We did something fun in April. SURPRISE!

Tate and Em give the news while Hayden has a snooze. heh.
The look of happiness on his face was great. He loves this place.
I guess Hayden and Emily are getting too old for even this part of the museum. Tate was ready to reprise his old role of popping up and disappearing like he did a couple of years ago. He was the only one interested in the re enactment.
Who doesn't love a helicopter??
Ha ha. Hayden's in front of a green screen. Should've dressed him all in that shade of green so he could be a bobbing head.
Didn't get to spend long enough in the building area.
Hayden shops for rubber fish and plays his DS at the same time. He insists he can't multitask. hmphf!
No! I'm the cashier! NO! I got here first!
Tate loved riding the front runner!
They really did look out the windows sometimes, I promise.




We went to the Gateway Children's Museum on the Front Runner (commuter train) on a day off from school in April. We grabbed McD's and ate it on the train. The kids enjoyed it and I didn't have to stay awake behind the wheel. When we missed the trax back to the FR station, we had to walk to the next stop. My back didn't love that back then. It'd be ok now. Tate loves the museum, but Hayden and sometimes Emily are too old. Hayden grouched enough to make me mad. Overall, we had a good time. It's the overall that counts, right?

My brother got married!

Ty, Lauren, and kids from our sideMy handsome guys
The cousins
My niece
My kids.



I still haven't really recovered from the quick trip yet. In fact, I put on my back brace for a little bit this morning. I was asleep before any of the kids last night. Thank goodness Mike could keep his eyes open long enough to put them to bed!

Old pics clear from April. Of this year.

Emily and Tate holding bunnies, before Em's bunny freaked out and started thrashing which freaked her out. It scratched her, she wants you to know.
Took a lot of convincing to get Emily into the pen with the baby cow. Tate's behind her, kneeling by it.
Seriously brand-new bunnies. Teeny baby bunnies. SOO cute!
Em petting a bunny
Tate petting a goat.
Me holding a tiny turtle!
Not one of us feeding a baby bear.


I pulled Emily and Tate out of school to go to baby animal days in Logan. Hayden was under the mistaken impression that he's too old for this and he chose to stay at school. Crazy. (head shake)

Next week I'll post pictures from my brother's wedding! Yay!

Don't hit the bears with the train!

(Apparently Tonya is too busy reading books to bother with blog posts. Doesn't she know that this is the age of the Internet, not books? So I'll post more things that she intended to post while she tells me all about building schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the book she's reading.)

After fishing for bluegill at the ATK Ranch, we headed to the Golden Spike National Monument, since it's only a few miles from the ranch. Here are the kids standing on the final tie where the spike was driven, apparently waiting for a train to hit them as some kind of cruel joke played on them by their parents.


And here I am next to the track contemplating how boring life would be after the train came.


Then we headed up to Pocatello for the night, then on to Idaho Falls the next day. We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you, you... (Curse your catchy tunes, Peter Paul & Mary)


We learned that Tate does not quite measure up to a golden eagle. He better keep working on that. We also got to enjoy the wonders of the Sloth Bear. There were Sloth Bears at the Calgary Zoo and we always enjoyed watching them. They are goofy. From listening to our kids during the video, apparently they are just as goofy and do the same things.

Then we went to the 17th annual Eastern Idaho Fly Tying Expo for a while - which everyone enjoyed, really - and then checked out the falls downtown.




And that was last weekend. Whew.

As for this weekend, we were back to soccer games for Emily and Tate while Hayden went to EFY (three hours of church meeting with all talking and he loved it - ha). Then I went fishing in Paradise in the evening and caught many, many nice trout. It was a great time. Funny thing is that I caught most of them - including all the largest ones - on the exact same fly I used to catch all my bluegill last weekend. I finally lost it hooked into a fish in the end. I tend not to take many pictures when I'm fishing (but will gladly let others when there are others with me) yet I did take this one with my cell phone. Ah, sweet trout.

Fishing and etc

These are my $5 shoes that I made un-plain. Hayden gave me props even though I'm still "mostly fuddy-duddy".

Either Emily or Hayden's bluegill. Should've gotten the child in the pic, too.
Hayden. Can't see his face, but you know what that looks like. This shows what a pretty spot it is. Hayden caught six fish.
Also illustrative of the loveliness.
Mike getting Emily untangled.
Yellow-headed blackbird, Mike tells me.
Mike's fat bluegill from the small pond.
One of Tate's many, many fish. He kept telling everyone, "Dad says I'm a pro now!"This is the muskrat Emily named Fuzzy. He swam around a lot, not even caring that we were there.
I swear that I turned and saved this picture. But it's all about Tate's sweet shirt. Hayden has one too.

Since the kids had Friday off, Mike took the day off and we went fishing at the ATK ponds near the Golden Spike site. We stopped there, too. Then we went to Pocatello. We'll take care of that next post.

cop-out dinners and a photo or 2 or 10

I've been playing with fingernail polish. I kept seeing enamel-coated metal stuff in jewelry, and I thought, isn't fpolish like enamel?
I took a class at JoAnn's about making clay flowers. This one I burned in the little toaster oven, hence the bubbles on the edge, and ta-da, fingernail polish to cover up the burned spots.
This was a poster we saw at BYU.
This is the reflection of the top half of a piece of sculpture, in the water of the bottom half. Springville Art Museum.
He did not pose for this! I snuck up and took it with the zoom. see comment on Tate's photo.
Sweet tea-party sculpture.
Tate didn't pose for this, either. Someone said that we should take our kids someplace fun instead of to museums. I feel sorry for her. My kids like museums. Tate's totally got the museum stance! Sometimes we ask them which piece they like best and why. It's neat to see they are developing their own taste.
Bean Museum at BYU. The butterfly is made of butterflies. Pretty cool.
Tate has horns too.
Emily's DNA. Not from her body, from class. The different colors of marshmallows represent different things. See, they shouldn't close Bunderson because this is the coolest DNA I've ever seen.


I know I can't nor do I want to have a regular theme blog. But I've been in need of what I call cop-out meals lately. You know, like spaghetti: start green beans and pasta water to boil, grab sauce from the freezer and defrost in the microwave. 20 minutes, max. Found a short cut for my friend Chelsea's faboo potato soup, even though I like the fresh veggies more. Frozen cube hashbrowns and frozen chopped carrots, celery, and onion. Do you have a cop out meal you want to share?