Trip to Utah

We went on a road trip to Utah earlier this month. We ended up leaving several hours later than we had intended on somehow. One of our rest stop stops had Jeremiah in heaven with the rocks and sand to play with. And Isaac was thrilled with the viewing scopes. We were stopped (resting?) for a good 15 minutes, and those boys seemed perfectly happy to be there all day long.

While we were in Utah, we celebrated Bill's wedding!, played with cousins and visited with family, and I took the kids to BYU. It was a great weekend!

On the way home, we camped just outside of Zion National Park. It was beautiful. Enjoying my children enjoying nature is right up with teaching them to love books, two of my absolute favorite parts of my life.

The Button Bag

Jeremiah brought home the Button Bag. He sorted the buttons by color.


And then he took a picture of his buttons. :)

Jeremiah's Birthday!

Here are Jeremiah's birthday pictures, just a couple of months late. Though he HAS been trying to convince us that his birthday is on Halloween. :)



It's always a bit tricky to get him to cheese it up for the camera...especially when there are infinitely more interesting things to be doing, like:

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!!

And, feeding Buzz the brown cake with brown frosting which was specifically requested and left uneaten by the birthday boy.


Opening his birthday presents! Very exciting. :)



And, lastly, blowing out his candles. Watch for the victory arms in the darkness.

Bed-Time

I think things are going to be changing around here. I get really cranky around 7:25, which makes our hopeful 8 o'clock bedtime...well, not the happiest time.

But, for some reason, our kids absolutely adore reading in their beds, which I discovered last night. So, if they can stay in their beds, they can read for a few minutes. I was originally thinking maybe for 10 minutes, at 8.

Now, though. Since they seem to like reading in their beds so much. (No other reason, of course!)

Maybe, if they wanted to read for say, half an hour, why not? They can go to their beds at 7:30, and then read for 30 minutes. I'm okay with that.

A good, solid way to encourage avid readers would be to let them stay up later with a book. Which is pretty much the same as going to bed earlier with a book, right?

I melt when I listen to little voices reading. And hearing three little voices at the same time? Priceless.

Important-Urgent

John was making and organizing his to-do list. I decided to use the old Covey method to help him. The 2x2 of important/not important, urgent/not urgent. 8 were in the important-urgent square, 1 was in the important-not urgent square. Hmm. Not so balanced here, I think.

He was so helpful, and just colored in the 2x2 for me. The things I do are either important-urgent, or not-important-not-urgent. :) Like decorating our blog...not-important-not-urgent. I'm not certain where cleaning, cooking, preparing, transporting, and such fall. Those are things that always can be done and should at some point, but dishes have more of a gray area between important and not, and urgent and not. I think my life sort of falls in a box around the intersection of the 2x2.

Yosemite!

I took the kids to Yosemite for an extended family camping trip (it's annual, but I haven't been able to go for almost 10 years, so the kids have never gone), and while we were there we went on two beautiful hikes. The first was to see the Big Trees. And boy, were they big.

Isaac went ahead with the faster majority of our group, and Alecia and my mom stayed with me, Jeremiah and Danielle. Everything fascinated them. Here's Jeremiah loving slowly walking across a wooden bridge.

Me and Jeremiah in front of the Fallen Tree.

Danielle pointing to show us how big the trees are!
Alecia "hiking" with Danielle.

Two cute kiddos "fishing" in a small stream.

Danielle asked her aunt if she could pick up the big pinecone. And if she asks so sweetly, of course the answer is going to be "Yes." But when she picked it up, it was covered with sap!

Jeremiah hiding inside a tree.

The Grizzly Giant.


Standing with the kids in the Tunnel Tree.


The boys sitting quietly with their sticks while we took a water break. (Prior to sitting quietly with sticks, I'll just say that they weren't sitting quietly with sticks and there were threats involved.)



The other hike we went on was to Lower Yosemite Falls, just me, my kids and my parents.


Upper and Lower Falls.

Holding hands with Grandpa.

Isaac an Grandpa kept getting ahead of us slow pokes, so they missed out on the very close and personal deer sighting. She was timidly grazing in the forest, and then suddenly leaped across the path. Stunning.
An up-close view of the Lower Falls.
Grandpa making Jeremiah crack up: It's getting me! Aaah!


A half-hearted attempt at a family picture.
Touching a huge rock that the path went around.
And Grandma, always at the end, with her princess. :)

Summer Reading Program

The three kids all participated in our library's summer reading program this past summer. We loved going to the library to choose new books and get new prizes every week. I wanted them to be finished with the program prior to leaving for Yosemite and Utah, and they did it! Isaac and I read the first Harry Potter book together, which I consented counted as 5 stars, but other than that, every star he earned was for a book that he read by himself. I read aloud to Jer and Danielle, so, I didn't enter any books for myself. There was a lot of reading going on!

We also had swim lessons for the boys. They pretty much lived in their swim trunks throughout May and June. In their library prizes pictures, you have permission to notice their cute suits and swim shoes. :)