Playing with Friends

My best childhood friend, Trista, came down to St. George with her two adorable little girls this past week. Trista lives in Logan now while her husband goes to school and works at Hill Air Force in Ogden. While she was down, we got to play. She wanted to see all of the fun new sites of St. George since she left almost 6 years ago. I told her that not much had changed but we could go do some of the fun things Emily likes to do. I was sure Jaydee would have a blast too. Emily and Jaydee are one month apart in age. So here are some pictures of our fun day.

The first place we went was to the library. It was Story Day so we couldn't miss it. The two girls had fun singing songs and listening to the stories the librarian read to them. They learned the letter "F" and about firemen this day. After the library, we had planned to go ride the St. George Carousel but it was closed! I guess the Carousel closes at 2:00 on Thursdays, just so you know. We were so bummed! The kids were mad too until we told them we were going to the splash pad which made everything better. So we were off to get wet.

Emily and Jaydee had a blast splashing in the water and chasing each other around the water falls. Emily really enjoyed having a new friend to play with and they played really good together.

Colby had fun splashing in the water too. He liked to kick his legs and get all wet.

Here is Colby playing with Trista's little girl, Kaycie. Kaycie is 5 months older than Colby but you can't tell by looking at this picture. Colby is definitely a big boy! Colby is a little flirt too, he kept smiling and talking to Kaycie but she would just look at him funny.

Emily loves everything about the splash pad. OK she loves anything about water! Colby on the other hand only liked sitting in the swallow water. Probably because it reminded him of a bath. He hated the waterfall because the water was cold and it splashed him in the face.

Emily and Jaydee loved this boy statue and spend most of the time near him. They would put their hands in the water the statue was spraying out and splash each other in the face and then laugh and laugh. After spraying each other in the face, one of them would go lay down where the statue's water was landing and have it spray them in the face down there while the other one blocked the water and then let it spray with her hands. Then they would switch. It was funny to watch. While the girls were doing this, Trista and I stood back a little so that we wouldn't get sprayed as well. Not that we didn't want to get wet, we mostly didn't want our cameras to get wet!

After playing for a while, we took a much needed snack break in the shade while the kids dried off. Thankfully Trista had brought some snacks with her because I didn't. The kids loved the cheese puffs and every one's hands were orange after eating them. I think Trista even had an orange hand print on her pants from Kaycie... a true sign of a mom! While the kids played and ate, Trista and I chatted and caught up on old times. I don't know if Jaydee really wanted to share her snacks with Emily though because she grabbed two handfuls of cheese puffs and shoved them in her mouth before Emily could get any. We both laughed at her because her mouth was so full! (Sorry for eating your snacks Jaydee we'll remember to bring some to share with you next time...) When Emily saw that her hands were all orange from the cheese puffs, she had a great idea. She said, "Oh I'll wash them in the water!" and she ran over to the splash pad, "washed" her hands and came back to dry them on the towel. What a smart cookie! :)

No trip to St. George is complete without a trip to JUDD'S!

Once we had dried off, we met up with Trista's parents and walked across the street to Judd's General Store. I probably haven't been in Judd's since 6th grade! OK maybe once or twice since then but it has changed so much. Colby was exhausted from too much fun and was asleep as soon as I put him in the stroller to walk over to Judd's. While we were there, we enjoyed rainbow Superman ice cream cones and Judd's famous bread sticks. Sooo Goood!

As we were leaving, Emily asked if Jaydee could come over to our house. Trista said she could but on the way over to our house, all four of the kids fell asleep so we just let them sleep instead of waking them up to play some more. I showed Trista our new house and then said goodbye. It was definitely a fun afternoon. Thanks for coming down and hanging out with us Trista, Jaydee, and Kaycie. It was fun and we need to do it again sometime soon!

5 Little Monkeys

Emily loves singing the two 5 Little Monkeys songs. For her birthday I made her these fun monkey finger puppets to play with while she sings the songs. I also made her a hand puppet of a alligator so she could "SNAP!" those monkeys right outta that tree. He looks kind of funny but he works.

Emily loves them and has a blast playing with them. The finger puppets are a little big for her hands so she has Russell or me wear them while she uses the hand puppet alligator to eat the monkeys.

The alligator is also good at eating Colby too. He laughs and squeals every time the alligator gets him. I love it when my kids enjoy something I have made. It makes all the work worth it.



***For a pattern for these puppets click here***

Emily's 3rd Birthday

Emily is 3!! Look how big and cute she is getting:

Emily is growing fast. She is 27 pounds and 37 inches tall. She is the funnest little kid and my little buddy. She is also my little helper. She is always trying to help out with Colby, cleaning, and recently she has been wanting to help me sew. Emily is learning all the time. She has the best memory and can remember everything we say or do. She will tell stories about things we have done months ago and sometimes I have even forgotten about these things until she reminds me. She loves playing Memory and can find all of the matches without help. She also loves coloring and putting puzzles together. She loves drawing O's. Emily loves singing and dancing. She sings every song she knows and often she will make up her own songs and sing them at the top of her lungs and then ask me to sing them with her. When I tell her don't know her made up songs she just looks at me like I am crazy. Lately she has introduced us to her imaginary friends Cindy and Shalana (I guess that is how you spell their names but who's to know!) Shalana is a mermaid and Cindy is just a girl. Emily is also a mermaid and tells me to call her Mermaid not Emily. She tells me she has to move her tail whenever she goes potty. I just laugh at her and say okay.

Every little kid Emily sees is a "friend." She also just calls them "Friend" instead of their names. Emily loves going to the library Toddler Time and singing songs with her friends. She also loves picking out books and reading them. We have scripture picture books and we have started reading these scriptures at night before bed. Emily enjoys listening to the scriptures and will not go to sleep until we have read our scriptures. Her favorite movie is "Tangled." Her favorite song is "I Love to See the Temple." Her favorite food is Spaghetti-O's and Otter Pops. She also loves playing with her baby brother. Emily and Colby share a bedroom and Emily thinks it is like having a sleepover every night. Emily can count to ten and can almost count to twenty as well. She can sing her ABC's and we are working on the recognition of the letters. Emily also knows all of her colors and basic shapes. She is also a little chatterbox. She loves talking... all the time. I am constantly entertained by all of the things she says and amazed at all she knows. I love this girl so much!

When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday party, she excitedly said "A Candyland Party!" So that is what we did.

My favorite part of the party was the cake. Loading it with candy, I decorated it as the Candyland game board. I think it turned out really cute. Emily loved it and so did everyone that had a piece. We did have a ton of candy left over though so we put it all in bags and gave them out as party gifts to the guests. Unfortunately half of the guests left their candy bags at our house when they left so we still ended up with a ton of candy! I think I have gained 5 pounds since the party because of my cursed sweet tooth!

For one of the games at the party, we made the Candyland Castle. We used this castle for a bean bag toss game. The kids had fun throwing the bean bags through the holes while we waited for all of the guests to arrive. But mostly they had a blast running around in the grass in the backyard and playing on the swing set.

Another game I planned for the party was the Cupcake Commons Cake Walk. I drew pictures of the Candyland game pieces and characters on pieces of paper to be used for the walk. The kids had fun running around the circle of papers while the music played. They especially loved the bag of candy they got when their picture was chosen.

After a hot dog dinner (Emily's favorite), it was present time:

Emily got some really great gifts from everyone that came. She was so excited to open all of her presents. Her friends were really excited to give her all of her presents too. One little boy, Colton, thought Emily wasn't opening her presents fast enough so he started opening them for her! His mom got kind of mad about that.

It was fun having all of Emily's friends over. We were originally just going to have a family party with cousins but then Emily kept asking us if her friends were coming to her party. She would ask "Is Jace coming to my party? Is Teryn and Trayton? Is Brittlyn and Colton coming to my party?" So the last minute on Tuesday, we took and invitation around to all of her friends. It was good we did because her cousins were not able to come. One of my really good friends came too. My best childhood friend, Trista, came down from Logan with her two girls to visit her family so I invited her to Emily's party as well. Her daughter, Jaydee, is a month older than Emily so they had fun playing together.

Emily was a little spoiled though and had too many presents. The kids started getting bored and ran off and played. So I decided we could open more presents later and it was time for cake.

Here she is blowing out the candles and cutting her own cake. We had cake and Rainbow ice cream that Emily picked out. It was so good. One thing we told all of the guests' parents was that we were not responsible for hyperactive kids due to sugar rushes! The Candyland party was really fun but probably not the best idea for a night party because Emily was so wired that she wouldn't go to sleep.

Colby was starting to feel a little left out because we were focused on Emily. Thanks Mom for playing with him. Happy Birthday, Emily! We love you!

Swiss Days

Today was the annual Swiss Days in Santa Clara. I have lived in St. George all my life and never been to Swiss Days. I decided that needed to change so we got up bright and early and headed to the parade at 9:30. Because I had never been there before, I didn't know where we could park and not park so I just parked at the Santa Clara library. I loaded the kids up in the stroller and headed down the road. It was then that I realized that the Town Hall was a lot further from the library than I thought. (It doesn't seem far in driving distance, but pushing a stroller loaded with kids it is kind of far.) Any way we made it to the parade route and Emily had a blast watching the parade. Emily loved waving at all of the people on the floats and gathering the candy. She even remembered to bring her own candy bag from home. The bad thing about it was we were sitting toward the end of the parade so by the time everyone got to us, they were all out of candy. Emily was kind of disappointed that she didn't get a lot of candy but she soon got over it.

After the parade we walked through the booths and saw all of the crafts and products people were selling. I like looking at all these booths because I get ideas of things to make on my own. I am too cheap to buy anything but I will take pictures and mental pictures of the things I like... hee hee.

One of the booths were making prairie rings for the kids. They were doing hands on crafts and Emily got to bend her own ring and then the boys helping shaped it and sized it to fit her little finger. Emily loved it and is so proud of her ring. She is still wearing it and showing it off.

On the hike back to our car, we passed an awesome Buzz Lightyear cow! We had to stop and take a picture because it was so cool. By the time we got back to the car, we were sweating even though it is the end of September! I felt bad for the kids because they were so hot too. I gave Emily her water bottle and gave Colby mine. He LOVED it and tried his best to get suck the water out but it was too heavy to lift. I had to help him get a few sips before getting in the car myself. Then to top it off, our car has no A/C! There is a leak somewhere in the lines so we have to recharge it with Freon at the beginning of summer and by the end of summer it has usually ran out of freon. Since it should be the end of summer, we no longer have A/C. Luckily we don't live very far from the Santa Clara library and we soon made it home to our Otter Pops! Yum yum!

Colby has officially out grown his car seat! Here he is in his new seat. I think he likes it. When I was researching car seats I was amazed at what they recommend. They (whoever "they" are) recommend kids ride in a rear facing car seat until they are two or like 35 pounds! If that were the case, Emily should still be in a rear facing seat. I really don't think she would like that very much. They did say though that even though your child is over 20 pounds, he should still be in a rear facing seat until he is at least one. That made me feel better because I had only heard that if they were over 20 lbs they could face the front but I was worried that Colby was still too young to face front even though he was over 20 lbs. Any way Colby is in a new convertible car seat that faces the rear but can also face front when he gets old enough.

Any way, enough of my car seat info. We had a great time at the Swiss Days and it was worth going to.

Bishop's Rodeo

Every year our bishop hosts a fun "rodeo" with the young men and young women in our ward in his arena. Since Russell is an advisor in the Priest Quorum, we went and watched. It was so much fun and so funny to watch. There were four rodeo events the kids could participate in.

First was the bull riding:

The "bull" was actually a barrel suspended by ropes and then rocked by the leaders. The kids had to try and stay on for 8 seconds. One of Russell's boys was knocked off and actually did a front flip over the bull as he was fell. It was really quite funny and he was laughing as he was getting up. After seeing this though, the girls didn't want to ride. Janelle finally got brave enough and the boys had a great idea to duct tape her to the bull and then she wouldn't fall off. So as you can see from the picture she was duct taped to the bull and, to be funny, they duct taped her mouth too so she couldn't scream I guess. We all had a good laugh. By the way, the duct tape didn't hold too well and she fell off any way. They were a little gentler with Emily and she had a blast riding the bull.

The next event was the barrel racing:

The kids rode stick horses around the barrels to see who could get the best time. As you can see some kids really got into it. I think the best times were 21 seconds.

When Emily saw the kids riding the stick horses, she wanted to try it as well.

She had a lot of fun running with the horse around the barrels. She even wore out Russell as they ran around. I don't know what her time ended up being but I sure it was a good one!

The next events were calf roping and a cow pie eating contest:

Most of the kids had already participated in the calf roping event by the time I got there to watch but I am sure it was as fun as the others.

The pie eating contest (or I called it the cow pie eating contest) was fun to watch. Every one's faces were covered in chocolate pudding. The winning girl was giving everyone pointers on how to eat fast and get the crust out of the pie tin. It was great.

The rodeo was really fun to watch. I am glad we decided to go see all of the fun events. Our ward does a lot of fun activities.

Birthdays and Parades

This weekend has been filled with birthdays and parades! First, Friday the 16th was Russell's dad's birthday and Alex's birthday too. Keith was in Washington state visiting his brother Harold so we just called him on the phone to wish him a happy happy. That night, we headed up to New Harmony to celebrate Alex's 3rd birthday. He had a dinosaur party and Jen made a really cute dinosaur decorated cake including really cool dinosaur candles.

Alex loved the play dough Emily and I made him for his birthday. Jen said he needed more play dough because all of his were mixed together.

After the presents were open and the cake and ice cream were eaten, all of the grand kids played pile on sacks with Uncle Tyler. Tyler was a good sport and let all of them smash him and ride on his back. He probably had close to 100 pounds on his back. The kids loved it and had a blast trying to hold on as Tyler crawled around.

That same night, we also had some pretty crazy weather. Tom, one of Russell's grandparents' former foster boys, called from the Iron County Fire Department and told us that there was a tornado warning in effect. The tornado was supposed to touch down one mile west of Kolob Ranches which would have placed it exactly in New Harmony right where G & G Maxwell's house is. Right where we were! We were all pretty nervous so we headed down to their downstairs and turned on the news to listen to the tornado report. While listening, all the grand kids cuddled up on Great-Grandma & Grandpa's bed with them. Russell said that they used to do that all the time when he was a kid.

It turned out that the winds changed and the tornado warning moved from west to New Harmony to north to Cedar. Russell and I headed home with the kids after this and drove through quite a bit of rain before making it home safely. There was not a tornado but that was the closest I have ever been to being in one. I was glad we were with family.

The next day, Saturday, I took the kids to the Dixie Round Up parade. It was a really good parade and lasted about an hour and a half!

Emily was so excited about the parade. While we were waiting for the parade to begin, she kept asking me when it would start. She would ask me every minute what time it was and look at my watch. I would tell her 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes and so on. Then she would yell to everyone around us "Only 10 minutes!!" etc. Everyone around us just kept laughing at her and telling me how cute she was. They also said they hoped the parade was everything she hoped it would be and not disappointing. Emily was not disappointed in the parade. She loved sitting by her cousins and especially loved gathering the candy that was thrown.

We also liked watching and listening to the marching bands. These were the best pictures I could get of our family members in the bands. Justin played the bass drum for Desert Hills Middle and Cassie and Tyler played in the Snow Canyon Middle band. Cassie played the flute and Tyler played the trombone.

Russell met us at the parade after he got off work. After the parade, we headed over to my Aunt Janet's house to celebrate my grandma's 93rd birthday! It was fun to see all of my dad's side of the family again. It is nice to see my grandma in such good health at her age. It is fun to live next door to her and have my kids get to know her. Emily loves going over to Nana's house and visiting her. Grandma loves having her over and seeing her.

The party was really fun. Russell and Emily loved swimming in Janet's pool and Colby loved playing with Grandma. My favorite part was the homemade root beer! I definitely need to learn how to make some.