Taylorsville Dayzz

After a long and fun day at Lagoon, we headed to Taylorsville Dayzz to have even more fun. My girls always look forward to dancing to the music. This year Jason's band got to play on the East stage and we went over to listen to him for a little bit.

When the sun set, I pulled out the glow sticks. We made everything from balls to hats with them. They were a huge hit.

We had so much fun that three out of the four girls fell asleep during the loudest part, the fireworks. It's no surprise that they get their narcolepsy from me. I even fell asleep for a minute.

Lagoon

What a day! After learning from our mistakes in the past, Josh didn't go on a single ride other than the water ones and the Rocket in order to avoid getting sick and we left Emma with Grandma since the park wouldn't be any fun for her. So I got to spend all day enjoying the rides with the girls. Kali and I went on a ton of fast rides. Unfortunately, the Samurai scared her to death. She rode on it last year with me, but this year we weren't able to be seated by each other. She said if that happened again, she would refuse to go on the ride. Thankfully it didn't scare her enough to not want to go on any of the other rides. I just can't believe she thought the Samurai was scarier than Wicked. I did notice that after going on all those rides, I was starting to get a headache. I think I'm just getting old and my body doesn't recoup quite so easily.

Sadie needs to grow another three inches in order to be able to go on all the fast rides so she had to settle for the kiddie ones again this year.  She was, however, just barely tall enough to ride the Bat. She was so excited to go on it but told me she didn't really like it after we got off. Later in the day she changed her mind and decided it was pretty cool. Ashlyn could go on all the rides with Sadie other than the Bat, but she doesn't quite have the courage that Sadie and Kali have. She chickened out of most the rides unless they were the really little, slow-going rides. Thankfully she still seemed to enjoy the day. In fact, she had so much fun that she wore herself out and fell asleep on Josh's head while he was giving her a shoulder ride. I wish I would have taken a picture of it.

Our day was going wonderfully until this happened. This would be my phone. I thought several times that I should take my phone out of my pocket and put it in a locker for the fast rides, but after not having a problem on a couple of rides, I no longer worried about it. However, as Josh said to me, "Wicked lived up to it's name." My phone fell out of my pocket some time while riding Wicked. I'm just shocked that the employees were able to locate it. It's obviously a regular occurrence because when I asked what I should do, they immediately told me a time to return. The employee told me they would stop the ride and run a check. When I went back to see what they found, the guy had a hat full of phones and I had to identify mine.

 Thankfully we were able to finish the day out strong. It's become kind of a tradition for the girls to run through the splash pad just before heading home. They love being able to cool off and it was very much needed since I think the high ended up being 105 degrees. The only benefit to the heat was that the park didn't seem quite as crazy as it usually is. Probably because no one wanted to sweat all day long like we did. But it my eyes, it was well worth it. And I'm sure the girls would agree.

Stealing

Last night, while moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, I found a watch. We had seen it at the store the previous day while shopping. Immediately I knew one of the girls had hidden it in their pocket to bring home. All three of them thought the watches were cute and were begging to buy them. I refused because they cost $12.95 a piece (way too much money for a child's watch). After approaching the girls about the stolen watch, Ashlyn admitted to the wrong doing by saying she was sorry. I knew it was time to teach her a lesson and hopefully help her keep from making this mistake in the future. We talked about how we needed to go back to the store and tell them what she had done and that she would need to apologize. Then we would have to pay for the watch because it had gone through the wash and she would have to do extra jobs for me to earn the money to pay for it. Needless to say, she was pretty devastated by the situation and really struggled to say she was sorry. I almost shed a few tears making her apologize to the store clerk, but if you can't tell from the picture, she sure felt better afterward. She even lucked out because the clerk said we didn't have to pay for the watch if we didn't want to because it was still working. I was more than happy to give it back, although Ashlyn was a little disappointed.

Gymnastics

I finally found a gymnastics class for Kali that's a relatively reasonable price. She has been wanting to do gymnastics every since we watched a U of U gymnastics meet a couple of years ago. The only problem is that most places only do tumbling unless you want to spend a fortune. And tumbling doesn't do the bars and beams which is the reason that Kali wanted to do gymnastics in the first place. I knew she'd be amazing at it because she's such a monkey and has no fear of heights and twisting and tumbling, but it was even better when I saw her at her first class. It was like a light went on in her. They split the girls into two groups based on their cartwheels and she was put in the more experienced group. Since then, she has been asked several times if she has done gymnastics before because of how well she's doing (all the other girls in her group have done gymnastics previously). It'll be fun to see where she's at after the seven week session is over.

New Word

Emma is starting to learn new words and has a couple of food related ones that I love. She started saying gogurt and I thought it was simply because she loves to eat gogurts. Then I realized that it's the word she uses to tell me that she wants food. It's so cute to hear a 15-month-old say gogurt. But even more than that, I love what she says when she's done eating. She hollers DONE with a big smile on her face and raises her hands in the air. That's what she's doing in this picture.

Love

For family home evening tonight we wrote notes to each other to show our love. On my card, Ashlyn drew a picture of herself to show me how much she loves me and this is the face she said she's making in the picture.  If that doesn't show love, I don't know what does!!!

Hair Style

Kali is growing up and has been begging to do her own hair for quite some time now. I've been reluctant to relinquish my control over this aspect of her life but decided that during the summer would be the best time to let her have a go at it. I told her that it's just during the summer and that I get to do it if we have anywhere important to go. Her favorite "do" has been the swooping bang with her headband.

RSL Game

Josh recently got promoted to R&D Manager at work and was given 5 tickets to the RSL game as a way of saying congratulations. The crazy thing is that they were $100 tickets because they were on the 3rd row and included food. This was our view. Can I just say amazing!

Other than having to take care of a 15 months old, we had a blast. We ate more popcorn and ice cream sandwiches than was good for us and enjoyed every second of it. And the game was good too. They won 2-0.

We were also close enough to have a special moment with Leo the Lion.

Donut Falls

Ever since Josh did some hiking with his scouts he has been dying to go hiking as a family. Today we got the chance. We hiked Donut Falls and had a wonderful morning. It was the perfect temperature and the hike wasn't too hard for the girls. The only sad part is that there were so many people there that we weren't able to hike all the way up to the falls. We got to the water and were able to climb onto some of the rocks in the middle, but that's it. Despite that, it was still a lot of fun to be in the mountains and to be able to enjoy nature. We plan to do more hikes in the near future.

Walking

Emmalyn is finally walking more than crawling. It's so cute to watch. She moves her shoulders up and down as though it helps her lift her feet off the ground. It seems like it took forever for her to finally walk and it really did considering that most kids are walking by 15 months. Her pediatrician wasn't concerned because she often took 6-7 steps at a time but usually preferred crawling. The funny thing is that she looks so tiny walking. Most people don't expect her to be walking. And it's true, she is a tiny thing. She's my first child to be under the graph on her weight. She lost weight from her 12 month appointment. Again, the pediatrician wasn't concerned because she's a healthy vigorous child. She's just little.

The Sandbox

Right after we moved into our house, we put a sandbox in. Every day since that day I've had a love / hate relationship with the sandbox. Why? It's so much fun and keeps the girls entertained for hours at a time. It also keeps them out of my way while mowing the lawn. However, it is such a mess. When it's wet, it stains clothes and I can't get it out. Also, no matter how many times I ask the girls not to throw sand, it still happens and their hair and scalps are covered in it. It also gets caught in their clothing and tracked all over the house and I can't stand sand on tile. Let's not forget that every cat in the neighborhood is attracted to it, so I'm always having to make sure it's covered and I haven't found a very good method. I've been using tarps, but they disintegrate and it gets costly to keep replacing them. Oh yes, and babies love to eat it. I don't know if you can tell from this view, but Emma was eating the sand and had it all around the corners of her mouth. It makes for fun diapers.

Ran Out of Gas

I'm one of the last people on earth that you'd expect to run out of gas, but guess what? It just happened. Typically when the gas light comes on, I can think of little else but getting to a gas station and filling up. Cars are designed to have the light come on very early so I never worried that I'd be cutting it close. Well, about six months ago, the gas gauge went out on the van. I asked my favorite car shop how much it would cost to fix and was told that it typically costs around $500. Who wants to spend that much  money on the gas gauge? Not me. Thankfully, the gauge was always showing 1/4 tank less than it really had, which only meant that I'd be filling up sooner than normal. Then about a month ago, the gas gauge completely wigged out. It was all over the place. One day it would point to full and the next day my gas light was on. So I decided to start using the odometer. It had been working fine based on my calculations of getting 16 miles a gallon for a 20 gallon tank. That would normally allow me 320 miles. But the last time I filled up, I didn't have quite enough money in the budget to completely fill the tank but was pretty sure that I was close. I thought I could make it at least 300 miles. Well at 294 miles, I was out of gas. I had all the girls with me and it was a super hot day. Thankfully, however, we had just left to get gas and hadn't even made it more than a mile from our house. In the end, I learned two important lessons. Lesson #1 - always fill up the entire tank when depending on the odometer to know when to fill up next. Lesson #2 - my Odyssey only has an 18 gallon tank despite the owners manual saying it holds 20.