Summer Fun!!

 ****WARNING:  LOTS OF PICTURES AHEAD!****

We've had lots of fun this summer!  Let's start with the zoo. 

We went with all my siblings and their families to Hogle Zoo.  I haven't been there for years and it was so much fun!  The kids loved it!

This picture cracks me up because you can see pretty much all of the kids, except Brooklyn, who is turned around telling everyone what to do.  I hear she's like that in nursery too...yikes.  

 

This is how Adilyn was pretty much the whole time.  She was so good and didn't even mind being trapped in her stroller for a whole day.

Ben and Brooklyn absolutely loved the merry-go-round!

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Brooklyn turned 3 this summer.  She wanted a flower cake, so we made do with cupcakes arranged in flower shapes.  

She got a princess outfit, and loves it.  She still wears it at least once a day!!

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Ben and Brooklyn got to go swimming in Gramma Merrie's pool in Moab, and they would have stayed in there and floated in their tubes all day if we would have let them. 

 

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And the kids still talk about the hike we went on.  

Adilyn was so intrigued by McLain's funny hat!  So cute!

Right by one of the creek crossings, there were tons of butterflies.  It was amazing. 

 

 I'm offering a prize to anyone that can tell me the correct number of butterflies in the next picture.  

And this would have been a great family picture, but we didn't realize til we got home that the baby carrier was smashing Adilyn's face!!  Oops!

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For the 4th of July, we went to Willard and had a good ol' time!  The kids had fun playing the games.  They both got a ring around the pop bottle!

Although Brooklyn did have to step forward a little!  

 

They loved the train ride, 

and especially the airplane ride!  They couldn't stop smiling.  Brooklyn was a little scared though, and wouldn't let go of the sides of the plane for anything!  White knuckles the whole time!

The main reason for us going to Willard for the 4th was for the entertainment!  McLain's band, With One Accord, was part of it!  They played for half hour and they were a hit!  No surprise!  Everyone that hears them loves them! They did a great job!

 

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And now some pictures of Adilyn, who is getting so big!  She will be one next month!  Crazy.

She's standing and walking all along the furniture.  She's into everything, and she's quite hilarious!

She woke up from nap the other day, and apparently it was hot in her room.  Her hair was soaked with sweat, it was so nasty!

I guess she has some fascination with laundry baskets.  Besides the fact that she's always throwing clothes out of them, we found her like this on one occasion.

 

And like this on another occasion.  

What a cutie!

And I had to put this picture on here.  It describes the kids so well.  Ben always trying to protect and love Adilyn, while Brooklyn is the never-ending torturer.  So funny!!!

 

YELLOWSTONE!!

So for Memorial Day weekend, our plans were to do nothing.

Then my dad called and offered us a trip to Yellowstone!  He had planned a trip for him and my mom, but it turned out they couldn't go after all, and the reservations were non-refundable.  So he gave it to us!  And they even offered to take the kids for the weekend!  Bonus!

Thanks Mom and Dad!!!  We had lots of fun!

We were only able to go into the park on one day, so we just made it to Old Faithful and back.  But it sure made us want to go back sometime and spend more time there.

So here are the pics of the journey to Old Faithful.

It was freezing!!  And wet.  And rainy.  And windy.  The high was only in the 30's.  Brrr.  Can you see all the raindrops on the windshield?

We saw lots of bison through the binoculars.

And we even got a picture of them through the binoculars.  Cool, huh?

Look how cute the baby bison is.  

 Welcome to Yellowstone!!!

So here is Old Faithful.  We weren't that impressed.  Maybe because it was such an overcast day and from where we were sitting, we could barely see it.  The geyser just blended in with the clouds!!

The hot springs were cool and so pretty!

But they were so hot and it was so cold, there was just so much steam.  Sometimes it was pretty hard to see.  Beautiful anyway! 

We came upon another geyser (I don't remember the name, something about a great big fountain or something) that was way cooler than Old Faithful.  Way bigger, and a little bit easier to see (the clouds were darker, so it didn't blend into the sky quite as much).  It was totally awesome!!!!

And there you have it!  We had a good time!  Despite the cold, it was an awesome trip!  Thanks again Mom and Dad!

Mohawks

So, for whatever ridiculous reason, all three of my children have been blessed with mohawks as babies.

I don't know why. I never had a mohawk. McLain never had a mohawk. I don't get it.

Ben's mohawk was harder to see because his hair was so blond, but it was there.

You can really tell at his first hair cut. He was 17 months old.


And Brooklyn's was in full force by the time she was 10 months!

And it just gets worse...here she is at 13 months. Notice the lack of hair on the sides, and please excuse the yogurt face!


And then there's sweet Adilyn, who has now, and has had for a while, the worst mohawk yet!
She's only 6 months in this picture!

And within the last month, this is what has happened...

her mohawk has gotten longer...

and longer.

At least as the length increases, so does the cuteness!

At the rate we're going, the next kid we have will be born with a mohawk!!!!

Seattle

In December, McLain was sent to Seattle for a training for work. He ended up having to drive, so I got to go with him! ROAD TRIP!!! So we sent the kids to my mom's for a few days and headed north...west.

We left early Wednesday morning and drove pretty much all day long! It takes a good 13 hours or so to get there from Richmond.

We learned a few things about Oregon. It's against the law to fill your own gas tank. Who knew? Thankfully, the guy came over and started filling ours before we did anything bad. We also came in contact there with a nice old man that tried to change lanes right where we were, saw us at the last second, swerved back into his lane, and decided to show us how wrinkly his middle finger was. It was so funny. He was totally yelling at us and cussing us out. Grumpy old man, we were in that lane first!

We got to Seattle that evening at 6:00 or so, right at rush hour...awesome timing! There was another ornery driver in Seattle. As we were driving slowly in the slow traffic, the guy behind us apparently wanted to go faster. He totally kept flashing his brights at us. Over and over. Didn't he realize that we were going just as fast as the rest of the cars? Honestly. He finally was able to pass us and he got back into our lane just in front of us. Just as he pulled into our lane in front of us, he tapped his brakes. So we had to slam on our brakes real fast. Then he sped away. What a turd. He was obviously very mad at us. He wouldn't have thought it was so funny had we hit his beautiful shiny car.

Seattle roads are somewhat confusing. The hotel was next door to the airport and as we were trying to find our way to the hotel, we ended up in the one way lane for airport parking. We did not want to go to the airport! Luckily the nice lady didn't even question us. She just told us the right way to go. About 2 minutes later, we were in the airport parking lot again! We were so confused. But we finally made it to the hotel. (Just for the record, it wasn't really a great hotel. The free internet was so so so slow, there were hardly any channels on TV, and there wasn't even a pool or hot tub. Really??! What hotel doesn't have a pool?)

Thursday and Friday, McLain had training for 8 hours. So I tried to entertain myself in the hotel all day. I played games, watched TV, worked out in the fitness room (they have a fitness room, but no pool?), and slept in. By the end of the second day, I was pretty bored.

By the time the trainings were over in the evening, many of the things were closed in Seattle, like the museums, Pike Place market, and so forth. So one evening we went to the HUGE mall and walked around. It was so so big! I'm used to the dinky one in Logan that has like 10 stores in it. The one in Seattle was ginormous!!! And the other evening we went to the Seattle Center.

Here are the pictures capturing our fun at the Seattle Center.

Space Needle (so cool)

us in front of the Space Needle (which you can barely see)

view of the city from the Space Needle

view of the bay from the Space Needle

looking in the cool mirrors, which made us
tall and skinny

short and fat

and somewhere in between

posing in front of a fountain, in front of the Space Needle

and making a heart in front of a fountain, in front of the Space Needle

because we heart each other.

Then we drove home on Saturday. Thanks Mom and Dad for taking the kids for us.
I really enjoyed Seattle and loved seeing it from up high in the Space Needle. I hated the traffic and the weird roads, but it was beautiful to look at. And it was so good to get away and be with McLain for so long.

Yay for road trips!