4th of July

Unfortunately, I spent most of my birthday cleaning house to prepare for out big party the next day. Tony spent it assembling my birthday gifts! My grandma & grandpa Quinn give us a very generous check for our birthdays and this year I didn't want to put it in the bank and let it get eaten away by bills. I wanted some fun stuff for our backyard--a swingset and a trampoline. When Tony went shopping for them, he found a great clearance deal on a patio set and gazebo tent thing and I settled for those instead of the swingset. I must admit, I do love them!


On the morning of the fourth, I took the kids to the Kaysville City booths and parade while Tony finished his assembly work. We had never been before because we usually go to Willard. They didn't have many booths, but a company that was advertising their inflatable party service had a bunch of bouncy stuff that kids could go on for free!



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Faith & Christian went on this slide about a hundred times.






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They loved the ball pit at the bottom!







They also loved the one that had an obstacle course. Just after the parade started, I got the kids to leave the slides and bouncies to find a spot to watch it.


The parade was not especially entertaining. Given how many millions of people were there to see it, I was very surprised when a man sitting in front of us commented, "Ooooh, a float! Kaysville parade's finally got a float this year!" It was mostly pageant winners, police vehicles and posses. It was kind of funny that that same guy was shouting to everyone in the parade as they passed by. Things like, "Woo, hoo for miss Kaysville/Fruit heights! Lookin' great there, let's see that wave!!" and "All right Davis County Commissioner ___ !!!! You can throw that taffy right here!" and "Go pioneer outfit kids, yee haw! Uh oh--I mean Thoroughly Modern Millie olden day costume kids!" (that was the musical Kaysville city was performing as part of the festivities). I loved that it made them all look kind of tickled and embarrassed at the same time and it also got more candy thrown to our area :)
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After hiking back to our car, we got home to set up for our 4th of July BBQ. It's traditionally held at Tony's parents' house, but this year they were dealing with getting the interior painted and also Larry's office remodelled because of water damage from a broken pipe.
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Larry & Lana, Tammy, Tina & Brian, Zach, and Jason & Athena came over to celebrate with us. Of course, we had a ton of food.





The kids swam for a bit right after dinner. Don't they know about the 30 minute rule? ;D

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We laughed at this giant bumblebee climbing into and out of our snapdragons.

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The kids sure enjoyed bouncing on the new trampoline!

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Pa Braegger and Christian went into our bedroom to "watch Little Bear" but this is what I found just a few minutes later. I think it's so funny that they fell asleep in the same pose!

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About a half hour after that, they had both rolled over into a snuggle :)

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Grandma Braegger got obsessed with playing Wii bowling.

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Leave it to Faith to strike a pose and become the center of attention in a picture where she was supposed to have a supporting role!

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Tony dared Tina to get on the tramp, and then bounced her so hard that she fell down. After that he kept doing it so she couldn't get up. I don't think her hysterical laughing helped either!!

At sunset we woke Christian up for marshmallow toasting,

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and sparklers.

Faith barely even got brave enough to hold hers poked into a pencil eraser, but she loved it!

Lastly, we went to the front for some fireworks that Tammy & Tony had gotten. I love how they are all covering their ears for this loud one! They loved the show, but I think their favorite part is taking turns choosing which ones get lit next :)

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It turned out to be a wonderful Independance Day! We feel very lucky to live in a free country and very much appreciate those who have fought for it and those who are still working to keep us safe.

I'm sure most of you are getting sick of the incessant plugs for my preschool blog, but I'm going to keep begging for participation until at least 6 people have voted on my polls!! Thank you so much to those of you who have already. I think I will have a give away soon where those who vote (and then comment letting me know they have) will get a chance to win something awesome!

I just started putting up letter themed ideas on that blog and began with A is for Apple. I hope this will be a fun resource for anyone with a preschool or kindergarten aged child, much like the Crafty Crow letter themed posts are. Just so you know, I won't be posting them in alphabetical order, but in the order of my preschool lesson plans. Let's get crafting!

(Images are linked)

"E" Day

I see that a bunch of you clicked over to look at my preschool's new blog--thanks! Could I ask a huge favor of you? Would you please answer the polls that I have going on there? Just click HERE and look on the left side (you'll have to scroll down to see them all). I have questions about time, length, day, snacks and price for the preschool and it would really help me out to hear your opinions! I know most, if not all, of you will not have kids in my preschool, but I'd still like to pick your brains!!!!

We've been so busy with summer fun that I'm way behind again on posting. Hang in there with me!

Joy has been having letter themed weeks to teach Sierra the sounds of letters and asked us if we wanted to participate in the activities she had planned for "E week". Of course we jumped at the chance! On July 2nd we started out at the Tracy Aviary so Joy could get her yearly family pass which is $40 for parents and two children. In addition to the aviary, you get to go to the Dinosaur Park free during weekdays and the Nature Center & Hogle Zoo free on the first Thursday of the month. Luckily, we get these too with our Dino pass!

The kids loved the ducks and pelicans.

While we were walking over to see the eagles and the emus, I looked back to see that Sierra had taken Christian's hand, how cute! Buddy might not look that happy in this picture, but I could tell that he was loving it. He's always asking if we can go places with Sierra or if she can come over to play.

The kids were facinated by this grey crowned crane that tried to scare us away with it's puffy afro and wings outstretched. It reminded us of the crane in Kung Fu Panda.

After the Aviary, we went to the zoo to see the elephant show. We had just recently been to the zoo, but had opted for the bird show instead.

We weren't early enough to get seats on the bleachers, but we were early enough for the kids to get bored waiting for the show to start!


It was fun to see the soon-to-be-mama elephant do some tricks like fetching, holding different legs up and waving her ears. It was not fun to see that they made her lay down and then get right back up--this girl is 21 months pregnant for heck's sake! At the end of my pregnancies I would have just told anyone who instructed me to get down on the ground to just bite me, and I didn't go past 9 months ;)






Christian has a knack for awesome picture poses. The giraffe isn't the only one trying to reach something!












It sprinkled on us for awhile, but by the time we got up near the big cats, it was dumping buckets!! We spent a lot of time under the roof of the tiger exhibit before daring to venture out. Even though it lightened up a bit, we still got completely soaked!

We also took our time looking through the small animal building. Looks like buddy has a message for the porcupine. He was "Communicating. Keeping up foreign relations."




We started to dry off just before we left. Still, a fun day of "E" activities!

Unfortunately we were busy the next few days getting ready for a July 4th party at our house so we missed the rest of E week. Lily rode the elevator and escalator at the mall and got her ears pierced with elegant earrings. It would have been better with her aunt Emily!!

I've decided to do a tiny pre-preschool starting this September and made a blog for it: CLICK HERE

If you know anyone near my neighborhood who has a little one that's a bit too young for regular preschool but would like to have fun and learn with friends, please let them know about it!

It's too bad that Robert Pattinson from Twilight and Daniel Radcliffe from Harry Potter have gotten so nasty with each other, I love both their movies!

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.