Who Knew Chickens Would Be The Highlight?!

After we left East Canyon on Sunday, we decided to take a detour on our way home and drive through Emigration Canyon along the Mormon trail. As we passed the "This is the Place" monument we decided to stop and see if they were open. The village next to the monument is usually open and populated with actors from the early pioneer era but since it was Sunday it was almost completely vacant. The little gift shop/visitors center at the front of the village was open and inside we were told we could go into the village and walk around for free but none of the buildings/houses would be open and there would be no "villagers" about. MC and GM made a pit stop in the visitor's center while BR and I explored a bit. We decided that we'd go into the village and check it out since our kids were game for it. Shortly after we entered the village, we encountered a whole bunch of young chickens running around one of the houses. My kids were so intrigued by them that we decided to stop and let them watch the chickens for a while. I figured they would soon tire and want to move on, but I was quite mistaken! I believe we stayed nearly three quarters of an hour and as we sat there we all decided which ones were our favorites. They all had their own unique "personalities". (MC and BR would have stayed even longer just watching and playing with them.) It was fun to watch how engrossed they were with these little birds. (BR said that it was the best time he'd ever had and decided he wants a pet chicken!!)

We were a little shy at first Getting braver... BR had little yellow dots on his shoes that they must have thought were seeds of some sort. It thrilled him that they loved his shoes so much! :) Their little feet tickled ours as they walked over them BR was the first one to be brave enough to pick one up When GM went over and sat by the kids the chickens had to check out the new feet :) MC holding her favorite, the white one (it was very skittish and it took a while for BR to catch it for her) :P BR caught my favorite one for me. It turned out to be a very calm one that everybody liked holding.



After a while we coaxed the kids into moving on. We saw other animals around, but they were all in pens and it wasn't as much fun for BR and MC because they couldn't interact with them. We found a few buildings open in a little "play house" area. The kids had fun exploring the little houses, the TP and the train, but the most fun they had was when their dad decided to start chasing them and squirting them with their water bottle.







They would have done that for hours too but GM got worn out. :P

Long Chicken video

East Canyon

Our annual Dalton family vacation/reunion was the first week of June this year (June 3rd-8th). It was very different this time than other years. First of all GM wasn't there until Thursday night and most other years he came up for the evenings even if he had to go back down the canyon every morning to work. Another big change was that I decided to give my kids more independence this time as long as they used the "buddy system". They were free to go from our condo to my sister Amber's condo, to my sister April's condo, to "The Bus" (my parents' motorhome-ized bus) as much as they wanted as long as they stayed in groups (with their cousins). They slept at "The Bus" or other condos most of the time and lots of times ate their meals with grandma and grandpa or their cousins so I didn't see them very often!! Because my kids are the main focus in photography, and because they were off with their cousins so much of the time, I took very few pictures this time as well.


If you look closely you can see BR in the background eating breakfast and watching TV. :) In the foreground is my oldest niece doing some scrapbooking. (My sisters and my mom and I also did a bit of scrapbooking.)


MC getting ready to go swimming.



I spent a lot of time with my sisters and I took some pictures of Amber's kids (her kids are also some of my favorites to photograph).






We went during the first week of June, from June 3rd through the 8th and it was very cold and rainy most of the time. In my opinion it was much too cold to swim (this wasn't helped much by the fact that I'm not a big fan of swimming), and I thought, foolishly, that my kids would feel the same. How wrong I was!! They went to the pool every single day, multiple times, rain or shine!! The only thing I made them get out for was lightning storms or if no other "big people" were going to be there. (BR would have probably been there twice as much if he could have stayed on when nobody was there or when the weather was too bad to permit swimming! GM and I call him our little guppie!)

GM decided to surprise me and come up on Thursday evening instead of the planned Friday evening. (I was glad to see him!!) We went to the hot tub together, 4-wheeling together and watched a movie or two together, but he also went off and did stuff without me as well. He went shooting with BR and my brother-in-law Alan. He also swam with the kids and I believe he went mini-golfing with BR.

A Tribute to Aunt Peggy

We were looking for our wonderful Peggy treasures one day to take pictures of them for her and so MC wanted to "sing" how much she loves her since MC loves to cuddle with this lovely blanket from Aunt Peggy. We do love you Peggy!

Fun Friday #2

This week was our second "Fun Friday" so my sisters and I and all of our kids all went to the zoo together. There was tons of chaos with so many kids, but it was tons of fun! And the thing that made it the most fun was that we all got to be together! We (BR, MC an I) rode with my sister Amber and her kids. We met up with April, Julie, Grace and my mom showed up at the zoo. They've got a new carousel and so everybody had to take a ride on that, we also got to see a bird show (which is always a highlight), and take an *amazing* train ride (well, at least the kids always think it's amazing). :)



It's always fun for me to see which animals my kids will want to ride on...



This was a bowl that you rub and it makes a surprisingly loud ringing noise.




This cute little baby is my "big Buddha" Big HAPPY Buddha! :)


These boys sat there forever staring at this frog with its tongue hanging out. :)



It's my kin about as far back as the eye can see! And that's not everybody!!














After the zoo Amber's kids played at our house for a while (BR played wii with her oldest son while MC played with the baby and her middle son played with GM's "Matryoshka" doll. There's something fascinating to kids about that doll!! It doesn't matter how many times they've played with it before, they still want to play with it again the next time they come!


As we drove home from dropping off Amber's kids, my kids, GM and I were discussing what we could do that would be fun and different, but cheap. :P And as we were listing off the possibilities we came to kayaking on the Daybreak lake (which is conveniently free) and everybody was game so we rushed over there ASAP. (We got there at 7:15 and had to be back by 8:00). They have 2 man kayaks, 1 man kayaks and also row boats. We opted for the 2 man kayaks into which BR and I were a team and MC and GM were a team. It was tons of fun, in fact it was so much fun the kids were both begging to go again the next day!! (Which we had to decline due to blisters that we both got from the oars, GM's were much worse than mine). :( BR was quite a good little rower!! He and I could just keep up with GM's rowing by working together (our hardest). :P


















Once we were done we decided it was high time for dinner. We grabbed some sandwiches from Chick-fil-a and supplemented those with some left over salad from our fridge. :)

Sardines

One night for family night we were playing games and one of the games we played was sardines. For any not familiar with the rules you can refer to "Family Party Game" website, or this book:

Well GM was it first and he went and hid while the rest of us (the kids and I) counted. Then we split up to go look for him and for a while none of us were having any luck and we kept passing each other and exclaiming about what a mystery his hiding place was. Well pretty soon I stopped seeing BR, but figured he must be hunting in another part of the house. I figured for sure I would be the first to find GM! ;) Well then pretty soon MC wasn't passing me either and it was very quiet throughout the house. So then I decided they must have found him and realized that I'm the last one!! :) I finally found them ALL THREE hiding in a little built in bench that we have in our laundry room!! GM had asked his mom to put the laundry basket back on top so it wouldn't be obvious. It was such a funny and surprising sight to me that I had to take a picture! I must note that as soon as I had taken the picture GM said, "Okay, let me out! Let me out! Let me out!" (Tight spaces and claustrophobia don't really mix well. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did!!)



BR got to be next because he was the first to find his dad. We had set boundaries on the possible hiding places, which excluded anywhere outside or in the basement. We hunted and hunted for BR!! We couldn't find him anywhere!! GM even tried taunting him to get him to giggle or make some kind of noise, but he wouldn't give. We were so perplexed that we started searching out of bounds thinking either he didn't understand what the rules were or he decided to go outside them to fool us. Well, he wasn't anywhere outside, in the garage, in the loft of the garage, or in the basement! So we went back to looking in the designate area. Finally GM got him to giggle and found that he was under our bed in our room, along the wall at the head of the bed and it was completely pitch black so we'd have never seen him (without a flashlight) and it was impossible for GM or I to fit under there so we'd have never found him! It was some hiding spot! He felt very clever for having stumped us all so profoundly!! :)

Memorial Day Weekend

This was a big fun weekend thanks to GM's family! Diana and Ashley (sister and sister-in-law) threw a fantabulous birthday party for my marvelous MIL. It was a really great party and many people who love her came to be there for that fun and special night. Her son Wayne made a slide show of her life that was really fun to watch, and really sweet.

On Sunday we did family pictures...or tried. :) It's pretty tough with groups as big as our family is!! But it was an adventure nonetheless. We also worked on a big ol' lego Eifel Tower (I think it was about 3 feet tall in the end). Lots of people had fun with it! It was a huge project!







Then on Memorial Day we continued with our tradition: do a project for MIL's birthday present. She usually wants her yard kind of renovated so that's what we did. Everybody pitched in and helped in their own way:

Thanks to Peggy for posting this priceless pic. (I had to steal it because I never got one of MC outside in the yard).

And also, we just did a bunch of hanging out, which is always very eventful and entertaining!

Our main source of entertianment was my darling little niece...she single-handedly provided us with hours and hours of diversion!!

Starting Off Our Summer With A *Bang*

Wow! Our first official week of summer vacation was action packed!!

Monday: Wii, Swimming and parks with cousins
Tuesday: Wii, Swimming, Water-guns and Slip-n-slide with cousins
Wednesday: Wii, Swimming, Water-guns and Slip-n-slide with cousins
Thursday: Picnic in the mountains, playing at the park, watching the Manti pageant and camping (all with cousins)
Friday: Hiking to a waterfall, picnicing and playing at/in the waterfall, Wii, decorating bikes and riding/walking in the Bluffdale City Parade (my sister's city), park,
movie and sleep-over with cousins
Saturday: Wii, playing at park, building big sand projects, dinner and a movie at cousins while watching their city *fireworks* from their backyard!! And the moment we've all been looking forward to all week....Daddy came home!!!
Sunday: Church/primary with cousins and watching their family speak in sacrament meeting, playing games as a family, mom and dad taking a long needed nap (actually early bedtime...7 pm!!) while BR and MC play until they finally just put themselves to bed because their parents slept right through bedtime!! :O Ooops!

Unfortunately GM took my camera to NY with him and I didn't think of using my camera on my phone until SATURDAY! :(

So here was their sand project on Saturday. It was at the Bluffdale City Fair and the kids got this idea to build viaducts and rivers down the "mountain" of sand with a dam at the bottom. They were yelling at each other with important voices like "more water" or "build up the walls, they're caving in". Lots of kids were attracted to the project and came to ask if they could help. To which my kids/neices/nephew would respond in important voices "yes! go get water!" :) It was quite entertaining to sit in the middle of it all watching, taking pictures, and getting sunburned (as usual). :P