The Living Planet Aquarium

Our next activity was a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium. This is new to SLC so we hadn't been here before. The girls loved looking at all of the sea life. The coolest part was being able to pet the sting rays, star fish, and other sea creatures. Unfortunately I was so busy helping the kids I didn't get any pictures of them petting them, but I got some other cool pictures around the aquarium...
Here are my girls with their cousins Brianna and Megan. Brooklyn, Natalee, and Gentry came along too with their Mommies Janette and Robyn.
This is one of those times when you think you can get a cute pictures, but the kids just don't cooperate all at the same time, so this is the best one I got.
Rylee loved playing peek-a-boo in the caves.
I thought the least exciting part was the section on Utah sea-life. You can only look at so much trout and brine shrimp. I was actually amazed they found so many different fish to put in that area. But the kids really enjoyed the simulated boating on the Great Salt Lake.

Discovery Gateway

yesterday we wanted to do something fun with Craig's family that wasn't out in the hot son. So, me and the girls went to the Discovery Gateway children's museum with Grandma Wales, Aunt Margaret and her grandbaby Carter, Aunt Tammy, and Nathan. We had a great time and the girls got spoiled by their aunts once again!

They have a lot of fun things at the museum that the kids enjoyed, like th balls you can drop into all different sorts of places. they especially liked the shoot that sucked the balls up.
Here is our niece's little boy Carter having fun making music...
Rylee loved playing in the kid-sized grocery store. She bought a LOT of milk.
She also really liked the pretend horse. So did Jaycee. they spent a lot of time climbing up and down from the horse and feeding it hay.
Jaycee liked the helicopter, but Rylee didn't want to get in.
We had a great time with the fam. Thanks for taking us all Grandma Wales!

Sister Retreat 2008

My family's annual Sister Retreat featured a beauty pageant this year... it was a great time. We had a murder mystery dinner and then stayed up until 3:00 doing nails and talking about all sorts of weird stuff, as usual.

The next day we continued the "pageant" by showing off our unusual talents... then we headed to the park for other strange competition events, such as seeing how far you can walk with a book on your head - which turned into doing jumping jacks with a book on your head, and racing accross tires, and more...



And Kelsie was our winner! Way to go Kelsie. Juli and Janette were attendants...
(by the way, never ask Juli to gather some foilage for a bouquet... she practically killed the tree.. haha! )

I love hanging out with my sisters and I'm glad we get the chance to be all together once a year with no men and no children (besides the occasional baby). It's fun getting to know everyone and being able to just be silly all night!

Pioneer Day

on Pioneer Day I was too tired to get up for the parade... Rylee is really freaked out here and will not leave my hip! So, instead we just hung out at the house, played in the kiddy-pool, and then went to Craig's sister Tammy's house for a family cook-out.
(this is a bad picture, but I had a hard time taking any with Rylee being so demanding)
Uncle Dave taught Rylee how to get her own drinks from the cooler. I had to keep stopping her from getting more cups to fill up { thanks Dave :P }... after a while Rylee decided it would be a great idea to put the juice on top of her cookie! She would pour a little juice on top and then lick it off. What a goof!

After dinner we came inside to watch some old family movies Tammy had made of the past few Christmases and her daughter Emily singing (and she is amazing by the way). Jaycee and Rylee liked seeing themselves as babies in them and they went crazy when they saw daddy on the TV! They miss their daddy SOOOO much!

Then Jaycee and her little second-cousin Jayden peformed for us all...

It was a fun night!

Visiting Cousins

It's been a fun week in Utah and the girls are having so much fun with their cousins. Last week we met some of the cousins from my side of the family at the "splash pad" for some water fun. I was missing the shade at the park... where are all of the trees? The girls had a blast playing with their cute cousins.
Here is Jaycee with Brianna. These two are only 10 days apart in age and they are best buds. It is so fun watching them together.
Here is my niece Alli with her little baby Peyton.
This is Rylee with Lani.
Here is Rylee and her cousin Gentry eating back at my parents house...
The little girls had so much fun playing together at G-ma and G-pa's house. Jaycee and Brianna had to be with each other every second. At one point Jaycee crawled up onto Grandpa's lap and fell asleep and Brianna was heartbroken. She kept asking "when will Jaycee wake up?" She was so excited when she finally did. Rylee loved playing with Brooklyn and Peyton.

On Our Way...

Well, me & the Girls are off to good ol' Utah! We had a fun time packing today... the girls thought the suitcases were very exciting....
Rylee even thought it was a good location to take a rest...
And despite the power going on and off all day long making it VERY difficult to do laundry, I was able to get us all packed by 4:00!

For those of you in South Carolina, we will miss you while we are gone! And for those of you in Utah, we'll see you tomorrow!!!

A Wonderful Saturday

Today we wanted to spend time together as a family before us girls head off to Utah for 2 whole weeks! We first went to visit the temple grounds, the girls in their white dresses. Unfortunately we couldn't get too many good pictures because they were doing construction on the exterior of the building and all you could see was ladders and construction workers!


There is just something about seeing my girls together in their white dresses...

Jaycee loves going to the Temple and she talks about it all the time. She loves her Temple dress and her Temple bracelet she got when our family was sealed.
Next was a stop at none other than...

I swear the girls could stay at Krispy Kreme all day! They LOVE watching the doughnuts being made. And of course they love eating them too!

I'm glad we got to spend time with "daddy" today because we are all going to miss him SOOO much! I'm really wondering what I was thinking planning a trip for two weeks without Craig. Don't get me wrong, it will be nice to see all of ya'll there in Utah, but I am going to miss my hubby so much!!! And I know my girls will too! They are crazy about him.

Swim Lessons... 2 days down, 3 to go

I must say I am pleasantly surprised at how well Jaycee is doing with swim lessons! She started with a group a week ago where she witnessed kids being tossed off the diving board. Couple that with the fact that she is afraid of water and hates getting her face wet, i thought we were in for a tough go. The first day was a little shakey.. she cried a bit, but she stayed with her teacher and did great. Second day was a piece of cake and now she is so excited to be swimming. Hooray!

I think it helped that her friends Levi and Mira are having lessons with her too. And her teacher Angelyn is awesome!!!

Some Kids really can sleep ANYWHERE...

Fun at the Park

The other day I took the girls to the park. It had been a little while because I really cannot stand the heat, and I've been working in the mornings, so it's been harder to find the time. here are some cute pictures of the girls having fun together. I feel really blessed that they are so close to eachother. It's fun to see them being best friends.

Rylee on the "BIG" swing...
Rylee going up the ladder... just like her sister. what's funny is when she gets to the top she freaks out and asks me to come get her down. The gap between the top rung and the platform is a little too scarey for her.
I swear they can stay on the swings for hours! Jaycee really wants us to get swings in our backyard, but we haven't done it yet - she keeps telling us "you guys forgot to put swings here".

~ No Love at First Bite ~

It happened. Rylee bit Jaycee today. And hard too. Poor Jaycee has a big welt with 4 teeth marks in it. Rylee has been working on these 2 teeth, the ones I call the fangs, you know the pointed ones. They are the last ones that need to come in and she has been working on them for weeks now. They are poking through, but not moving down. Her gums are so swollen and bleeding and I think she is just miserable.

I couldn't get a good/clear shot of it when Jaycee asked me to take a picture.

So, Thank goodness I finally found Teething Tablets!!! I thought they had been taken off the market because they disappeared off all of the shelves, but then my sister let me know she found them at Smith's in Utah, so I made a special trip to Kroger here, and sure enough! For any of you with teething children I cannot tell you enough how much I love these things!!! They are the only thing that worked for either of my children. LOVE 'EM!

Luckily Jaycee still felt good enough to help me make Zuchinni Bread! YUM!

Fourth of July

I hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July! Our family certainly did. Despite the horrible heat and a little rain, we were able to go to the Lexington County Peach Festival here in SC. We had a great time watching the parade with our friends, the Shumways.

Here we are with Vern, Kathy, Levi, and Dallyn. Jaycee absolutely adores Levi. They are such good friends. They were holding hands most of the day, and they love spending time together. We are happy she has friends she loves so much.
This was our favorite float "the black peach" (well, maybe tied with the couple in the tractor with the "just married" sign on the back -but we didn't get a pic of that one).
I just love how cute they are together!

After the parade we of course had to get some good ol' peach slush and peach ice cream! Yumm! We also enjoyed the hush puppies.

And then the kids enjoyed the over-priced rides. Here are some more pictures:

After the Peach Festival we went home to recover, shower away the heat, and enjoy the air conditioning. Then it was off to Newberry for the family fireworks show. It isn't the best show we've seen, and very short firework display, but it is very family friendly and we weren't sure how well Rylee would handle the fireworks, so it was perfect for us.

We of course enjoyed their Free slides and bounce houses. Jaycee especially loved the obstacle courses, and of course the Princess bounce house...

Harvest

We are pleased to announce we have succeeded in producing our own food. After being heartbroken by racoons eating our almost-ready crop, this week we have finally yielded zuchinni and green beans, and we are so so very close to having cucumbers, tomatoes, and jalepenos. They should be ready by Monday i would assume. We are so proud of ourselves! Now if only I could get the motivation to make some zuchinni bread this weekend...

Hair Cuts

well, I hated to do it because Rylee's hair is SO short and everyone already thinks she is a boy, but considering her hair is always in her eyes and driving her nuts, I decided to give her hair a little trim...
It would be nice if she would let me put bows or clips or something in it, but she wont, so until she decides to grow some hair she will just have to look like a boy.
I really didn't cut that much off.
And here is the finished product. Not perfect, and nothing much, but no hair in the eyes!
Five minutes after I got done cutting Rylee's hair Jaycee came running out of her bathroom saying "I did it mom!" and she handed me a pair of scizzors. Ooops, guess I forgot to quickly put them away. I guess she didn't do too bad... but you can see her the little spot sticking up on top in the front, that is where she cut off her cute little curl...

And here are just he girls having fun in the bathroom...

Late Night with Jaycee & Rylee...

Yesterday the girls both had fevers in the afternoon and both fell asleep. They were sleeping longer and longer and longer, but I thought - "hey, they are sick, they need their sleep", so I let them keep sleeping until about 5:00. Turns out that was a big mistake. Around 8:00 when Craig and I were trying to get them to go to bed their fevers broke and they were both full of energy. So, we had a late night with them. Luckily it wasn't one of those late nights where the kids are fussy and moody or anything. They just stayed up coloring, playing with blocks, and playing with the cat that has decided our back stairs are pretty darn comfortable.
And here is a cute picture of Rylee doing what she does best. She loves stripping off her clothes and playing in the water.
Your lucky she is wearing a diaper here, she usually prefers to feel completely free...

In fact, last night after we finally got the kids to bed and we were all sound asleep we woke up to Rylee yelling "daddy.." in the hallway. She was naked. Apparently she had taken all of her clothes off in bed, including her diaper. And sure enough there was a nice wet spot in the middle of the bed!