Family Fun

May 1 2016

Goblin Valley

A couple of months ago as spring break approached, I told Dallas he should try to take a day off during the week so we could do something fun together as a family. He assured me there was no way he could take off that week.

I’m not exactly sure what happened, but the Monday of spring break Dallas announced that he had gotten Wednesday off. Yay for dads being home during spring break!

Ever since Dallas and I went to Moab six years ago, we’ve been dying to take the kids to Goblin Valley. It’s a huge area with funny-looking rock formations, and you climb and explore to your heart’s content. Our kids love climbing all over rocks, so we were sure this trip would be a huge hit.

We got up early in the morning and took off. We made it to Green River at lunchtime, so we grabbed some food and headed the rest of the way to Goblin Valley.

We sunscreened up, took a couple pictures of the valley, and set off to exploring.

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The kids loved finding these little caves:

This was Spencer most of the day:

He really hated the rocks getting into his shoes.

After about an hour of exploring, the kids were getting really crabby and whiney. They were tired and wanted to leave. Dallas and I were both thinking the same thing which was, “We just drove four hours and we have to drive four hours back. We are not leaving after only ONE HOUR.”

I was so sure the kids would have a blast and never want to leave. How had I misjudged so grossly?

We decided to head back to the car and have a snack break. We let the kids gorge themselves on crackers, granola bars, candy, and water. Turns out that snack was just what we needed. We set off again and this time the kids were running ahead of us scampering all around having the time of their lives, just as I had envisioned they would. We wisely brought some hard candy with us as we were hiking this time so anytime someone got tired or complained we could give them a Jolly Rancher and that would keep them happy again for a long while.

The second half of the day was perfection. We had so much fun exploring and laughing at all the funny rocks we saw.

There weren’t many people around, so we were by ourselves most of the day. Late in the afternoon we could hear someone following us. After a while a woman found us and desperately asked if we knew how to get back to the cars. We pointed her in the right direction and before leaving she took several pictures of us:

She insisted on taking one of just me and Dallas and was really bothered that Spencer slipped into the shot. We assured her we’re used to little people photobombing our pictures, and it was okay.

Brooke jumped off a rock:

Then Caroline got some air:

So of course Madison had to try:

Brooke really conquered the gaze-victoriously-into-the-distance look:

Brooke: “Can we take a picture with just the girls looking adorable?”

Done:

January 3 2016

The Most Wonderful Time of Year

Rebecca Family Fun 2

Family picture time!

The kids were driving me bonkers during this photo shoot, but we got some great shots, so I guess I still love them.

October 1 2015

It’s Vacation Time!

Rebecca Family Fun, Vacations 2

Or rather, it was vacation time last week so now I will subject you to the billions of pictures we took.

Two years ago we went with my parents, siblings, and their families to Disneyland. We had such a great time and couldn’t stop thinking about our week of fun so shortly after that trip we agreed we needed to do it all over again. We’ve been planning this trip for ages. I would put Caroline to bed every night and she’d say something like, “Is it time for our trip yet?” and I’d say, “First you need to start kindergarten, then finish kindergarten, then have the summer, then start first grade. THEN we can go.”

We thought the time would never come, but it finally did and we were ready!

Brooke, the morning that we were leaving:

Me: “Are you excited for our trip?”

Brooke: “I can’t be too excited yet because I still have to get through school.”

Fair enough.

Our countdown reminder:

Brooke prepared a sticky note to put on our door so friends wouldn’t have to knock and knock with no one home:

(In the interest of not advertising our absence to everyone, we decided not to put the sign on our door.)

Spencer packed his essentials:

Then we just had to wait for Dallas to get home from work. In a perfect world he would have finished work at his normal time of 2:30 and been home before 3:00 giving us a departure time of between 3 and 4:00. Unfortunately he didn’t get off work until about 5:30. Grrr. The kids and I were bored out of our minds waiting for him to come.

Finally, he made it home. We packed the kids in the car and left:

We were passing Provo at dinnertime so we decided to stop at a Wendy’s near Dallas’s mom’s house. Dallas called her up and invited her to dine with us, which she did:

The girls were freezing so they enjoyed getting Oma’s warm hugs, and we enjoyed chatting.

Just as we said good-bye to the piggie hat, Caroline found a replacement headpiece:

We stopped for the night at a hotel in St. George. The kids have never stayed in a hotel that they can remember so it was a new experience for them. Madison’s favorite part of our vacation may have been the never ending supply of tissues within her reach which she certainly took advantage of:

The next day we took a quick detour by the St. George temple to have a look:

We made another stop in Las Vegas to visit Dallas’s grandma:

We had been planning to stay the night with Grandma Golden, but a few days before our trip she fell and broke her hip and was in a care facility to get better. Sad! We were happy to see her and visit for a bit.

After that we finally made it to Belle’s Castle! Spencer busied himself playing with the car toys that my sister brought:

Everyone else hopped in the pool for a quick swim before bed:

The next day was our designated beach day. We stuck with tradition and graciously allowed my dad to cook breakfast for us everyday. French toast for the win!

We also took our traditional matching T-shirt picture next to the mural in the house’s foyer. Somehow we added a few extra kids to our family shot:

That’s more like it:

Then it was beach time!

We came home and Spencer resumed his activity of choice:

As did Dallas:

And the kids:

We ended the evening with a movie for the kids:

September 17 2015

Potpourri

Rebecca Brooke, Caroline, Dallas, Family Fun, Madison, Rebecca, Spencer 0

Let’s start off this round of pictures with one of Dallas and his man-crush Scott Kelby:

On Mother’s Day Brooke made me this:

It’s not everyday you get an airplane banner message, so I felt pretty special.

Spencer was cute eating a Fun Dip:

He got a little crazy with sidewalk chalk:

I have a friend on Instagram who is always posting the cutest pictures of her child sleeping. That has led me to do some serious reflection on my life and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to take more sleeping-child pictures. So I have:

There. I already feel like I’m leading a more fulfilling life now.

Let’s move on to another picture of Caroline with her beloved pig hat:

Caroline wore that silly hat EVERYWHERE, for better or for worse.

Madison tried it out as well:

You may be relieved to know that the pig hat is no longer. At my Mom’s and sister’s and husband’s insistence I threw the pig hat away. Don’t tell Caroline.

We went on a fun hike. The trail started off looking a little spooky:

Caroline used my phone to see all the dirt on her face. She couldn’t believe her eyes, apparently:

Caroline loves Jell-o. She saved up enough money to buy her own package of Jell-o so she didn’t have to share with anyone:

My bearded brother:

We had a flat tire. Dallas hurriedly put the spare on before leaving for work. Spencer saw the jack still out and used it to do some repairs on his jeep:

Madison has a thing for shoes:

Poor baby fell off her trike and skinned her elbow. The actual wound wasn’t too bad. Until she started picking at it. So we put band-aids on it. Which apparently she had an allergic reaction to. So her arm looked like this:

You’ll be happy to know we found non-latex wraps and after a few days of TLC her arm is now looking much better.

At the same time her arm skin was bubbling up and falling off her body, her face looked like this:

That was a rough time in baby’s life.

Flashback to February when I had a birthday! Happy birthday to me!

Brooke made our family out of Legos:

This scene is one of my favorite Lego things she’s done. You can’t tell from the picture, but the thing on the right is a snack machine. There was a slot to put Lego money in and a way to make an actual snack fall from the machine. The thing on the left is a soft drink machine:

Spencer was proud of his Lego car:

And whatever this was:

This is the creepiest thing my kids have done. Our neighbors were moving. The kids wanted to see the action but got bored watching, so they set up video cameras to record the whole thing:

I love to imagine what the neighbors would have thought had they known their every move was being filmed. Probably that they were getting out of the neighborhood in the nick of time.

Brooke used paper to weave a checkers board and she and Caroline played some game they made up:

Flossing is hard:

Brooke and Caroline were having a paper airplane contest. Brooke named her plane “The Black Star.” She recruited Spencer to be her cheering section and gave him a flag to wave and a hat to wear, complete with the Black Star logo:

Spencer has added a new machine to his drawing repertoire. Here we have a digger:

Spencer used Perler beads to make a sunrise:

We got a hummingbird feeder. I have never seen hummingbirds just out in nature around here so I was skeptical that we would attract any…but we did! We have several that come and go every day:

This picture is hard to see, but Spencer was recreating the crash scene in one of his books with his cars:

This little girl loves to climb the bunk bed ladder and sit at the top giving me a panic attack every time I catch her up there:

When Madison is surprised she makes a perfect O with her mouth:

Believe it or not, this post gets us up to date on the blog. We thought this day would never come!

September 8 2015

Backyard Beautification

Rebecca Family Fun 2

It’s been two years since our last backyard update. You may remember that when we moved in our backyard was just a huge patch of weeds:

This backyard has been the bane of Dallas’s existence. He has spent hours and hours and hours and hours trying to get it looking nice. Last year we cleared out all the weeds:

Then Dallas got to work trenching the yard for sprinklers. Google Earth took a picture of his progress for us:

After trenching, Dallas installed the sprinklers. Then we got compost and spread it over the whole yard:

And Dallas rototilled it in:

We had some good helpers:

Caroline assisted us in trying to level the ground:

At this point, sane people would lay sod. Cheap people would spread seed. One guess as to what group we belong to.

After spreading the seed, we had several crazy rainstorms which practically flooded our backyard:

I checked the ground for growing grass every day. Nothing. Until….

…one day there was something! And then a lot of somethings!

This was a promising area:

Unfortunately the rain caused the seed to run together in clumps making the grass thick in some areas and nonexistent in others:

We knew when we planted seed that this would be a process and that it would likely take a few years to really get a good lawn. Those pictures are from last year. This year the grass has grown in a little better. We still have those darn weeds that are trying to grow so we’re out weeding constantly and we’ve planted some more seed in the areas that are the most sparse.

Now that we kind of have grass, we decided to get a swing set for the kids. The swing set was delivered and the million pieces looked slightly overwhelming: