Last half of June

On June 19th our ward had a homemade ice cream party and, for some reason, I signed up to bring some. I had to borrow the machine from Joy & Jordan and had never made it before, so it was a bit of an adventure! With the help of the kids, I cranked out a fairly delicious (but on the soft-serve side since I didn't figure in enough freezing time after it came out of the machine and the party was outside in the heat) cookie dough ice cream. Christian decided to nearly wear the pan as a hat while he licked it.

On the 20th, Tony had plans for us to do some fun stuff down in Utah County. On the way, we tried to stop by Taffy Town, but they aren't open on Saturday(!!) so we had to go to Sweet Afton's candy shop in Gardner Village to get that brand of salt water taffy. The kids also each got a sucker.

We wanted to feed the ducks again, but it was sprinkling and I hoped that the skies would clear up if we did another activity first. We headed over to the Provo Color Me Mine so the kids could glaze some pottery. Tony delivers to this store quite frequently and has been wanting to take the kids for awhile. Faith very carefully painted her kitty statue and Christian thoroughly coated his dolphin with as many colors as he could.

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I couldn't believe how enthralled they were for several hours. I think we have not one, but two little artists on our hands. They both had a blast and already wish that we could go back! I just wish they had a closer location and that it was less expensive.

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The next week Tony picked up their fired pieces and this is the final result--awesome!

Unfortunately, the light rain turned into a crazy heavy flash flood downpour, so the duck pond was out. We then went to eat at Wingers at the Provo Towne Center and to "Up" in 3-D there. This is the first movie Christian remembered seeing in the theater and the first 3-D movie Faith wasn't too scared to watch :D

The next day was Father's Day! After church I set about helping Faith make some hamburger cupcakes that she had fallen in love with on the Bakerella blog. I quickly whipped up a couple pans of vanilla cupcakes and a cookie sheet of brownines and cooled them in the freezer. Faith used the electric knife to cut the cupcakes in half, and then a cup to cut out the brownie circles.

I put yellow, red and green frosting into some ziplocs and had the kids use them as pastry bags. They squirted on blobs of "ketchup" and "mustard" and then a ribbon of "lettuce" around the edge.

Lastly, they popped the cupcake tops on and sprinkled them with sesame seeds. They turned out so cute! Both kids were pretty pleased with themselves.

They were a big hit with everyone at my mom & dad's! We also attempted some sugar cookie "fries", but they turned out too crumbly (I tried to fit way too much baking into a two hour block) and we left them home.

Apparently I was too busy to get pictures of our dads, or even the kids with their dad (!!????!!), but my dad got this picture of the gifts Faith & Christain gave Tony. They are the things they made at Home Depot, but Faith painted hers and Christian scribbled a bit of marker on his.

I want to thank my dad, my father-in-law, and Tony for being great dads. You guys are the best!!!!!

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While I was chatting with my parents and siblings in the kitchen and Tony & Brad were playing football on the XBox downstairs that afternoon, we heard a dull roar and looked out the window to see hail coming down pretty heavily. Of course, we ran right out to play in it. Tony, my mom and the kids each had to stand in it, get pummeled and welted by it, and then express that it hurts! Dad finally thought to grab his camera, but by then it was quite melted--when it fell it was marble size! When the sun came out we all grabbed handfuls and started a hail-ball fight.

We then went to Tony's parents for a visit even though their house was in the middle of being painted inside and all of the furniture had been moved to the middle of the rooms and covered with dropcloths. Christian told Lana that her house was messy, certainly shocking to him because it is usually the epitome of perfection. The next week when we visited it was in a similar state and Christian exclaimed, "you still a big mess!"

On Monday the 26th I took the kids strawberry picking at Day Farms which I had been meaning to do for a month. We grabbed a container, headed out into the field and I showed the kids how to pick just the red ones. Faith was doing a great job, but I remarked that Christian loved picking dirt instead of strawberries. "No, I wuv picking dirt and frowing (throwing) dirt!" he excitedly responded.

Eventually we ended up with quite a haul. I had a hard time convincing Faith that we just couldn't eat any more than what we had! About halfway through our time, Christian discovered that picking strawberries was actually more fun than dirt, because they are delicious to eat! None of the million or so that he picked ever made it into our container. I told the cashier girl that she should just put him on the scale to figure our price because he had eaten so many in the field, but she said that all you can eat while picking is figured into the price already :) Because it was late in the season and the remaining berries were small, they were only charging $1 per pound anyway!

Look--he can't even keep his mitts off them for one final picture before we left! It was so much fun that I think we'll make strawberry picking a yearly tradition.

Recently Pioneer Woman spotlighted a website called Asian Aisle which critiques food and cute items that were picked up at Asian markets. It reminded me of how many fun items you can find and how long it had been since I'd gone. So, after Day Farms, we went to Thai Market in Layton. We got some chocolate filled panda cookies, fruit chews, and some (hideously disgusting, it turned out) coconut cookies in a bear shaped clear plastic bucket. Someday soon we'd like to check out the Asian market in Roy because I remember it as having even more of a selection of sweets and fun stuff.

These were my & Faith's favorite (Christian absolutely loved the panda cookies), but Tony hated it so much that he spit it out right after putting one in his mouth.

On our way home, we saw this cool rainbow!

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On Saturday the 26th, we started off with a Lowe's project. This time they made pirate ships!
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In the car on our way to our next destination, the Dinosaur Park, I got a picture of this.

I said that I would let you know how Tony did in the truck rodeo--he won second place in the state! He was actually very disappointed that he didn't get first. Instead of a belt buckle he would have won an all expense paid trip for two to Pittsburgh for the National Truck Driving Championships. They change the location every year, so of course he was most excited about going this year even though it would have been in August (before football season).

When we got to Dinosaur Park, we first went around outside checking out the giant dinos and feeding the fish. The kids loved this cave with fossils and dinosaur bones embeded in the rock.

They spent a lot of time playing in the sand at the playground section and also here, where they can pretend to discover dinosaur bones as they clear the sand away with paint brushes.

Then we went inside the museum.

That's one big skull!

This wooly rhino replica must be new, I haven't noticed it before.

It was nice to be able to go for free with the family pass Faith won at the Dinosaur Park Halloween costume contest. We'll have to make good use of it over the next few months.

After that we decided to take the kids to Cold Springs Trout Farm in North Ogden. Faith hadn't been since she was three and both she and Buddy had been dying to go. Here's one of Faith's three trout . . .

and one of Christian's two. They also loved feeding the fish and we went through a bunch of cups of fish pellets.

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For an extra 25 cents a fish, they even fillet your catch for you. It was some pretty captivating entertainment.

When we got home, I fried them up in some butter and squeezed some fresh lemon juice on the top. We all loved it! It ended up costing about twenty dollars, but for several hours of fun plus a delicious dinner, I thought it was a pretty good bargain. Plus, our first two activities of the day were free! I really wanted to have a bunch of adventures with the kids this summer and think we have been doing a pretty good job.