PemFest 2012

Every year our neighborhood does a big "PemFest" carnival.

They have a kids bike parade, games, a BBQ, etc.

Instead of decorating his bike, Bridger decided to dress up as Batman.

Saxon all ready to go:

Both boys:

Our cute neighbor Noah agreed to help Dalton in the cake walk :)

I don't know why I didn't get any more pictures?  The boys did a sponge race, a pillow sack race, a tug-of-war, got their faces painted, and ate a million cupcakes.

It was a fun day :)

Swimming lessons 2012

This year for swimming lessons, Saxon was in level 3 and Bridger was in level 2.

Saxon is awesome!  He can swim really well on his own.  The only thing they told him to keep working on was side breathing.

Bridger didn't love swimming lessons.

Every day I would have to pick him up and hand him into the pool to his teacher because he wouldn't get in on his own.  Every time she would ask him to do something, he would say no.  In our pool, he can almost swim.  He calls it his "monster swim."  He goes under water and treads water and holds his breath.  He can hold his breath forever!  But he was really nervous in lessons and he gets shy, so his teacher thought he was afraid of the water.

This year Saxon was big enough to go on the slide alone.

Bridger had to go with his teacher, but he loved the slide!

For the exit skill "dive into deep water and swim to the side", Saxon got to jump off the diving board.  He has been dying to jump off the diving board every year and finally got to do it!

Bridger's class played games for their last day:

The cute boys:

This is what Bridger thought of swimming lessons:

This is what Saxon thought:

T-ball 2012

We've been having a busy month is June with T-ball every Tuesday and Thursday.

The boys look so cute out there.

They loved their first game, but since, I think they've gotten a little bored.

T-ball is a little slow-moving for them.

 Saxon playing catcher:

 Bridger in the outfield:

 Me and my cute Saxy:

St. George Weekend - Memorial Day

 On Memorial Day, the weather was perfect!

It was hot, not windy, and sunny.

Emily met us at the pool with Kaylyn and Zachary and kids swam all day.

Literally all day.

We never even took a break for lunch.

 The hotel had an amazing pool!  It was big and only went up to 5 feet deep.  There were plenty of lounge chairs and lots of other kids.  Some other kids that were leaving left noodles for my kids to play with.  Most of the other people at the pool left by noon.  After that, we had the place to ourselves.

 Dalton couldn't quite stay up with just his floaties, so we tied a noodle around him.

 The kids found this raft and took turns jumping off the side onto it.

(Left: Kaylyn, Right: Bridger)

 Left: Saxon jumping backwards, Right, Kaylyn.

 All 3 jumping at once.

They didn't quite have the timing of 1...2...3...down yet so Bridger is all the way in the water all ready.

 Kaylyn kept rescuing butterflies out of the pool:

 The boys:

Bridger, Zachary, Saxon

After spending all day at the pool with cousins, it was time to get ready to go.

We went back to the room and packed up and showered.

We were so sad to leave.

It was such an fun weekend!!!

St. George Weekend - Sand Hollow Reservoir

While we were in St. George, Mike wanted to check out the Sand Hollow Reservoir.

It is called "Little Lake Powell" and he wanted to see if it lived up to its reputation.

It was really pretty, and had these gorgeous red sandy beaches.

The boys had fun splashing around in the lake.

It was pretty shallow too so it wasn't too cold.

It was pretty crowded though.

And windy...ahhh!  The darn wind all weekend!

While it was really fun, we decided that it we wanted Lake Powell, we better actually go to Lake Powell.

Once we got home, Nate's sister Emily and her family came over for a BBQ.  We told them about our day and Emily's husband Scott told us that it is always windy at the reservoir.  Plus, he told us that they have swimmer itch there.  Little bugs that get into your skin and make you itch for a week until they die.  Gross!  I'm so glad I didn't get into the water.  And this lake has those mussels that aren't supposed to be spread from lake to lake.  So you would have to decontaminate your boat after going.  If we lived in St. George, it would be a fun place to go.  But I'm not sure it's worth taking the boat all the way down there...

It was another fun day in St. George though!

St. George Weekend - Cinder Cone Hike

The main hike that we wanted to do while we were in St. George was "Jenny's Canyon."

Of course...it was closed.

So we read the descriptions of the other hikes and thought that "Cinder Cone" sounded cool.  It was marked as difficult, but it was only a mile long.  We're good hikers, so we figured, "how hard can it be if it's only a mile?"

There was another family that overheard us talking about doing it and they decided to do it too.  They weren't sure if it was safe for kids, but if they we were doing it, they figured it must be safe.

We actually, had no idea what we were doing though...

The hike to the top wasn't too bad.  It wrapped around the mountain, and then finally up to the top.  Cinder cone is an old volcano, so the kids thought it was cool to look inside.

There was another volcano just in front of us too:

Another family shot:

Thank goodness we had Mike...we never get family pictures LOL.

While we were standing at the top of the volcano, we see some kids come up over the top.  But they didn't wrap around the mountain, they came straight up.  They even brought their dog.  So Mike looks it up and says that there is a trail that goes straight down.  It looks way faster than the trail we took up.  We couldn't actually see the trail though because we would have to walk around the top rim of the volcano and back to the front in order to see it.  But the kids were tired so "shorter and faster" sounded awesome.  We were so excited about it that we even talked all of the other families into taking the shorter trail too!

Yeah.

Well, the "shorter" trail was a straight, steep, shot straight down the front of the mountain.  It was half dirt, and half volcanic rock.  It was slippery and very steep.  Dalton was in Nate's arms and started freaking out and getting too wiggly for Nate to safely hold him and make his way down the mountain.  So I took him, but I was so off-balance with the wiggly, crying baby, that I was afraid I was going to fall.

I finally asked Dalton, "What do you want!!"

"Mike."

Of course.

So, I pass him off to Mike where he settles down and is happy.

I was the last in the group and the path was getting kind of treacherous so I called up to Mike to see how he was doing with the baby.  He didn't answer.  I leaned over the edge to see and saw Mike sliding down the mountain on his butt with baby on his lap.  Baby Dalton was cracking up.  He loved it.

Eventually, we slid/fell/stumbled/crawled our way down the face of the mountain.

It probably took twice as long as if we had taken the real trail.

And all of the families behind us were struggling too.

Oops.

Mike said that the moral of the lesson is that you are an example even if you don't mean to be, so make sure you make good choices.  Shorter isn't always better, or smarter.

Lesson learned.

Since we survived, we laughed the whole way home and then all took long showers!