Five Little Monkeys

Here they are...my five adorable babies.



It was quite an event trying to get a good shot. This one turned out the best. I love these kids!

Happy Birthday Karen

This is the birthday girl. She usually doesn't like her picture to be taken.

On occasion though, she can be talked into it, as seen here with my number one grandson, Caleb.
Twenty-eight years ago, I spent the afternoon alone (or as alone as you can get in a hospital) waiting for this little girl to enter my world.

Here's Karen from a couple years (or so) ago, enjoying her Winger's Asphalt pie, and Brandon trying to puppydog his way into a few more bites, although he already polished off his own slice.
Happy Birthday, Kake. I love you a million gazillion and back again. I've been blessed to have you as a daughter and now even more blessed to have you as a friend.

Heritage Village

On Saturday we took the kids to This Is The Place Park and went to Heritage Village which is what they call the little Pioneer place inside. We thought it was free due to Pioneer Day weekend, but it was a misadvertisement. Evidently someone on the Days of '47 KSL 5 Parade "misspoke." We had to pay to get in. Because of that, we decided to get our monies worth and we stayed all day.
Here's our little pioneer girl, Agnes, trying on a bonnet in the main building.

One of the first things we did was "sign up" the kids for a watermelon contest, just so we could get them a piece of melon because it was very hot.

Caleb and Agnes both started on their watermelon before the contest started. Cheater, cheater, watermelon eater.

Hello Llama.

Agnes wanted to ride the ponies. Once she got on, she changed her mind but was eventually talked into trying it again and she decided she really liked it! She's always loved horses, and now she's ridden one.

Caleb was less sure, but was also talked into riding. In fact, Caleb did it first before Agnes!

Caleb was still working on his watermelon when we got to the petting pen. The little goat was wondering what he had.

Caleb is crossing the bridge very nonchalantly, when all of a sudden...

out of nowhere comes this cow! Holy cow! Thank goodness Caleb's mama was there to save him!

The cow got the watermelon. He didn't share it with the goat. There's not much worse than a cow with bad manners.

Caleb was more sad to lose his watermelon than he was upset for being attacked by the cow.

This is what Agnes was doing while Caleb was being attacked by the cow.

Agnes took this picture of the lady who told us about an air-conditioned spot where we could find...

ice cream! This flavor is called Play-doh. I wouldn't recommend it, however the chocolate was very good.

Even sugar-free Caleb got to have a taste of Mommy's vanilla cone.

This is the kid-sized train. They like to holler when they go through the covered bridge, but I don't think these two kids hollered.

After the train, and a quick run through the sprinklers for Nana, Laura and Agnes found a handcart to pull.

Agnes helped at the Tithing office. She sorted the plastic vegetables into bins. We drenched our heads in some cool water that was pumped from behind the store. That was great! The man there said it came from five feet below the surface which is why it is so cool.

By this time, not only had Caleb needed his battery recharged, so did my camera. This was the last shot I got for the day. There's a couple more pictures on Karen's blog if you're interested. The girls learned how to make rugs from the next place. I'm anxious for them to get going on a couple for my kitchen floor! It was a fun day. Yay for the pioneers!

Pioneer Day Photo Gallery, Part Two

Our evening on Pioneer day went something like this...

Just for the record, no Agnes is NOT on fire.

Thanks for buying the fireworks, Karen!

Our Pioneer Day Photo Gallery, Part 1

I'd like to show you what I saw from my front door yesterday. I love it when the boy scouts put up the flags.


It's been so fun to be surprised at what pops up in my yard. This guy showed up a few days ago.


Isn't the flag such a nice addition to my yard? Too bad they take it back down again so early in the evening.

Even nicer than the flag in my yard are my two little lammies with the flag.

Agnes took this picture. Pretty good job!

She took this one too. I like it!

Sitting on my porch, waiting to leave on a picnic

Hello Caleb!

Check out Caleb's hairdo. Yep, Nana did it. But I only used water.

Karen did Agnes' hair but Agnes didn't let it stay. Laura used a different barrette and now we're good to go!
I'll show you the fireworks tomorrow.

Pioneer Day

Tuesday night we went to see the floats for today's parade, up-close and personal.

This one was my favorite but I don't know who made it.

There were clocks all over the float.

Agnes got to hold a...flower petal?

Posing with the lady mouse

I really liked this one too. It's a seagull barbecuing crickets.
There was even "smoke" coming from the barbecue.

Can you see the knight in the background? Nice looking dragon.
Good job Orem City.

Not too sure what the deal is with the feet...

A small part of Noah's ark

Agnes couldn't NOT touch and consequently some of the floats are without a tiny portion of their decorations for this morning. Oops.

Future BYU students?

Everything was fine until...

Oops again, Agnes walked the wrong way and collapsed the covering where the driver sits.
I'm sure it's just fine though. Yeah, just fine.

I bought the cheapie version of Photoshop a few days ago. When I overcome my fear of the program I'm going to learn how to chop that lady in the purple shirt out of this photo. Then won't that be such a sweet picture of Karen holding Eliot? Look at Eliot, he's even smiling!
Happy Pioneer Day. I'm blessed to live in this valley with gorgeous mountains. I appreciate all those who made that trek across the plains and settled this beautiful place.