Just keep swimming....

Well, since my last post I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.  Travis FINALLY got the basement to where I could paint!  I was so glad to be rid of sheetrock dust for a day or two!!

We had a get together with some of the Muaghan family at my Uncle Darwin's house.  We managed to get a half way decent photo of my grandpa & all his boys!  Grandpa turned 86 this April and the last photo we have all him with his boys was probably at his 80th birthday party!

My kids have had MANY "movie nights".  They always fall asleep well before their movie is over.  Now that school starts in a few days I've banished them.  I seriously have no idea how my kids can sleep like this and not just hurt for a week after they wake up in the morning!

And the exciting news....
Yesterday after church we went out to Benson Marina with my in laws & Travis's brother's family.  The last time Travis took the kids out there with his parents Nash was learning how to knee board.  Yesterday they pulled him past me and he was not only knee boarding, but he had flipped the board around so he was facing backwards and was holding the rope behind him!  STINKER!  

And as if that wasn't enough....
He decided he wasn't going to let the water ski's get the best of him this time.  Last year he tried so hard to get up on the water ski's but couldn't quite do it.  Yesterday he managed to get up behind the jet ski!  At first Travis was in the water to help push him up.  After several attempts he was not only getting up and staying up, he was getting up without any help from his dad!  I told Travis he has to teach him to get up and ski on one before the kid can master the wake board!

 Uncle Chad with Brooke & Olivia.  The girls had so much fun "bobbing" with Uncle Chad!

I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of Nash up on the water ski's.  I was able to get this one of him after he was back in the water and decided he was done for the night.

After watching the crazy Nash, Brooke decided she too wants to knee board.  Travis asked the other kids, "Do you want to knee board?" and Brooke looks at him and pipes up, "I BOARD!"  Travis didn't hear her and asks the other kids, "Do you want to water ski?" and Brooke pipes up and says, "I SKI!"  I had to point it out to Travis before he heard her.  She sure thinks she's big & tricky!

Kash decided he couldn't let Nash show him up on the ski's so Travis helped Kash get up too.

I can't believe school starts in three days!  I'll have about a week and a half after the kids go back to get everything finalized for preschool.  The basement is painted and I'm waiting on Travis to put the lights up, trim out the doors/window & put the light switch covers on.  Then I can move everything down and set it up!  I won't have my wood floors yet - ran out of money.  We'll get them down as soon as we can though!  I will post pix of the basement once it's all set up and ready to go.  Then I get to go back to work at the kids' school the second week of September.  Should be a busy school year for all of us!

Caleb turns FIVE!

 It seems like Caleb can't possibly be five yet.  First of all, the kid is much smaller than other kids who are five.  He wears a 4T pants & they fall right off him!  He is a very smart little bugger for a kid his age though.  (Thanks for 2 years of preschool Miss Shannon!).  This year for his birthday he wanted all things dinosaur (and occasionally spiderman).  When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted this year I was told, "A T Rex." that came with an expression like "Duh, mom.  I can't believe you even had to ask!"  Lucky for me I found a T Rex cake pan!  I also put some cupcakes to work & made a no so long neck long neck dinosaur (that I also made for his birthday when he turned two).

We didn't celebrate with family until Monday, July 22 because that was the first day Travis was home.  We had our family over for cake and ice cream (and of course presents).  This kid was sure spoiled in the present department!
Uncle Chad & Aunt Shanah's clan got him all things school supply & a new school shirt.

Aunt Cass & Uncle Chad got him his very own bag of cheetos & a cool real skin dinosaur that has skin you can pull off the skeleton.

Sam bought him a magic volcano at the dinosaur park that when you filled the container up with water the volcano fizzed until the volcano was gone & you were left with a dinosaur.

Great Grandpa Russ knows Caleb all too well & got him a double barrel Nerf gun!  Now he'll be a two slingin' double barrel shotgun/Nerf gun maniac!  Great Grandma Ruth got him a book that has magnetic letters.

Grandma Terri & Grandpa Larry got him a new pair of wranglers, 2 dot to dot books (so he can be an extreme dot to dot maniac like Nash) and a book AND his most wanted item of the entire summer!  

The most wanted item of the summer is this sucker.  You fill it up with water & it fills up water balloons.  He's used it more than once already!

Grandma Kris & Grandpa Scott gave him this Ninja Turtle shirt and...a Lone Ranger LEGO set!  Boy was he excited about that LEGO set!  It even came from the LEGO store in San Diego!

The shirt Aunt Shanah & Uncle Chad gave him (Ninjago)

Mom & Dad gave him all the Land Before Time DVD's #s2-11, a dinosaur cup & a catch game with the velcro gloves.

 He had a good party & at the end of the party he even got to go home with Uncle Chad & Aunt Shanah's clan for a sleep over with his cousin Kash & his brother Nash.  It was his very first friend sleepover.  He was pretty stoked about it.

He is so excited to start Kindergarten in less than a month.  I hope that his excitement lasts through the year and that he isn't disappointed too much.  I know his teacher will do everything she can to make it exciting.  He has Mrs. C. Kendrick & she just goes a million miles an hour all the time. 

Happy birthday buddy!

Late Night With Rex

Last night I took all four kids to the Lehi Museum of Ancient Life to celebrate Caleb's birthday.  Every time we go to Manti he asks "When can we go to the bigger, better dinosaur park?"  So, I caved & we went!  I had been looking at their website & realized that Friday night they were holding their once a month Late Night With Rex.  It's more money ($110.00 for all five of us) but it was totally money well spent!

We arrived at about 5:30 pm & it didn't start until 6 pm.  So, we checked in & then went straight to the gift shop!  Good thing we did too because we never had another chance to get in there before they closed!

There were about 20 of us there for the late night so they divided us up into two groups.  We ended up with another mom & her 7 yo & two middle school aged girls.  We had two guides (both girls) that were a lot of fun & very knowledgeable about everything we were seeing and doing!
They have over 60 complete dinosaur skeletons at this dinosaur museum!  There are some you can touch & some to just look at.  They have some on loan from other places and some that are there all the time.  I thought this guy just inside the entrance was pretty cool.  He reminded me of our TJ :)

 The first thing we did in our group was go on a tour of the entire museum.  This museum is huge!  We spent about an hour on our tour & we weren't too pokie at any point in time!  This showed the kids what the sea floor would have been like.

Lots of cool trilobytes!

Any guesses on what this is?  I wouldn't have ever guessed it if they hadn't told me!

 It's fossilized squid!

They had recreated different things.  This showed the ocean life.  I was impressed with how well their recreations were done!

And this my friends, is exactly why I don't like to get in deep water that I can't see the bottom of!  I know it's a mostly irrational fear, but hey, I don't care to take my chances!

Caleb thought this spiny guy was cool.  He isn't a dinosaur but what we had in the period before the dinosaurs.

Caleb thought he was being tricky by making it look like he was holding up this dinosaur skeleton!

This stegosaurus was pretty cool.  They had some dinosaur era crocs laid out there like they were eating the stegosaurus.

The pelvis bone of a brontosaurs.  This thing was massive!

We walked under the Brontosaurus and weren't even close to being able to touch the rib cage!

We went into an area of the museum where you can see/learn about erosion.  The kids liked playing in this area.  They were making little islands & putting plastic dinosaurs on them so they were trapped on the island!

Caleb thought it was pretty cool he could actually sit on this dinosaur!

Caleb's favorite!  A T Rex!

Another T Rex

This was one of the fossils they had out that the kids could touch.

A massive sea turtle

A wooly mammoth.  Notice the human skeletons with the spears killing the mammoth?  I thought that was pretty cool.  If you look close you can see the mammoth kneeling on a human or two & crushing them to death!

After our tour we went into the palentology lab.  The kids got to take a fish fossil & use dental tools on it to carve around the fossil or put their name/date in it or whatever.  B was not a fan of the noise or the safety goggles!

We also got to make a plastic of paris cast.  The boys did a T Rex tooth, Sam did a raptor claw & B did a triolobyte.

Next up we made petroglyphs with a small nail & some tile like pieces.  Caleb insisted I draw a T Rex on his for him.

After our petroglyphs we each got a wooden triceretops puzzle to put together.  Yes, it was one of those 3-D puzzles!  Even B got her own puzzle.  She was more interested in coloring on a tile & pushing the stroller around though!

See what I mean about pushing the stroller?  Every time I picked up my camera or phone out of my purse she would get mad at me & make me put it back in my purse so she could push it around the room!

Caleb finished putting together his 3-D puzzle with the help of one of our nice guides.

After we finished up in the lab we had about ten minutes until we started our scavenger hunt.  So, we went into the area of the museum that is like a big sandbox where the kids got to use paintbrushes to uncover dinosaur fossils.

After we uncovered some dinosaur bones in the sand we went on our scavenger hunt.  I said this museum was huge.  I didn't realize how huge it was until we were running from one end of it to the other and back in a race against the other team!  At the end of the scavenger hunt the kids each got one of those styrofoam flyers that was shaped like a dinosaur.  AND, since our group finished first we got to launch them off the second floor of the museum into the giant brontosaurus while we waited for the other group to catch up!

After our scavenger hunt we got to watch a 3 D movie on a mammoth screen (like an IMAX screen).  Everyone voted on what movie they wanted to watch.  We ended up watching Titans of the Ice Age which was about mammoths.  It was kinda cool but as the older kids put it, it was "too educational mom."  They had wanted to see the Dinosaurs Alive movie but we got out voted so, next time!

We didn't leave the museum until 10:30 pm!  When we left I asked the kids if they had $110.00 worth of fun and got a resounding "YES!"  Nash even said, "I know where I want to go for my birthday next year mom!"  And, he also informed me that now he wants to be a paleontologist too.  (When we were on the tour we got to see the spot where the actual paleontologists work on uncovering dinosaur bones during the day.  They have one of those labs at the Ogden Dinosaur Park too and the paleontologist there sat & talked with my boys for a good 45 minutes last time we went.)  So, I'd say that all in all the evening was a huge success!