Category: Family Fun

We had a regular day of chores & relaxing at home for the 4th of July, then we went to Jason & Whitney’s place for a barbeque & chatting.

We went to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks, outside the stadium, of course. Provo was bustling, I tell ya. The fireworks didn’t start until 10:30, which was quite late for our kids! But it was a great spot to watch from and we didn’t park in any of the parking lots where they were charging $5/car.

We decided against doing any of our own fireworks since it’s so dry & hot this year, & there have been almost a dozen wildfires in Utah just in the last couple weeks.

We were in good company with Jason & Whitney & fam.

Chase perhaps had the best seat in the house! I love his creativity. He also showed us some awesome dance moves during the fireworks show.

We got home around 11:30pm. Crazy late for our kids, but it was a fun night!

These pictures are already six weeks old…. But better late than never!

Here are our three kids.

Pace & I still have to remind ourselves that we have three children; that all of these little children belong to us. There are times when it hits us, like when a car ride or a dinner time is incredibly loud with children sounds. Or when we get to Home Depot & our clunky, car-shaped shopping cart is already full of kids before we even start the regular shopping (but Caroline sure loved the steering wheel so it was worth it).

Caroline is very mobile now & very fast. Chase & Charlotte are both helpful with keeping the stairs blocked off, such as when Charlotte sprawls out across the edge of the stairs to create a human baby gate. They also help by creating barricades/makeshift playpens like this:

Caroline is kind of wondering what to do in this limited space.

They are a funny little bunch.

Chase & Caroline are the two that look the most alike, in my opinion! Caroline still adores her big brother & seems to be quite content with him.

Caroline also loves this big sister, although Caroline won’t allow poor Charlotte to hold her. She is perfectly fine in Chase’s arms, but whenever Charlotte tries to hold her, Caroline cries & squirms. It’s like she senses that the arms holding her are not very secure or something. Hm.

Gotta love the panty bum + rain boots look that Charlotte’s sporting.

We ran the dirty dash which I heard is a 10k but my wife says is a 5.5 mile run, I don’t know how many miles 1k is nor do I care as I don’t run. But I do play in filthy nasty stinky mud. We all had a blast at this once in a lifetime experience. We will not be going again with a bunch of little kids. Our favorite parts included the giant water slide, the giant pits of mud, and watching Chase realize that he could throw as much mud as he wanted to without getting yelled at.

I’m sure Joy would have more commentary, but I’m writing this post so… here’s a photo slideshow

Yesterday, we went to the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. Wow, we were impressed! On the main floor they had real artifacts from church history, like letters written by Joseph Smith, a full-scale covered wagon, the pocket watch that blocked a bullet from killing John Taylor, etc etc etc. I was glad that the kids were so enthusiastic about everything! I know they won’t always be so enthusiastic about these things!

Upstairs, there was a children’s Book of Mormon exhibit that was absolutely amazing. A must-see for anyone with little kids!! Very impressive & hours of fun.

Playing on “Nephi’s boat”

Dressing up some Book of Mormon characters

Building a tower

Replica of the Golden Plates. They were really heavy! Charlotte turned each page so that they were all on the left side. She is very particular about these things!

Charlotte got to work preparing dinner for the missionaries. Pace wanted this chicken to be in the photo for some reason.

Near these chickens, there was a story posted about how we should serve others & give our best. It told the story of a family who saw another family in need. The father told the kids to get one of their hens to give to the poor family. The kids obeyed & grabbed their scrawniest hen to give away. The father told them that they should pick the best one to give away, which they did. I liked the message of that story, even though Chase & Charlotte weren’t exactly listening as I read it to them!

Pace got to get behind the podium to give a talk. Maybe someday, Honey! We loved the full-scale Angel Moroni statue. We couldn’t believe how huge it was!

               

There was also a dress-up area where you could dress up in Mexican dancing clothes & follow along with some Mexican dancers on a screen. Chase handed me a frilly skirt, so of course I had to join in the dancing. Oh, shucks, we didn’t get any pictures of that!

We also went up to Bountiful to see the Jason, Laura, & Boston Graham. We love that little family!

I adore tulips. I’m so glad we have some in our yard, and I will most definitely plant more bulbs this fall (if I remember) so we can have lots more of these cheerful spring flowers. If only they lasted longer than a month and stuck around all summer long!

I love this picture of Caroline “planking.” Kinda reminds me of that super intense scene in Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise is dropping down into that crazy high-security, white lights room.

Caroline has started army crawling and can get anywhere she wants to go. It’s a lot of fun, and also tricky to keep tiny things off the floor that she could choke on.

 

She lights up when that Daddy guy is around!

Here’s Gretchen with her Big Baby Boy (Tyler), who is now home from his mission!

 

The girls in their matching dresses (they have cute white matching cardigans that go with them). Caroline’s is still shiny gold pink, whereas Charlotte’s is just pink now since she wears it all the time & the gold sheen has worn off. She gets a lot of use out of any dresses she has that are frilly & pink.

            

Easter Egg Hunt at the McGrandparents’ place

I tried to be some sort of creative mom by cutting out 70 pictures from the Friend magazine & putting those in each egg along with the candy. The idea was to have the kids glue them all onto poster board and make a collage that showed things that we believe to be good & true & uplifting for a nice Easter Sunday discussion. Well, it was a flop. They tossed the little pictures aside & just dug into the candy!!

Dying eggs! That was a little crazy, as you can see. Kind of fun. I don’t think we’ll necessarily stick with that tradition…

The day after Easter, Chase was very eager to have his own Easter egg hunt with his neighborhood friends. So he went to everyone’s houses at 8am & invited them to come over at 9am (I made him wait till 9) to have a hunt at our house. I was fine with this because then we’d get rid of all the candy! Which we did!

So they put candy back in the eggs & hid them all outside. Some kids came over and they had a blast having their own little Easter egg hunt. Oh, Chase, my funny boy! Such a social, creative kid who loves to share with others.

The last time we went to the aquarium was when Chase was under two years old. I’ve wanted to take the kids for a while now, but wasn’t too jazzed about taking them on my own. So we decided to head over there after the baptism we went to in West Jordan. The Aquarium was much better this time than last time; they’d added a lot & I think it was actually worth the price this time! The energetic penguins & the adorable otters were especially entertaining to watch! No good pictures of those, but I think Pace might add some from his phone, that some random lady took & emailed to us. Kinda weird but kinda nice.

Charlotte ended up throwing the tantrum of the century over sitting in this canoe one more time before we left, so we exited the building immediately. But it was a lot of fun for the rest of the time leading up to that!

I snagged this image of the terrible weenies playing balderdash you can see how intense they are.

Haha

Yes I used speech to text to type

This post is mostly for my mom, because she’d be interested to see these pics!

Our Family Photo Op

My Kids’ 2nd Cousin, Natalie (the one being baptized)

The women (from left: Dianne, Sung Hee, Leann, Shannon, Joy, Katelynn, her friend, & Ingrid)

Awkward picture (above) for the records!

Caroline & 2nd Cousin Jessica

Easter Egg Hunt afterwards with all the kids!