Last Day with Grammy

The last day of Grammy's visit was busy!  We squeezed in many of the things

we'd talked about doing but hadn't accomplished yet, like eating out at some

of our favorite places and going to a fun movie.

The kids insisted that Grammy not leave when they went to bed,

but she decided to leave anyway.  What a stinker.

We were so glad to have Grammy here with us for a few days.

We aren't sure when we'll be seeing her again, but we're

going to keep our fingers crossed that it's very soon.

Thanks for coming, Grammy!

Hierarchy of the Monarchy

Grammy  and the girls and I watched Princess Diaries the other night and Eliza was a trooper to stay awake until the end of the movie.  But she just collapsed when I put her in bed.

Before she fell asleep she wanted to put on her Rapunzel dress, so that's what she was sleeping in.  She told me that she's a princess and I replied that we have 3 princesses in the house and a queen.

"Who is the queen?" I asked.

"Cat." said Eliza, without missing a beat.

Imagine my surprise!  "Cat?"

"Or you.  Or Grammy."

"I think Grammy is the queen and you and me and Cat are the princesses."

"Yeah."

But let us not forget that her gut response was that CAT is the Queen in this house.  So I guess that would make me the Queen Mother...

A Night Out with Some of My Favorite People

Tonight we had one of our favorite babysitters come take care of Jack, Eliza, and Luke while Grammy, Ben, Cat and I had a night on the town.  We saw an excellent musical at a wonderful little local theater then enjoyed play-related discussion over dessert crepes, waffles, and hot chocolate.  It's hard for me to imagine an evening I would enjoy more.  Perhaps if we all went to a Michael Buble concert, then got crepes afterward...?  :-)  But until then, tonight tops the charts.

Stop. Grammy Time.

My Mom is staying with us for a few days and we are loving it!  Tonight after dinner we all went to a nearby park and hung out for a little while.  It was a beautiful night and we loved playing and exploring.  Mom even let me take pictures of her with each kid.  You can never have too many of those.

Cat, Jack, and Mike (who is back with us until he heads home tomorrow)
had fun climbing this great tree.  Jack was so excited to be climbing himself,
and insisted on jumping out of the tree when he was finished, instead of
letting me help him down.

Just Keep Swimming...

The Bigs finished up swim lessons today and they really loved it.  Unfortunately, we haven't done very much swimming since moving to Utah, but hopefully they'll continue to progress when they do get a chance to practice.

Jack practicing floating on his back.

Eliza, practicing "ice cream scoops."

Cat learning butterfly.
Even after lifeguarding and swimming on my high school swim team,
I still cringe at the thought of having to do a lap swimming fly.

Game time.

Luke enjoyed the observation room above the pool.

Big Boy Hair

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Look Who's Walking

After weeks of conditioning, I'm proud to announce that Luke is a bona fide walker.  Look out world, here he comes!  He's been cruising for months, but didn't begin standing up on his own and taking steps until the beginning of June.  This week he crossed the threshold of doing more walking than crawling, and today (when he is officially 14 Months old) he hardly crawled at all.  Check him out.

And here he was just two weeks ago.  Look how far he's come!

So Luke is a real-life walking, climbing, smiling, laughing, food-dropping,

shelf-clearing, drawer-emptying, tantrum-throwing, face-smacking toddler.

(We're not sure why Luke likes to smack our faces.  We consider it a gesture of affection.

Like a Love Tap.  From a very small ninja.)

Luke will look a lot older when he gets a hair cut, which really needs to happen.

It's on my to do list, now that Ben has given his permission.

(It took Ben a little while to be okay with cutting off Luke's curl.  As in single curl.

It's over his left ear and you can see it in the pictures below from tonight.)

Stars & Stripes Party

Saturday was the Freedom Festival's Stars & Stripes Party at Riverwoods.  Mike was hanging out with us for a couple of days so it was fun to get out and show him one of the fun spots in Provo.  And to make live music, games, and decorations even better, our favorite food truck was there!  We LOVE Waffle Love!  :-)

Just as we were starting to leave, we spotted a local celebrity, Jeremy Warner from BYUTV's Studio C (sketch comedy show).  Cat introduced us to Studio C after her friends told her about it, and our kids have been hooked on it all year.  Jeremy wasn't very excited about being stopped, but was a good sport about taking a picture anyway.  If only I could tell whether he's smiling or not...

If you've never seen the show, it's worth checking out on YouTube.  All of the sketches are pretty short, and of course completely clean.  This is a sketch I like, in which Jeremy has a part.

BSW Week!

After Flammy Fest Weekend, we still had several days with Ben, Suz, and Whit, which we loved!  We did our share of hanging out at the house, but I didn't take any pictures.  (I'm bad about that when we have people visiting... ughh.)  Ben (BIL) took these pictures of Whit, though, doing his very favorite thing from their visit.

...outings and adventures were many and awesome, as you will see...

Monday Night

Bluegrass concert in the park.

Tuesday

The newly renovated and re-opened Bean Museum at BYU

Shasta, the Liger

Napoleon Dynamite Movie Night

It was fun to watch the kids dance with Napoleon.

Wednesday

Inlet Hot Springs in Saratoga Springs

Ben and Eliza went with BSW since Luke was napping, Cat had softball practice,
and Jack didn't want to go to a "stinky" place.  (But Ben said it wasn't actually stinky, after all.)

Taking a dip in the hot springs.

Hike to Stewart Falls  

This hike ended up being longer than I thought it would be,
but it was really pretty and there was so much to see.

Looking down from our hike, we could see beaver dams in the water.

This was somewhere in the middle of the hike.
Stewart Falls is behind us.

There were lots of different wildflowers in a variety of colors,
which Eliza kept wanting to smell.  :-)

Behold!  The waterfall!

Whit got to stretch his legs after being in the hiking backpack for an hour.

Yumm!  Rock!

Ben and Ben scrambled up the rocks on the side to get a closer look at
the middle of the waterfall.  Without kids, of course. 

The waterfall was so big and we enjoyed taking a break and just playing and
exploring when we got there.  The water was freezing cold so we didn't play in the
water much but it was fun to hang out and take pictures.

Thursday

Ziplining in Bear Canyon

This was an activity we didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago.

Then, imagine how excited we were to see coupons for a free trip on the zipline

in the swag bag for ALL of the runners who ran in the race last week - adults and kids both

(even though the kids' race was free also).  Talk about good luck!  So we managed to find

a time we could all go before Ben and Suz flew out Thursday evening and we all had a blast.

On the practice line before we got started.

They weren't even a little scared.  Only excited.

It was chilly up on the mountain and for some reason all of the kids had decided
to leave their long-sleeved layers in the car...

Cat

Eliza

Suz

Eliza + Me on a tandem line

Bear Canyon, right off of the Provo Canyon Road

Eliza + Me

Ben + Jack

We had a great time with Ben and Suz and cute little Whit.  The kids enjoyed playing and reading books, and we loved just having that time together.  The week seemed to go so fast, so we need to plan another visit really soon.  Okay, Suz?