The "Gray Gun"

We stopped in Gunnison on our way to Sevier Co. today so Darryl could stop and have the Dr. hopefully get rid of a wart on his foot. The boys and I went to the park to play while we waited. We spent a majority of our time on this, the "gray gun," as the boys call it. They had so much fun pretending to shoot things and make it work. They also had fun climbing all over it; Kade started climbing out to the ends of the barrels but I caught him before he got there-- Mom sucks the fun out of everything! I swear Kade would climb the Chrysler building if it was in front of him. :) I did get a picture of him on his way down. It's amazing to me how intriguing and wonderful and old artifact can be to small boys--I'm sure the fact that it is linked to things exploding plays a big role as to why they're so attracted to it.

"Run a Mile"

Kade and Clint get on these kicks where they come up with something and then they do it daily. Their kick this week: "We need to go run a mile." They run up and down the street until they've had enough. The other night they did it while I was making dinner and 30+ min. later I went to check on them and they were still running. They run up to the top of the street until they reach the stop sign. They take a little break and then they run back down, again another little break, and then they head back. I love these two!

Love the Farm Life

Grandma's neighbor has a little "farm" in her back yard. They have a few goats, a steer, a dog, and a lot of chickens. The neighbor let the kids come and feed the baby goats. The boys couldn't quit giggling. The goats were so hungry that they drank their bottles very quickly and then they would follow the boys around trying to find more food-- so cute. Then the kids convinced Grandma to pull them on the sled behind the 4-wheeler. What a treat that is for them. Cole got to get in on the fun this time and according to his smile and shrills of excitement he thought it was great!

Spring Break

It sounds like we joined the rest of the Heber Valley and spent one of the evenings at the Kamas Pool. I swear that pool would be empty if they built one in Heber(everyone on the sign in is always from Heber when I go). On Thursday our Pass of All Passes paid for themselves on our trip to Trafalga. We had a great time. The highlight for Kade was laser tag and the go carts. Clint's favorite part was, "Laser tag. The go carts too. And everything!" Cole's highlight was going down the stairs while we waited for the boys during their laser tag games, and riding on the merry-go-round(wish I had a picture of him doing that!) He also enjoyed pretending to play the car racing video game. I loved seeing the boys faces lit up all day. It was super cute too when their airplane ride was over and Clint was panicked because he was still buckled in and he couldn't undo it; Kade ran over to give him a hand. I'm writing this post about a week after and every day since we went to Trafalga the boys have recited parts of the instructional video you watch before playing laser tag. They will also sporadically say things like, "That was a great day at Trafalga." I love watching them enjoy life! We hit Tepanyakis on the way home. The boys LOVED everything about it this time. We haven't gone for a year or so and when we use to go the boys were pretty scared of the cooks and the fires. Every day after they asked if they could eat some more of "that food."

kids say the darndest things

We went for a bike ride tonight and while we rode through the cemetery Clint said, "It will sure be hard to breathe when you're dead." Darryl replied, "It's okay you won't need to breathe." "Oh ya, because you're dead!"

I surprised him!

In the past 10 years I've racked my brain trying to think of ways to surprise Darryl. He seems to surprise me every Christmas, birthday, Valentine's day, "Wife's Day," etc. It's really hard to surprise him though because if there is something that he needs/wants he usually just gets it. Well today I succeeded in surprising him--it was more of a complete shock. :) I've been wanting to do something to our bedroom for a long time but if you know me it's hard for a myriad of reasons. A few of the major reasons are: I'm a tight wad, I can't justify spending time and money on a room we're rarely in, and I'm not an interior designer so I don't know what I want. Well bedroom sets were on a super sale and I found one that I kind of liked and had the thought to get pillows in the different color and then paint the walls that color. It turned out great-- much better than the before that's for sure. We've always had a plain jane bedroom but no more! My only regret is I didn't get a before picture so I did a quick edit job in paint so you could kind of get an idea of how drastic the change was. Darryl was gone on a 5 day trip so I spent the first day getting the paint and taping, the next night after all the kids were to bed the painting began. I did let the boys paint a little. They asked constantly if they could help and I told them yes but our ideas were completely different. I only let them paint a small section and then I painted over it--not when they were in there. When I said they could help they thought I meant they could paint a whole wall, so they were a little disappointed. They were so excited each day to see the changes. When Darryl returned they said, "Dad you've got to come and see our surprise for you! You will be so surprised." I'd hung a few pictures that have been sitting around forever(like over a year), so Darryl said, "Oh ya that looks nice." "No in here Dad!" He rounded the corner to the bedroom and said, "Wow! That is a surprise." He didn't have the 'I love it!!!!!!!!!!' reaction I anticipated but he sincerely said he liked it. I think a few people that knew about the project were worried that I was painting our room purple without his input. I knew he liked the deep purple so I figured it would be okay. Kade says it is, "so different." And Clint says it, "sure looks good."

Robot Construction

The boys get some idea in their head and they run with it for days. Their latest is that they need to make robots out of cardboard boxes. They cut the boxes into pieces of various sizes and then they started the assembly. When Kade started Clint said, "I know Kade! You can make a robot that will clean our room!" I said if they were going to do that they needed to make one to clean the whole house. :) Today we had the Sluga boys over and so they got in on the robot making today. I'm sure Andrea was thrilled to have a life-size robots(mass of cardboard, tape, straws, string, and pipe cleaners) invade her house. I love when they come up with these things!

General Conference--And the Red Knoll

We spent the weekend in Redmond with Darryl's family. General conference is always great but this weekend I watched more than usual because the boys were busy playing with all of the treasures at Grandma's house. It was an especially great trip because Saturday after the last session Darryl, his dad, Kade, and Clint all went and hiked the Red Knoll. The boys couldn't quit talking about it. They asked to go again Saturday night and again on Sunday. Darryl was pretty enthused with their reactions because the Red Knoll is where he spent most of his childhood. I'm sure there will be more hikes on all of our subsequent trips.
I love this picture. It really captured the weekend of conference. Grandpa sword fighting Clint while playing peek-a-boo with Cole. Grandpa was a busy guy those 2 days. Cole spent most of his time on that trampoline. He would start crying because he wanted to get off the trampoline but the instant he was almost off the trampoline he would begin the process of climbing back on. He loved to hold on the bar and jump, and holler at whom ever was sitting on the couch. By Sunday he was getting brave and he would let go of the bar and jump-- he was so proud of himself.

April Fools!

My boys got their first introduction to April Fools Day today. I've never done anything with it and so the boys had never even heard of it. Wendy invited us over for their traditional April Fools Day dinner. It was a ton of fun. I really should take up that tradition. She started by serving us "chunky kitty barf"(it was really an angel hair spaghetti casserole with chunks of vegetables. Then we got our drinks-- they were solid!(It was orange jello). James was so funny he was perplexed by the drink for 10 min. Dinner was followed by dessert, spaghetti and meatballs! She baked a chocolate zucchini cake for the bottom of the dish and then did strands of icing that looked like spaghetti noodles all over the top of the cake. She topped that off with Ferrero Rocher chocolate balls and then used seedless jam for the sauce. It really looked like spaghetti and meatballs. The boys said no thank you until they tried it, then they wanted more!

Cole loves animals!

We went to the duck pond today with Raquel and Jayden-- I'm so thankful for beautiful days! Cole just screams some kind of gibberish any time he sees an animal. He was so excited about the ducks-- he wasn't excited about me sitting him down and stepping away from him to take a picture. The boys had a grand time playing some sort of adventure game on the playground. Kade is such a monkey. He has this intense desire to be on top of the highest thing in the room. He spent most of his time climbing on top of the tube slide and on top of the railings of the playground equipment. Clint and Kade have been attached to their walkie-talkies lately. I let them take them along and so they played a little bit with them. I don't know why it is still fun to them because they mainly just push the annoying call button and then say, "It's an emergency. It's an emergency." Funny kids. We went into the visitor center and checked out the wild life museum there. I finally snapped a picture of Cole yelling his gibberish to a beaver.