June 2014

It was Ryan’s birthday in June, so we did his traditional cheesecake party the weekend before. We had chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake, crème brulee cheesecake, and cookie butter cheesecake. We had a good turn out of friends!

On Ryan’s actual birthday the next week, me and the kids made him crepes for breakfast in bed, he got to open his presents, we went to BJ’s for dinner, and we watched Pacific Rim once the kids were in bed.

Pretty much all of the pictures I took this month were on vacation, so here is the last one (of the kids pretending to be ghosts together in one robe of mine):

This month Cora has still been very into The Little Mermaid, and picks it to watch most of the time. Now, if she finds a microphone of any kind, she will grab it and sing either “Part of Your World” or “Let It Go” at the top of her lungs. One time, we caught her combing her hair with a fork while waiting for dinner (just like Ariel does in The Little Mermaid).

Cora has started to frolic everywhere, like walking is too boring and dancing is better. I can’t wait to put her in dance next year!

Hyrum loves the baby in my belly, so he’ll always ask me if he can do things like “pet the baby” and “give baby a hug- the baby likes hugs.” It is very cute to watch him hug or pet my belly!

While on our trip, one of his little 2nd cousins started to tell Hyrum about cockroaches and that they crawled all over the house and Hyrum started full on bawling. He ran to me and told me he wanted to go home right then! When I told him we weren’t going home yet, he insisted that he wanted to sit in the room we were staying in with the door closed to keep the cockroaches away. Me and my cousin were only able to calm him down by telling him that to a bug, he is a giant, and bugs are scared of giants and will run away. So funny how deathly afraid of cockroaches he became!

Road Trip! Part 3

After Lehi, we headed to Rexburg, ID to visit my sister, Mindi. She is a professor at BYU-I, so the kids had fun playing in her office and drawing her some pictures:

While she had a class, me and the kids went around Hinckley gardens on BYU-I campus. It was beautiful! I keep describing it like a mini Thanksgiving Point, but free! The kids had a lot of fun exploring, and Hyrum wanted to go in every room of every building we went into.

That evening we went to the Rexburg Farmer’s Market, where I got some cool earrings and tried some mango and strawberry fresca. The next day we went to Bear World, which had a drive-through wildlife exhibit with over 45 bears. The kids liked to see all the animals and bears, and one bear even crossed right in front of our car!

After the drive-through part of Bear World, we went to the rest of the park. It was so cute to see all the baby bears wrestle and play together:

There were some fun boards to take pictures with, so the kids pretended to be baby bears the rest of the time we were there. They also got to feed the fish and the ducks. Funny story- an older man had brought some bread to feed to the ducks, but he was done doing that, so he offered a piece of bread to each of my kids so they could feed the ducks. Cora took the bread from the man and immediately took a bite! Gross! We had to convince her it was stale bread for the ducks, not for people.

They also had a fun petting zoo, where we pet baby goats, deer and fawns (who also sucked on our fingers):

The kids’ favorite part of Bear World were the five rides that were part of the admission to the park, so they got to ride them over and over again. We had to drag the kids away from the rides!

This was Hyrum’s favorite:

The train was Cora’s favorite:

After naps, we took the kids to a plash park in Rexburg. They got to ride a carousel:

They didn’t play at the splash park very long because the wind was blowing and the water was ice cold. So different from Arizona! So we took them over to the dry portion of the park, where they played for quite awhile. They loved being able to be outside so much!

We also visited the Rexburg temple one evening:

On our way home from Rexburg, I stopped with the kids at Temple Square for an hour. They saw the temple, a statue of Hyrum Smith (Hyrum’s namesake), big fountains, and the Christ statue. The kids’ favorite part was pushing all the buttons at the visitors’ centers.

Then we finally headed home, with a night stop in Lehi, Hurricane, and Mesa (visiting more cousins). The kids got a few more new toys from the dollar store, I was a champ driving all that way by myself, and more playplace stops!

As soon as we got home (after 2 weeks of road tripping), Hyrum asked, “when are we going on our next road trip?” So, I guess the trip was a success! We sure missed Ryan though, and hopefully he can go on the next one with us