Amy Which Way It Goes: tyler

Showing posts with label tyler. Show all posts

Friday, May 3, 2013

Arizona Trip: First Half of Day One

It's time for another series! This is my blog so I get to post as many pictures as I want of my lovely, goofy family reunion and trip to Arizona and there are a lot. About 420. Remember when I used to do photo collages? Those were the good ol' days. Some might end up on the cutting room floor but after looking through them again I just really don't know... mwahahaha! My mom did say she didn't want me to post the picture of my dad jokingly putting his finger up his nose, but my goodness, it is just too funny and now that I've already told you about it, I kinda have too...:)

Got this fortune right before we left. :)

The Day I Was Crowned

On a nice Sunday when my parents were in town, we drove to a family dinner in Brigham City, UT- home of the best Utah peaches, the birthplace of Alma J. Yates and the home of my sister, Valerie.

We waited for the blessing on the food so we could dig in to the Hawaiian haystacks!

And waited...

Mason prayed someone would hurry up and bless the food. Where is Grace when you need her?!

The Day I Became a Hero

Yes, I am posting more beach pictures. Remember last time we went we were kicked out because they needed the water for a nearby fire? Well, I wanted to show the pictures of the difference in the water levels after that. I call this my Summer Summary.

We got to go to the beach with Jessica and her girls one morning. You can see a buoy in the background nicely resting on top of a decent water level.

A few days after they shut the reservoir down, we heard it was back open. All the while we were driving over looking at this fire. This was a different fire! Further east. As I mentioned in my Manti post there were a lot of fires in Utah this summer. Luckily for us this fire didn't shut down the beach. You can see the water level is much much lower this time. Look at that buoy, much closer to the shore and the rope is exposed. The kids tried to have fun with this new level, but the water was murkier and there wasn't as much water to play in unless you went on the other side of the rope and it was too scary for them too.

There is a rock wall right under the rope and bouy. Danielle played on that for a little bit, but it wasn't very comfortable to walk on.

We didn't stay very long this day. The kids got bored and their bickering had us heading back to the car pretty quickly. Sad.

A weekish later we thought we would go see if the levels were any better. Danielle and Tyler were SURE that they wouldn't be, so she and Tyler had bad attitudes and didn't even want to go, but also didn't want to stay home, so they decided to go, but not bring their swimming suits.

Oh those poor unprepared children were out on their luck when we pulled up to a practically open beach and great water levels!

I love these two pictures of Danielle splashing around.

Tyler making the best of the beach in his jeans.

Cassidy had her cast on for most of our beach trips. She had a difficult time NOT going in the water. I was almost constantly reminding her to not go too deep or to be careful not to slip. We were blessed to not have any accidents with her cast around the water.

Keeping busy in the sand.

Lady Bug came for a visit.

Psyching themselves up for the unheated water.

My little swamp things.

On one of our excursions Samuel threw Tyler's sandals in the water. Very quickly the current/ waves started taking them into deeper and deeper water. By the time I got up off my blanket to help they were so far out that I had to immerse everything but my head and swim a bit out to get them. I was a bit hesitant. It was cold and murky. I will run around in the water and play with the kids, but I much prefer to lay in the sun vs. actual swimming. The kids were cheering and hollering about how I had saved the sandals and that I was their hero and that they couldn't believe I had ACTUALLY got in the water! "I thought moms didn't get in the water!", exclaimed Tyler. "HaHa, Tyler." I said. He knows I get in the water all the time! Just not with my full body. They sure made me feel awesome though. Set the bar low, I always say.

One time we made our own little swimming hole.

With all the ups and downs, this was still a great beach year! Maybe BECAUSE of the ups and downs. It was never too crowded and we had enough variation for the kids to not get TOO sick of going to Mommy's favorite place.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

The Day We Got Kicked Off the Beach

May 2012:

These pictures are painful, just painful! I will try to remember when I look at them that summer will return again (unless Twinkies and the Mayans have anything to say about it) and I will again feel the encompassing warmth from the sun sinking into my skin.

Our original destination this day was the beach. We do have an open invitation with my sister in law, Lindsey, to swim at her apartment complex, but I don't like to intrude too much. I'm glad that she is willing to let us crash her complex though because this day we were so excited to go swimming, but when we arrived at the beach it hadn't opened for the summer on the date they had said it would! Something about finishing up construction...Anyway, Lindsey was home that day, so we changed our plans and went there. Being so early in the year it was a bit nippy; too nippy for me to venture into the water more than my ankles. I mostly hung my skin out in the sun, visited with Lindsey, watched the kids splash around and shouted at them to not run or they will break their heads open and if blood gets in the water they would shut the whole pool down!

Hmmm...It was a nice day.

I'm pretty sure this is the day there was a lady sun bathing next to us and we were warning the kids about spraying/splashing us because we had books and cellphones out and the lady next to us was included in the don't spray list. She piped up that she actually wouldn't mind getting cooled down by some water. "REALLY?", we said. she confirmed and then we told the kids they could go ahead and get her wet. Benjamin then sprayed her right in the face! I was mortified! She took it really lightheartedly just laughing at the situation. Then after we included the rule of NOT spraying her in the face Benjamin and Tyler then were completely delighted to cool her her back and legs with water.

Pretty sure this two-toned, star-shaped, floatation device was just for looks...He was like me; being picky about the water.

Double up!

August 2012:

Oh, I had big beach plans for this day! There, I was planning on meeting my sister, Jennifer, and a neighbor who was taking her virgin trip to the beach.

My kids and I pulled up in the new parking lot and they started hauling things down to the sand. In the meantime, I was gathering the remaining stuff while watching the kids spread the blanket out and then a police officer walk towards my kids. I can kinda hear him ask Danielle something about "mom" and she kept looking up at me and I'm up there looking down in my big, old white brimmed hat thinking, "Dood, I am right here. Chill, I'll be down there in a second. My kids aren't here all by their lonesome." Then I saw Danielle start to gather things up, so I left what I was going to bring down and went to see what he was saying. Turned out that they were shutting down the beach because there was a chance that they would need the water from the reservoir to fight a nearby fire.

I looked around and saw that the other groups at the beach were packing up too. I'm glad that we hadn't become too comfortable there before we had to leave. So, I called my friend (who had just arrived) and my sister, (who was still on her way) and we agreed to head to a splash park. Then, I went the wrong way and never found the splash pad. Frustrated, I saw a decent sized park and just decided to stop there, let the kids eat their lunches and figured out where to go from there. I called my friend and she had made it to the splash pad, but it was getting kinda busy (no beach to keep the population down) and her boys were needing a nap, so she went home and my sister met me at the park. I felt bad she didn't get to "beach" that day, but it wasn't my fault. I'm not the one who parked their over -heated truck on top of extremely dry, tall Utah mountain grass, was I?

We ate, the kids played on the park equipment and Danielle had a brilliant idea to call Aunt Lindsey. Lindsey, was so nice to let us all come play in the pool!

The kids had such a good time with their cousins! The temperature was a lot warmer than May, so I didn't have much of a problem jumping in the water and swimming/playing a bit.