Shopping - Real vs Play

Skylee loves to go shopping, but not for very long - it's different every time, she'll just decide she's done and it's time to go home. Well a few weeks ago we went to the WVC Fitness Center with some friends - and no, not to actually work out - for the kids area there. There's a little movie area, reading area, play area, a giant jungle gym thing, and a grocery store. Skylee loved it. She mainly loved the grocery store and the little kitchen they have in the police station area. She couldn't get enough of it and wasn't very happy when it was time to go home - of course she's always ready to go home from real shopping. So I think she might be paying a little attention to our routine...she went shopping, scanned her items, unloaded the items in the kitchen and then was making something - don't know what, but something. When it was time to go, she didn't understand why we had to put all the items she unloaded into the kitchen back into the grocery store, cause "that's not right" as she puts it.

An Unconventional Bday Bash

So my sis had a birthday and along with it a little party. Only, in her invite she asked for no presents just your presence. This same sis also happens to be the biggest Halloween fan I've ever known. Well since she kind of sucks at getting people presents for their birthdays (she gets them, just never by your birthday - just some time randomly later). After my families heap of spring/summer birthdays and my sis yet to get presents, she decided that for her birthday no one could get her presents but instead she threw a party where she gave all of us not only birthday presents but Halloween goodies to go along with our presents. Our goody bags included vampire teeth -Skylee's showcasing a pair in mouth in the pic. You got love any "granny" that is willing to have some fun...mine enjoying her new vampire dentures and some fashionable eye wear...

A pic of the gang sans the birthday girl (insisted on taking the pic) and Luke (who was late to the party at his own house)

The Park

About a week ago grandpa decided he wanted to take Skylee to the park while the weather was still nice. We are park people. There's a park across the street from our house, there's a park at the other end of our neighborhood, there are parks all over the place. But grandpa had a particular park he wanted to go to - one that's 15-20 minutes away from our house. Now I know that's not a long time to get somewhere or anything, but when there's a ton of parks nearby why drive past so many to get to this one. I have even driven by this park and haven't thought anything special about it. Oh but there is...see there are two bridges over a creek with hills on the other side of the bridges and to my little 3 year old it was heaven. It more than helped that it was seriously the nicest day outside. So after this day, it's now Skylee's favorite park. We started our park adventure with food (sort of - McD's version - at least we were at a picnic table) Then on to the playground - grandpa had to play too.




After the playground Skylee found the much anticipated hills for her and grandpa to roll down. She started out on the little hills until she realized there were bigger hills to conquer.


Now I don't know if any other kid does this, but when Skylee sees little sticks on the ground, she can't resist them. She has to have them, and not just one or two. She tries to get as many as her little hands will let her carry. Oft times I just watch as she continuously drops and picks up the same stick that has just put her over her little hands limit of what she can carry - She's at least figured out she doesn't have to have all the sticks, she use to keep doing the drop pick up until I told her it was ok to leave some behind. Well she doesn't really ever do anything with these sticks - sometimes piles them . Well at the fabulous park she figured out that she could throw the sticks over one side of the bridge and that it would float to the other side. Well the creek is a slow moving creek - slow enough that you could walk over to the other side of the bridge and you'd still be waiting for the sticks to float by. She eventually just wanted to keep throwing sticks and not worry about them floating under the bridge, but for a time she watched and waited...

Cabin Fever

We realized that we hadn't been down to the cabin in at least a year - maybe two - so we headed down during conference weekend to Luke's parents cabin. We took the 4 wheelers (though I didn't think we needed to), but didn't even get them off the trailer since it didn't stop raining long enough to go for a ride without rain gear - and we forgot rain gear.

Skylee had no problem finding plenty of things to keep her entertained. She loved chasing after the skydiving Kermit the Frog - Luke would dangle it from the landing above.





Not to mention the little room upstairs that was just her size. She spent plenty of time in there.

Then there's the bunk beds. She thought it was great being on the top bunk. Even greater since there's a little carpeted plant shelf area just above it, and with daddy's help could get up there to play. Of course the best part was when she was ready to get down she'd jump to daddy since it was easier than climbing down.


To top it all off she got to have a pillow fight with grandpa!


Gotta love the cabin.

Road Trip!

Driving between Utah and Arizona isn't something of a new thing for me (and my fam), but you can never be sure how the drive is going to be - flat tires, windows shattering (seriously happened), traffic, gas, food, potty breaks, sleepy drivers all factor into being prepared for a "good" drive. When you add kids of any age into the mix it just amplifies all the factors -and some new ones - into a whole new level. Skylee does pretty good in the car and doesn't usually need too much entertainment when we drive around our area, but to drive 11-12 hours in a car you have to be prepared. Luckily she did great, plus bringing along an activity tray made it a whole lot easier (thanks Jen for lending it).

So the main reason we were even heading to AZ was to see one of my closest and long time friends, Adrian and her fam. Oh yeah and to do a little project - turn her patio into a playroom.

Luke's a little more use to dust and construction debris, not so for Stuart. With the use of ski goggles, face mask, shower hair cap and gardening gloves Stuart was ready to help Luke with more of the stucco removal.

Luke with the help of Stuart framed 2 walls, added insulation, sheetrocked the room, moved their current sliding door to the new exterior wall as well as move a window to the other new ext wall and installed new french doors where the sliding door was.

Not entirely finished but you get the idea of the finished product.

Meanwhile the kids had a great time just playing around and keeping themselves entertained. The kids got along so great it's too bad we don't live closer together. Kylie even told Skylee a bedtime story before saying goodnight.

The kids loved posing in front of the camera.

With Luke's part of the work done, on to having fun. The last few times we've gone to AZ we've headed over to Amazing Jake's. It's a little buffet of fun - pizza, salad, pasta, dessert, drinks, rides, games, tickets, bowling, and the list goes on. What's not to enjoy?

Going in circles tend to make Luke a bit sick, so I get to be the lucky one to go on the carousel - again and again. Skylee has to go on the girl horses (she determines their gender by color).

The tea cups were a fav by all 3.

Kylie wouldn't go on the frog hopper, but these 2 loved it!

Adrian (with her new baby, Kolby) and me watching the kids in the free area - of course the free area is also one of the kids' favorite things.

So on our drive home - which also went great - we stopped at the gas station which had this giant rocking chair. We just had to get a pic of Skylee in it.

Fall Kick Off

So this fall started out like so many in the past, we once again received peaches from Luke's grandparents. I'm not the biggest fan of peaches. Previously we've canned them, eaten them or simply just given them away, but last year we made jam. Suprisingly I like peach jam. It also made for nice Christmas gifts for our friends and neighbors. This year we decided we'd do the same thing (including giving jam as Christmas gifts again). We did 2 batches of canned peaches, kept a few fresh ones to eat, and the rest we made jam - and jam and jam and jam. We did try freezer jam this year which we didn't try last year. Haven't tried it yet to see if I like it better, same or not at all - we'll see...

This fall was something new for us. Skylee started Joy School - preschool - which we were all excited about. Skylee was a little disappointed when she found out that she didn't get to ride the bus to school - and with the construction of the new schools, probably never will. But after much insistence we agreed to get her backpack, which she doesn't really need - not a lot of homework in preschool. Come to find out all the kids -5 of them - each had to have a backpack. I put a sweater in it, just so it's not empty.

So another fall item for us is attending the Utah State Fair. We've attendend for the past 4 or 5 years. No exception this year, except Skylee wasn't free to go on rides anymore - she may not have been free last year, but they let her on. We do the norm and see some of the booths, check out some of the displays, see the animals, eat and go on rides.

Whenever Skylee saw the photo cut outs, she wanted to get her picture done, so when we found one for 3 people we had to get a pic - I think I actually have 4 different cut outs with her in them.

So on to the animals, seriously they smell foul. Of course Skylee just wanted to see them and touch them. Me, not so much. I took her to pet the pigs - where she could just stick her hand through the bars - I let my dad take her up to the cows to pet, which she loved.

The fair has this Little Hands on the Farm area where the kids get to go and do farm things - kid version (my version too) of course, nothing real - but Skylee just loved it. We missed it last year, but we won't be missing it again.

With all the many things to do at the fair, there is of course the kiddie rides. There's this race car ride that whips the kids around the track, and Skylee just wanted to ride it over and over again. It was one of her favorites last year and again this year.

Last year she wasn't tall enough for the majority of the rides, but this year she was barely tall enough. Well one of the fun house type of rides has this spinning barrel the kids have to walk through. Most of the other kids ran through, but Skylee decided to take it slower and crawl through - it was quite entertaining for us to watch.

Summer lovin' had "us" a blast!

So I'm new at this and well not very good at keeping up on this type of thing - seriously check myspace, I think it's been updated once this year, not to mention the thousands and thousands of pictures I've been meaning to scrapbook - oh and the not so small collection of scrapbook material I've been gathering to scrapbook my pictures with, which currently collect dust in my office closet, on tables, under tables, bins, etc - so who knows maybe this will be better.

Well I think I'll do just a little picture caption recap of our summer....

We had sno cones and swimming (even at the same time)

We had water slides and fun slides

We had rock walls and fire trucks

We had hair caught in tents when camping - don't ask

and we had many trips to Lagoon (thanks mom & dad for the season passes) - note Luke's cast since we also had a broken bone this summer first red and then a black one...