Visiting Omes & Opes

I wanted to be sure to take advantage of summer vacation time to spend some time with my Oma and Opa in St. George.  I didn't want to be limited to a weekend, so I made up my mind to go without Ben, planned the dates with O&O, and crossed my fingers that Ben would be traveling at the same time.  No such luck - he went on a business trip the following week.  But I was still excited to have a visit with my grandparents and drove the kids down to St. George looking forward to some good family time.

It was about a 4 hour drive and we left right after lunch, when Eliza usually naps.  Of course, she hadn't eaten any lunch during the 30 minutes I tried to coax her to eat something, but we hadn't even pulled out of the driveway before she asked me for a snack.  Kids.  We had quiet time for the first couple of hours while Eliza napped, then I told the kids they could watch a movie after we stopped for a potty break.  Cat had chosen 2 DVDs from our collection, and I love that she chose these ones:

And you know what?  They didn't even watch Aladdin.  They watched "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" down to St. George AND back.  And they all enjoyed it.  Woot!  We arrived in St. George in time for Oma and Opa to grill up some burgers for dinner, and giving Cat plenty of time to clean off the table on the front patio, where she really wanted to eat dinner.  It was fun to be outside, fun to talk, and fun to just be together.

The kids took their time going to sleep that night, but once they were finally down, I was able to enjoy some good talk time with my grandparents, mostly learning more about their families.  I never get tired of hearing them tell me about their youth.

We went to bed good and late, and the kids woke up nice and early, but we managed to stay somewhat quiet so that Oma and Opa weren't forced to wake up too early.  Once they were up and about and we'd had some breakfast, Oma and I started talking about some things we could do that day.  And in the middle of our conversation, Opa came in saying he'd just received a phone call that his sister in Wyoming had passed away.  She'd been sick for quite a while, so it wasn't unexpected, but of course, it's always sad news to hear.

Because they had significant preparations to make before going out of town for the funeral I decided to go ahead and take the kids home that day.  O&O had one errand that needed be taken care of ASAP, then they wanted to have lunch together.  I knew I had to take kids to the water play area near the St. George Tabernacle, if nothing else, while we were in town, so we headed down there while Oma and Opa ran their errand.

Eliza has really taken to Opa over the last few months.  During this trip, whenever she had a choice of who she could be with, who helped her with things, who held her hand to cross the street, she chose Opa.  She loved to sit with him and snuggle, and Opa didn't mind one bit.  I love that every time Eliza rushed to him or clung to him instead of coming with me Opa would exclaim, "I got me a girl!"  It was just precious.

(Side note: I love this picture of the two of them from April - Oma and Opa were passing through town on their way to Salt Lake and we met them at Zupa's for lunch.  Eliza refused to come to the car with me, but very happily held Opa's hand the whole time they walked to my car.)

After the kids had some play time at the water area we all got lunch together and enjoyed a little more talk time before the kids and I left.  It was definitely a worthwhile visit, even if it was short, and we're so glad to live close enough to be able to drive to see them.  We have another trip planned for next month and I can't wait!

Family Olympics

After hearing about an aunt's fun Olympics FHE, we decided to take our own spin on it and create a Family Olympics for FHE one Monday night.  It was a group effort - I made medals, Ben set up our first event, and Cat set up our last event.

Event #1 - Skittle Scatter
Ben strategically placed Skittles throughout the playroom and each competitor had a bag to collect the Skittles he or she found.

Event #2 - Zingo
A fun, BINGO-type board game for kids

Event #3 - Obstacle Course
Cat had fun setting this up so that we would have obstacles to go over and under.  We loved watching the kids complete the course, and of course we timed everyone so we would know who the winner was.

I was content to let the kids have all the fun, but Cat insisted Ben and I go through the course as well.  I'm pretty sure my time was at least triple any of the kids'... those chairs weren't meant to let adults through them!

Perhaps in an effort to redeem himself, Ben then challenged all of us to an apple throwing contest (using the immature apples that had fallen into our yard from our neighbor's tree).  He claimed he could throw an apple over the mountain.  He was just a little short of that goal.

Then of course we all went in for our medal ceremony and winner's reception.
Cat was the decided overall winner, but we all had matching medals anyway, since I only had "silver" tin foil.  Brownies followed, in the banquet hall of course.

Gotta say... it was the most fun we've had during FHE in recent memory.

Utah Olympic Park

I wanted to go up to the Utah Olympic Park in Park City to see the ski show all summer, but it was one of those things that was just hard for me to spend the money on.  I knew it would be cool and the whole family would love it and be grateful for the experience, but still...

Then one Saturday afternoon I was looking online at the website, checking the dates for the shows and thinking about when Ben would be out of town and when we might be able to go before we moved and got ready for school to start again, when I saw that there was a FREE kids activity going on at the park THAT DAY commemorating the opening of the London Olympics.  So that was it.  We had nothing to do that night (how often does that happen??) and the combination of an awesome paid-for show and a FREE event for kids was enough to mobilize the troops.

We got there in just enough time to enjoy the end of the kids' activity - a kid-sized Olympics set up outside.

Badminton

High Jump

Tandem Slide
This has yet to be recognized as an official Olympic sport, but soon, my friends.
Very soon.

The kids LOVED the gymnastics course.

And what children's event would be complete without an
over-sized stuffed animal to take pictures with?

Then we headed over to the show to get some seats.
Jack was pretty nervous about the whole thing - he was crying and asking to leave.
We were sure he would enjoy it if he stuck around, so we tried to calm him down and just wait for the show to start.

And, we were right.  Once he saw what was going on, he was just as into it as Cat and Eliza.

Let me tell you.  It didn't disappoint.
These skiers were amazing.


I didn't make this video (I think the videos I made are stuck on my other, chronically-ill, computer)
but this video gives you a good idea of what we saw:

One interesting thing we learned was that they aerate the pool in the spot where the skier will land in order to  decrease the surface tension of the water and cushion the landing.  Also, it doesn't look very fun to have to swim to the side of the pool while wearing skis...

Survey says??

Two thumbs up!

Everyone loved it.

When the show was over we headed back to walk through the museum, and learned a lot about winter sports.  Of course, it wouldn't be hard to teach these Southerners a thing or two about skiing.

The next great American bobsled team.
Wait a minute... we might need another person.  Where's Ben?

Evolution of the luge.

This may be the closest they come to downhill skiing.

...and slalom skiing...

Maybe next time we'll go we'll fork over the big bucks to ride on the Olympic bobsled track,  try out the extreme zipline (which simulates a nordic ski jump), slide down the Alpine slide, go through the high ropes course, or even learn how to do freestyle jumps ourselves.  We could definitely spend another day or two doing fun stuff there if we had money to burn.

But our adventure was exactly what we hoped it would be - fun, entertaining, and interesting for all 5 of us.

What a great way to spend an evening!

Look - I was there too.

A Secret Garden

My cousin Alicia lives in Salt Lake and decided to bring her kids down to hang out one afternoon.  We met up at the Tahitian Noni building in Provo to check out their corporate garden, which is open to visitors.  (Info found here.)  I was impressed with the size, beauty, and variety of the garden - all free and easily accessible.  Bonus: I had just gotten my camera back - yeah for being able to take decent pictures again!

When we finished exploring the gardens we came back to our summer house for pizza and let the kids play and watch a movie.  It was a great way to hang out on a summer evening!  Thanks for trekking down here, Alicia!

Pioneer Day

I knew before we arrived in Utah that Pioneer Day is a pretty big deal here.  I was really looking forward to Ben getting a day off for the Fourth of July, then another day off for Pioneer Day on July 24th, as is customary in Utah, as I understood.  Unfortunately, Ben's boss was either unaware or just didn't care that everyone else took the day off to celebrate Brigham Young's arrival in Utah.  So Ben had to work.  Sad.  But I talked him into meeting us at North Park in Provo for a big festival with reenactment activities and all kinds of other fun stuff.  He obliged, but there was so much to do that we couldn't do it all during a lunch break, even a somewhat long one.  We did as much as we could, though.

First we took a few minutes to admire the antique cars in the "car show" portion of the festival. 

We all enjoyed this 1917 fire engine.

Jack even waited in line for about 45 minutes so that he could have
the chance to sit in the drivers seat and blow the horn.

Eliza enjoyed checking it out too.

After we waited in line we talked to this man, the owner of the fire engine.  He's been restoring it himself for several years, and he's in his 90's. He talked about how much he loved coming to events like this and sharing this piece of history with children as well as adults.  When he heard us using Jack's name, he said, "My name is Jack too.  It's hard to beat a pair of Jacks!"  That was the highlight of the afternoon for me. :-)

While Jack waited in line to get in the fire engine, Cat got her face painted. 

Cat and Eliza also panned for "gold."

When Jack finally got through the fire engine line we checked ou the Native American area. 

Cat made a bracelet

And made a "rock" carving.
 (It was actually plaster of paris that they painted brown.) 

We finished our visit with a ride in a covered wagon.  There were TONS more things we could have done. We didn't even go into the pioneer village, we didn't learn any of the dances that were
being demonstrated, we didn't go into the "jail" or ride the ponies.  But we still had a very fun lunch break on Pioneer Day!

That evening we drove down to Mapleton for their city fireworks show.  We met up with my friend JoDell and her three kids and everyone had a great time.  Cat even brought along the glow-in-the-dark balloons her Pops gave her for her birthday.  Very festive!