Adam and Heather Hayes

Well after fixing the pump for our well a few weeks ago, we decided that we didn't want it to have any reason to go out early. We had a leaky faucet out by the pump that had been very leaky for about a year now. I thought that I could just dig it out and replace it.

I soon found that it was a very, very deep pipe that I was trying to dig out of the ground. I dug for half of one day and was rather dismayed, downtrodden, and down right depressed at not having found the junction. (The hole had tons of water in it as I dug it because of the leaky faucet, so I was forced to "bail out" the water every few minutes so I could see what I was doing while I was digging. But the second day I got smarter and turned off the pump. So by the time I hit the junction I had gotten most of the water out of the hole). I called around to people in the ward that I thought might have a backhoe that they would rent. Unfortunately, nobody was home.

So I dug some more yesterday and finally found the junction. That was the good news. The bad news was that the hole was not even close to being big enough for me to bend over to work in, which explains the above pictures. So.... I ended up working in the hole upside down. (I had to come out every once in a while to get the blood back out of my head that kept turning very purple.) This was made even more interesting in that the hole filled up with some water after we took the old faucet out. So as I was hanging upside down in the hole with my head hovering above the water, I tried to tighten the pipe that was underwater, and thus invisible, with the pipe wrench.

Fortunately, I didn't drown and we have the new faucet in place. Thanks goes out to Josh who didn't let me drown and Stuart who helped me know how to replace the thing once I got the hole dug and for taking pictures so you can all laugh at me. 

Well, well, well, what a week we've had. 

I woke up on Tuesday and found that we had no water. I was worried that our pressure tank had finally given up and that I'd find a few feet of water in the basement. Fortunately that was not the case.

After checking breakers and fuses and getting some advice from Stuart as to which well pump service company to use, we had Forman Pump come out and check out our system. They checked the "quick fix stuff" first, but it wasn't the cheap stuff that was broken. After pulling over a hundred feet of pipe out of the ground we found that our 11 year old pump had gone out (normal life span of a pump is 12-15 years from what the experts told me) So we replaced the pipe and pump and dropped the pump down another few feet because the water table was lower for this time of year.

Well, unfortunately that wasn't the end of our problems. We powered up the pump and things were good, but we had awful water pressure. Dropping the pump meant putting it closer to the bottom and closer to the dirt/silt/stuff that resides at the bottom of the well. That plugged up our filter in quite a hurry, but it was probably a good thing that it did, because it made me look into the pressure tank a little more than I had.

I decide that it would probably be good to pressurize the tank again. So, I called my dad and he came over with a couple of tanks of air. We pressurized the pressure tank (I now know how to do it properly) and everything works great. We've never had this good of water pressure. I really think that our pressure tank hadn't been doing its job for a while now (it is a bladderless tank and I think the air was all but gone in it). I think that contributed to our early pump failure.

At least now I know what to look for as signs to re-pressurize the system, and understand a little better how a well pump works.

On the down side I have one heck of a sunburn that looks pretty funny. Hopefully it will have faded a bit by the time we bless Clara in a couple of weeks.

I saved since the beginning of the year to take off for Spring Break and go to Disneyland, and we did it!

Day 1: We left Friday and drove to Layton to get a recalled wiper motor replaced on our SUV.  Then we drove to Salt Lake and had a delicous barbecue at Bethany and Eric's house.  The adults played settlers and pinnochle while the kids fell asleep to a movie in the livingroom.

In the morning we had a scruptious hot breakfast, played a few songs on their piano, (Thanks Eric and Bessy! You're awesome!)

opened some birthday presents and then hit the open road.  10 hours of it,

thank goodness for portable DVD players and books, that is a lot of driving.  We gained an hour when we got to LA, and the power had been off all day and came back on just before we got there.  That was lucky!

So we drove all Day 2, Day 3: went to church with Adam's uncle Ryal, aunt Cory, and cousins Andrew and Evie, and had a barbecue and egg hunt with their local extended family. It was a fun day and I didn't even think to take a picture of it. Nice.  Day 4: we went to the beach.  It started off beautiful and sunny.  These first pictures are the "Before Adam almost drown" pictures.

Adam and Andrew were having a great time body surfing until Adam got caught in a riptide and kept getting sucked back into the ocean.  He swam and swam and swam, but was not getting any closer to the beach.

He tried swimming parallel to the beach but that just took him farther away from me and not any closer to the beach. 

So he called for help and Andrew pulled him in to where he could touch.  I was quite worried by now, and was very happy to see Adam stumbling up the beach to me.  He was in shock.  He asked for any drink that did not contain salt.

I gave him a Capri Sun, he drank some of it, then layed down and didn't move for quite a while.  Then all of a sudden he flipped over and started puking sea water.  I realized how tramatic it really was for him at that point.  I covered him up with all the towels and clothes we had, and let him rest for a couple of hours.

While he was resting, the girls and Andrew and I had a fun time.  Two sand castles were made,

One closer to the ocean than the other.  This first one was too far away to fill the mote with water before it sunk in.

Tons of shells were collected.

White bodies soaked in some sun.

Some bodies were whiter than others.  I do have olive skin like Erith and Tric, I just don't wear a bathing suit very much.  You'll see later that poor Vi has Adam's white freckley skin, we don't know about Clara yet.

Little girls made memories.  This is Clara's first time on a beach.  Vi's first time getting wet on a beach.

I noticed Andrew and Vi had been standing in one spot for quite a while, I walked over and Vi said "Look Mom my feet are gone!"

It was fun to stand right at the edge of the water and feel yourself sink after each wave.  She loved it so much, she and Andrew stood there for almost an hour.  Andrew got a bad sunburn for that one.

When it got close to her knees she started to chicken out, mostly because the water was splashing her face.

We were happy to see Adam back to normal after his nap and some lunch.  Evie and her friend Jerica joined us after a while to do some sunbathing.

Look at all these cuties at the beach.  I thought I had sunscreened everyone head to toe.  But alas, it became apparent that I had missed a couple spots on Vi when I put her in the bath that night.

A word to the wise, don't scrunch your nose while applying sunscreen.  And don't be overly cautious about getting it in the eyes.

Oops!

Our girls were so excited when I bought a Slip'nSlide that they invited a bunch of family over for a water party.

Viola surprised us by potty training herself this week, so this is her first time swimming without a swimming diaper. She'll be two next week.

What would a water party be without hotdogs and Adam in his grilling apron?

We had otterpops and splashed it up to stay cool in the hot sun.

The slip'nslide said for kids only, but what fun is that? Yes, that person is me, Heather.

I just had a baby remember, I've got some baby fat to lose!

Here are some skinnier splash kings and queens.

Kami and Josh

Tricity and Sarah

Some just came to chat and laugh at the rest of us.  Jaleesa was there, how did she escape the camera...

Erith was being a prim little princess and didn't want to hit the water with her face very badly.

Clara had a trick up her sleeve that day too. She rolled over from tummy to back about 6 times!  Loa got a video of it, I will try to get it from her and post it soon.  She will be two months next week.  She is very active and alert and determined to grow up on me.

Hope you all are keeping it cool! 

I really thought we didn't have anything exciting to write about, but today I realized that I'm doing this blog so I can have a history of our family.  So if every entry isn't that exciting to you, I'm sorry, but it's information I want to remember.

I need to remember my first time calling Poison Control, which happened last night.  My sweet little two year old Viola has learned to use chairs and stools to climb onto tables, counter tops, pianos, and anywhere else we thought was a "safe place."  She climbed onto the bathroom counter and grabbed an Air Wick scented oil with fan refill and sucked on the wick like it was a straw.

She started bawling and ran to me.  She smelled very strongly like Harvest Orchard oil and said she needed a drink.  We gave her lots of water to drink and Poison Control said we probably gave her too much to drink which might make her throw up, which might get in her lungs, which might give her pneumonia, which might start an infection, but most likely she would be fine.   Which she is, just fine today, didn't even wet the bed after all that water before bed.

She is definitely in the terrible twos though.  She has to do everything her way. Don't even think about helping her out of the car.  She fell flat on her face at my mom's house a couple weeks ago getting out of the SUV by herself and skinned her forehead and nose. I had to cancel her picture appointment that week.  Since Erith and Tric are at school five days a week, Vi has 2 less sets of eyes to watch her.  She  is quite the adorable trouble-maker!  She is communicating so much better though.  She says simple sentences and knows how to count to 13 in English and 6 in Spanish.  She can say the ABC's pretty clearly and knows the color red.  She can play several games on the Ubuntu computer that Adam set up for the girls to play on. She knows who's turn it is for family prayer which we do by order of birthday! Crazy huh!

Erith lost her fourth tooth last week.  She has lost 3 on bottom and 1 on top with two more quite loose.  She can read quite a few books and verses of scripture without any help now.  She knows how to change Clara's diaper and draws and prints picutures on the kid computer nearly every day. (We had to give her a paper limit per day recently.)  She is taking piano lessons and doing quite well, when she practices!

Tricity is quite the social butterfly.  I hear story after story about all the kids in her kindergarten class when she gets home.  She loves to help me cook.  She likes to draw and play on the computer as well.   She is quite good at remembering to practice the piano.  She is doing great at school and has helped me find homes for 10 of our 19 kittens.  (You heard me right, 19!)

Clara is jabbering a lot and she seems like a permanant hip ornament on me.  She is definately a momma's girl.  She laughs when Vi or I entertain her.  She rolls like crazy but is not wanting to crawl or sit up on her own much. She is eating lots of new foods and seems to never get full.  She's very cute and sweet and I love her a lot.

Adam's business is picking up again, it usually does right before year end.  His brother is working for us in the evenings so Adam's challenge is to NOT stay in the office from morning till 11 at night.  He got to meet Dallin H. Oaks when his stake presidency got replaced, that was cool.  He likes the boys in his scout group really well, they are going swimming tonight.

I have been crocheting baby booties for humanitarian newborn kits.  I am still quite slow and have a lot of mistakes, but they keep Clara's feet warm, so I'm sure they are good enough.  I have lots of Primary stuff to do before the end of the year and I help a lady I visit teach quite often, and the PTSO have something they want at least once a month.  I just keep busy without a whole lot to show for it.  It's kind of frustrating, but I hope I'm making a difference.  Adam and I are going on a date this week if it kills us!  It's been about a month.  Between his schedula and mine, there's never a free night.  I really want to do a session at the Rexburg Temple, I haven't done one there yet.  We're still in the Idaho Falls temple district.   Have a great day!

I figured it is my turn to give everyone an update.

I made my goal of losing 30 lbs. I got back down to 175 which is about the weight I was when I graduated. I haven't been below 180 since before I got married, so I was very surprised to make the goal. I've been hovering around 175.5 and 177 for the past couple of weeks, so I didn't just "bounce" up after losing it either.

I rode my first horse last Friday. We went up to Daniel's house and I got my first ever chance to ride a horse. It was ok. They told me that trotting isn't the most enjoyable and that I should go gallup, but I'm not sure that I enjoyed that any more than trotting, but that could have just been because of how far down the stirrups were. (I have short legs and Daniel has really long legs.) All-in-all it was pretty fun. Darcy threatened that we should go for a trail ride. So we'll see how/when that happens.

T-ball. Heather finished her season (I'll let her tell you about that more herself.) But from my position as designated 3rd base coach, I thought her team did excellent. Heather was soooooo patient with the kids.

Erith and Tric were on her team and they did amazing. Tricity hit two home runs this season (which is pretty hard to do in T-ball.)

Erith keeps getting taller and her long legs kept her ahead of most anyone (even when I thought for sure that she would get out, she always beat them to the base... even if the ball was hit directly at the base she was running to.)

Overall Heather's team had a winning season and I am very proud of her and the girls. 

I've started painting again. I haven't painted in a lot of years, and I've never done oil painting. I did water color when I was in high school, but I haven't done anything since then. I convinced a very nice lady in my ward to teach me how to oil paint. I've been planning this for a while and had asked for oil painting equipment last year for Christmas, so I had most everything I needed to get going. I've completed two paintings so far, one an abstract picture based off of a Paul Klee painting that I really like. The second is a still life of a couple of bottles. I think I'm getting better and I'm really enjoying painting again. I had forgotten how much fun it can be.

Well there is my update. I'll get the pictures out here as soon as I can for people to see. Please let me know what you all think.

This is an amazing talk that discusses in no uncertain terms the financial problems facing the United States. It goes over some amazing statistical data for "average" families and the financial crunch that many people are facing compared to 38 years ago.

Skip forward to 4:45. That is where the lecture actually begins.

Well we had our second tournament. This week was pretty good. We split with the "undefeated" Hillcrest team and I think we would have won both if we hadn't had one of the girls sprain her ankle. I spent quite a while getting some ice for her ankle and when I got back we were losing 10-22. As you can see the games were pretty close. I was very proud of the girls.

• Hillcrest
•      10-25
•      25-18
• Madison
•       25-15
•       25-14
• Sugar Salem
•      25-18
•      25-23
• IF - Justin
•        27-25
•      22-25
•        15-8

Wow, what a week. We have been working hard insulating and sheetrocking our new office, running kids to preschool and kindergarten and trying to help some close friends who are having problems. Then we find out that my little brother Landon who is 11 years old has bone cancer. WHAT A SHOCKER. Adam came out of his office after talking on the phone with my parents and asked "Are we ready to be strong?"

That didn't bode well. I was kind of thinking I was already being strong for people. Landon has been limping for a couple months but we were shocked when a knee specialist said he thought it was bone cancer. My parents have been at Primary Children's from Tuesday to late Thursday and we found out for sure yesterday (Thursday) that the knee tumor is in fact cancerous. It's officially called:

osteosarcoma

The Doctors and staff made my parents feel very at peace with it. They say it is very treatable and it doesn't seem to have spread to the surrounding bone or effected his lungs or other common occurances. He will have to do Chemotherapy every 3 weeks at Primary Children's for a year and thus he'll have those side effects and can't be around sick people or stressful situations. He starts chemo on Tue, Sept. 25.

The hardest part of this for my parents is reliving it every time someone calls or asks so in order to lessen that discomfort Adam set up a blog just like this one for them on my Dad's stock photography domain. The address is:

landon.stustock.com

This way everyone can know how it's going without putting my mom on an emotional roller coaster everyday.

On behalf of my family THANK YOU so much for the prayers and fasting and various other help it has really made this ordeal seem bearable. We know we're not alone in this and that is a great feeling in a less than great situation.

You're awesome!

Heather

Hello everyone, I can't believe a month has passed since Clara was born. Erith and Tricity have had their end of the school year parties and programs, and T-Ball practice starts this week. Summer is here! Now if we could just have more than one day of sunshine at a time...

I have been inside with the baby watching the rain and actually longing to do some gardening and yard work! Clara is growing up so fast. She likes to use her neck even though she probably shouldn't. She is awake more. She's very alert and loves being entertained by her sisters.

Viola is very interested and protective of her. When she cries she gets Adam or I and says "Mon! Mon! Baby!" as she pulls on our hand.

Erith has become my second set of hands, bless her heart. I am usually taking care of Clara when Vi needs assistance, so Erith helps, like a second Mom. I sometimes have to remind her that I am still THE Mom though!

Erith may be the baby/toddler tender but Tricity is my cleaner. It's amazing how messy a house gets with four kids, and Tric is my quick to obey house cleaner, yeah for her!

I really love my girls, and wouldn't trade a one of them. They have a sweetness and a goodness that they were born with that has nothing to do with me. Even when I'm tired and grouchy they still love me and forgive me and want to be by my side. I have noticed Erith hanging out with me A LOT lately. She is constantly watching and mimicking me. I definitely need to watch my words and attitude. It's embarrassing to see some of my episodes repeated!

Well, we are glad to have water again (read Adam's explanation on that) and wish you all a Happy Memorial Day!

(There are a bunch of new pictures of the baby and the other kids in the Image Gallery under Kids 2008 , check them out!)

Day 6: California Adventure

We didn't get to bed till super late Tuesday night, so we had a late start Wednesday morning.  (Plus I felt like we should take it slow so Adam could have his daily health issue.  But, he didn't have any more problems that trip!)

Wednesday was the coldest day of the trip.  We had shorts and short sleeves thinking, it's hot in California.  But alas it was windy, overcast and sprinkled on us a couple times!  We should have brought some warmer things!

We started out in It's a Bug's Life and rode Flik's Flyer.

We let Andrew take the camera for a while, it's nice to see us all together.  It was kind of cool to see what it's like to be tiny like a bug.  I'm used to the opposite, too tall to see the underside of things.

We did the spinning ladybugs next, and like I said, Andrew had the camera.

Adam, Clara, and I chose to be together so we wouldn't have to spin more than necessary.  Ugh.

Our girls were terribly impatient to drive the bug bumper cars.  They all feel it empowering to be the driver.

Wonderful Drew stayed out with Clara who was too short and took pictures.

The rides seemed a bit short and non thrilling after the wild night we'd just had, but this vacation was for the kids. 

I didn't go to Disneyland till I was 18 for my senior trip and I wanted my kids to have some fun kid memories. 

The Heimlich ride was more a ride for your senses than anything.  We traveled through a watermelon rind that smelled and felt wet and juicey, and an animal cracker box that smelled like some of my favorite childhood snacks.  Like I said, not thrilling but creative.

This bug land place had SO many fun places to take pictures.  We didn't put a dent in the possibilites. 

They had a fun 3D bug show with a stinky stink bug, black widdows coming down from the ceiling, and wiggley maggots.  I love 3D shows like that.

Wade joined us and brought us lunch.  Clara had a tradition of falling asleep through every meal.  It was so cute to see Vi share the stroller and hug her till they both fell asleep.

Oops, I forgot to flip that pic.  After lunch we went to the forest rangery part. 

They had a cave to tell you what your inner animal was.(Adam was a skunk!) rope bridges, tire swings and Clara's favorite: rock slides!

Poor Vi barely made the height measurement at the bottom of the swings, walked all the way up the rope bridges to the swing ride just to be told she was too short to ride.  She cried and cried and said, "That lady thinks I'm little and I'm not, I'm a big girl, waaaaaaa!"  Gotta love it!

Adam took Vi back down and while he was comforting her, she decided she wanted to get a picture with Brother Bear.  Good idea Vi!

The lines at California Adventure averaged about 30 minutes except the next two: Mickey's Fun Wheel and Toy Story Mania, those were looooong. (probably an hour)

The fun wheel was way too high for Adam's taste, I was afraid he might toss his cookies for the third time on that one!  It's a huge feris wheel with most cars on rollers.  Vi and Clara put on their brave faces.  Andrew, Wade, Jerica, Erith, and Tric were making theirs rock and roll like crazy!

Toy Story was a shootem up video game ride, I was terrible, Andrew and Wade smoked us.  Then we went to the tortilla factory for free tortillas and the sourdough bread bakery for free sour dough.  Then we ran into these green army guy musicians.  That was pretty cool.

We went to a super cool Aladdin live production.  Who knew you could get a 45 minute Broadway show at California Adventure at no extra cost!? We then had dinner in the brr cold and split into groups again.  The big kid group did Soarin' Over California (which is VERY cool, if you're on the front row you don't have feet dangling above you and it really feels like your're flying into the green screen!) and California Screamin'.

Screamin' is pretty intense!  It was Erith and Tricy's first upside down rollercoaster!  Erith said she was too scared to scream, Tric asked, "Did we go upside down yet?" Yep! (Get Fast Passes to both, like we did!)

Yeah right Wade, even a ride pro like you couldn't fall asleep on screamin'!  Then the boys took off to play stake volleyball.  I'm not sure where Ryal and Cory took the little ones while we were gone.  I believe they did King Triton's carousel more than once.  We girls met up with them and watched the electrical parade, then the second it was over Ryal, Erith, Tric, me, and yes Vi, did Hollywood Tower of Terror! Sleeping Clara stayed with Aunt Cory.

Remember Where's Waldo?  Where's Viola?  It was a pretty scary story line (Twilight Zone) and it is probably too much for an almost 4 year old, but I didn't think she would behave for Cory while we went, so I took her, and she did it!  I told her it was all pretend and she was extremely proud of this picture. "HER picture".

Vi threw a huge fit on the way to the car.  She wanted me to carry her, not Ryal, not the stroller, give me a break kid, you're heavy and I'm tired!  Another late night, got kids to bed and did 2 loads of laundry.

Day 7: Drive to San Diego to see Trevor at Camp Pendleton

My brother has been at Camp Pendleton since last summer when he went to do marine boot camp to join the marine reserves.  He tore the cartilage off his hip while doing the usual drills and whatever and was declared physically unfit enough to finish. (2 weeks before his graduation no less) He has been sitting in the the hospital wing for 5 months waiting for his discharge papers to come home.  It's very depressing and he longs for company, so we came to visit.

He can't leave the base, he got leave to have this visit with us, and they have an awesome rec center to play and eat in, so we played and ate.

We bowled 2 games at the bowling alley and then had lunch, hamburgers and pizza. (There were about 4 choices on the menu)  Vi wailed on her big sisters at bowling! (Bumper buddies and a ramp helped!)

Then we hit the free arcade.  Trevor's favorite game is this shoot deer and elk game, I think he liked having a gamer like Adam for competition.

I couldn't pry the sunglasses off Erith's face this trip!  That was a dark room!

Tric loved the basketball hoops game, Clara loved the one thing she could climb on by herself and reach the controls!  Vi had too short an attention span to do much of anything.

I had to give them my driver's license to get the air hockey puck and paddles, so muscle men, don't hit the puck hard enough to jump the table and lose it!

Speaking of losing things, Clara lost one of her shoes and it took forever to find.  Guess where it was? Behind the propped open door, that tiny triangle of space was the last place I thought to look!

We got Trev back a tad late for his 4:00 cut off, oops, bad shoe.  We're glad we could see him.  We zipped back to LA without too much traffic trouble and then climbed in the passenger van for an Angels game!

Praise to Andrew again for the tickets and chicken burgers hot and ready in the van when we got there just in time to leave.

This is our family's first major league baseball game. 

We didn't have as much red as the average fan.  But I did buy a t-shirt before we left.  I know, I am a junkie for vacation suveniers!

The angels did not win I'm afraid.  They lost to the San Diego Padres 5-2.  The whole experience was awesome though, being able to buy hotdogs and peanuts from your seat, the great american pasttime.  I have to say though, Adam playing here at Tauphaus Park moved tons faster! (no raking the dirt!)

Surprise Tricity!  When we got back from the game this was waiting for us!  Andrew is magic, I'm telling you!  Tricity's surprise princess birthday party!

Day 8: We drive 11 hours to Andi's in Ogden Utah, goodbye California, Wheelers, Trevor, we love you!

Only a cool sister like Andi would let 6 people crash her one bedroom apartment at 12:30 AM!  Thank goodness she did because we were having a hard time getting that far, all the way home would have been misserable!

Day 9: Conference, birthday presents, meeting the infamous Mike, and Fat Cats.

We finally got to meet Andi's best friend she's been hanging out with for 3 years.  We met up for a between sessions lunch.  I liked him a lot, we need tall men in this world like him!

This Fat Cats place had a ton of fun things to do, but we just didn't have enough time to do all we wanted before conference started, so we settled for Jazzi style bumper cars and ice ball. (skee ball)

It was a fun ending to a fun vacation, I'm very glad we went.  I'll write about Tric's birthday later, and that's all she wrote!

Our bathroom is almost done!  It sure is looking nice.  The new cabinets are so much sturdier and pretty.  We decided on oak since our kids would ding the softer kinds of wood.

The handles are on their way.  The medicine cabinet holds  SO much stuff. It is great.

The jetted tub and toilet are so blinging white and beautiful and work flawlessly.  Well, flawlessly if you have more than a half inch of water above the jets that is.  Poor Vi got a tidal wave right in the face when we first tried it out! 

The cultured marble is so pretty and easy to clean, I'm really glad we went with it.

We just need handles, painted trim, and decorations and I think we'll be ready for the before and after comparison!

I've finished another painting. I liked the way the sky/clouds turned out and some of the mountains. The trees are ok, but I still need work on my water reflections.

Heather took some "in process" pictures of my painting.

So you get to see my glorious studio. :)

On a side note, apparently Clara got into the lotion, but used a little too much.

It reminded me of a similar experience from when I was that age. (My mother will get a kick out of this). I painted my friend's face with Desitin. I though I had done the best job until I saw what Clara did. She wins hands down.

This was our first vacation in our new SUV.  It was nice, and very different.  Our Saturn Outlook is an 8 passenger vehicle, it's like a short suburban; thus one person had to sit way in the back.  The other 2 back seats we folded down so we would have more room for our stuff.  This is a sampler of our vacation pictures.  To see TONS more go to the IMAGE GALLERY up above and then click on 2008 vacation.

Monday we left home early in the morning and drove to Ogden and went to the Eccles Dinosaur Museum.  It was mostly out of doors, which we weren't expecting, but they had made some very cool dinosaur recreations/interpretations.  There are a bunch of different dinosaur museums in Utah.  This was not the one I went to in elementary school.

They had lots of photo face hole places to take pictures and the kids insisted on sticking their heads into EVERY hole!

They had places where you could dig up or brush off dinosaur bones and eggs.

There were real fossils and fossil replicas inside. Oh, and one robotic dino display.

After we were done at the dinosaur museum we drove to Midway.  My cousin Camille lives there and we stayed there that night.  We had an excellent barbecue lit by torches AND glow-in-the-dark earrings!

Tuesday we started the day with cute hair for once! (Thanks to Camille)

Then we went fishing!  We didn't catch anything, but we'd rather catch nothing than catch a duck, right Camille? :)

Camille invited a family of cute little boys to come along and teach my cute little girls how to fish.  Fun fun!

Then we headed to our hotel in Salt Lake City.  We dropped off our stuff and then went to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum by riding the TRAX.

The Kid's Museum had a ball blower machine, a house, farm, grocery store, water works, TV station, helicopter, magnet wall, and tons more.  Its was pretty fun, but again, I was disappointed it wasn't as cool as I remember MY children's museum experience being. :)

Then we went to Temple Square.  The kids were pretty tired by then so we didn't stay too long.

We went back to the hotel to swim in the pool and sleep.  Erith and Tricity learned to float that night in the pool, that is a big accomplishment for them!

Wednesday was Lagoon Day!  Adam's whole family and Uncle, Aunt, and Cousins met us there for a day of fun!

This is Vi with her Uncle Gabe.

LagoonABeach was NOT a good idea for 2 adults with 4 little kids. Let's just say we got to play for less than an hour before Vi had a BAD accident in her swimsuit (Which was the only accident she had all vacation I might add) and I couldn't find Adam with our locker key. :(  And to top it off I am now 3 little girl swimsuits less than when I got there. One I THREW AWAY, the other 2 were accidentally left there. So this is the only picture I have of these cute suits, sniff.

Adam's family took the kids so Adam and I could go on some thrill rides like Wicked and the Colossus.  I was too chicken to do the Spider. I don't do a lot of spinning.  Then we did some all family rides, like the train as you see above.

Erith and Tric even did the WHITE ROLLERCOASTER! That was quite a step up from the kiddieland rides they did all day.  Vi rode the merry-go-round about 8 times that day!

Thursday was our last day and sadly we didn't charge the camera so there aren't a lot of pictures of this day.  We went to Hogle Zoo then This is the Place Monument then to Ogden to have dinner with Adam's sister Andrea. Here's what we have:

This is the Place is much cooler when you can go into Pioneer Village but we showed up 5 minutes before they closed. Darn.

Well, it was fun to play more, drive less this vacation.  We recomend all the places we went if you are planning a vacation for little kids! (Lagoon is for everyone of course!)

Well the other day the bottom step of our front deck broke. It has been threatening to break for the past...umm..... 4 years, so I knew this day was coming. Heather and I have a bad habit of not being able to "just fix things". We normally say something like this:

1. You know, while we are at it, we should replace all of the stairs,
   
2. and if we are going to replace all of the stairs, why don't we extend the stairs to be the full length of the deck,
   
3. and since the new stairs are going to need stained, why don't we sand and stain the whole deck while we are at it.

So our simple fix a bottom step turns into quite a large project. However, we are always happy with the results, it just takes longer than a quick fix (just look at our bathroom project to see a similar pattern of just tearing out the carpet to a complete master bathroom makeover.

I just finished sanding the whole deck today and we'll probably be doing the stain tomorrow. The above picture was taken when we finished installing the new stairs but before any sanding began.

We've also done some modifications to our blog. Hopefully pictures from now on should be expandable (horizontal pictures that is) by hovering over them and clicking if a magnifying glass comes up. Let me know if you have any problems with the new feature. :)

Erith and Tricity have started school again.  They are really enjoying it so far.  They have lots of friends on their bus route, and it's the shortest amount of time they've ever had to ride.  

Vi, Clara, and MOM really misses them while they're gone.  Erith and Tricity help so much with the little ones.  When I hear Clara screaming to get down from her highchair, my natural inclination is to say "Erith can you get Clara down from her chair?" But alas, I have to do it.  And when it gets way to quiet I want to say "Tric can you see what Vi and Clara are doing?"  But now, I find them, or just Clara covered in permanent marker plus my front entryway covered in permanent marker, just a few minutes too late.  I should have taken a picture but I was too mad.

So, I am relearning to shut the bathroom doors all day long so I'm not cleaning up toilet water, and not leaving things on the kitchen table that a 16 month old can easily pull a chair up to and make a mess in.  I am determined to buy some child proofing devices.  My old rubber band-it-shut trick doesn't work on this trouble maker!

Vi has grown up enough that she's okay passing on the trouble maker mantle to Clara.  Vi has bonded with a kitten this summer and they spend a lot of time together.  The kitten just lets her pack her around, arms around the tummy, squishing her quite hard at times.  I keep asking Vi what the kitten's name is and she always says "Baby Kitten."

Oh, and no, I don't let my kids outside in their pajamas...