Is It Naptime Yet

Here are the pictures to go with my detailed posted of what we did in Pine Valley.

Saturday, September 5, 2009.

Getting ready to feed the Koi.

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Watching Gary so they can pick blackberries.

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Lilah showing off a blackberry and Britta trying to put it back in the bowl.

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The pond.

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This is the first picture of many of the girls on the swings.

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Eden swinging an singing by herself later in the day.

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Closeup.

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They were on the swings a lot.

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Silly Eden.

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Sunday, September 6, 2009.

The girls outside the church. It’s really hard to take a nice picture of three girls when they’re being silly.

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Eden was the most cooperative.

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The girls were pushing the four-wheeler.

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The view from Gary’s nephew’s cabin.

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Hanging out by the pond.

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pretty peaches

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wild turkeys

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Monday, September 7, 2009

crate on a pulley

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The girls liked “helping” to pull one another up in the crate.

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Pretty flowers that were in the yard.

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Britta twisting Eden up in the swing. Eden was the only one who enjoyed this because Lilah got hurt at one point and Britta was just too scared.

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There she goes!

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And she’s done, and so our are my pictures of the girls on the swings.

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The redneck trampoline, AKA an old box spring. It was fun to jump on it. Sam tried it out and then made me.

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They had fun jumping on it.

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Eden in the pup tent.

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Britta and Lilah in the pup tent.

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All the girls.

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Lilah being silly.

This concludes the picture portion of our Pine Valley trip. I just wish I had one taken with Sam, or had been fast enough to catch her jumping on the redneck trampoline.

We spent the Fourth of July at my parents house. I guess it’s just tradition since we celebrate my nieces birthday, have a BBQ, and enjoy fireworks that my dad buys, though this year I actually bought fireworks for the first time since the young woman in our church had a fireworks booth.

After we ate, I’m sure something delicious that my father barbecued, we entertained ourselves by having the kids practice baseball, only with a wiffle ball. Jon and I have a t-ball bat his parents gave us and wiffle balls, so we supplied the materials while we made Carolyn’s husband Derek do the work of pitching. It was for quality bonding time since the kids mostly play with one another and the adults just chat when we get together. We also brought the bat because the last time we were at my parents house Derek was playing “baseball” with Lilah but they were using a hand rake as a bat and I was worried that she might swing it too hard and impale herself. That would have been a terrible memory for all.  The hand rake looked like this, and lets face it, any way you hold it is dangerous if you’re swinging it around.

The kids had lots of fun and the wiffle ball only went over the back fence twice, and luckily the neighbors were swimming and pretty good sports about getting it for us, and telling us when Eden was climbing on a chair and nearly about to climb over the balcony railing, or was it Lilah that almost went over?

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Lilah was able to hit the ball about half the time.

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Carolyn helping Addrienne. Notice Carolyn’s blue shirt? She was also wearing khaki pants like me and Jon joked that when looking at the camera screen if our heads weren’t in the picture he wasn’t sure which sister he was looking at.  For a while there we were constantly wearing the same colored shirts whenever we saw one another.  In fact we both wore green the day we drove up to Ely and I could have worn the same colored shirt another day we were there.

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Kaitlyn up to bat.

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Howie waiting for the pitch.

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Lilah on the balcony.

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After some time playing we went inside and celebrated both Kaitlyn’s and Lilah’s birthday, since we had yet to celebrate it with my family.

Kristi made the birthday cake while I just brought cupcakes.

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We forgot candles so we did what we could with what my mom had. 5+2= 7 and Lilah still likes Dora.

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Lilah likes to read the cards. Also, that’s a picture of her as a baby on the far left.

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Then it was time for fireworks. Lilah and Howie were the only kids outside, Eden was OK, but a really loud one was set off at the beginning and ruined her for the night. Lilah held out but only by plugging her ears the whole time.

A little unsure of the sparkler, but she wanted to try it.

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Liking it a little more.

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Having fun with the sparkler, though this might have been the second one.

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Jon and Lilah enjoying the fireworks, though enjoying is relative term in this case.

While in June we visited The Old Mormon Fort. I believe it was Friday June 19th that we went. Jon had taken time off for part of the play and since he needed to, and that Friday we didn’t perform due to the library the theater was in being closed.

The Mormon Fort was our first official stop on our State Parks tour. After we were at Cathedral Gorge Jon and I decided that it would be fun to visit all/ as many as we get to, Nevada State Parks. I think it’ll be fun and hopefully we can accomplish most of them over time.

We mostly just walked around and then we sat and ate our lunch. The workers started turning up soil in the stream so it started to smell terrible around there. We did get to enjoy the pond a little bit before we finally headed over to the  Natural History Museum for just a quick visit.

One worker asked if he could take a family picture and we said we were OK. Then a little bit later another one offered, though his hands were covered with the smelly soil, so we opted out of that one too.

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So this year there almost wasn’t an Ely trip since we went camping in Caliente with Andrea and Brien in May. Jon was going to consider that our “Ely trip” since we traveled two-thirds of the way to Ely and saw Andrea and Brien, but since we were unable to make it to the family reunion this year and I was bummed that I wasn’t going to be able to see Andrea and Brien and have our girls go to the Hoggle Zoo together or have any awesome sisterly fun driving to the reunion with Carolyn, he felt bad and said we could go to Ely. I thought he meant just me, Carolyn, and the girls, but he came along too and it was lots of fun.

We went up on Friday the 7th of August and did the normal visiting thing, except there was lots of teasing Lacey this trip, and it all started Friday night. Andrea and Brien made us dinner, though I can’t remember what we had this night. Brien made kinda an upside down cake, but with apricots he picked off his neighbors tree. Don’t worry the old lady neighbor said they could pick as many apricots as they wanted and it was also the first summer in like 20 years that it was summer long enough for the apricot trees to produce apricots in Ely. The cake was delicious, and made even more delicious by ice cream, something I asked if they had to go with it earlier, but was told  “Jeez, do you think we’re a buffet?”, though this was also after I said apricot cobbler would be good but Brien was just making a spice cake with apricots in the bottom. So Brien baked the cake and then tasted it and decided it needed ice cream, so he then went and bought some and might I add I would have eaten it without ice cream, but he really wanted it and it did help with the tartness of the apricots.

Saturday we went canoeing at Cave Lake. We made a sandwich stop at Subway and enjoyed the fresh air as we ate. I left our state parks passes in our suitcase at Andrea and Brien’s so we did not get them stamped, though we didn’t really see anywhere to have them stamped, so we’re still gonna just check that off. We will probably go there again because canoeing was so much fun, despite my dislike of natural bodies of water, and Brien was also trying to talk Jon into getting a canoe. I’m just happy to know that we have a long list of other saving projects before this can ever even remotely become a reality.

Brien and Andrea took the girls out first on the Lake. Jon and I went out alone so we could practice in the canoe. It was my second time canoeing, with the first being about 12 years ago at girls camp one year. Lilah would say that I needed to put my paddle into the water more, but this was something she heard from Brien as he made fun/ teased me some more.

After our practice run we  took the girls out on the water with us. We then switched back and forth, with Zarina only going out once since she didn’t like her life jacket and Carolyn also avoiding it till the last run. She doesn’t like natural bodies of water either, but thought it would be fun to let my girls play in the water and get a little muddy and wet. This was while Jon and I went out our last time. Of course when we returned they said the fun was over to the girls since Mommy was back and it took a lot of will power to let them continue to get wet and muddy. I know I can be a little uptight about dirt and messes, so I was trying to relax since the damage had already been done.

We then headed home and after some naps and showers had a delicious turkey dinner that Brien and Andrea made.

Sunday on our way home we decided to take a little, but long, detour to Great Basin National Park and take the Leeman’s Cave Tour. We’ve been to Great Basin twice, but had yet to take the tour. I called the week before to purchase the tickets in advance, something I recommend so you don’t have to wait an hour if a tour is full and ours was. Since Eden is only 4 we went on the shorter 60 minute tour and someday may go on the longer 90 minute one which includes one or two more caverns.

Before we entered the caves the ranger/ tour guide gave the challenge to crawl through a cement hole that was about the size of the hole the 70 or 80 year old Mr. Leeman had to crawl through to find the caves. It was a part of becoming a cave cadet. The girls both went through and the other children, then he gave the challenge to the adults and I challenged Jon to go through since he was the slimest adult. He did and since he went through so easily the guide challenged another adult and one other man did.

We started off the tour together, but as it got narrower, the guide had the children up front with him, and we were in the back, so I have no idea what happened after we were separated.  We had areas that he was able to talk to us directly, and then at other times it was just through the grapevine. The girls seemed to have a lot of fun from what we could tell at the end and we entertained ourselves with them gone. It was a cool tour and I recommend it to anyone who might pass by Great Basin National Park.

After the tour we enjoyed some of the yummy homemade ice cream the cafe makes and then hit the road to return to Vegas.

We all loved seeing the Park’s and getting to see Zarina. They grow so fast and it’s so hard when you don’t get to see the small children often enough.

It was a fun little trip and the girls enjoyed Aunt Carolyn’s company. I also enjoyed talking with her and being able to chat.

This will be the fourth year we’ve made a trip to Ely and I hope we continue the tradition as long as Andrea and Brien live there. Brien said we could come back anytime after it snows, but I don’t see us visiting till after it melts away next year.

So, I just realized I hadn’t written a post about the details of how my weekend away went. I guess I’ve been pretty preoccupied by homeschooling and using Linux this week.

We wanted the trip to have a lot more woman on it, but since it was the weekend right before school a few mom’s decided to stay home with their soon to enter kindergarten children and one had to cancel because her husband got asked to go on a Scout trip and she felt he needed to go. So it was my dear friend Sam and her dear friend Julie who went and they both brought their nursing children. So we had three mom’s and two young children.

Just a funny note: I have never spoken to Julie that much, but my mother made her wedding cake, I had an English class with her husband in college and she and Andrea were friends back in the day. She’s also visit taught my sister Carolyn, and she now lives in my parent’s ward and receives sewing lessons from my mom on a weekly basis. So even though Julie and I had only seen each other at Britta’s birthday parties, we know of one another and she knows my family. Oh, she also lived in the ward we’re currently in, but moved during the housing boom a few years ago.

Friday afternoon Sam and I dropped our girls off at her in-laws house. I needed a sitter for about 3 hours that afternoon since Jon couldn’t take any time off and Sam asked them if they’d be willing to take my two rambunctious girls with her crazy daughter. (Ha, all of our children are pretty mellow for other people so this is such an exaggeration.) They said yes and in one afternoon they were bombarded with 3 times the normal number of young girls they’re use to. Jackie, Sam’s mother-in-law, said that none of the girls spoke to them and just played until they came out to tell her they were hungry. She then fed them some biscuits and chicken nuggets and Jon arrived some time soon after.

We left a little later than normal due to nursing kids and me waiting outside the wrong house to drop my kids off at, but we all eventually piled into Julie’s van and got on the road to Pine Valley.

Riding in one car was so nice. I was in the back because Sam gets car sick, but both of the kids were pretty good for most of the time. We did have one throw up and one cry for the last 30 minutes of the drive, but eh, that’s all in the day of a mother.

We got to the cabin and settled in. We had Navajo tacos for dinner. Sam had brought bread dough to make the scones and I brought the rest of the ingredients. We had homemade guacamole and I made the taco meat a little more delicious by adding a can of pork and beans. (I had it at an activity and it just added a sweetness to it that was so good.)

We ate till we were far too full and  then relaxed and just sat and talked some more since that’s all we did for the drive too.

It was so nice to be with other woman and to talk like woman and not have to worry about little ears and little hands, though Dallin, Julie’s son, was walking around but he was pretty low key in the getting into things area.

Julie, who knows so many of my the women in my family, got a kick out of hearing and watching me talk. Since many of us Harvey girls have similar traits in how we carry ourselves and talk she said how she could see my mom’s, Andrea’s, and Carolyn’s mannerism in me.

We had strawberries and banana’s dipped in chocolate for a desert and then continued to talk till about 2 am.

Really our weekend consisted of food and talking the whole time.

Sam made some delicious chocolate ginger pancakes for breakfast and we enjoyed our food outside on the deck. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside for most of the time we were there.

Julie made quesadilla‘s with pico de gallo for lunch, which we also ate outside.

As we sat on the porch we watched the hummingbirds feed off the feeder. We also saw them dueling and I got scared a couple times because they came dueling towards my head. Sam got a kick out of me being afraid of the hummingbirds but I didn’t want those beaks coming towards me. I’m sure at a high speed they can hurt you pretty badly.

As afternoon approached so did some rain. Julie had been wandering around the yard and found the blackberry bushes which were in season. So despite the fact that I already had done my hair and make-up and do not enjoy playing in the rain I ran quickly and gathered just a small amount for my girls to enjoy, which they loved.

We then packed up the van and made a delicious stop at Chuck ‘A Rama, my favorite buffet in St. George, though it gets pricey at dinnertime.  After that we were all so full and tired that it was quiet in the car for about 5 minutes before we started talking again.

We got back into town around 9:00 pm and I was able to kiss my girls hello before I sent them off to bed and then stayed up till 1 am talking to Jon and checking e-mails and blogs.

It was so beautiful that I’m going there again, but this time with Sam and her daughters and me and mine. Britta and my girls and good friends and we think they’re at the perfect age to begin creating fun sleepover memories and enjoy time at the cabin together.

I’m so excited.

I just want to note that it’s best to blog right after an event and not 3 months later. A mind becomes very foggy.

Jon had his birthday at the beginning of May. We celebrated by making homemade pizza and eating watermelon for dessert, though I think the girls and I enjoyed some ice cream after the watermelon. He is always striving to be healthy and isn’t the biggest fan of cake so that’s why we had no cake.

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My birthday was pretty regular. Jon had to work since we had just gone camping with Andrea and Brien and it was a three day weekend. I had a little meeting with someone on my birthday so I dropped the girls off with Jon at  his work then he picked up a frozen pizza, but it was a California Kitchen BBQ chicken pizza which we had never had and it was tasty, and frosting for the cake he had baked the day before. Lilah had play practice that night and I was going to go home and sew on the costumes, but decided to just hang out with Jon and Eden while we watched Lilah. Eden fell asleep on the way home so I was sung to the day after my birthday, but before Jon went to work.

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Also, I just wanted to include this picture of Lilah churning ice cream on Memorial Day. My dad has a cool ice cream maker that can be hand cranked, or cranked by a motor. It brought back lots of memories of watching my dad and brothers crank our old ice cream maker, which was very hard to crank. I tried but was always too weak.

In an effort to not get completely behind and post every picture post months after if happened, I’m posting pictures from Eden’s 4th Birthday Party.

We had the party at the Zurflueh’s house where Lilah’s was held last year.

We of course had a pinata.

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I made the pinata this year, like I did last year, but since I painted it it didn’t take me 8 hours to decorate. Just $4 for spray paint and half an hour. It’s the only way to make a homemade pinata.
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This is the cake I made, sorry it’s dark but it looks better since you see less of it’s imperfections. I drafted a slightly bigger genie since I decided 8×10 would not be big enough for the sheet cake my mom baked for me.

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We did pin the lamp on the genie. The genie was drawn by my wonderful friend Anna. I painted it.

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This is my niece Adrienne, with her big sister behind helping to hold up the blindfold that I did not securely tie. The funny thing is my niece is far sighted.

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Judging who won.

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We enjoyed some Otter pops and then it was pinata time.

Eden the birthday girl was first.

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Gracie got a really good hit in. I think next year I will make the pinata three layers again and maybe blindfold the kids.

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Josh is in Eden’s church class and lives down the street from us.

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Some of the kids close their eyes when hitting the pinata anyways.

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Christina, Josh’s older sister, broke the pinata on her third hit, but it wasn’t quite spilling the candy yet.

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Her sister finished it off for us.

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We then sang Happy Birthday.  Lilah is such a wonderful big sister. I think everyone needs a big sister.

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I just thought that this was a funny picture.

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We opened presents and then it was time for swimming!!!

The Spencer family.

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Elona Spencer with mommy and sisters behind her.

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Lilah looks like she’s waiting for a swim meet.

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And she’s off!

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Eden swimming with Jon. I think they’re so cute.

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Cute Eden.

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Sam with Britta and baby Matilda.

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Carolyn with Adrienne.

It was a fun enjoyable party and we thank everyone who helped and was able to celebrate with us.

On May 29th the girls, Hannah, and I went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. I had a free ticket for me, Eden was free and Lilah was just $8.50, and so was Hannah even though they first wanted to charge her as an adult.

They gave us these hand held devises that we would punch in the correlating code and then listen to information on the animal or animals we were looking at. Apparently if you don’t pay for that child they don’t need to listen, so they only gave us three things for the four of us. I gave Eden mine, and then Hannah let me use hers for most of the time, she had been before and apparently knew that the information was only somewhat interesting. Lilah was very intent on listening to each little recording, but towards the end, at like 32 of 36, she stopped. Eden gave up a little sooner, but still listened to most of them.

We saw so many interesting fish and the girls loved petting the sting rays. Hannah was a nice help and hopefully she had fun too.
We watched two divers cleaning one of the tanks and one even put his hand to the glass to “high five” the girls. We also saw some bait for some fish, but they must not have been hungry because they didn’t even notice it for the 5-10 minutes we watched and waited to see if they would eat it.

I don’t have too many pictures because it was not the most ideal setting. Most of the time if was too dark and then the flash would wash everything out. It was still fun and I will try to get a free ticket next tax season so we can go again.

Some giant fish from the Amazon.

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Eden watching another giant fish from the Amazon.

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Lilah is listening to the recording about the giant fish from the Amazon.

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Learning about the piranhas. They had a staff member stationed at the tank. No doubt to keep idiots from putting things, or there own hands, in the tank.

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Hannah helping Lilah pet a sting ray.

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Gross fish water!

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Eden’s turn to pet the sting ray. Hannah actually had to pull her arm down so she could reach.

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I thought this was a tiger fish, but it’s actually a lion fish.

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Lilah looking at the jellyfish.

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Eden ready to go home.

On March 25th we went to the Secret Garden and Dolphin habitat with a homeschooling group. Sadly the group has dissolved and it was our last trip with them.

Our friend Hannah came with us. The girls adore her and she adores our girls. Even though I didn’t really need the help, since they are so well behaved and rarely get into trouble in public, Hannah came along and lent her hand to also hold while we walked around and her arms to pick up the girls to see things. It was nice and the reason we invited her to also come to the Shark Reef with us in May.

Here’s just a few pictures of the girls and our activities. I can’t believe it had been two years since we had gone with our old Mommy group and almost to the day.

The underwater observatory.

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The girls loved when the dolphin swam right by the window.

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Above watching them feed the dolphins.

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There was a 6 month old baby dolphin, though it was pretty big for being 6 months old. I’m happy my girls grow slower than a dolphin, but it’s still too fast.

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Cute Eden.

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Hannah helping Lilah look at the map.

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There was also a baby jaguar to watch.

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Hannah with the girls.

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A tiger taking a bath.

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Sisterly love.

Jon and I spent part of our Saturday night watching videos by Rhett & Link. This folk song order at taco bell was one off my favorite and I thought I’d share it with you.

Happy Monday!