual was all over the place - usally right in the way when we wanted to take a shot. :)
Kaitlyn refused any help and did it all herself, using her own technique. I think it took her 5-6 shots (at least) per hole but she really enjoyed herself.
Sam and I weren't feeling very competitive - hard to be when your attention was always halfway focused on the kids and keeping them out of trouble - and we both did pretty badly. But it was still a lot of fun.
The rest of the weekend included a nice little date for Sam and me, while the kids stayed with my mom. We got to see the new Batman movie, go out to dinner, and do a little (very little bit) of shopping. And of course all of our dates end with a kid-less trip to the grocery store :)

Other highlights from this week include Kaitlyn's first swimming lessons (she's having a blast and getting so brave!) and a very fun visit from my friend Christina. I can't remember what else we've been up to, but whatever it was I'm exhausted and am taking some time "off" to recover! :) (that means no cleaning bathrooms today! LOL)