Tree Climbing

A cute boy in a tree:)

Lap Time

Sweet Jake loves the attention of sitting on someone's lap and "talking" to them. Sure love this baby of ours!

Fisherman

Logan finally convinced me to take him somewhere to use his birthday present from his Grandparents, and wouldn't you know it--it started to POUR! The other kids and I ran for the cover of some trees, but Logan stayed at his post:)

I wish his determination had been rewarded with a fish, but no such luck. He was a good sport about that, though, and declared the outing a fun success!

Genealogy Helper

Jason had a happy helper the other day while he was doing genealogy.

Bike Rides

This summer has been the summer of bike rides! Logan and Jason have gone on several together, and now that Eli has a big kid bike and Ali has her training wheels back on (you just can't force someone to learn to ride...) they join them. Cute family.

Summer Vacation: Snow Canyon

Our last morning in Utah we went on a nice hike in Snow Canyon to see the lava flows. Ali saw this cactus and said, "Hey, look! Cactus! Are we in the desert? I've always wanted to go to the desert!"

Here we are hiking into one of the caves left by the lava flows:

It was so pretty and the kids surprised me by loving it! They didn't want to turn back when we said it was time to, but we must know our kids because right before we got back to the car they all hit a wall. Good timing, I'd say!

Summer Vacation: St. George

Our last leg of the trip was to Grandma Eldredge's in St. George. The kids and I hadn't seen her new lovely home, so we were especially excited to be there! We were only there for parts of four days, but we did a lot! We celebrated Jason's birthday, Jason and I went on a breakfast date, we all went out to dinner one night and dessert on another night, and went to two different pools.

We also visited the impressive St. George temple visitor's center (can you see the kids?):

And had a water fight in the backyard:

 (This is how Jake and I enjoyed the water fight):

We also visited Gary's grave. Ali asked if she should smile or frown for this picture. Hard to say, dear one.

My last vacation post will be of our favorite St. George adventure: hiking in Snow Canyon National Park.

Summer Vacation: Riverton Utah

The second part of our vacation was in Riverton, Utah to celebrate my Grandma Quillen's 80th birthday! It was so good to get to see them and all my cousins, aunts, and uncles I hadn't seen in years and meet cousin's spouses and kids. My cousin hosted a great birthday party at her house, and my kids had a fantastic time. In her backyard was a huge slip-in-slide, a trampoline, a sandbox, an airplane seasaw, and a "fishing pond" where all the younger kids got prizes. We all roasted our own hotdogs over two big firepits and ate lots of other yummy things.

All my siblings and our families stayed in one house and my other Grandma came out from Arizona to meet all the great-grands she hadn't met yet. Jake spent a lot of time on her lap.

And here is Jake with my parents and his cousin nearest in age, Owen. There are 7 boy cousins within a year and a half in age to each other, with four more boys a few years older than them. Family get-togethers are going to be interesting in a few years!

I also snuck away for a couple of hours to visit my great college friend, Jennifer. It was good to catch up with her and meet her cute kids!

We also had not one but two big photo shoots (a William Quillen family one and a Daniel Quillen family one), went to a great children's museum, had dinner with old family friends, went back to my cousin's house to shoot off fireworks for the 4th of July and then to watch a big fireworks show (we had a GREAT spot to watch in a friend of a friend's driveway!), and played in the house's big backyard. It was a short stop, but it was fun!

Summer Vacation: Colorado

One last post about our Colorado segment of our summer vacation. The night we got to my parents house, my mom and dad stayed up until about midnight finishing building this swing set in their backyard, and it helped make the backyard one of the best places to be.

Jake was a sweet patient boy, tagging along on most of our adventures with hardly a complaint.

Cousins Dean and Neil live with their parents at Grandma and Grandpa's house and they LOVED Jake. It was so sweet to see these two 16 month-olds light up and wiggle from head to toe with joy every time they saw him.

Logan heard Grandpa had guns because he was a hunter and was so pleased when Grandpa showed some of them to him one night. Logan told me later, "Mom, I don't want to be an engineer anymore. I want to be a hunter."

The bitter-sweet part of our trip was saying goodbye to our beloved Teo. He had an accident playing ball that left him unable to use his hind legs. Uncle JD and Auntie Lianna had to take him to the vet to be put to sleep, but not before we were all able to say goodbye. Ali was especially heartbroken.

Other great, unphotographed moments of our trip included about six trips to grandma and grandpa's neighborhood pool and two trips to the reservoir. The pool was perfect because it is always nearly empty and the shallow end is three feet deep, deep enough for Ali and Logan to really try to swim without having to worry because they know they can touch the bottom. They played and practiced with me enough that when we went to Jason's Aunt's pool in St. George they both started to really swim! It was amazing to see!

We also had dinner at Uncle JD's and Auntie Lianna's new apartment; had three groups of old friends over for dinner/dessert/visits; visited my dad at his work and went to lunch with him in his office's cafeteria, and visited the little Aurora City museum they have there; I took my dad to a movie to celebrate Father's Day; and we hiked around a state park while Uncle JD took pictures of the kids. We had a great time!

Summer Vacation: Camping

The thing the kids were most looking forward to about our trip was going camping and fishing with Grandma and Grandpa. They have a pop-up trailer that the kids remember fondly from other trips that they took to camp at a nearby reservoir. Jake and I sat this one out and I enjoyed my almost 24 hours of being a mom to just one almost as much as the kids enjoyed their overnight with Grandma and fishing with Grandpa. 

Summer Vacation: Renaissance Festival

Another highlight of the Colorado part of our trip was our day at the Renaissance Festival. It was a bit rough to begin with when we were trying to dictate to the kids what we were going to be doing and trying to catch as many shows as we could, but once we just let them wander to see the sights and pick something to spend their allowance money on they started having a great time. Our favorite show was the acrobats and our least favorite was the fire breather (Logan will still mention how annoying he was because he kept talking and talking and not doing any tricks).

A lot of people come to the Festival dressed up, and this guy was SERIOUSLY dressed up. Logan was amazed and grateful he was willing to pose for a picture.

Some of my favorite moments of the day came from the awesome street performers. This bird lady was lovely and sweet; she gave all the kids a feather that was supposed to bring sweet dreams, and Eli still has his and tells me that it really does bring nice dreams. There was also a great mime who played a guessing game with the kids and then gave Ali a rose and the boys a jingle bell.

My parents said they would pay for all the kids to play one game, and Eli chose to ride the elephant. This brought my best and worst moments of the day: as we went to get in line we managed to loose him. I panicked for the five or so minutes it took us to find him because I knew he was so excited to go on the elephant that he wouldn't leave the area, and sure enough we finally found him next to the fence looking at the elephants covered by the line of people waiting to ride them. Once my heart beat went back to normal Eli and I took our turn riding and it was amazing, especially at the end when we got to pet him!

Summer Vacation: The North Pole

We had such a fun summer vacation this year to Colorado and Utah visiting family. Jason drove us out to my parents' house in Colorado on a Saturday, then flew back to Illinois the next day so he could work and go to High Adventure with the young men. Then my dad drove us to Riverton, Utah, to celebrate my Grandma's 80th birthday with all my siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Jason flew out and joined us there, and from there we drove to St. George, Utah to visit his mom. When we finished our visit with her, we drove back to my parents' house and rested there for a day before finishing the drive home. The whole trip was three weeks, 55 hours in the car (a bit more than 4,000 miles) and two plane trips. Whew.

One of the highlights in Colorado was the day we went to the North Pole, a kid's amusement park up in the mountains. My mom and I took the kids, and Eli was lucky she did because most of the rides were of the spinning variety which I cannot handle and he could ride the rides alone, so Grandma was his ride companion.

The Ferris Wheel made Ali very nervous because she read the signs posted all around that told us not to rock the seats, so she was worried about any little rocking that happened as a natural result of being on the ride. When Logan saw those same signs, he immediately decided to rock our seat...funny how their reactions differed!

This ride was really the only one we had to wait in line for at all. Only two people could ride at a time, so that makes sense. It is a big zip line and it was so fun!

Jake was a trooper on this day and throughout the trip. He hung out happily in his car seat, eating and sleeping when he needed to and otherwise being cute and peaceful. My mom said over and over on the trip that she couldn't believe we were doing everything we were doing with a two month old, and that he was letting us! What a sweetie.

Helpers

Thankfully I have a some baby helpers this time around. Ali is even getting pretty good at burping Jake, which she is very proud of. I've also recently taught her how to pick him up and carry him safely places, so she can go get him from downstairs and bring him to me sometimes. So nice! And of course, if Jake is around, so is Eli.