Category: Family Fun (Page 21 of 25)

Where have I been? I’ve been wondering the same thing about a few of you. Where have YOU been? Well, I’ll tell you where I’ve been and what we’ve been up to. We’re in the middle of a “stay-at-home-vacation” around here, I tell you. Can you guess by these pictures where we went on Friday?

We saw Alphonse the white aligator, climbed Rhinos,

and did some monkeying around, that’s for sure. You’re right! We went to the Zoo on Friday. Many thanks to my mom and dad for coming with us, it made it much more fun.

We went from the zoo directly to our next activity, which was nice and warm for once.

The kids loved having a warm swimming lesson, and didn’t want to leave. But we had to hurry home so that Mom and Dad could leave on their date to go and see our favorite local band in concert. We went with Julene and Italo and had a great time! There was that small problem with Cafe Rio not having received our on line order and having to wait for it, but since they only charged us $20 for a dinner for 4 of us, we won’t complain about that. It was a great concert and lots of fun!

On Saturday we did some jobs around the house until late afternoon, when we went to a fun party. We called it “Moms work party”, since it was with the bell choir. It was worth the drive up to Kaysville and everyone had a great time!

Today, our day of rest, I am supposed to be preparing my lesson for RS this aftenoon. It’s this lesson and I don’t really have any ideas for making it fun.  I know not every lesson has to be fun, but I’d sure like it to be.  I’m thinking of making cookies for the treat, with chocolate chips or raisins, and bringing them out when we talk about how “most of us have vulnerable spots through which disaster can overtake us unless we are properly safeguarded and immunized….” and make some kind of comparison that we are all like the cookie.  We all have these “chips”.  And we need to know where our weaknesses are and safeguard against temptations there.  Yeah, kind of weak, but I’m at a loss here.  I hope it goes well.  (No pressure or anything, but the stake people are just going to be there today. For this lesson.  Ugh.)

Tomorrow we will continue our fun mini vacation at home with a day at Lagoon.  There will be a great amount of picture taking there, I’m sure.  It should be nice weather, too.  I hope.  And Tuesday, Ryan’s taking another day off work for my cousin Sarah’s wedding.  So we’ll be busy busy busy having fun fun fun.

Have I mentioned that I am trying to teach my kids the way of contesting? I’d like them to grow up to be winners (in every sense of the word!). A local radio station does a feature called “no adult left behind” where kids ask grade school questions to adults, and see if the adults can get them correct. It’s kind of like that new show “Are you smarter than a 5th grader”. Well, at 7:00 am they usually ask for a kid to call in to ask the questions.  They feed the kids the questions and record it, then the adult calls in a few minutes later to play.  Usually the adults cannot get 2 out of 3 right, and the kid wins.  I’ve had Cole call in once, and I think Megan has called in twice.

So, this morning, the phone rang at 7:06, and we’re thinking, “Who could that be, calling us while we’re still in bed?”

“Hi, this is Todd from B98.7, and we’re wondering if Megan wants to play no adult left behind.”  Hmmm.  There must not have been any kids calling in this morning.  Maybe they are all home sleeping since they are out of school for spring break.  So, I went to wake up Megan, but she was still really asleep.  I told Cole to pick up the phone instead, so he did it.  I think his questions were: “What is 11 times 12,” and “What is the state fruit of Utah,” and that’s all it took for that adult to go down defeated.  So, Cole won a prize!  Of course, it’s not a prize that we are really excited about or can actually use (4 tickets to a baseball game tomorrow night–can you say, it’s not yet baseball weather and no, we’re not going?), but he was still excited about hearing himself on the radio and winning!

The headache is gone. I am happy about that. And check out this picture that Megan took of me. Pretty good, I must say.

Thanks to my friend Tess, who encouraged me to take the kids swimming yesterday. We met Tess and her sister-in-law with all our kids at the Lehi Legacy Center pool, along with the rest of Northern Utah County who are also on spring break. Even though it was crowded, it was fun. John was a bit timid at first, choosing to sit on my lap in the 18 inch deep water, but eventually he was jumping and splashing and running around.

The worst part was that sense of panic when I couldn’t find all five of my kids. Wet blonde head one, wet blonde head two, WHERE’s WET BLONDE HEAD NUMBER THREE? Oh, there she is. She’s taken the life jacket off and put on a different one, so I didn’t recognize her at first. Tess was a great help in helping me find my children. The second worst part was the noise LEVEL in that place.

But it was a fun adventure for a cold and dreary spring break day. When we came out, it was actually snowing. What in the world? Yes, snow. But we were already wet, so it really didn’t matter. So, we’ll continue to have some kind of fun for our spring break. We’re hoping it warms up enough to go to the zoo.

Missie tagged me for a “Real Moms” post. So, if you are reading this, I tag you, too.

Real moms let their kids play with frosting. And candies. So they can make their own wonderful masterpieces that they are so proud of. Even if it makes a mess. Even if mom has given up sugar for lent and has to go and wash her hands instead of licking the frosting off of them.
Real moms also decorate Easter eggs with their kids. And yes, it’s messy. And the counter gets egg dye on it. And there are 3 1/2 dozen hard boiled eggs in the fridge to use up somehow in the next week or so. But we do it because it’s so much fun. And they have such fond memories of coloring their eggs. Just for fun, pick up an extra egg dye kit and put it away to use sometime that’s NOT Easter. You could dye eggs in the summer, or even in the winter. It will be a fun surprise on a boring day.

I’ve been suffering from chest pains today.  STABBING chest pains.  Before you get all alarmed and tell me I should be going to the ER for things like that, let me explain.  The underwire has escaped from my underwire bra and is protruding about an inch, giving me periodic stabbings.  I keep trying to shove it back in there, but without taking the darn thing off and doing some serious work on it, it doesn’t help.

After dinner Ryan gave me a hug, and I said, “Watch out, I may stab you.”  And then I broke out singing (I couldn’t help it) “Stabbed through the heart, and you’re to blame.  You give love a bad name.”  And a little voice pipes up from over at the table, “It’s shot through the heart.  Not stabbed.”  I looked over to see why in the world my 6 year old would be correcting me on a Bon Jovi song.  “How do you know that?”  I asked her.  “Brittan told me.”  So, her little friend is teaching her Bon Jovi songs?  I may have to talk to her mother about that.

My kids had the day off of school on Friday, and since Cole was gone camping, I decided to do something fun with the other kids. We had a few free passes to Boondocks that the kids had gotten from school, so we went there. It was a good way to celebrate the end of the cast for Jenna, too.

We did some golfing, which was quite entertaining to watch certain little people hit and push the ball about twenty times, then stand up with glee picking the ball out of the cup and saying, “I did that in ONE shot!” After golfing, Megan and Natalie went to play a game of lasertag while I took Jenna and John to Kiddie Cove. I shouldn’t have wasted the money on buying them Kiddie Cove wristbands, they didn’t want to go in. I think Jenna was a bit scared of using her new uncasted leg so much, but eventually she did some climbing around and sliding. John was happiest “playing” the race car and shoot-em-up games. Since he doesn’t really care if he’s playing the real game or the demo, we stick with the demos. After one more game of laser tag and quite a few little arcade games, we took our tickets to cash in and buy our cheap crap. Luckily we had just enough tickets for everyone to get something they wanted.

After our fun filled day at Boondocks, we got to go to an “Activity day Idol” at the church. The idea was cute, with all the girls doing some kind of talent, but it just went on TOO long. They even had a “Simon”, “Paula” and “Randy” doing the comments after each girl’s talent. Two hours for a talent show? Too long.

(Just like this post is too long. I know! Go get yourself a drink, maybe an energy bar if you plan to make it through.)

Saturday was our first soccer game of the season, and it was beautiful weather. My kids complained that it was too cold, but I thought it was just right for soccer. We took hot dogs and drinks for the snacks, and that was a big hit. I cooked them and put them in the buns, then wrapped each one in aluminum foil, and stuck them all in a cooler with a little microwavable hot pack. The girls ate them up!

I also did some clean up work in the front yard, filling one whole trash can with dead plants and weeds. Then I managed to get the kitchen and family room mostly clean, since we had invited a new family in our ward over for dinner. We had a fun time, and John loved having a 3 year old boy to play with.

Sunday we were having an old mission buddy of Ryan’s come over with his family. We had decided to cook up a turkey that was hanging out in our freezer (since it had been there since Christmas, and we need the freezer space), so for three days it was taking up lots of room in our fridge. So after Church we had another quick clean-up, then a flurry of activity to get the turkey dinner ready. When they came, it was fun fun fun, as they have 5 kids, too, around the same ages as ours. The kids had a great time and became instant friends.

Now comes the recovery. I have a turkey roaster, a small crock-pot, a large crock-pot and glasses to wash. And get myself organized for the week. So, although it was a fun filled weekend, it wasn’t very restful. I could use a weekend after my weekend.

It’s no secret that I like birds. I’ve had parakeets, finches, and now we have three cockatiels who are sweet and fun but poop all over everything, which drives me crazy. So, today, when I saw that someone was giving away two parakeets on Freecycle, I should have just deleted that email. But Megan’s birthday is coming up, and she would LOVE her own parakeets, and so I had to respond. So, I went and got them, and we’ll give them to her tonight for a surprise early birthday present.

You know that cold that I mentioned was threatening?  Well, I got it.  Full blown sick.  I’ve got the sneezing, the stuffy nose, the sinus pressure, the achy head.  In fact, if it were physically possible to blow the nose right off of my face into the Kleenex, I’m sure it would have happened.  All the garbage cans are full of Kleenex, and there’s a little pile of Kleenex by my bed, where I’ve been tossing the Kleenex, but they don’t quite hit the garbage can.

The kids have been quite sympathetic, asking if I’m feeling better, telling me they hope I feel better, and asking if there’s anything they could do to help me feel better.  Jenna even wrote me a cute get well card and taped heart balloons on it.  Isn’t that sweet?  You say to yourself.  Those kids must really care about their mom.  Well, kind of.  But mostly, it’s that I promised to take them to the new children’s museum at Gateway on Monday, since they have the day off of school.  We talked about this on Friday, and they can hardly wait.  John asked that night when we were going to the museum.  He thought we meant we were going right then, not in 3 days.  Well, if Mom’s sick, she won’t be taking anyone to the childrens’ museum, right?  So, they are really hoping I’ll get better so I can take them where they want to go.

Actually, I am feeling quite a bit better this evening than I was last night, and even this morning.  I lazed around all day, didn’t go to church, and pretty much stayed drugged up on Tylenol cold.  I’m not sneezing so much, but I wish I had the use of both of my nostrils.  If I can breathe tonight, then I’ll sleep.

So, be sure to disinfect your keyboard and mouse after reading this, so you won’t get it, too.  And wish me luck at the children’s museum tomorrow.