Gatorland!

I've never seen so many alligators!  The only alligator I've actually been near has been the white alligator they had at the zoo a couple years ago.  Well I saw a few white alligators and over a hundred other alligators today.  It was so amazing to see how lethargic they seem.  A few times we got to see them more active when they were dangling chicken over them and when we were throwing chunks of meat to them but overall they are pretty slow moving.  It was interesting to me how they would just be totally content laying on top of one another.  We paid to feed the gators.  This seemed uneventful until they had us pose in front of the gators for a photo.  Our nerves were a little on edge.  You can see in the photos we freaked out a few times before finally calming down to get the photo.  It was just so unnerving because you couldn't see what those big guys were doing behind you and the one directly behind us had been pushed back at least a dozen times because he kept getting too close.  He was determined to get where we were and so we were a little scared.  We also paid to get our picture taken while sitting on a gator--which reminds me I never got that from Megan :(.   I wasn't thinking it was as thrilling as it sounded until the little girl in front of me straddled the gator like everyone before her and it started flailing.  They quickly removed her and calmed it down and then got a different alligator to sit in the photos.  That made me a little nervous to go saddle up. :)  They also had some exotic birds that were very fun to see.  I'd never seen a flamingo before and so that was really fun to see a whole flock of them.  There were a few little birds, I'm not sure what kind they were, that hung out with the alligators and would even walk on them.  I was shocked to see that the alligators didn't even attempt to eat them.  They didn't care at all that they were right in front of them.  Speaking of birds, we were walking along and a peacock just appeared in front of us.  He fanned out his feathers and strutted, and spun around.  We were laughing talking about how neat it was that he was trained to put on this show and one of the workers interrupted us and said he was a wild peacock he was just putting on a show because a wild hen was behind us.  We turned around and sure enough we were in the middle of the love birds.  One thing was a sad reality was to see some of the gators chewed up from other gators.  The workers said they often get gators that are just more aggressive and so they have to isolate them or move them to another facility.  

Florida Leadership Training

Going to spend the next week with these amazing ladies and 20 other amazing people.  We are in Orlando, Florida for a Redmond Leadership retreat.  We will have discussions, visit new sights, and eat amazing food cooked by Chef Ryan.  Our home for the week is an incredible home that they are just renting.  It is more extravagant than I could have imagined.  So grateful for this opportunity. 

Story time

This is a bird's eye view of a story time at the library.  We're not in the photo but we were there as we are almost every week.  It is hard to believe that for the past 5+ years we have been going to laugh and learn with Ms. Sally every Wednesday morning.  I started going with Kade and Clint and now we've just been trudging in with Cole.  We often take Alex Spencer with us too since we watch him while Wendy works on Wednesday mornings.  They sing songs, do actions, read a story, do silly things(like get dressed wrong), and talk about letters.  Unfortunately Cole has hit the age where story time isn't as great as it use to be.  I think it is because he is going to school now and so it is just a little too much to do story time and school so he has lost his desire to go. :*(  It is hard to think that we're passed this phase of life.

1st try!

Darryl wanted to let Clint try the slopes so they went night skiing after school.  He chose to try skiing even though he does really well on the snowboard toy when we go to the sledding hill.  Darryl told him that if he crashed it would be less painful and that was all he needed to say.  He did really well for his first try and loved every minute of it.

Is It Spring Yet?

The lack of snow this year has made us feel like we should be able to play outside and do various outdoor activities, like play-dough.  The boys were insistent that they would be just fine playing outside and so they marched out in their coats.  They looked cold but seemed to have a great time.

Happy Birthday to Kade!

We had an early birthday dinner for Kade.  Kade requested we go somewhere that would sing to him on his birthday.  After polling everyone on Facebook, we found that Don Pedros would definitely sing and so that became our destination.  There was only one night this week that we could go out to eat so we celebrated a few days early at Don Pedros.  Kade loved the song and the tiny sombrero he got to wear.  Kade also got a special treat because Wendy was in Park City at some conferences so she made the trip over to Heber to go to dinner with us.  It's always fun when Aunt Wendy comes!

Darryl and Kade hit the slopes at Park City Mtn. Resort this morning to celebrate Kade's birthday.  By the afternoon they were wore and so they came home for lunch and then Kade went to school.  Kade fell pretty hard and so it took some of the fun out of it but after a few days he was talking about going snowboarding again.  Hard to believe I've got a 10 year old.  Happy Birthday to my awesome buddy!  This year Kade started voice lessons(which he loves), improved immensely on his repeating back-handsprings, and decided he likes football.  He has always wanted nothing to do with football because he didn't want to get tackled.  This year he has been playing football at recess with a group of guys in his class. He says he's pretty good at it and likes it.  He may be giving up his soccer shoes for football cleats.  Kade auditioned for his first musical and got the leading boy role.  We were a little surprised he got the role because he's done theater before but not surprised based on his ability.  He rocked the audition.  He sang perfectly and was full of energy--  kind of a shoe-in. Though I was worried he'd stress out about having practices so often and for so long my worries were soon resolved when he would run out of rehearsal, jump in the car, and tell me all the fun stories of rehearsal.  Kade has finally gotten a little more "at home" with the friend situation on this side of town.  He enjoys playing with the Spencer Ailshie, Allen Butterfield, and Zack Woodland.  I'm just excited that he seems to be settling in to the new area more this year.

Kade was excited to share his cake with the Nance cousins.  They came to Heber for a Redmond activity on Friday night so the boys got to hang out and have pizza, and cake-- epic! :)

Kade's stats this year are:

Height: 51"

Weight: 61 lb.

We gave him a chemistry set and his much hoped for lava lamp.  The grandparents gave him money which was exactly what he was hoping they would give him.  He had big plans!  He wanted to go buy an airsoft gun.  Darryl and I had been a little opposed to him having one just because we've seen damage done to our and neighbors fences from the guns.  We learned a little more about them and found out there are varying FSP (feet per second) on each gun.  This made us much more open to him having one as long as it isn't the most powerful gun out there. ;)  He spent the money as soon as we could get to the store.  He bought a pack that came with 2 guns and some extra ammo-- such a bargain shopper.  :)

Just Chillin' Gym Meet

Kade and I ran up to the Utah Olympic Oval arena this afternoon for his gym meet.  When we got there they had run Kade's double-mini group early so we had a little moment of panic but they ran him through the next group and it all worked out.  He ended up taking 1st in Double Mini, and Trampoline and 2nd on Floor.  The best part of the meet was when he was on trampoline he did his routine and then just kept doing tricks.  He realized it suddenly so he stopped, saluted, looked at the judges and said, "I don't know what I was doing!"  The judges were laughing pretty hard, one of the judges is one of his coaches and so she really laughed because she knows what a crackup Kade can be.  The funny didn't stop there.  During the awards when they announced Kade in 1st place he marched up onto the podium and looked at the announcer totally puzzled and during his salute he held his arms open saying, "What?  I messed up BIG TIME. What?  How did I get 1st. I totally messed up."  The judges used his ending and just judged his pass not all the extra he did and his score was more than the other boy so he took 1st.  Pretty funny.  I just felt bad for the other kid because I thought that sure would be awful to have someone say they messed up and they did better than you.

He competed level 6 on Double Mini and scored 27.3, 27.1; 54.4

level 6 on Trampoline but I don't know what his score was :(  I think it was like 27

level 5 on Floor 28.1, 27.1; 55.2

{heart} attack

For our Young Women activity tonight we gave 9 people in our neighborhood a heart attack.  The girls cut out a bunch of hearts and put messages on some of them and then taped them all over their doors.  I thought the doors turned out super cute.  I should have taken a picture of the girls though because they were flying high on good feelings.  They were so happy and when we were done they said they wanted to keep doing everyone in Heber.  Unfortunately that would take A TON of hearts and we didn't have anymore.  Maybe we'll expand and do more next year.  I love activities like these.  That night just before I went to bed I got a text from the owner of this door that said she cried when she saw her door.  She thanked us repeatedly for making her feel loved and so happy.  Ah, good day.

Body Worlds and The Leonardo

Darryl had some friends, Dan and Diana, who were in town preparing for a retreat they were going to be holding this month.  He invited them to stay at our place until the retreat.  Dan happened upon free tickets to the Body Worlds exhibit and offered us some.  Darryl and I have seen the exhibit a couple times but we thought it might be interesting to take the boys.  They were pretty fascinated and grossed out all at the same time.  It was so amazing to them to realize what is going on under their skin.  We walked through the exhibit rather quickly just because the boys weren't really interested in readying any of the information.  They discovered a lot and talked about how great it was to go for days.  After we finished waling through the exhibit we went upstairs in The Leonardo where they have a kids discovery museum.  They went into the science room and were so excited by the transistor with the electric current buzzing up and down the wires.  They also loved the science experiment they did with the worker there where they took two chemical compounds and make two different compound which resulted in gummy worms-- such an awesome experience for them.  They were especially excited about this because they were pretty familiar with the elements the lady talked about.  They have had many discussions lately with Darryl about sodium chloride and dihydrogen monoxide.  The discussions mainly started because Darryl often uses the "NaCl Man" for his screen name when he plays games.  So when the lady said she was going to take sodium alginate and add it to calcium chloride. The boys were all excited to talk about sodium and calcium.  They were even more excited when after the chemical reaction they had "gummy worms" (calcium alginate), and sodium chloride, NaCl!  They also had a great time messing around with the green screen as you can see in the photos below.

Cole's Cute Picture

In primary Cole drew this depiction of the First Vision of Heavenly Father, Jesus, and Joseph Smith.  It was just so cute because he was so proud of it and ran into the Young Women room to show me and had to tell show it to everyone he saw.  Such a cute kid.