Texodus: Mommy and Daughter Hike

 

Birdy and Bear went home with Grandpa and EJ and I stayed back to go on a hike I had read about forever ago from Pintrest.  It was so fun!  We visited Lisa Falls in Little Cottonwood canyon.  The hike was short, shady, and full of fun boulders to scramble over and play on.  The falls themselves are so pretty!

As you can see, the falls have an actual fall and a really cool section where the water slides down the face of the granite wall.  

At the very mouth of the canyon, we noticed a sign for the Temple Quarry nature trail.  The scenery of the canyon was amazing, and we learned all about the geology of it.

The Temple Quarry was the place where they got the "temple granite" (actually a quartz) that they used to build the Salt Lake Temple.  There is even a place where you can see where they drilled holes (using two people- one holding a drill, and the other pounding an 8 lb hammer onto the drill).  It was cool seeing the 100 yr old drill holes!

Texodus: Vomit, Snowbird tram and panning for gems and fossils

Our awesome cousin sleepover continued with an adventure to Snowbird and a ride up to the top of the mountains on their tram.  Our drive there included a detour to clean up Bear's awesome orange puke :)  Luckily Cynj had some DI clothes and he looks fantastic in Bubba's old 6T clothes!

The tram was so fun (for most of us EJ was pretty scared of the heights).  This was the best way to get reacquainted with our beautiful rocky mountains.

My girls, on the other hand, were less than impressed. They felt it was too cold (Birdy) and too high (EJ).  

Look! I can see my (parents house) from here!  That is Heber in the back ground!

Eventually EJ got used to the heights and enjoyed the view.

After a yummy picnic lunch, the kids got to pan for fossils and gems.  It was so fun and the kids LOVED it.  We bought dirt and sand that you put in the screens.  All the small stuff would wash away leaving all kinds of treasures in every screen.

The kids were all really into it and they were so thrilled with every new discovery.

Even better, it was educational! They handed out cards helping identify the rocks and fossils.  The girls have played with them for a couple hours- identifying them, sorting them by size, type and even trading them.  Bear has kept his treasure close at hand (literally) and has been carrying them everywhere. 

Texodus: Dino Train and Cousin Sleepover

This year, we hit the ground running with fun adventures right off the bat.  On Monday, we met Cynj's kids for a dinosaur train adventure on the Heber Creeper.  Take a good look at Bear above... Playing inside with the deluxe Thomas train set was the happiest he was the whole visit. More about that later.

 We were met at the station by these two handsome, er, dinosaurs?  These were the only kids I could convince to come close to them :)  Bear continued to be terrified of all things trains.  We figured he may be freaked out at first, but warm up, as we went along, but sadly, this pretty much sums up how he felt about the whole thing:

As a side note- how DARE we put a Thomas tattoo on him? In our defense, he loved the Day out with Thomas and wasn't scared of the train at all... 

On the up side, the other kids were really happy. EJ and Junior hung out the windows and told jokes. Birdy declared that Sis was her new best friend.  Check out Sis and her cool wings and Mom's sunglasses combo. I love that girl SO MUCH.

Bear pretty much bawled the whole time and complained "I feel sick..." which, since his few days of fever, he has learned will get him what he wants.  I thought it was just a ploy to make me get him off of the scary train.  Boy, was I wrong.  The boy had diarrhea.  As we have learned before- pull-ups do NOT contain diarrhea  and by the end of the ride, he was wearing a pull up over his shorts as a last-ditch attempt to contain it and I had poo all down my let (and a LOT of it) and he had it all up his back.  So I guess you could safely say we scared the crap out of him.  Lesson learned.

After our beautiful but eventful train ride, we went home to nosh on the best lasagna ever, made by yours truly (the PW lasagna recipe- it is so good!).  It was especially fun because Cyndi's Bubba asked her for lasagna that very day!

After dinner, the cousin sleepover began.  Grandpa had bubble supplies for all the kids and they had so much fun with it.  Then there was a basement dance party.  EJ is convinced that every sleepover requires a dance party.  It was pretty wild, but they had lots of fun.  

Just before bed, everyone got in their jammies and wound down with an episode of Phineas and Ferb.  Sis and Birdy were so cute together (sorry the angle is funny, it makes Sis look huge!)

Texodus 2013: Aunt Jen and Uncle Jeff (or, Uncle Jen)

I can't think of a better way to kick off the Texodus than to have Aunt Jen come to help us drive (DMP stays home for a couple weeks and flies to meet us and then drive back).  She spoiled my kids and properly ooh'd and ahhh'd over the new house.  As an added bonus, this year Uncle Jeff had a work trip and was able to visit at the same time! 

Uncle Jeff cracked the kids up with all of his silly voices and impressions- especially when reading story books.  It was the first time these kids had seen him in 2 years!  Bear kept getting confused between our two visitors and called them both "Uncle Jen".

Aunt Jen spent a lot of time looking for the answers to riddles in the "I Spy" books Grandma sent.

 She also helped us make our 4th of July shirts.

Aunt Jen does hair the very best- here is Birdy getting a special bun for her ballet performance.

Give it up Bear, it's a lost cause...

We capped off our visit with a BBQ feast.  As you can tell, everyone was super happy to pause in their dishing up of the feast for the momarazzi moment (except Birdy, she is genuinely happy because all she wants is "corn-a-ba-cob")

Splash Pad Play Date

Fairy Houses

 A pic from Bek on facebook reminded me of how her girls love to make fairy houses. We have an awesome new back yard full of great fairy house materials, so I kicked the girls outside with instructions to make fairy mansions.  This is one of their creations.  Then, they got inspired to raid the recycling bin to make fairy "camp sites".

 It was a super fun, creative day. 

P.S. Fairy camp sites + days of rain + sprinklers = Soggy garbage on my porch that I'm not allowed to throw away.

And just in case you were wondering about what kind of creative awesomeness the boy was getting up to while all this was going on:

You're welcome....

Twinners!

EJ and I got matching glasses (not really on purpose, they just worked out that way...). Aren't we cute?

Buzz Buzz, Snip Snip

We had our second lice encounter this year (!). The thought of digging through Bear's mop of hair daily for checks made me want to poke out my eye so I declared that we were going to hog tie him and buzz his hair.  It was pretty traumatic for everyone.

First I grabbed the scissors and cut his hair shorter so we could buzz it.  I had a little fun and made an awesome mullet. If he hadn't been so traumatized I would have taken a picture.  Then DMP got our clippers out to cut it short.  They broke, so he went to his little trimmer that he uses for his ears and stuff between hair cuts.  He just snapped a random guard on it and set to work on Bear's hear.  EJ exclaimed "Stop it Daddy! He looks hideous!!" but, alas, it was too late and he looked like a cancer patient for about a week. 

This story has a happy ending, though. Bear has gained the new nickname of "fuzzy" and he loves, loves his fuzzy new head.  I've caught him several times dancing around and rubbing his head.  Hopefully he remembers how much he likes it and lets us do it again?  A girl can hope, right?

Sprinklers

Last Day of School!

 I wanted to do a cool side-by-side comparison with the girl's first and last day of school pics, but I am on the wrong computer. You'll just have to click this link really fast to see how much they've grown and changed this year.  Bring on First and Third grade!!

Funny Kiddos

Bear came in from playing outside in the water for a long time. He showed me his fingers and said "My fingers are all mumbled!" (he meant wrinkly)

Bear squished a bug on the way to the car as we were going to McDonald's for lunch.  As I was strapping him in he says "Bye bye dead bug! You can't come to McDonald's with us! You can't play on the slide!"  Guess he decided to add insult to injury (rim shot!).

Birdy calls corn on the cob "Corn-a-ba-cob"

 EJ was telling us about a school picture she drew.  They were given a letter, and they had to draw a picture that was a puzzle-like hint to what the letter was.  Example: The letter Q and the picture is of a duck, because a duck Quacks. Get it?  So she was telling us that she had the letter A.  We said "What did you draw?"  She replies "A roller coaster".  I thought that surely she meant because people scream "Ahhhh!!" on a roller coaster and was congratulating myself in my head for the intelligence that she surely got from ME.  I said "Oh, that is so clever! Because people scream "Ahhhh" on roller coasters?" She replies, "No, because they are awkward."  Oh.  As a side note, she uses the word "awkward" a lot and I don't think it means what she thinks it means :)

A Conversation with Bear as DMP

One of Bear's favorite things is to pretend he is Daddy or Mommy and that we are Bear.  This is a conversation I just had with Bear who was pretending to DMP. I thought it was funny- especially since father's day is coming up...

Me: "Hi Daddy!  What is your favorite food?
Bear: I like Bars (i.e. nutrigrain bars- he likes them a lot- DMP does not)
Me: What do you do when you go to work?
Bear: I ride trains a lot. I drive, drive, drive my car. Then I go pee pee in the toilet!
Me: That sounds fun, what do you like to do when you come home?
Bear: Play trains
Me: How big are you, Daddy?
Bear: Smaller
Me: How much money do you make?
Bear: (holds up 5 fingers) Five dollars
Me: What do you do when you are sick?
Bear: I get me a cough drop and the sick will go away!