Watch This Safety Dance!

Safety At It's Finest

One of the times that we took the kids to a certain water park in Draper last week I was sitting in the sun working on some menu ideas for school when I looked up to think, this is what I saw. Is this their idea of what a lifeguard should do? As I was watching him twist his head from side to side and up and down I thought at first that he was trying to keep himself awake. But as he kept doing it I looked around at the other lifeguards. Several of them were using this, um, tactic (?) to "watch" the kids in the lazy river. So I decided that I needed to get a close up look at the lifeguard. Guess what? Half of the time his eyes were closed while doing this! Part of the time he was staring at a cute girl but just moving his head around. In the 15 minutes that I watched him he managed to miss 3 kids walking on the outer section of the pool (which is a big rule violation), one little girl fall off the tube and get stuck under the water (her dad had to pull her up), and me standing right in front of him commenting to him on how he looks like and idiot and is really not doing anything. Lewis and I had a good laugh but the more I think about it the crazier it seems. Is this really what they teach them to do? If you really watch what he is doing it looks ridiculous. Up, down, side, side. Up, down, side, side. Safety at it's finest? I think not.

(Video in the next post)

I Took The Kids to Classic To The Slides

Here is Jason and his friend Patrick playing not on the slides! Jason has some crazy hair!

Patrick's mom claims that they have no pictures of Patrick where he is showing teeth. Here you go Becky!

Hiking at Brighton

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to go up to Brighton for the evening. We have a great friend who owns a cabin up there and she hosts a fun night about 2 or 3 times a year. Last time we went it was in about 6 to 8 feet of snow and we had to hike in using snowshoes and sleds. This time since it was warm (it was 97 at the bottom of the canyon and 77 at the top) we went for a hike around the lake. Well it is more of a walk then a hike, but you get the picture.

We even got to see a few of these:

After the walk we had a barbecue and then played poker. We drove back down the mountain at about midnight. It was a very fun evening!

My Saturday Job

I spent most of last Saturday cleaning the whole garage. I had a little bit of help from the kids, very little. I even swept, vacuumed, and washed the floor. Usually Lewis cleans the garage and I do the very little helping, but this time I took charge because he was mowing and I was sick and tired of the piles of shoes and trash that the kids put on the floor in there. So now it has been a week and it still looks the same. I make the kids keep their stuff put away and take everything inside the first time. (Just patting myself on the back....)*

* How boring was this post! Seriously? What have I turned into? It is like I am a stay-at-home mom that has nothing else to do but cook and clean and stress about dirty socks and piles of shoes. I need to do something about this, and fast!

Working On The Yard

Here are my raspberries. Don't they look great? The kids are ready to eat these, but they are all still yellow and not ripe. Hopefully soon! We also have a garden spot but I let that land go this year. I am not quite ready to deal with lots of fruits and veggies. We actually used the spot to put the extra mulch. Ha!

Here is the backyard. Lewis has since bought a new lawnmower so it is looking even better. He fixed all of the sprinklers and have it so we don't get yellow dead spots. He is turning into a little handyman.

Tweet Tweet

This poor bird fell out of out big tree. It had at least a broken leg and maybe a broken wing too. Lewis moved it out of the lawn twice but it kept coming back right by the tree. I could not watch. I left to run an errand and when I came back it was gone. I imagine that the poor little guy somehow got back up the tree and into the nest. Hey, like I said I imagine...

Please Don't Go!

As I was packing Adam's bag for scout camp...

(Don't judge me, I like to know what is being packed. What was that? Controlling? Not me!)

Mojito kept climbing into his bag and blocking me from packing. He was so worried that we were going to leave again. He followed me everywhere. It was so cute and so sad.

For two weeks after we got home he followed me around and would not let me out of his sight. If I went out to the garage he would cry and try to follow me. We could not leave him alone at all. Of course I felt bad and took him with me everywhere that I could. He would sit by the car door whenever I got my shoes on, even if I was just taking out the trash. He is finally acting normal again. It is nice to have my little guy back. Now what do I tell him when I start packing for Cabo?

After being at the beach for over a week we all needed pedicures. I took the girls and while I picked out my color they told the ladies that they needed water and the "glue" to make their feet soft and smooth. I was like, glue? Then Abigail tells me that she is talking about the stuff in the cooking pot. Cooking pot? Oh yeah! She wants them to put her feet into the wax. Ha! So I told them that it was too hot and they could not use the "glue". They settled on the water. It was very fun and I actually look forward to taking them again.

I feel the need, the need for Speed!

Speed Stacking that is!

The girls have pulled these out every afternoon to compete for fastest time, and strangest stack. It is a heavy competition and usually ends in a fight but they have a good time doing it!

Happy Birthday America!

We got home at 7:30pm, unpacked the car and set up for fireworks. Since the state that we live is a strange and unusual place they do not do fireworks on Sunday even if it is the 4th. They do them instead on Saturday because someone decided that it is not a "Sabbath day" activity to be as a family and watch fireworks and such (I know, I am being a brat). So by the time we got home we had missed the fireworks both at home and in California so we did our own. We had a few really good ones but I did not take many pictures. They men managed to kill/blow up a Pinocchio toy with some fire cracker things that we got in Nevada.

The yearly picture of the kids on the 4th with the friend Ewells!

Getting Home

Days 9 and 10 were spent driving home. We stayed the night in Primm. I will just give a few notes on these days:

• NEVER stay at Primm. Ewwwww. I wanted to shop the outlets on Saturday so we stayed there instead of in Vegas proper. Lets just say one word: cockroach. Enough said. I did not know if I should sleep in the car or in the hotel. Both were bad.


• Primm has good outlets. Lots to buy.


• When you go on a 10 day vacation with your family pack light or the shopping bags will not fit in the car on the way home.


• It is HOT in Nevada.


• Taking 2 days to drive back from Cali is a good idea.



• Family vacations are fun, I totally recommend them.

  

Beach & Breathalyzer

Day 9: Friday was beach day. Our last day. We slept in for a while and went out to breakfast all together, nobody wanted to miss anything now. We took the kids to see Airbender after the change in plans from the night before. Then we went to the beach for the majority of the day. This was my view as I sat in my chair.

This is what the kids did:

They all had a great time. After the beach we went to the house, showered and left to go to the pier in San Diego. The kids wanted dessert and I wanted a t-shirt. On the way home we got stuck in traffic but it ended up being a sobriety check point. With signs leading up to it. What kind of police department does that? (We went less then a mile and a half in over and hour.) Who puts up signs telling you that you are about to be breathalyzed? Whatever. San Diego is a strange place.

Lego Take 2 and Disappointment

On day 7 we went back to Lego land to finish the rides and to go to the water park. The water park is very disappointing. Too many rules and not enough fun. I even got into trouble for pushing Abigail in a tube through the lazy river. They wanted me to be in the tube with her but not 2 people in a single tube. They were ridiculous. So we left.

We decided to get showered and dressed and go to dinner and a movie. The kids went nuts and did not want to see Airbender. They threw a fit. So Lewis and I took Abigail and went to go to dinner and the movie. We drove to the theater and could not turn onto the street because of a big street fair that was happening. We decided to skip the movie and go to the fair for dinner and shopping. We ate yummy food, Abigail bounced, and Lewis and I shopped. At one point I said that we should call the kids and tell them to get ready and go get them and bring them back. Lewis said okay, but then decided that they had a chance to go and didn't. So we finished shopping, got dessert and went back to the house. When we told the kids that we did not go to the movie but went to the street fair instead they threw ANOTHER fit. Oh well. You can't win no matter what. :)

As Seen While Sitting On The Beach...

... it made me laugh.

Day 7 Lunch

We took the kids to Dave and Busters for a late lunch after going to La Jolla and before Sea World. They ate lots of food and luckily on Wednesdays the games are half price so with their game cards they got twice as many games and twice as many tickets. They were in heaven!

And we got tiny donuts for dessert. Yummy.

The Day of Surprises

Day 7 started out with the kids knowing two clues; beach and whale. I even told Adam that it did not mean beached whale. So the first part of the day too us to La Jolla beach to go to the tide pools. Well we were able to get a bunch of seashells from the walk down but when we got there the waves were too strong to take the little ones past the break so we just played for a while at the rocks and in the water.

Jason found some crabs and claws. He loved it.

Clue 2 was whale. We took the kids back to Sea World for an evening of fun and fireworks. (I will tell you about the middle of the day in another post.) Here is Lewis, Haley and Jason on the roller coaster that everyone hated the night before. Lewis got soaked! Ha!

Here is a worm thing. Jason saw it and said, "Hey mom, He is doing the traditional wedding dance. The worm! Hahahahahahahahaha!" He thought that it was the funniest thing ever!

We saw a couple of shows and before we went to see Shamu the kids got these:

We had a great 7th day!

Who forgot the camera?

Day 6:

So we needed a down day so we hung out in the morning. We walked around Carlsbad for about an hour and then went to lunch. After lunch we headed to Toys-R-Us for the new Lego Harry Potter and Toy Story 3 games for the PlayStation. {I needed a game because I could not go outside. My eyes are so sensitive to the light (even with the clouds) because of the new medicine that they have me on.} We also needed another boogie board because we only had 3 and we have 4 kids. Get it? When we got back to the house my wonderful husband took all 4 kids to the beach for 2 hours and I got to just sit and play the game for a while. When they got back he got them all showered, dressed for bed, and fed so that the two of us could walk down and eat on the beach at a little restaurant a few blocks down from the house. It was a delicious dinner of pasta and clams for Lewis, and steak and veggies for me, followed by cheesecake and lava cake for dessert. As we sat and watched the ocean after dinner I realised that we had forgotten the camera all day and that we had zero pictures to show for the day. Oh well. Just know it was a nice quiet down day in the middle of the vacation. Exactly what we all needed. Well, at least it was what I needed.