Pinkies Up!

I got to go to the Utah Home Education Association's homeschool conference this weekend. And while I was doing that, Adelia got to go over to Grandma Swan's and have a tea party with her cousins who were up from St. George.

Del doesn't have a lot of other girls around most of the time, so she was pretty thrilled about this. She got all decked out for the occasion. And she was good about reminding everyone to have their "pinkies up" while sipping their beverages. :)

Audrey, Aneya, Adelia, Claire, and Sam

Backyard Dinner And Gardening By Night

For date night tonight we decided to go to the greenhouse and get some plants for our garden. Yes, we are getting a bit of a late start this year, but we've been busy, and it's been raining a lot.

After that we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. And played a family game of Frisbee. It was a good night.

We didn't get the kids to bed until after dark, and I was afraid if we didn't get our plants planted that they would dry out and die. So Aaron and I hauled out our spot light, and got to work planting the garden. I'm sure the neighbors think we're nuts. We've always got these after dark projects going on.

Piano Recital

These boys had their piano recital tonight. It was so fun to watch them perform the pieces they've been working so hard on. Ivan performed Take Me Out to the Ballgame and a piece he wrote himself called Sad Grasshopper. Lincoln played a duet with his teacher Sister Straatman called If the Savior Stood Beside Me. 

Both boys earned medals for reaching their practice minutes goals. And both boys earned trophies for passing their end of year theory exams. Nice job boys. 

;

Self Portraits

We did a fun art project today from our At Home Art Studio DVDs. The idea was to create a portrait of yourself as you think you might look if you were on TV. I love what the kids came up with. 

Vacation Day 5: Driving Home and Green River WY

The drive home was great. I hate driving on I-80 because it is so so ugly. BUT the kids couldn't have been better on the drive. They were awesome. We listened to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and that kept everyone happy. Even Rue did well with her frog and her pearls. :) Love this girl.

We stopped in Green River, WY for lunch, and found a fun little "spider playground" for the kids to climb on and get their wiggles out.

And we were home by 5:00pm and got the van unpacked and everything put away before dinner.

I'm pretty sad to have to get back to real life. I think I could move to South Dakota and love it.

Vacation Day 4: Custer State Park, Hot Springs South Dakota, and Cousins in Wheatland

We had to be out of our campsite by 11:00am. So we spent the morning packing bags and loading up the van. Then we were supposed to go hiking and spend the afternoon at Sylvan Lake. It was raining. I wanted to go anyway, so we drove up there, but they'd shut down the road to get to the lake. I was so bummed.

There was nothing for it though, but to keep on going. We drove through Custer State Park, which was beautiful. We stopped at Mt. Coolidge Overlook for as snack and let Rue have a turn behind the wheel. She likes to practice her "Uncle Ryan faces" while driving.

Then we had to stop for a bathroom break. I'm not sure if this place has an official name or if it's just a random rest stop, but it was really pretty. It had stopped raining, so we got out and "hiked" around for a little bit, and let the kids climb on some fallen trees. Ollie really enjoyed jumping off of stumps.

This is how Rue hikes, all snugly and warm with Daddy.

Right as we were leaving Custer State Park, we saw this guy and his buddy, just nonchalantly walking down the road. I was so happy my kids got to see a real live buffalo! I was probably more excited for them than they were for themselves, but they were still pretty excited about it.

Our next stop was a cute little historical town called Hot Springs. It had a walking trail along the canal that lead to a hot spring. More of a warm spring really, and it wasn't one of those sulpher smelling ones either. You could drink from it. Aaron, Adelia, and Ollie did. None of them died. :)

I like when Aaron takes pictures of me taking pictures. :)

Apparently Ollie wanted to get closer to the waterfall.

Throwing rocks into the canal in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

"Mom, take my picture." -Ivan

Since it had recently rained, the path we walked on still had puddles all over the place. The kids kept stopping to look at the night-crawlers and worms in the puddles. At the end of the trail, Adelia and I were standing there waiting for the boys to come out of the bathroom, and Del said to me, "Ya know Mom, I think that I'll just leave my jacket on for the rest of the trip."

Immediately I knew something fishy was going on, because Adelia hates to wear her jacket. So, I asked her, "Why Del?"

And she said, "Well, I think I'll just leave it on, and then I can keep my hands in my pockets."

Me: "What's in your pockets Del?"

Del: "Nothing."

I walked over to her and had her turn out her pocket. It was full of night-crawlers and worms. Full. Like 20 all together. She threw a fit when I made her dump them all in a nearby puddle. She just wanted to bring her friends home with her and make them a nice place to live! Eek.

Back into the car, and on our way to Wheatland, WY. Where Aaron's sister Sydni lives. They'd invited us to stop in for dinner, since we were staying the night in Laramie, and Wheatland was right on the way.

The kids were so excited to see their cousins! They paired up and ran off to play the moment we stepped out of the van. It was cute.

Malia and Ruby got to meet each other for the first time. They are about 6 weeks apart in age.

Lincoln, Zac, Ivan, and Luke

Eliza and Adelia

Eliza, Adelia, Zac, Malia, Ollie, Lincoln, Rue, Ivan, Luke

When did we all have so many kids? Haha! When we lived next to each other in Phoenix it was just baby Zac with Lincoln on the way, and now there are 9 of them!

Of course, we had to say good-bye too soon. But we're excited to see them again when they come out for the 4th of July.

Then we drove to Laramie. Laramie is not an exciting place, and the cabin and camp ground there were not as nice as the one in Custer. But that's ok, because really all we needed was a place to sleep before we hit the road again in the morning.

Vacation Day 3: Jewel Cave

 Today we went to Jewel Cave. It is the third largest cave in the world, and they aren't even through exploring it yet. They don't know how big it is.

We took the "Scenic Tour" which is an hour and a half guided tour through a certain part of the cave where they've built metal walkways and platforms and have lights.

The parts of the cave they have mapped out. They discover new passages all the time, so this map is a little outdated the tour guide said. 

Ruby waiting for out tour to start. She has awesome hair.

 Our tour guide had a sweet mid-western accent. It was fun to listen to him talk throughout the tour. We were the only family who brought five children with us on the tour. I think people thought we were slightly nuts. Haha! But the kids did really good for about the first hour. Then Ollie got a little stir crazy and wanted to touch everything (which you aren't supposed to do) and walk up all the stairs himself (there were a lot, like 700 and something). So he fought Aaron a bit. I had Rue in the Bjorn, and she got sick of that at the end too and was fussy. And the older kids did well, up until the end. We would have been great had the tour only been an hour long. But the last 20 minutes were a little rough. And it's not like we could just leave the group, because, you know, we were in a cave under the ground, and kinda had to stay with the group.

The cave was SO COOL though. I'm glad we did it. It was worth it, even with the rough 20 minutes at the end. I love caves. They are so cool. I told Aaron that we should send our kids off to boarding school so that we could join the National Spelunking Society and come be a part of the team that's exploring and mapping new passages of Jewel Cave. (Obviously, I'm only joking about the boarding school bit...but I do love caving.)

Anyways, here are some pictures of the cave. The not so good ones are the ones I took, and the rest are ones I found to give an idea of how cool the cave was.

 After the cave adventure, both Aaron and I were pretty tired. So we drove back to camp and everyone had naps/quiet time for a little while. Then then we hung out at the camp site. They had a giant jumping bubble (like a trampoline), and a play ground that they kids enjoyed.

 We decided to have an early dinner and then try to head back up to Mt Rushmore a second time to see it lit up at night.

I had made taco soup before hand and frozen it, so all we had to do was put it in the pan and heat it up. I got the fire going, got out the food, and the bowls, etc. And while I was doing that it clouded over and got windy and cold. So we had hot chocolate as well.

 I was glad we had decided to have dinner early, because as we were finishing up it started to rain a little bit. We cleaned up quickly and took all our chairs and things into the cabin. Then we got in the car and drove up to Mt. Rushmore, but it was so foggy we couldn't even see it from the parking lot. And it was raining and cold, so we decided not to even get out of the car. Instead we headed home and got to bed early (ish, it was about 9:30, which is later than the kids' normal bedtime by two hours, but so far on the vacation we haven't been getting into bed until 10:30 or so. But don't worry, Ollie woke up at 6:30 every single morning. Sigh.).