Blues Night

Another year at Park City... another night of Blues, Brews, & Brats. Corey always makes sure the boys bring their horns so they can join in with John Paul and his blues band. The first year playing with the band was 2013. They've played every year since - here's the two most recently documented years of 2015 & 2016. I didn't get any pictures or videos of it last year. I was home tonight but Corey captured the moment. Ethan joining in solo, cause his brother is gone on a mission.

I hear it was great music, as always. 

Girls roasting some marshmallows, cause they're not huge fans of brats. 

Corey took six videos, but I can't get any of them to open... It says: "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file." Translstion: I think we're outta luck. I haven't every uploaded videos of them playing, though I'm sure we have a few from years past that have been compressed correctly. For now you'll just have to imagine, we'll see if I find/make the time to upload them later.

Train Game

We are up at Park City this week with Corey's family. I came home this afternoon after having a horrible morning with my three toddlers. Daniel woke up at freaking 4 a.m. He was wide awake and wasn't buying my "it's still night time" shtick, but I stuck to it by not turning on the lights. In the dark, he turned his interested to the alarm clock on the night stand and was pushing buttons there. After 20 minutes clicks and lights flashing, I took the clock off the nightstand and put it under the bed and gave D a bottle hoping he'd go back to sleep, but instead he was sad and cried. Which woke up Owen. Great. So we went out and I turned on the tv for them and I tried to lay and sleep on the couch. I wasn't able to sleep and soon Natalie came out to see what was going on. 5 a.m. I was so drunk tired irritated. But I gave them cereal. After a while I went back to bed. Then I head the door open and shut, the door that I had locked before I went to try and lay down. Ugh, I got up, Natalie was out in the hall, I told her to come back in. Around 7:30 Corey woke up and took over and I took a nap and vowed to go home and have them sleep in their beds tonight. I had plans to stay this whole week cause I don't have a newborn to feed, and I'm not uncomfortably pregnant and I also don't have any caterpillars at home. I can't believe I don't have any caterpillars! Our milkweed is better than every I have over 20 plants and some of them are really big this year, but I've only seen one monarch butterfly and haven't found any eggs. I'm a little worried about the monarch butterfly population! I hope they are okay, I keep forgetting to ask my neighbors if they are having luck. Hopefully things are normal for them and our yard is just having a weird year.

I left for home earlier than I had planned - I left around 2 with Owen and Daniel. I had hardly seen any of the kids during the day. After I woke up from my morning nap, I watched Owen play with the train. Hyrum and I made Owen and Daniel a pretty sweet train track, if I do say so myself.

It was cute to watch them. Well... atleast until they started fighting and screaming bloody murder over the train cars. (Daniel has a vicious yell) When they had freaked out enough, I decided to call it good and Mel helped me take them to the car and I headed home. I've been home since 3 and have been cleaning mostly. I just put them to bed at 10:30 and read my scriptures, yay! The talks in church two weeks ago were about the Book of Mormon. I think I do a pretty good job reading, but our new Elders Quorum President said he has read the Book of Mormon every day since he was in Seminary in high school. He's married with 5 kids now. I cannot make such a claim. I haven't kept track, and doing it as a habit has been inconsistent over the years. The time and duration of my reading has been dependent on energy from pregnancy or taking care of babies and kids, which has been consistent over the past 18 years, lol. I know we've done really good at reading as a family since we were in Chile, but my personal study hasn't been as consistent since I don't have a time of day for it. So I'm not sure it's been every day. But I that night I made the resolve, once again, to do it daily and know that I've done it, so I got a new LDS Reading Chart app and it's helped to have to check it off before I go to bed. So that's going great and I have done it every day since July 15th. Tonight I just read 7 chapters in my closet while I waited for O and D to fall asleep. Now I'm going to go do a quick walk/jog on the treadmill and then I'll head to bed. Might head up tomorrow cause I have dessert that I already bought to bring up.

Owen is 3!

Today is Owen's Happy Birthday! Usually, when it is a kids' birthday, there is the sign in the window and a birthday banner and presents on the table when they wake up in the morning. But Owen is my early riser. And he watched "McQueen Mater" while I exercised. So that's what we did this morning, like we do every morning. And he could care less. So I didn't have anything ready. I hadn't even bought his presents yet when he was awake. Hyurm came to me around 10 as I was finishing up exercising... "Is today Owen's birthday?" "Yeah." "Where are his presents?!?!" "I didn't get them yet." "What the freak, Mom!" as if he feels I've violated Owen's constitutional rights of childhood. "Hey, he's 3 years old! He doesn't care! I'm taking advantage of it! I'll go get him a present after I shower!" And I did. Stocked up on diapers, wipes, and got a sweet toy for $20 bucks that has 6 cars in it! A big toy semi pulling two cars, and a truck pulling another car. When I pulled up to the house, there were 3 cars in the driveway - my mom, Corey's parents, and Owen's church teachers. The church teachers brought by a book and fruit snacks. He took the gift but didn't smile for them. He loves them at church, but maybe seeing them at our house might have been too much for his brain to handle - they are supposed to be in the nursery room at church, not at our house! After the teachers left, I talked to my mom, she'd left a pile of birthday goodies in the kitchen. So she said goodbye and we went into Corey's parent's car for Owen to sit and open presents there - Some new Micky Mouse clothes!

Owen was still working on his fruit snacks though - so his siblings helped open his other presents - a little car with Micky Mouse, a saxophone to play! Ethan showing Owen how it's done

Owen was done with his fruit snacks and was looking at the car now. So they showed the sax to Daniel.

Ok, Owen's ready for the saxophone.

Owen just likes to take things at his own pace. Like at the bounce house on Wednesday - he eventually went into the balloon room, he just needs space to do things at his own speed. He'll get to it when he's ready. So we said thank you, Daniel said "Bye, See ya!" four times, then inside to see the loot from Grandma Hibbert. Daniel was happy to eat the bunny crackers.

My mom asked me a week or so ago what Owen would like. "Any kind of car or truck toys. He esp loves McQueen and Mater". Owen's got cars galore now. Daniel was feeling pretty sad when Owen wouldn't share the McQueen that my mom got. That's when I went and got my vehicle 5 pack, which took Owen's attention straight away from McQueen and let Daniel have some McQueen time for a few moments. My present was hit, yay! I like it when Owen loves my presents. It makes me feel pretty special. He wouldn't even come over for cake. Like I just said, he likes to do things at his own pace. We had cake twice today, but the first time we didn't have candles. So we put candles in the second cake, and Owen wouldn't come away from his cars for us to sing. So we sang the birthday song a few times from a distance and we let the candles keep burning. 

I recorded a video cause it was funny, and on that last one he finally came over.

Yay! A picture for posterity. Trying to blow out the candles...

Try again, Owen! You got this!

Success! And he didn't even need help from his siblings

Happy Birthday Owen! I don't know if Owen knows it's his birthday, but he does know he got a lot of cars, and he's good with that. 

After an afternoon of playing, Owen decided it was time for a late nap - he snuggled up with his soft cars. ?

Whatever floats your boat, you're the birthday kid, we love you Owen

We are not taking Owen out for a birthday dinner date. That starts at 5 years old. So since Owen didn't need one, we took Wes out with us for date night to finish catching up on our belated birthday dinner dates. We went to the Cheesecake Factory. Good stuff. I got the Vegan Cobb Salad with 4 grilled shrimp, Wes got Orange chicken, and Corey got a Thai Chicken coconut curry dish

Now we're all caught up and we won't get behind again, cause Hyrum's birthday is next, and is close enough (2 weeks) that we shouldn't forget this tradition. School is just around the corner, less than a month away, crazy. It's good that time seems to go fast sometimes, cause that means the faster the baby will come and  the faster Joseph gets home. :)

Organizing Picture and Video Files

I stayed up too late tonight organizing videos and pictures. Not sure how I got on this tangent. But I was poking around the drive looking for pictures from Corey's phone for a blog post, then I discovered that his pictures were in like 7 different folders and then different folders in each of those folders in our cloud drive: Pictures. Shared Pictures. Videos. Videos 1. Videos 2. Coreys Pictures. Corey's Cell Pics, Camera, Camera Roll, etc etc, ugh! There is no end to the disorder. I gotta get these organizes so I know where to find what I'm looking for...

So I've been here for a couple of hours looking through and sorting them and moving them by date into my master files which, until now, have just been my pictures for the past 10 years, but now I'm putting everyone's there by date, were I can find them and see them and so I can access them to show the kids as needed. Since I'm the main one who pays attention to organizational details like this and I'm also the main one asked to find/retrieve these type of files. So hooray, now I'll know where they are! I even just found where all the videos of Chile are from out few months there in 2010-2011, yahoo! I had a few here on the blog that I uploaded here via the "insert a video" link, but I like embedding them as youtube videos more, so now I might be uploading those to youtube and going back and embedding them. Cause some of them are family classics. Like the family bike ride in Pucón, Chile. I loved the toddlers squealing in this front basket seat.

Ah, the good ol' days. That one is now embedded here and in that original post. We'll see if going back and uploading all those videos to youtube is a project I want to tackle right now. I guess I'm a little nervous they'll get lost if I only have them here on the blog if blogger formatting changes in coming years or something like that. I feel they are safer if they're on youtube. Maybe I'll get to it. But first, it's time for bed (almost 1, yikes) and I'll come back to filing away all these videos into an organized place tomorrow. It's kinda fun, like taking a broken puzzle and putting it all together properly how it's supposed to be.

Bounce House & Axe Throwing

Hey, I'm on a roll! Two days in a row! Guess what we did today!!? I took 7 kids out and we went and spent 90 minutes at a bounce house, which is a normal thing we've done before with the kids, but then afterward we went axe throwing, and I thought that was a pretty good cherry on top! So I didn't mention this yesterday, but we were able to get into Cowabunga bay with the Get Out Passes that I bought for our family last week. Today I took Wes to his Little Big Band rehearsal in American Fork, as I do on most Wednesdays. But instead of just doing a Costco run, I decided I'd take the kids and we'd try out one of the other Get Out Pass activities. We drove 9 minutes to a Bounce House in Orem. We can go here weekly, cool - I might have a new place to go with the toddlers. I enjoy my Costco runs, but I like getting the kids out of the house more, and this might now be the ideal time for that. So we found it, it was crazy hot, we hurried in, and the kids took off, except for Owen. It looked like any other kid bounce house in a lot of ways (aka kinda dirty and grimey) and 3 of the 4 fake palm trees below on the main slide needs some repair attention, lol, but not a big deal, especially cause it seems like we're basically getting in here for free.

Owen wouldn't take off his shoes at first. He didn't want to go in. I think this big black dragon that you could see from the entrance door and that was flapping its wings might have had something to do with that. 

I finally had to pick him up and carry him in. Lucky for me, there was a comfy couch to sit on, yay. He finally got down and looked at some toys in a display case. They looked like just a bunch of old used toys collected from a thrifts store or the DI. Owen wanted the dark green car

I asked the guy at the desk if the toys were for play. He said no, those were prizes for birthday groups. I thought that was weird. So, sorry buddy, no car. But you take your time to warm up to this new environment. He's a funny kid, I need to remember that he takes things at his own pace. See him front and center in the first picture? While his younger brother Daniel went willingly down the big slide with the big sisters... 

Owen would not go on the slides or do anything except play with the baby toys. 

Silly kid. Daniel had a blast, the girls were all off and exploring the area. 

They had a climbing wall with a big foam pit below it. If you reached the top and rang the bell, you got a little treat, like a small box of Nerds candy or small package of Swedish Fish. Abi and Lily climbed that a few times and earned a few treats. Sophi tried...

But couldn't do it up the middle of the wall to reach the high bell.

There was lower bell on the other lower climbing wall that she was able to reach though and she got some candy too. Good job. I really liked that they were being active and having fun climbing and it was safe! Not like the climbing wall at the school park where Daniel can't get up and I can't help him get up and he gets frustrated. There were activities for all levels here. After climbing the wall a few times, Abi and Lily spent a good chunk of time trying to cross the slac line. 

They never made it across, but I think it's opening up an idea for the two of them of a new goal to shoot for. Daniel discovered the balloon room! 

Earlier as I tried to get Owen's attention away from the glass case of cheap toys, I tried to show him the balloons, but he wasn't interested.

He played it safe in a toy boat instead.

Hey Owen, are you sure you don't want to go back there with Daniel? I think he's really having a fun time! You might like it! Do you want to try it?

I love his eye roll and sigh at 1:23 - it's like he kinda wants to go and experience the rush that such risk would bring, but he is resigned to his desk job. He has a stuffed lion back at home to think off and provide for. He just doesn't have the courage...

...or does he?

Owen, you're doing it! 60 minutes to warm up to the idea, and sure it's about time to leave now, but good job buddy!

Oh yeah! The thill of adventure! You did it Owen! You're living life! And part 2 here - just another video of more balloon heaven. It was a fun afternoon. So we left there a few minutes too late and Wes had to wait for us in the hot sun for 5 minutes. It was 100 degrees, so after getting Wes, I somewhat reluctantly bought them all frostys at Wendys. Then I said I wanted to just swing by this axe thowing place and check it out. Just so happened that no one else was there, and so I signed the waiver and we all went in. 12 years old and older can throw axes, 11 and under can do Chinese stars. A quick lesson - we did the toddlers first -

Yes, Natalie, this is your chance. Go ahead and throw that sharp metal object. 

So the little girls were practicing with the Chinese stars, toddlers were being good for the moment...

Oop, moments over.

Wes learned proper axe throwing technique. He got a bulls eye on his first throw.

Victory photo -

His second throw hit too, on the target above the first.

Ok, this boy might be a natural. As Corey said later "Don't upset that kid!" The toddlers were getting better with the stars - Natalie made two stick!

Abi got three -

Lily's got three there, one of them was a lucky fall into the top of the yellow target, you can barely see that one.

Our teacher Caleb chalenged Wes to hit all four in the same target. He got 3 a few times... one of them would fall out as the others hit the target. So you had to throw them in hard enough that they wouldn't get loose as the others hit. Wes finally got all 4!

Owen was content with his blanket and lion.

Daniel wanted the stars though. I didn't get a lot of throws in cause I was making sure Daniel didn't get in the way of any flying objects. It was fun though. And this one is a weekly pass too - 30 minutes a week, so I told Wes I'm open to coming here after band. It's like 2 minutes away from the soundhouse, lucky boy! And now he's nagging me for an axe so he can go practice at the tree farm. He's never had so much fun, he loves axe throwing. There's another axe throwing place up closer to home in Murray, we'll go check that one out soon. It was another fun day, and I'm feeling like a rock star mom. It's fun to be up and doing. I'm going to enjoy it during this second trimester while it lasts.

Cowabunga Bay & BBQ

I did something today that I don't think I've ever done before. I took almost all of the kids on an outing by myself. Like, sometimes, I'll take the younger kids, but for an almost whole family thing? I usually don't do that unless Corey and I are both able to go. But he was working today and taking Ethan to a drivers ed test, and I was feeling ambitious I guess, cause I woke them up, told the kids to clean their rooms, and then we would go to Cowabunga Bay. So no Joseph, obviously, and Ethan and Corey didn't come, so it was me and 9 kids (that's including the 1 year old and 2 year old) and we were there for 6.5 hours! We got there at 11 and stayed until it was almost closing time. I didn't take as many pictures as I usually would have, cause it's hard to be chief photographer and chief activity coordinator a the same time. I was on kid duty most of the day, but did get some good pictures after lunch and after Owen finally warmed up to participating.

He protested the first two hours. Then we ordered some pizza, fries, and frozen grapes for lunch. Owen helped me wait in line.

Food's here. Daniel gave up and slept through lunch - you can see his tuckered out body on Wesley to the left there.

After the kids ate, they went and played and came back over to check in on me now and then. We spent most of the morning in the pool and lazy river, and they were on the waterslides after lunch. Which was good cause they were often walking by and I could see them from the lunch table. Wes and Abi encouraging Natalie to go down the slide. She was so cute up there, holding her nose as she tried to get up the courage to slide down... You can do it, Natalie!

There she goes!

I stayed in the shade by the lunch tables where I was able to sit for an hour as Daniel napped. Wes, can you document for me?

Owen was content to stay with me, though not comfortable enough to be able to take a nap himself. Owen ate the slice of pizza and fries that I was saving for Daniel to eat. So after Daniel woke up, I ordered more fries, grapes, and pizza.

After Daniel ate, I took them out again and counted heads again. All the older kids were great helpers, we were all watching out for each other and taking turns, I couldn't have done it without them helping to watch the little kids.

Wes taking Daniel on the lazy river. Lily's head in the other hole of the tube.

More pool time - 

Natalie wants to go back to the waterslides. Mel and Hyrum watched Owen and Daniel while I went on a slide with Natalie. Not this one, this is her playing afterwards.

Lots of fun water slides and buckets and sprayers to play with.

Wes and Abi got dunked in the big bucket splash.

Over at the Kids Cove, Owen was very content playing with this water wheel and turning the water on and off.

Fascinating how that works!

Daniel walking by

Daniel still looks a bit tired. He's not used to this much fun! Daniel, you want to go on the tubes?

Yeah, he looks like he could use a few trips around the lazy river.

 Around 4, Hyrum was done. He wanted to go home. I used the line from Mrs. Parr on The Incredibles on him a few times "This is not ABOUT YOU!!!" We are here to watch the little kids have fun and have a family memory together. We did bring two cars, but it was the van and the stick shift. If Mel could drive the stick shift, they could have left. But if you leave in the van, I only have room for 4 people, so I guess if you can convince enough people to leave? Then Hyrum was nagging everyone for the next hour.... "Abi, do you want to go home?" No. "Ahh! Lily? Do you want go go home?" No. Fine! Be that way! He was tired and he had stuff to do. I told him to go take a nap in the shade. He was mad and wouldn't let me take a picture.

Hyrum, you're complaining this past hour is kinda ruining all the good feelings I had for you being such a good helper. (I got a picture, ha!)

After a few hours, Owen was finally in a really good mood and enjoyed playing in the water, hooray!!

It was worth the struggle. Owen, you make a cute little tadpole.

Round and round the lazy river we went...

Hooray, for family time! I did something with the kids, go me!

This why it's called the lazy river -

Around 5:20, I decided it was close enough to closing time (6pm) so okay, let's get ready to go. I get Owen and Daniel dressed (kinda - just took off the wet swimsuits and put on diapers), we gather up all the towels. You survived, Hyrum. Good job. One more picture.

Look at that scowl, lol. Natalie's looking at the waterpark map.

Ok, selfie pic with me and D. (Smile, Hyrum!) Ok, yay, good job team. Let's head out.

I texted Corey on the way home. He ran to the store for some food for dinner. After I got home, I got a text from a neighbor inviting us over for an impromptu BBQ. We had already eaten, but we decided to go over for fun and visiting. You could tell the kids had gotten a lot of sun. I should have done a half time re-sunblocking on us all. Oh well. I did have them covered up well for the high noon hours. Hopefully burns won't be too bad. At the neighborhood bbq, the kids loved the zip line in our neighbors back yard.

Wee!

I think we need to get ourselves one of these. We've got the trees and the space for it. The wheels are turning in Corey's head...

Abi's turn.

Kids playing on the trampoline.

Wes got a little stuck, he tried to run the zipline back to the top. Yeah, that doesn't work.

We have great neighbors and there are lots of kids for everyone to play with.

I'm glad we went over for the bbq rather than winding down in front of a movie, as was the kids' request on our drive home from the waterpark. Daniel and Owen driving little hot wheel cars along the small brick wall...

It was a great day. A lot of work, but great. I've been wanting to get out with the kids, but haven't had the energy until now. I've been taking iron supplements for over a week now and the anemia is under control, let's make the most of these last weeks of summer break.