Monday, July 13, 2009

Kendall says the cutest things

This morning Zach asked Kendall to give him a goodbye kiss before he left for work. Kendall quickly ran over and gave him a kiss and then promptly said

"Leave."

We busted up laughing.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Happy Birthday Dylan!

Dylan has been counting down months, then weeks and then days til his birthday. The night before he informed me that it was just too hard and he couldn't wait any longer it was just too hard. Zach was coming home from work early and I asked Dylan if he wanted to call his Uncle Ryan who shares his birthday. His responce was I have to talk to my dad first and find out where my scooter is. He has been asking for this particular scooter for months. I don't know what the exact difference is between his old scooter (which is not a razor) and all the other scooters on our block (Everyone else has razors including Carter), but the razor scooters seem to be much faster than Dylan's so now that Dylan not only has a razor but a spark razor he is now the most popular boy on the block! Lucky for everyone else he is also a great sharer. He has let everyone else try it, including his brother and his dad. He has also been great at sharing the walkie talkies he got and has counted his money a hundred times talking about what he is going to buy with it. I guess we are going shopping today.

Now you can see what all the fuss was about. Here's Dylan on his Spark Scooter!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Science Center!







St. Louis has the best Science Center! I remember going there when I was a kid and told Carter and Dylan all about the bridge that goes over the

freeway and that they could use radar guns to see how fast the cars were going. They were pretty excited. Too bad the freeway was closed while we were there. But we still had a great time anyway!

We built the arch!







Played with the activities outside.


















This is where we stayed at Union Station. We had so much fun together. We'll let you know where we're headed next month!












Riverboat Cruise


The next morning we went out on a Riverboat cruise. We got to go on the Tom Sawyer. The kids wanted to ride in the front the first half and the back the second half. We all had a good time listening to the interesting facts that they were telling us about the river and the St Louis area.







We went out to breakfast to Denny's. We waited about forever for our food, so we pulled out the camera and looked at all the pictures that we had taken. And then we took a couple of us there waiting patiently.

St Louis Mini Vacation!



This year we decided we are going to play tourist around our new home town. This weekend we went to St. Louis. Originally we were going to go diamond digging which changed to Omaha, and when we couldn't get a hotel room in Omaha for less than $200/night we ended up in St Louis. It still ended up being a great time!

The water was higher than I remember and we had to go park in a garage. There were tons of people parked in no parking zones, but we decided against taking our chances getting a ticket.



Waiting to get on the tram to the top of the arch. This is why Kendall is so tough. Her brothers love to tease her. At least you can tell she is still smiling.







Looking out from the top. The kids thought this was great fun!



Back at the bottom a picture with the arch.

Girls Camp

Our priesthood helped not only with setting up the tents, making fires, and shelter, but they helped also with entertainment. I don't know who told the priesthood to bring candy, but with each shift one of the priesthood leaders showed up with candy. The first full size candy bars for answering his trivia questions correctly. He sure kept the girls entertained while I met with the rest of the leaders and let them know what was going on. The second day another brother showed up with more starburst as the girls finished shooting!
Our group picture at the sign for Riverbreaks! The leaders and YCL's have on blue shirts and the 4th year girls yellow. We insisted as the leaders that the 4th years (leaders and girls shirts) all say
"I survived Riverbreaks" The girls were so excited to read that the last day after they had turely survived 8 miles of hiking and two nights getting soaked in the rain. My shoes were so covered in mud that I threw them away on the last day.
In the back of this picture you can see the tarp shelter that the priesthood built for us. They found long logs and used roap to put it up. We were so greatful!

Our great fire pit that the priesthood set up for us!
The hike the first day was down this dirt road that was not even visible from the main road until you started walking down it. It looks nice and neat here but once you have almost 30 people walk over it it was sure slippery muddy by that back of the pack.

This year I was in charge of the 4th year High Adventure trip for our stake. Myself and the First counselor worked on this trip for more than 6 months! The whole thing was put together from scratch and amazingly went off with almost no problems. The first problem was that we were supposed to have a porta potty pulled on a trailer from camp to camp so that there would be a bathroom at the campsite. Ooops! It got canceled and we had to make due with a walmart emergency porta potty in a tent. (FYI a walmart porta potty ment for emergencies for a small family doesn't work so well with 20 young women) it broke by the second day and we ended up tossing it in the dumpster along with the tent it had been set up in. (Who wants to sleep in the porta potty tent after that!). The only other problem we had was all the rain and mud although it was also a blessing in that it kept away the bugs for the most part and less ticks! I was also nice that it wasn't muggy hot! So all in all it went great. My partner borrowed from her school 20 GPS units which we had the girls program with 11 different points which they were to go to . some were just numbers where we had hidden the day before camp small plastic boxes with "treasures" in them, accompanied with scriptures and quotes from general authorities. Others were the shooting range where the girls were taught to shoot one shot 22 rifles. We even had a few get a number of bulls eyes, and our camp sites. With out the gps units it might have been hard to find these points as we were wondering around a hunting reserve with mowed trails, but with so many trails moving in and out of each other many not on the map it might have been pretty hard. The girls did seem to have a great time. And we had the best priesthood anyone could have ever asked for. Our origional plan was to have the girls sleep outside under the stars. When we realized how many bugs there were we decided we needed tents for tick checks everynight and to get away from the bugs a little. Boy were we glad for the tents too when it rained every night we were there. The priesthood went ahead of us with the cars and set up tents, started chopping firewood and getting other shelter avaliable for us when we hiked into camp. The second night they even cooked our chili and the corn on the fire for us. We were so greatful to them for helping out so much. The girls did get to set up tents back at the main camp to air them out as most of them were still pretty wet from the rain the night before. We had a great time and my family survived without me for the week. (Barely if you ask Zach) : )

swimming


Kendall has jumped in with both feet this year! She loves the water and seems to think she should be able to go anywhere the boys are. Even the deep end.