Fort Buenaventura

A couple Saturdays ago we went to Ogden to Fort Buenaventura. It was kind of lame. We thought it was the free day but we were a week early. The kids had fun exploring the teepees and the fort and then we walked some of the trails and the kids played in the river. They even saw a snake in the river catch a fish and some guy came over and showed them a frog that he had caught so that was pretty cool. Anyway, here are some pics from our daytrip.

Checking out the teepees

Climbing in the trees

The not-so-exciting fort (a replica of the real fort that used to be there)

Checking out the lake

It's good to get out and see some things even if sometimes they end up being kind of lame.

One Good Reason . . .

not to let your son use his birthday money to buy a sticker book with over 500 stickers . . .




The headboard of his bed:

The footboard of his bed:

The front of the bunkbed:

Even the boards that hold the top bunk up:

Seems like a good purchase to me. And he still has about 50 stickers left to put up. Probably on the walls or somewhere else I wouldn't want them to be. One good thing though, it did keep him occupied for a good hour and a half the day after he bought them.

Halfway to One

Sweet Sarah is six months old already! She is so much fun to have in our family! She is really a happy, pleasant baby most of the time. She is starting to sit up by herself a little bit, although I am always right there to catch her because she usually doesn't stay up for very long. The other kids just adore her and they are always trying to make her laugh. She likes going for walks in her stroller and being in the saucer or highchair (or pretty much anywhere that she can be up and see what is going on around her.) She is still really droolly, but no teeth yet. She loves touching hair and fabric. She gets all excited when I take her in my closet and she can touch all the clothes. She really likes touching Robby's hair too and he is good to put up with her pulling it. She is napping pretty well now, sleeping around an hour and a half to two hours a lot of the time. She is still getting up once a night to eat most nights but I'm hoping that I can start phasing that out soon. She has slept through the night a couple of times already. She is such a good baby!

Sitting up by herself

I took her to the doctor yesterday for her six month check up and he said she is doing very well. She is healthy and growing like she should be. I was a little concerned about her weight since she has only gained just over a pound in two months (and she dropped from 58% at two months, and 33rd % at four months), but the doctor said he's not worried about it yet. We'll see if the trend is continuing at her 9 month visit.
Her stats: Weight: 14 pounds 3 oz 17%
Length: 25.75 inches 54%
Head: 42.5 cm 50%
I'm so glad to have such a healthy, happy, beautiful baby girl.

New Dishwasher and Sarah's First Cereal

Last Monday was a very exciting day for me. My parents got a new dishwasher and they brought us their old one! It is honestly one of the most exciting things that has happened to me in a long time because our old one wasn't draining right so I have been handwashing all our dishes for about three months. Let me just say how grateful I am for modern technologies that make my life SOOOO much easier!! Thanks again Mom and Dad for the dishwasher and for helping us get it installed. It has made me so happy!

Yay!!!

Also on Monday Sarah had her first taste of rice cereal and she LOVED it! Most babies make a funny face and spit it out for the first few tries but not Sarah. She ate the whole bowl full.

Her first bite

Deciding what to make of this new food

Mmmmm . . . give me some more of that!

A few days later she tried oatmeal and she loves that too.

Cute little messy face

Pineview

Last Monday we took the kids to Pineview to fish and play in the water. They just love it up there. We decided to try a different beach this time and I think I like the other one better. This one looks like it used to have some sort of fence or something along the shoreline, but now it is just the posts. Weird.


Robby fishing.


Sarah and me hanging out in the shade watching everyone play.

Cute Savannah

Isaac fished for a few minutes but then he wanted to play in the water.

The kids found logs and used them as boats. They had so much fun!

Making a sandcastle

Checking out the beach across the other side

Here's a couple of videos of the kids playing in the water. Enjoy!

Waters Reunion

After Zions we drove to St. George and stayed in a hotel. Friday morning we got up and had breakfast and then we went swimming in the hotel pool. I think this was the kids' favorite part of the trip. I must admit it is right up there on my list as well. The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and the water temperature was just right. It was so relaxing to swim for awhile before getting back in the car. Once again Sarah was not so impressed with swimming. She was wary but OK for a few minutes and then she started crying. Luckily for me Robby wasn't sure he wanted to swim anyway so he took her back to the room for a nap while I got to enjoy the pool with the other kids.

I did make sure to get a picture this time of Sarah in her swimsuit. The light wasn't so good in the hotel room, but you can still see how cute she is.

After we all got cleaned up and packed up we loaded back in the van and we decided to make a quick side-trip to see the St. George temple. It is beautiful! But I think it was about 130 degrees out there and we just about melted by the time we got back in the van. (Thank goodness once again for the air conditioned van!!)

After a quick stop at Walmart in Cedar City we headed up the canyon to the lodge where the family reunion with Robby's family was held.

The lodge up Cedar canyon

We spent most of Friday watching people arrive (we were the first ones there), getting our tent set up, exploring the lodge and surrounding area and catching up with the others as they came.

Friday night Robby and his dad went up the road a mile or so to a pond to see where to go fishing the next day and the fish were really jumping so he came back and got the poles and Isaac (Will wanted to stay and roast hot dogs and marshmellows and play with his cousins) and went back up to fish for awhile. I wish he would have taken the camera with him because on his first cast he caught a fish! He let it go because he thought he would catch a lot more since he caught one on the first cast but unfortunately he didn't catch anything else. A few minutes later he heard Isaac announce that he had caught a fish. Robby didn't think he really had but he told him to reel it in and he went over to check and he really had caught a fish all by himself! He was soooo excited about it! It was a small one so Robby threw it back not realizing that Isaac would be upset about that but by the time he realized that he wanted to keep it the fish was too far away.
Isaac was really excited and proud to tell me about it anyway when they got back to the lodge.

On Saturday we got up and had breakfast and then Robby's aunts had a bunch of stuff planned for the kids. They went on a little nature walk, made whirly birds (a little wooden propeller thing), did a pinata and had a scavenger hunt. The kids were in heaven the whole time with so many kids to play with and being able to spend three days straight with their cousins.

Making whirly birds

While the kids were playing some of the adults participated in the horseshoe contest. I watched Robby throw a couple of times but then I had to go feed Sarah and unfortunately this is the only picture I got of that.

The mad-dash for candy after the pinata broke.

Savannah's booty from the scavenger hunt.

Isaac got some good stuff too.

Will was really sweet and let someone else who didn't get one have his orange bag.

We were planning on going for a hike and doing some fishing on Saturday afternoon but mother nature had different plans. After lunch a HUGE storm rolled in. I couldn't believe how much rain was coming down. Thank goodness we were in the lodge. Then I remembered that earlier that morning I had zipped the window of the tent down a little bit so I could check on Sarah while she napped in there and I hadn't zipped it back up. I was just going to leave it until after the storm but Robby was worried about all our stuff getting wet so he put on his poncho and ran out there to check. The stuff right under the window was a little wet, but not too bad. The bad part was that there was about 5 gallons of water on either side of the roof of the tent. Robby tried to push the canvas up to let the water drain off but the tent pole couldn't take the pressure and it bent causing the whole tent to collapse. We rescued what stuff we could but a lot of our stuff got wet. Luckily the lodge had a washer and dryer so we were able to dry our clothes and we hung our sleeping bags and pads up to dry. Robby's aunt Susan was such a sweetheart and offered us her bedroom to sleep in that night.

Our poor collapsed tent.

Needless to say, no hiking or fishing took place that afternoon. Things cleared up by dinner time though so Robby took Will (who was regretting his decision to not go fishing the night before) up to fish for a little while. After we had some dinner we got to enjoy a very entertaining talent show. I didn't get any pictures though. It was pretty funny to see Robby's dad and his brothers and sisters entertain the group. Robby's grandpa who is 90 something even sang a song for us. It was great!

On Sunday we had some breakfast and got everything cleaned up to go home. We took some group pictures and then we took some pictures of just Robby's family since it was the first time in 5 years that we have all been together. I'm hoping to get copies of these from Robby's sister Jessica soon and then I'll post them here. It was so fun to all be together and catch up.

We drove home the back way by going up Cedar Canyon and then up Highway 89 until we got to Panguitch and then we drove back West to I15 and home. It was a long drive but the kids were pretty good.

The view from the top of Cedar canyon.

We saw a deer at the Duck Creek campground.

We stopped for lunch at a park in Panguitch and the kids had fun playing with their cousins for one last time before they had to go back to Virginia.

We were going to travel the whole way with the group but we were getting worried about getting the rental car back in time so we left the group in Panguitch and hurried on home. After we dropped off the car (which was on time luckily) we saw the most beautiful sunset. I was taking the pictures as we were driving which is far from ideal but you can still get the idea.

It was such a fun trip! It was sad to come home and know that we probably won't see a lot of the family for a long time. I'm so glad we got to spend some time together though.

Zion National Park

Last Wednesday night we met Robby's dad at the rental car place and he used some vouchers he had to rent us a van with air conditioning for our trip to southern Utah. (Thanks so much Bill! I think we would have died in St. George if we had been in our van) We slept at their house on Wednesday night and then we drove down together with Robby's parents, one of his brothers and his family and one of his sisters and her family on Thursday morning. It was fun traveling together but it was kind of slow going. We stopped in Beaver for lunch and then headed on to Zion National Park for the rest of the day.

Our rental van with air conditioning.


This was my view for most of the trip down. Robby's parents bought a nice new camper that they used for this trip.



Mostly happy kids watching a DVD and enjoying the ride. (Sorry you can't see Isaac. I did take a picture of him too but it turned out blurry.)

The mountains down there are incredible!

Sarah all ready to go for a hike. I forgot to bring her a hat so she got to wear mine. Although it was kind of cloudy so she didn't end up really needing it.

Riding the bus to the trail.

Jaimee and her girls. Jaimee is due in 5 weeks so I'm really impressed that she hiked at all.

Lisa holding Gabriel, Jaimee's husband Scott and Richard behind them.

We decided to do the Emerald Pools hike and it was a really fun one. It was so humid though! It didn't even feel like we were in Utah anymore. We were all just dripping wet by the end.

Will and Isaac hiking up the trial.

Savannah at the highest pool.

Isaac, Rebecca and Analeigh playing in the sand.

Sarah did great. She fell asleep for part of the way.

View from the top Emerald Pool.

Our family at the middle pool.

The whole group (minus Sarah and me).

The view from the visitors center on our way out of the park.

We had such a great day hiking and being with the family.