In God's Country: Day 3

We spent our third day doin' a little off roadin'. Our friends that we were with had their jeep from home and rented another to drive and we road our 4 wheelers. Addy road in the jeep and Aubrey road on the back of my ATV for 1/2 the day until she got tired and moved to the jeep. It was an AWESOME fun day. We did a trail called the 3D Trail that we had never done before. It is definitely one we will be doing again. We LOVED it. The above picture is of Zac.

Tough Stuff Emily goin' up the hill


Emily and Zac

We stopped for lunch and there was a little trail that lead up to a tunnel through the rock.

On the other side of the tunnel was a GORGEOUS hidden little valley.

Emily, Zac, Aubrey and Garrett

Zac (this picture will totally freak my mom out)

Steve and Emily

Zac

Allyson (that would be me) and Zac

Takin' a break on the rocks

It was late afternoon and we were so close to the end of the trail when suddenly Emily's ATV stopped moving forward. Upon inspection it was discovered that she broke the frame. Way to Em!

We caused quite a commotion there atop the rock. Everyone was anxious to help. All the teenage boys thought Emily was pretty cool for breakin' the frame, which made her blush.

We moved things around a little and kicked Aubrey out of the jeep and back on the the wheeler and loaded Emily's wheeler into the back of the jeep. We made our way carefully back to the road and feel back into camp exhausted, hungry and happy.

In God's Country: Days 1&2

We were on Spring Break the week of April 5th. The above picture was taken in my back yard on April 6th. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to leave behind our eternal winter and head south to one of our favorite places. We loaded everyone up and set out Wednesday morning to go camping in Moab. I have to warn you, I take way too many pictures. I have narrowed it down from a whole bunch of a lot of pictures, to a whole lot of pictures. I decided I should go easy on you and break it up by days. Here are SOME of the pictures from days 1 and 2.

Day 1:

Marshmallow Addy

Roasting marshmallows and making s'mores around the campfire. I am totally freezing as you can see from the picture.

Hey! We had reception at the campsite. Great.

Day 2:

The week before we left, we were at my mom's house and her neighbor came over and we were talking and we found out that we were going to Moab on the same days so we drove down together. We also spent a few days together while we were there. Day 2 was one of those days. (just in case you were wondering where the extra kids came from)

We started out this day by driving out to a place that has a ton of fossils. Moab is an ancient riverbed and we were able to find a ton of really cool fossils with shells and shark teeth and other things that I don't know the name of, but Zac does. Smarty pants. Anyway. That big hill is where we spent a good portion of the day searching for fossils. And that is also where I got a major yucky sunburn while I was wearing my one shirt with a really high neckline. So I have this stupid ring of a tan around my neck now. But I digress...back to the pictures....

Too Cute Addy

Hey look, we have reception here too! In different times I would have minded. In today's world, I'm just glad this man has a business that is busy enough to need his attention on a regular basis. And if his being able to take us on a trip means that he has to spend time on the phone, well, so be it.

Too STINKIN' CUTE Addy

Splitting open rocks to find their ancient treasures

You can't see them because they are so camouflaged, but somewhere in this picture is Zac and one of his best friends Garrett


Addy, Aubrey & Jess


I have a ton of pictures of Addy because she was the only one who stayed with me. Or she was the only one I followed around, however you want to look at it.

She was so cute here because we were all alone, just the two of us on top of the hill and this is the view we had in every direction. We couldn't see everyone below us. She got this excited look on her face and said, "MOM! This is where Heavenly Father and Jesus and Papa live! I am going to go find them!" And she took off running along the ridge. It was the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

Aubrey and Emily

When we were done there, we went for a little hike to see some dinosaur tracks in the rock. Once again, there are two boys in this picture. See if you can find them.

Garrett, Zac, Emily, Braxton, Aubrey, Jess and Addy

Steve and Addy

Dino track

Aubrey, Addy and Emily

Me and the old man. I hate to say it, but I'm kinda the old lady now. YIKES!

Does It Make Us Trailer Park Trash...

...if we leave a trailer like this parked in front of our house for an extended period of time?

Give Me Liber-TEA

TEA PARTY 2010

“The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled.” -George Washington

Sleepy ESP

So, last night, Steve sent me a text around 1:30 am to tell me that he wasn't finished with the job he was working on and so he wouldn't be leaving to come home until today (he is in Colorado)(he was going to try to drive home last night, crazy I know). Anyhoo. I read the text and then I thought, in my head, not out loud, "Shoot, I didn't set my alarm and Lori (my neighbor) is going to be waiting for me to walk in the morning and I will still be asleep". So I quickly set the alarm on my phone. I no sooner set it, it was literally still in my hand, than Addy started screaming and crying in her room upstairs.

Now, I have to tell you, Addy is a total momma's girl. She is practically attached to my hip (except when she is being naughty). She freaks out if I go anywhere without her. And she has the same nightmare that wakes her up at least once a week, if not more. In her nightmare, I am leaving to go somewhere without her. She wakes up crying thinking that I am leaving or have left to go somewhere.

So when I got to her room to see what she was crying about she said, "Why are you leaving?" And I said, "I'm not leaving, I was asleep in bed." And she said, "Yes you are going with Lori!" I assured her that I was not going anywhere except back to sleep in my bed and she kept crying saying, "You are going with Lori! I don't want you to go with Lori!"

So I'm sitting there, trying to comfort her, wide eyed thinking to myself, "Did this kid just read my mind in her sleep?"


Weird.

Flashback Friday - Easter 2004

These pictures were taken in 2004 on Easter. This was before my parents moved to Utah and my dad was in town visiting us.

These are some of my favorite pictures of Emily and Aubrey

This is one of my favorite pictures of my dad

A Dinolicious Day

Last Monday (March 22) the kids were out of school for "Quality Teaching Day". I am still a firm believer that if you are going to call it a "Quality Teaching Day" you should be spending that day actually TEACHING in a quality manner. Don't try to dress it up to impress me, I can see right through it. Just call it like it is, "Teacher Prep Day". I understand, teachers need time to prepare, I don't have a problem with that. So the purpose for the fancy and not completely accurate terminology eludes me. But that's not really the point of this post, so I will just shut up now. Well, I can't really shut up or I can't tell you the purpose for the post. But I can stop talking about why in our world today everyone is so confused because we can't just simply say what something is and leave it at that. OK SHUT UP! On with the post!

The children and I needed to get out of the house and go and do something fun. A few months back I won 4 tickets to the Ancient Life Museum. I was savin' 'em up for a day exactly like this. So we loaded up and headed out. We had so much fun. Did you hear me? SO MUCH FUN! We were there all dang day long. We went through the whole museum and then went back through it again. The kids loved it. And I loved watching them love it. You will have to excuse the quality of the pictures. Brilliant me, I left the camera at home so these are from my phone.

I learned that I am a little rusty on my dinosaur names. When Zac was little I could name all the different dinosaurs because we had so many dinosaur books and dinosaur toys. My dino days are long past and when Addy was asking me names, I really couldn't think of them. I was like, "Uhhh, I know long neck is not right....what is that dinosaur called?" Funny how your brain loses track of things over time.

Addy kissing a dinosaur:

We played FOREVER here. Twice. The first time through my kids were the only ones there and they loved learning about erosion all by themselves.

They had to share the second time around:

We also dug up dinosaur bones for forever. Twice.

Some of us even insisted on making sand angels:

Shark attack!:

On His Own Merits

There was a Court of Honor on Wednesday and Z cleaned up. He is now a 2nd Class Scout and he earned 11 Merit Badges! The Merit Badges he earned this time are:

Safety, Nuclear Science, Oceanography, Dentistry, Entrepreneurship, First Aid, Computers, Engineering, Chemistry, Photography and Golf. Way to go Z!

This is a picture of Zac and his friend Gus cooking and eating onions for their Chemistry Merit Badge.

This Merit Badge about killed me. Nuclear Science. Or, since I did vote for Bush and I am from Texas, Nucular Science. Zac and Gus were taking this Merit Badge class from someone who probably knew what they were talking about. But there were a few prerequisites they had to do before the class and the person helping them with those (AKA: Me) felt like she was reading a foreign language. I would try to read a sentence and this is how my brain processed it, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, bla bla".

We muddled our way through all the prereqs until we got to the last one. It said, "Choose an element from the periodic table. Construct 3-D models for the atoms of three isotopes of this element, showing neutrons, protons, and electrons. Use the three models to explain the difference between atomic number and mass number." Yeah, whatever. At this point my brain was already fried. I googled that thing up one side and down the other. And the more I googled, the more confrused I became. AHHHHHHH! Steve was out of town at the time so I called my neighbor who is a math major (YUCK! I KNOW!) and is one of the smartest people I know. Thankfully she is also one of the nicest people I know too. She came right over and within minutes she had us on the right track.

The next day I had to go to the Library to get the boys some books on Oceanography. The librarian showed me the books and then asked if I wanted to check out the Oceanography Merit Badge book also. She said it pretty much has all the answers and explanations for all the requirements. SAY WHAT!?! I wanted to hit her and kiss her at the same time. THANK YOU TO NO ONE FOR TELLING ME SUCH A THING EXISTED BEFORE I ABOUT KILLED MYSELF WITH NUCLEAR SCIENCE!

Anyhoo. Congratulations to Zac. I am proud of him and all the hard work he has done to earn so many Merit Badges.

Em Is 10!

My little princess Emily turned 10 years old last Saturday. We took her and her friends to a cute little cupcake shop to celebrate. It was fun fun and included no screaming, crying or destruction of my house. What more could you ask for in a party? After the party, she had two of her friends over to our house to spend the day with her. I love you Emily, you will always be my little princess!