Pioneer Day Celebration

Last weekend we celebrated Pioneer Day at the stake center and we combined with another ward.  It turned out to be lots of fun!

 We started with a parade for the kids where they could ride their bike, pull a wagon, or walk.  Those who rode bikes and wagons decorated them.  Then we walked around a couple times in a designated area in the parking lot while everyone else stood on the sidelines and cheered for them.

 After the parade was a dinner of sloppy Joe's, hotdogs, salads, and chips.  Then some of the kids wasted no time in running around the baseball field and kicking up lots of dirt!

Now time for some kid games.  How about a little tug of war!  Go Nikki and Garrett!  I think their team won that time.  This was one of Garrett's favorite games.

Next was a relay game where they fill a cup with water from one bucket and run it down to the other bucket.  First team to reach the line on the bucket wins!  The boys loved this game!

I don't remember what these are called but each of the kids made this spinning toy and Curtis is trying to get it to work.  Those toys aren't easy!

Then there was the clothes pin drop where you have to stand on a chair and try to drop clothes pins into the jar on the grass.  Jack is trying the nose technique that he saw one of the dad's doing, LOL.  It was too funny to watch!

He gave up on the nose technique and went right to the ground.  So much easier this way!

After the kids games the youth started playing volleyball and then the adults played a game of softball, one ward versus the other.  Curtis even got in on it starting out as catcher but then later moving to the outfield, trying to avoid running because of his knees.  But it was fun to watch him play and I wish I would have gotten out there and played too.  I was too chicken to ask to play though, LOL.  I haven't played since I was a Beehive!  This activity turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought.  So glad we went!

Our 9th Wedding Anniversary trip

June 22nd was our 9th wedding anniversary and we had our first weekend vacation away from the kids.  Curtis's sister was kind enough to watch our kids for us.  We were able to fly down to Salt Lake City for free because of our business card reward points and we took the bus and tracks to stay in my grandparent's condo and do things around downtown Salt Lake.  We had a great time!  It was nice to be able to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.  Here are some pictures from our trip.

We went to the Clarke Planetarium on Friday after we arrived where all the stuff we saw was free.  This is a picture of a telescope that is in space.

This was a fun contraption that had to do with Newton's law (I think).  It had all these little balls going around inside.  There are little knobs you can pull on the outside to help them do something.  It was big too as you can see!

I got the whole world in my hands!

Curtis is on Mars!

Duh...duh....duh duh....Deedra's first steps on the Moon!

Now a visit to the conference center and a tour.

Beautiful view from the top of the conference center.

Next we went to the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  What a wonderful view!

Sunday afternoon we visited the church museum right across the street from Temple Square.  Imagine having to travel in this instead of our nice comfortable cars.

This is a replica of the lower deck of a ship that pioneers came from England in.  Our family of 5 would have had to share ONE of those beds because there just wasn't room.  And I'm not talking about one whole bunk, but just one of the beds.  Depending on the size of your family you would either get 1 or 2 beds but that's it.

A model of the ship the early saints would travel on to come to America.

The death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Gives you an idea how big the Angel Moroni is on top of each temple.

Did you catch us at the last General Conference?  hehe

This model is at one of the visitor's centers on Temple Square and shows you what the inside of the Salt Lake Temple looks like.  We did a Saturday morning session at the temple so we were in some of those rooms but I always wondered what else was in there.  So awesome to see now!

Here's a closer look.

And this was taken from the airplane on our flight home.  I never realized so many crop fields were shaped in circles.  Sure was neat to see.

Well, we didn't get pictures of everything we did.  Here's a quick run down of what I can remember.  Friday the 24th of June we arrived in Salt Lake, looked around at the Gateway Mall, visited the Planetarium, went to the Gateway theater and watched the new X-Men movie, ate at Tuscano's for the first time (a Brazilian restaurant), then back to the condo.  Saturday morning we went through a session at the Salt Lake Temple, ate lunch at the Lion House Pantry Restaurant, toured the Beehive house, toured the Conference Center, went back to the Gateway Mall, ate some delicious pizza at Sborro's, then back to the condo to do some swimming and hot tub on the roof (we were lucky no one else was up there because it was crowded the night before), and then watched one of our movies we brought.  Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting at the Joseph Smith building, came back and watched church programs on TV and napped, did some laundry, then out to see the church history museum.  We tried to surprise my aunt at the conference center who gives tours but they had left before we got there.  We then went to the visitor's centers on Temple Square, and then back to the condo again to pack up.  Monday morning we woke very early (4:50am) to do last minute clean up and get to the bus stop on time so that we wouldn't miss our flight home.  It was a great weekend and great trip!

Our first garden!

This summer is going to be a learning experience for us because we are finally growing our first garden...with the help of Curtis's sister!  We are fortunate enough to be able to use the land behind Curtis's sister's house.  She is renting but the owners said we could use some land for a garden.  I think our garden spot ended up being about 50' by 25' approximately.  We spent the last couple of weeks getting everything planted and Curtis putting in a watering system.  Some of our seeds have even already sprouted.  We are so excited!

 Not all of our plants are seeds.  We bought a bunch of starts too.

 Garrett got his shirt wet so he took it off.  I hope this doesn't become a habit later in life, lol.

 Our garden was 75% finished with planting at this point.

 The kids had plenty of room to run around and were having a good time getting dirty!

 Our corn is sprouting already this week!

And today we picked our first strawberries of the season which were actually grown at our house.  They are the only food we have growing at home.  They were the only things I planted last summer and now they are taking off and spreading.  Yummy!

May Days

 My beautiful flowers and cards for Mother's Day

 Nikki and I on her first field trip to the Birds of Prey and the zoo.  It was pretty comfortable riding on a charter bus.  We were very lucky!

 Nikki with two of her friends from her class and in our group.

 One afternoon we went to the park and had a picnic.  There were some nice big climbing trees nearby.

 Okay, my kids didn't actually climb that tree.  Curtis had to help them up but they had fun sitting up there, hehe.

 We went to Parade America a couple of weeks ago.

 Can you see us in the reflection of the big fire truck?

 After the parade it was chill out and eat time at Jade Garden.  Jack made himself right at home.

Then last week on the last day of May my Dad came home from Iraq for good!  I'm so happy to have no more family in Iraq!  Hopefully it will stay that way  :)