Vacation - Fish, Food and Fun

On Saturday morning Steve had to work. His brother Mike was kind enough to help him. Sheila and the kids and I had a relaxing morning at the house. Then we met Steve and Mike at the dollar movie. The Dollar Movie is a unique concept to our East Coast Guests. We saw "Monsters vs. Aliens". Then we headed on over to the Aquarium. Seeing that we went with Mike and Sheila to the most awesome aquarium last year, we decided to take them to the least awesome aquarium this year. At least that is where we thought we were taking them. But they have a whole brand new section now and I must say, it really ain't that bad. I was impressed. Here's a picture of the kids at the touch tank abusing sting rays. Please feel free to note how dang cute Aubrey's hair is. It took me forever. Go ahead, notice. She's in the purple.

After leaving the aquarium, we went to the Mayan restaurant. We had an excellent table with an excellent view of the show, complete with cliff divers, fire twirling, and bongo drums.

Vacation - Temple Square & The Pie

We had a very long but very fun day on Friday. We rode the train downtown to Temple Square we left the house before 9:30 AM and returned after 10:00 PM.

The kids were able to participate in a "Stepping Into Art" program at the Church History Museum

Addy had fun playing in the "I Am A Child of God" exhibit

Reagan and Aubrey
(everywhere we went everyone commented on all the kids wearing their camel backs)

Asher, Aubrey and Reagan

Asher, Spencer, Emily, Reagan, Addy and Aubrey
Spencer, Zac and Emily looking at the Capitol from the observation deck on the Church Office Building

Asher, Mike, Sheila, Reagan and Spencer

Zac, Emily, Steve, Aubrey, Allyson and Addy

All the kids at the Beehive House

The Conference Center

We rode Tracks up to the U and went to the Pie for dinner. Mmm, mmm. You know what I had. And I had it for a bedtime snack that night, and for lunch the next day, thank you very much. Oh, and thank you, Mr. Pizza delivery man. For making sure to include the light fixture and cut off the heads of the children in the picture.

My kids have never been to the original Pie. They thought the underground, grungy, college hangout atmosphere was awesome.

The kids did their fair share of decorating the joint.

This is a good thing to teach a 2 year old. Here honey, take this sharpie marker and draw all over the walls. We couldn't pull her away.

I even got in on the action.

Like I said, it was a very LONG but very FUN day.

Vacation - Play Ball!

On Thursday we went to the Hill Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base. Steve had to work this day so the kids and I were flying solo with Mike and Sheila and their kids.

This was the day Emily and Asher went from being "mortal enemies" to "allies" as Asher put it. They were inseparable all day.

That night we attended an Ogden Raptors baseball game, courtesy of the free tickets I picked up off the counter at McDonalds. It didn't take me long to remember how...much...I...HATE...watching...baseball. Usually, when I am forced to sit through a sporting event, I pass the time by people watching. The problem was we were on the second row so my people watching ability was severely limited. I will say this. There are a lot of hard lookin' people who go to baseball games. I sat through an hour and a half of the game because I figured every American kid needs to be able to say they have been to a baseball game. Then I just couldn't take it anymore. Plus, the kids hadn't watched one minute of the game. I located the score board and through all the mumbo jumbo up there I was able to decipher that we were in the 3rd...what do you call that...inning. I thought really hard back to elementary school when we were forced to play baseball, and remembered that there were 9 innings in a game. OH MY GOSH! It had taken an hour and a half and we weren't all the way through the 3rd inning! That's when I knew I needed to get the heck outta dodge. If I didn't leave then, it would be too dark for me to take my kids and walk down the street to the car by myself. So I got them all ready to go. Mike and Sheila decided they had had their fill of the game too, so we all left.

All I can say is, I've done my duty. My kids can now say they are true blooded American children, and hopefully we will never have to repeat the mistake of attending a baseball game ever again.

Vacation - Camping

The first part of our vacation started out a little rocky. But things have improved greatly. We were FINALLY able to leave for camping around 6:30 PM. Almost 12 hours after we originally wanted to leave, so we did lose a whole day. But we didn't let that stop us from having a blast for the rest of the trip. We went to Manti Canyon. It was a very nice relaxing trip. Just what we needed.
I opened up my own little beauty shop in the wild:
My beautiful Emily:

The kids all got along fabulously:

We spent a lot of time on the ATV's:

The girls- Emily, Aubrey, Reagan and Addy:

The kids organized their own little sweat shops where they "painted rocks" with berries:

On the way home we stopped at a cute little ice cream shop:

Spencer, Zac and Asher

Reagan, Addison, Aubrey and Emily

Allyson, Steve, Mike and Sheila

We stopped at a cute little park on the way home in order to avoid rush hour traffic:

Our bad luck that we had on the first part of our vacay seems to be changing. The only bad thing that has happened since the origional onslaught is we had a flat tire on one of the campers on the way home. But by that time we were old pros. We didn't even bat an eye at that one.

A Vacation To End All Vacations. Literally.

Seeing as how I "have some time to spare" right now, I thought I would do a little vacation post.

We didn't actually go anywhere for vacation, our vacation came to us. In the form of Steve's brother Mike and his wife Sheila and their 3 kids, Spencer, Asher and Reagan. We have been looking forward to and anticipating their visit for months now. The week before they came, Steve and I worked our little behineys off. Well, I guess I should say his little one and my..not..so..little..one. Anyway, we worked hard to get everything done and taken care of so that we could just relax, have fun, and enjoy our visit with them. The guest room they are staying in was our 'throw everything we don't want to look at or deal' room. It had all the boxes we had yet to unpack in it. It was the kind of stuff that I had put off packing when we moved because I didn't want to have to sort through it, so the last day of moving I was just throwing it all in boxes. That kind of stuff. Very tedious to go through. And this is another long story so just suffice it to say, that I had to clean out our storage room and the room under the stairs to be able to unpack that room. Getting that done, buying food, doing laundry, paying bills, getting my hair cut an colored so I didn't look nasty in all our pictures, it wore me out. But I kept thinking, "It will be worth it when they are here and we don't have to worry about any of that and we can just have fun".


They flew in late Wednesday night. That day, Addison started running a fever, then Zac started getting a little sick. The next morning, all our kids were all sick and running fevers and having headaches. Not my idea of fun vacation type stuff. We got all dosed up on Ibuprofen and went to the open house for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It was very nice, but by the end of the tour, my kids could not hold themselves up. We decided to take them home and put them to bed. Mike and Sheila were going to go get lunch, do a little shopping and then come home and we would watch a movie. On the ride home my head started to hurt so bad, I thought I was gonna die. So we all went home and went to bed. As Mike and Sheila were preparing to leave the temple, they received some pretty bad news that kinda put a downer on things, so they came straight home.

The next day I was giving us all quite regular doses of pain reliever/fever reducers. We were feeling well enough to load up the ATV's and some lunch and head for the mountains.

We took turns riding ATV's and playing at our little camp site.

I'm really surprised no one was seriously injured when the boys brought out the sticks and starting doing boy things with them.

The next day was the celebration of the birth of our nation. After eating red, white and blue pancakes ('cause that's just what you do on the 4th of July) we went to a parade. Everyone was feeling much better, except the kids had a cough still.

After the parade we went to my mom's house for lunch and some sleep.

Later that night Addy started running a fever again (no one had a fever all day) and her cough got really bad. So I took her to a 24 hour pediatric doctor. That's where we got the fabulous news. Addy has SWINE FLU and that is probably what the rest of us had/have too.

We stayed home from church the next day. I figured we had infected our fair share of the population already. That morning Sheila got an e-mail saying that her neighbors house had burned down and they lost everything. Just one more thing to add to the fun. Yesterday was a fun day. Let me tell ya. I think we all reached our breaking point. We were worried that by the time we were better, Mike and Sheila would be sick and our whole trip would be ruined. But, we decided to look on the bright side of everything and try and have as much fun as possible for the remaining vacation.

That included going camping today. We put a deposit down on a "Toy Hauler" a few weeks ago. We were going to use my mom's pop up trailer to sleep in and we were going to load the ATV's in the Toy Hauler and Mike and Sheila were going to sleep in that. We were supposed to be able to pick it up last night so we could have it loaded and ready to go first thing this morning. The guy e-mailed me last week and said there was a problem with the scheduling and we would not be able to have it until this morning. We figured that was OK, we would be all ready to go when it became available. Well, it is now 3:30 in the afternoon, and the person who had it over the weekend has yet to bring it back.

We sat around waiting. The guy we were renting it from wouldn't answer my calls. More and more time passed. I was getting really mad because we are only going to be gone 2 nights and we wanted to have all day today to be there. The guy finally called me and said they person who has it now isn't answering his calls. Mike and Sheila went ahead and left so that our camp sites aren't given away. I'm not really mad anymore. Today is already over. By the time we get the trailer and get to where we are going, it will be night, so I guess it doesn't matter what time tonight it is. So we are just sitting here waiting.

In trying to stay positive around here, we keep reminding ourselves that everything happens for a reason. Hopefully in a few days, I will be posting some very lovely camping pictures...

Kitten Update and What's For Breakfast - I Promise These Are Two Seperate Topics And Are In No Way Related

First, for those of you who have been worried, the kittens have all found loving homes. My kind hearted neighbor, after a few days of bottle feeding 3 kittens every 3 hours, and wiping their bottoms to make them go potty (apparently they can't do that on their own) started to wonder what she was thinking when she took on that responsibility. So she loaded up kittens, her kids and 2 of my kids and headed off to the grocery store. They sat in the back of her truck for a few hours, trying to find other kind hearted people willing to adopt and care for the kittens. And they were successful. All 3 remaining kittens were able to be placed in loving homes. YAY!

Now, for breakfast. Actually I eat this for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Not all in one day. But, well, you know. It is a

Spinach Tomato Egg White Omelette

1. Coat pan with cooking spray

2. Do not preheat pan, place 3 egg whites in pan

3. Add spinach and tomatoes. I use 2 big handfuls of spinach and a whole diced tomato.

4. Add a little salt and pepper

5. Cover with lid and cook on low heat. I cook mine on the lowest heat setting and it takes about 7-8 minutes to cook. If you cook it too high, or preheat your pan, it will cook the eggs too fast and the spinach will not get cooked. I cover with a lid so it will steam the spinach.

I use a Rubbermaid rubbery spatula thigamajiggy to go all around under the omelette to loosen it, then fold it over and slide it onto a plate. Mmmm, it's very yummy. And for those of you who are doing Weight Watchers, it is only 1 point. You heard me, one little old point for all this yummyness:

Monday Morning Musings - Welcome To My Mornin', Welcome To My Day

We are so excited because late this Wednesday night, Steve's brother and his family are coming from clear on the other side of the country to visit us. They will be here for two weeks. We have a lot of fun stuff planned, including talking them into moving here and buying the lot next to us to build their house!

Don't worry, for all the rest of you who we have been trying to talk into building here, there are still plenty of lots left!

I just had to kick Zac out of the room because he was reading over my shoulder and correcting me.

You know how I said last week that it didn't bother me that that song was stuck in my head? Not so much the case anymore. In fact, I might go crazy if it doesn't stop. Now.

Speaking of songs. On Saturday we were cleaning the house since we had company over that night. I must say, I was being quite the whip cracker. The whole time Aubrey was cleaning she was singing, "It's a hard knock life for us" from Annie.

You know how I started running? Well, some of you might not because you are not on Facebook *cough*kristy*cough*. But I have. And lemmetellyasomething. What is this runners high crap people talk about? I keep waiting to get high, but it just ain't happenin'. Runners high my booty. Maybe people are talking about the feeling they get AFTER they run and they know it is over and they don't have to do it again for a full 24 hours? 'Cause I get real excited when it's over, but still, I wouldn't go so far as to say "high". Maybe it's just a mind trick people play on themselves to make them THINK they like to run. Well, y'all are all foolin' yourselves. I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Do you wanna kitty update? Well, I made a lovely Vietnamese dinner the other night....OK, really. Sigh...after I did my post on Friday, I kept an eye out for the mommy cat. She came around about an hour or two after the kittens were discovered by those darn loud mouth junk guys. She was looking all around the spot where her babies should be. I told the kids we needed to put them out there so their mother could take them. So we put them in a box and put them in the spot where they were found. The mom came back a little later and we watched her take one of the babies out and take it somewhere. Then she came back later that day and took another one. WHEW! We were down to four. I kept waiting for her to come back. Then we had a huge storm come in and we had to put the box in the garage. *grumble, grumble* I looked up online that night and found out that if I was going to take the kittens to the animal shelter I had to PAY $25 an animal. That's $100 for those of you who are mathematically challenged. So I put the box back in the spot the next day, banned my kids from going outside, and waited for the mother cat to come back. She did come back and take one more kitten. But she has yet to return since Saturday morning. What kind of mother is she? COME GET THE REST OF YOUR DANG KIDS! Thankfully my neighbor has a much kinder, softer heart than I. She has taken on the responsibility of caring for the kittens. She went to the pet store and bought little bottles and kitten formula. And has read all about caring for newborn kittens online. I have offered to her to take them to the shelter (really early in the morning before it opens and leave them by the door) but she says she will give it a few days and see what happens. She took one of them to the pet store with her yesterday and there is a lady who might want one of the kittens. Sigh...the kitty saga continues...