The Dinosaur Park+Megan's House

We finally got to see Megan and her kids! We went with them and Andrea's fam to the Dinosaur Museum, and it was so great!

We love this place. It is perfect for my kids right now. Every few feet Will would say, in his slow-motion speech, "WOAH! WOAH!" And then point/jab at the big dinosaur until I looked. It was pretty adorable. Love that boy. 

Mom, Lynnaea, Molly, Devaney, Ruthie, Kiersten, Will, me, Anders

Ruth has been asking to play with Devaney since we moved away. She's probably one of the few people that Ruth hasn't forgotten. Ruth even talks to her in our bathroom mirror. So I was REALLY happy when they hit it off great and played together all day. They even held hands as they walked. Sweetest thing ever.

In the above picture Kiersten is toting Molly along. She did that all day long. It brought back SOOOO many memories for me. She is ten, which is how old I was when I had just a couple of nieces (and pretty soon a couple of nephews) and they were just MY babies. I feel like I played with Olivia and Danica more than my older siblings! It was who made me excited to come home from school and wave to and play with! It was just like a little time travel mirror to see her so excited about a baby and being in charge and helping out, and just everything. I couldn't get enough of watching her with my kids all day long. 

Will peering up.

Kiersten again.

I love that look on Will's face. Part terror, part awe.

Look, mom!

Those cutie patooties. 

They spent quite a bit of time digging up fossils. 

All of us watching the fossil digging. Miriam, Lynne, Megan, Oskar, Andrea, Clover, Molly, Mom 

Molly and Clover bonded a bit, it was fun. Clover is the closest girl-cousin in age to Molly. 

Molly is grandma's little girl. 

I don't know what grandma's magic trick is, but in the past week Molly has been eating double what she normally does, as well as sleeping SOOO much better. She has slept through the night a few time (UNHEARD OF) and the other nights only gotten up once. Whether its because she is in her own dark, dark room, or because she has finally hit that stage, I don't know. But we are NOT complaining over here.

I love this giant tree slide.

Will waving down. 

Ruthie and Devaney pow-wowing through the old dinosaur head. 

It was hot.

Will and Oskar! Three days apart! (Will had fun with the drinking fountain.)

Aunt Megan was so nice and bought fish food for all the kids to feed the fish with. They loved it. 

And then we all panned for gold for quite some time. Ruthie and Devaney and Anders had quite a stash going in an empty water bottle.

I LOVE this!!!!

This made me wish desperately for a brother for Will. They were HILARIOUS together!

When you give Will a stick, or a pool noodle, or any long weapon-ish thing, he immediately yells "HI-YAH!" Anders was happy to oblige and started "hi-yah"ing right back. Will thought this was AWESOME (Ruth usually just yells at him to stop it.) and got into this hilarious, gleeful mood and played sword fight for quite some time. The best was when Anders was just walking along, and Will started charging him from behind yelling "HI-YA---H!" only Anders didn't notice so I said "Anders! Watch out!" Right as Will's stick got within one inch of Anders back, Anders got this instantaneous speed and leaped forward and ran ahead. Will thought this was so FUNNY. He laughed and laughed. I love boys.

Since we hadn't been able to see Danica or Myles (they are old enough to have REAL summer jobs! How did this happen?!?! I am supposed to be the high school kid with a summer job playing with all the little kids at night!!!) we headed over to Megan's for a BBQ so we could say hi. All I have to say is Frozen car. Ruth was IN LOVE. REALLY? A FROZEN car??!!?! I don't think anything could be more magical for her.

Devaney is a great driver. But she was also super nice and let Ruthie give it a hand as well.

Again, Kiersten wins the day because instead of just taking Will around the yard, she spent at least an hour start-stopping with him and letting him learn how to drive. He was ECSTATIC. He still talks about the 'green cawr". The happiest. Oh yeah, he was not quite so great of a driver though. He ran into a bench and sent it right over! Haha.

We finally got to see Danica! Drive back to Miami with us again, please!?!?!

Can there be anything better than playing with this in your background?! 

I left this in to document Will's eye. A broom smashed it. Today he has a nice layer of eye shadow. Poor kid. I think that was partly why the start of swimming lessons was so rough. 

Will was laughing hysterically. I don't know why he got such a kick out of this. 

Molly loved it, too. She did her high-pitched squeal all around the yard the entire time, haha.

 It's so fun to be around everyone! I love that my kids are getting to know their cousins! Thanks for a great day everyone!

Tower Ride

After dropping Sterling off at the airport at 5am on Saturday morning, we were the lucky recipients of a delicious pancake breakfast from Grandma Cindy. Then the kids had to get in a few more quick minutes of jumping on the tramp before we headed back to Logan. Ruth wanted Grandma Cindy to come with us--if only she wasn't in school right now!

Once the kids had eaten lunch and Will and Molly went down for naps, dad and mom surprised me by finding a babysitter and I got to go on a ride with them! 

Somehow, in all my years of LIVING right here with them, I have only gone on the tower ride once. Luckily, I am now one of the 'visitors' and so I get treated to the ride. Haha. Is that how it works? We had a great time. My allergies started going CRAZY but it was well worth it. Everything is SO green and SO gorgeous right now!

My mom. So beautiful.

Grandpa Jack.

Mom and me.

Sterling and I want to live in Mt. Stirling some day.

Dad and me.

Then dad started getting a bit hilarious and mom started laughing...

Awwww. And then I got the best pictures of all time.

Then Dad made some comment about it taking three and a half hours instead of two because of all my pictures...ruff. But this was SOOO worth it!

Then, to top off the exciting adventure, we saw two MOOSE!!!!!! Mom thought I was being ridiculous and said "It's just a little deer." Until she turned and really looked at it. Hey, I'm not THAT much of a city-slicker!

A little baby moose. Dad said they were yearlings. So cute!!!!

In other news, Dad takes my kids riding almost every night. Will is in LOVE with Smokey, whom he calls "Pokey" and asks to ride from the minute he wakes up in the morning. Mom is amazing and bought my kids bikes at DI this morning for four bucks and we have been working on getting Ruthie to ride without training wheels--so fun!! The kids started swimming lessons this morning, which I will post about when I take my camera and Will doesn't cry the entire time (he fell in at the very start and was off his game the rest of the time, oops).  I guess Molly needed mom's country cooking because she has been eating like CRAZY lately and I feel like all I do is feed her. Which makes me think that she might not be nursing too much longer. But hey, it's been almost a year which means almost six months longer than my other kids! Yay! She's also standing solo for MUCH longer periods of time and I just can't wait to see those tiny little shrimpy legs walking all on their own! We FaceTime Sterling in D.C. a lot and that is fun. I got my wedding rings cleaned at S.E. Needham's today and they are so bright and shiny and beautiful! I love that! Mom had dad watch my kids yesterday and we went to a free Flag Day concert by the USU alumni band and a cache valley choir. Craig Jessop came at intermission and took over and after that the concert got AMAZING! SO AMAZING! I love going to music things with my mom because she enjoys it SO much. I really missed Sterling though because he would have LOVED it. Poor guy. But hey, he got to see the White House today, and that's something I've never seen, so all good things, right? That's all folks.