Like their Father

My children are like their father. The little one likes to tease. The curly haired one likes to tell jokes. And they both learned how to say, "HA HA" just like him.

Lagoon

The highlight of J's year came, Stake Lagoon Day. He was so happy in church three weeks ago with the Lagoon tickets showed up.  Apparently the boats were all he talked about in Sunbeams. I know Stake Lagoon Day sound bizarre to all you non locals, but really its just a marketing scheme. You get in for a discounted price one day a summer depending on your Stake, and then never see anyone you know the whole day. It is not endorsed by the stake, there is no greeting anyone. It just a marketing thing. J looks forward to Lagoon all year, for what ever reason. Actually you get in for free but can't ride any rides, so then you buy the discounted ride package, or tickets to ride individually. Of course we started off with riding the baby boats. Our kids are little, and we are cheap, so bought tickets for individual rides, we spent $26 the whole day including parking. 

Although he dropped baby, and just called them little boats this year. Really the only reason he wants to go is the baby boats, so we should just let the kids ride them three times and go home, but yet we don't. Lagoon is really not as fun as he remembers, as he learned today.  And what do Brent and I do during Stake Lagoon day, sit in the hot heat.

We spent the morning walking around Pioneer Village (which is free). It has a WHOLE lot of pioneer artifacts and I found it quite interesting. We have never done it in the morning, so by the point we go there we are tired, and the building are hot, but since it was still morning, they weren't too warm, and we all still had energy. We had not seen the majority of the buildings, so it was nice to have something new to do.

Here is an old newspaper from my Alumi Mater.

 We also where we learned Nan knows that guns say Bang Bang. Nattie rarely talks anything other than baby

babble, but occasionally when we are out of the house, she does something like point to a gun and say "bang bang". She was scared to death of the buffalo head, and hugged her daddy real tight.

 One of the buildings that we unforutantely have seen every year is the circus model and old doll muesum.  Nan found that little baby in the basket and was so sad she couldn't have him.  She cried, so much and kept hitting the glass, when I tired to get her to leave, she ran away from me, and ran back to the baby.  Finally I coaxed her out, and said bye bye. 

But boy was it tramatic, she had to hug and kiss me for at least 5 minutes after we said good bye to the baby. That and a large fake horse, was quite scary to her.

Then we ate lunch.  What I love about lagoon is they allow you to take food in, so a lot of the guest bring in their own coolers, and they have tons of pavilions and grass for picnics.  I love that I don't have to spend $30 on food and drinks.  Not to mention my kids don't like fast food when they are hot. Still I'm sure more guest buy food than not.
Then we went back for a few more kiddie rides, the two things J was looking for was the baby boats, and (kiddie) bumper cars. I don't even know where he learned about bumper cars, he started asking to ride them before we got to Lagoon.

He hates rides that go up in the air because he has a fear of heights, so there really isn't a lot out there for him. But we still put him on one that didn't go too high, we thought he would be fine, but apparently we were wrong.  He told me he would "never ever ride that whale ride again".  Just for the record we do not tell him he is scared of heights, we ask him he wants to do something, and he says no, I don't like to be high.

He had fun, but not as much fun as he expected.  I think over the last year, he had built Lagoon up in his mind to be more exciting than it was. Nan hates those quarter rides you find at the mall or in front of the dollar store, she likes to sit on them until they move, but she loved the baby boats, so I guess we have a convert. We ended off the day with a really cool parrot show. Nan sang, danced and clapped, just like they wanted the audience to do.

J sat there silently smiling, his favorite was the parrot riding the scooter, because he loves his scooter so much. But unfortunately our pictures is the parrot riding a bike.

We got a picture with the parrot that might have been Cotton's parrot in Pirates. The guy running the show, said if you've seen Parrots on TV they are his parrots.  His parrots have been in movies, like Ace Ventura, and Pirates of the Caribbean, and Cotton's parrot in the movie is blue and yellow.  But who knows, maybe its a different parrot and that is ok too.

Anyone else

Does anyone else have those days where:

• You are so exhasuted from a week/month of so much fun you feel like you can't think straight
• And you have nothing you want to do since you since you sent your husband to work so you could have your "own time" since he isn't going to school during his one month break
• But he is gone you can't really lie in the already made bed, that he makes each morning, and nap two feet away from your loving husband who is actually working
• And so instead of sewing, like you thought you wanted to do, you spent hours on the internet reading random blogs, because they take no brain power
• Then you think back to 2007 when you started blogging, when not everyone and their sister in law made mommy blogs, and it was still cool to blog, and it was ok to blog stalk all the time, or at least you didn't realize it was wierd to blog stalk so you still read random people's blog on a regular bases, but now you only do it when your exhausted
• you look down after walking in your front door, and wonder who the heck bought those ugly skinny shorts. 
• Remembering it was you, and why the heck did you buy two pairs?  Oh yeah they are in style and the only thing you could find reasonably priced.
• And you find yourself relieved when you kid come home from a friends house, because then you can watch PBS kids with him, because the only channels that have anything in English that isn't soap opera-y or people's problems is PBS kids, but its embarrassing to watch Arthur by yourself.  Yeah, free TV is WAY pathetic.

You don't have those kind of days?  What is wrong with you?  I cleaned my house everyday this week, and now its clean, and I don't want to spend money, and no one was home all day, what else was I suppose to do. 
Did I mention I'm tired? 
I'm not in a bad mood, I'm just....tired....bored....and in the middle of a really boring book.

Main Event

The reunion was very low key. Thank goodness. The adults mostly sat around and talked,

...while the kids ran around, blew bubbles, ate candy and played video games.

I love this picture, I think the toddlers are all so cute.  But then again they are my favorite age, I love to watch the walk around, like they own the place. Nan looks quite a bit like Cousin O in the green shirt, in this picture.  Who would have thought, I thought O looked like his dad's family, and N looked like mine, but apparently their related, I guess that's why the attended the same reunion.

This is Brent, his cousin and his cousin's wife.  If they would have held a vote, I think she would have won for favorite family member.  Everyone seemed to gush that they were so glad the cousin married her.  She was super fun.

Don't I just have cute nieces?  I counted before we went up there, my kids have 28 first cousins between my family and my husband's, and two more on the way.  I can't even imagine having thirty cousins before your turn 5.  But my kids have been luckily they got to play with all 28 of them in the period of a month.

I'm so glad my husband's family got together.  I have so much fun with them, and enjoy all my in laws a whole ton. I got way luckily with who I married, sure I knew I loved him, and I picked him.  But who knew when I got married I had found another stellar family to be apart of.

Pioneer Day Parade

My son of course had fun playing with cousins at a reunion, but he often sees his cousins, so for him I think the highlight of the weekend was the parade.

Here are the pioneers

My daughter enjoyed plenty of candy during the parade.

My son gathered so much candy! He had an entire bucket, I think only a few of the older nephews got as much as he did. Luckily he did not eat all his candy like some of his cousins.

First Night

Last weekend, it was my husband's turn for the family reunion. We had a grand ol' time. Here a few of my snapshots from the first night.

The kids started an unofficial contest to see who could get the dirtiest. The joke was on them, the house we were stay at out didn't have hot water that night, and I made they get clean. They were mad.

Here are some adults, to mix things up.

Who she is

After contemplating my weak sauciness, I realized it was not the MBA that did it to me.  It was my daughter.  I love my daughter more than words could express more than anyone who is a not a parent could understand, but boy is she a pill. I don't know if you can see my daughter's face in this picture, because of the shadows, but this picture perfectly describes my daughter. She gives me this look more times a day, that I can count. Every time she is upset at me, disappointed, or annoyed at me. Which is often.

It can be quite frustrating to receive such a disappointed stare directed to you so many times a day.  It gives me pity to women who have children with medically recognized problems. But boy does, she wears both her parents to a frazzle almost any day.  The MBA is easy in comparison to caring for her. One day she might read this and ask me why did you write this?  And I'll say, honey I love you more than you could know until you have a daughter, I've loved you since the day you were born, but I can not count the amount of times we have been visiting at someone's house and they ask is she always like this?  "Like this" means whinnying non stop in all she does for at least an hour.  I respond saying, yes, always acts like this, its the miracle of Nan, she can be truly horrid all day, and yet I love her no matter what.
My husband and I were talking about it the other day in the car. Sometimes my daughter is extremely happy and joyful, she loves what is happening, but more often not. She is either very happy or very upset, mostly upset. Unless she is well rested well fed and outside. I told my husband sometimes I think, she just acts poorly because we allow her, its self fulling prophecy and so she acts how we think she will. I think no more, I'm going to think of her as a happy baby and strong willed but joyful baby. Then I swear, she gets worse, spends more times crying and throwing fits than usual. I give up, and think ok, she is who she is, I'll accept her for who she is, and just know, she is going to be ornery a lot of the day. Then all of a sudden she relaxes, she still cries a lot, but she just acts more relaxed. After saying this to my husband, she pipped up from the back seat in her carseat, I swear she was saying, thank you for accepting me as a baby that cries a lot. Its who she is, and apparently who she wants to be. But I'm not giving up faith I'll full expect her to grow out of it one day.
I will always be grateful to the lady who I go to church with, she has 7 kids, and her oldest is about my age, and her youngest is 8. I said a few things about my Nan and she says, that is exact how my second was.  She looked at me dead serious and said, there comes a time when you just have to say, ok its not colic its sometime else, maybe its who she is.  My daughter who was like that was by far my most challenging child, and I wouldn't have had 7 if I had another one has challenging as her.  Anytime I hit my limit, and I remember talking to this women, I feel relived, to know someone understands what I am talking about.  Most people look at me, think I'm exaggerating. I do exaggerated from time to time, but when my husband agrees with me, you know I'm not exaggerating, in fact I think he thinks she is worse behaved than me.
We see my grandparents often as possible, it usually ends up being about once a month, but we have also spent days in a row there.  So my grandma has watched her for the last 19 months. At this point, my grandma just laughs at her like I do, because what else is there to do, when out of no where she starts throwing a fit.  My grandma says, she never changes does she, she has been making those sounds (whiny noises) since she was a baby. 
That being said sometimes she can be extremely sweet. She loves to give me and her dolly kisses, and she loves to mother other things.  I would love to have another child some day, but my daughter has to drastically mellow out, or be in kindergarten. And that is acceptance.  Accepting who she is, what she needs, what my son deserves, and what my husband and I can handle.