A Weekend With Xixi and Coco

Last weekend we went out to Roosevelt to see my sister Alisha (aka: Xixi pronounced she-she). It has been almost 3 1/2 years since I have been out to see her. I know I'm a slacker, but have you seen the weather for the Basin in the winter? -20 and I don't agree, so it only allows a few months of which I can go visit. (That's my lame excuse.) Anyway...we had a fun visit with her oh and her husband Albert (aka: Coco) too when he decided to stick around. Here are some of the fun things we did. We had to get creative, it is Roosevelt mind you. Warning...there are a TON of pictures.We made haunted candy houses.
During the process.

The finished product. (which is now partially eaten away)

Alisha had some 2x4 pieces of wood that we asked Albert to cut into 3 inch pieces. So what does he do??? He cuts them into all different sizes. We were kind of irritated at first that he couldn't follow simple instructions, but then we decided that different sizes could be cute. Mikkele and I did Halloween blocks, and Alisha did Thanksgiving. We used Alisha's cricut machine to cut out the vinyl letters. Yet another reason why I love cricut machines.
Mikkele's finished product.

My finished product. My straight edge of my K is a pumpkin man. Kinda hard to tell from far away. Oh and there is a spider on the S block.

Alisha and Grant posing with her blocks. Can you see her turkey on her L? He was pretty cute.

We went to a corn maze in Bluebell, UT. It was about 30 minutes or so outside Roosevelt. I didn't even know that we had a Bluebell, UT. Anyway Mikkele had fun with all the different activities that they had. Can I just mention that I HATE corn mazes? And after going with Grant it just gave me another reason to not like them. He screamed throughout the entire maze. I should have gotten a picture of it, but I didn't because Alisha had the camera. And this is what I found on my camera after I got home.

Good

Sassy

Scary. We have issues in our family about making crazy faces when the camera is pointed in our direction. She may be sorry that it was my camera that she was taking pictures of herself with though. Did you know I would post these pictures Lish?

Mikkele measuring up next to the pumpkin.


Mikkele took Grant on a cow train ride. I think this was one of the only time he didn't really fuss while we were there.

She also took him down this slide made of PVC pipes.


They had this barrel thing that the kids could get inside and then get tumbled around in and get dizzy. Mikkele thought it was fun.

They had this barn filled with corn. Kinda like a ball pit, but no balls, just corn. Talk about the germs in that thing. YUK. And yes she thought she needed to lay down in it and make a corn angel!?!?

They also had this sling shot thing that you had apples and tried to shoot them at targets. She didn't hit the target, but had fun trying.

Oh and you can't forget the Moki dog. Moki had fun giving Mikkele and Grant kisses. He is a funny dog. I bought him a hot dog costume for him to wear on Halloween. We didn't get any pics of him wearing it, but it was really cute on him. I'm sure Alisha will have pictures on her blog within the next couple weeks of it.
And finally you may wondering why we call Alisha, Xixi and Albert, Coco. Well here's the story...when Mikkele was little she couldn't say Alisha very well. She said She-sha. Well when Albert and Alisha started dating he said that it was similar to Xixi (she-she) in Portugese which means "urine". So she is Aunt Xixi. And you can probably guess what Coco means...POOP.
And there you have it.
Thanks to Xixi and Coco for a great time! We'll try to make it out there before 3 1/2 years goes by again.

Mommy Daughter Date

Jeremy and I decided that Mikkele needed to have some one-on-one time with her mommy. She is such a good little girl. Often times she gets put on the back burner because of Grant's needs, but she is so good about it. She very rarely complains that Grant gets more attention than she does. So I told her that we were gonna go out on Saturday and she needed to pick what she wanted to do. She decided that she wanted to go to the Aquarium up in Sandy. So Saturday afternoon we left Granty with Jeremy to have some boy time and headed up to Sandy. We stopped and had lunch at Chick-fil-A first and then went to the aquarium. We saw a lot of really cool fish and sea life.

The octopus was pretty active. It was cool to see it move around and how long the tentacles were when they were fully stretched out.

The jellyfish were one of the main things Mikkele wanted to see.

Just a really big, weird looking fish.

Typically Mikkele is kinda a scardie cat about touching things. But she broke out of her shell and touched a few things while we were there.

This is her best shark face. She is such a funny girl.

She has always been scared of touching stingrays. She finally touched one after 8 years of trying to talk her into it. What an accomplishment.
We had a lot of fun spending time together just the two of us.

Grant

Grant has been really cute lately. When I am on the phone with Jeremy he knows and starts to say "A Dada, A Dada" until he gets to talk to him. Once I put the phone up to his ear this is what happens....

A few other things he's been doing lately...
*The other night I thought I heard Jeremy's truck pull up so I told Mikkele to go see if D-A-D was home. Grant then proceeds to say "A Dada, A Dada" I asked him how he knows what D-A-D spells and he just got a big smile on his face. He really does know what's going on and is a lot smarter than we give him credit for.
*He has started to drink out of a sippy cup. This is a HUGE accomplishment for him. It's not perfected to the point that we can switch from bottle to sippy, but I know it's not too far off.
*He learned a new word....Ya.
Mom: Do you want to go take a bath?
Grant: Ya
Mom: Do you want to take a nap?
Grant: Ya
Mom: Do you want something to eat?
Grant: Ya
You get the point. It's really cute. It takes months to sometimes see new things, but I am grateful for those little accomplishments. However minor they are a huge milestone for him.

The Anniversary Trip

For our 10th anniversary we wanted to get away on a trip somewhere. We had a lot of thoughts that ranged from a cruise, to lots of states between California and New York, etc. After doing a bunch a research on the internet, we decided on IDAHO. I know it sounds kinda funny, why would we choose Idaho out of all the places we could go, but we did and we had a great time. We went to the Twin Falls area. Why Twin Falls do you ask..well if you get on their chamber of commerce website their motto is "In the middle of everything". And they seriously are. There is so much to do within the city and about an hour and a half radius, and we only covered a small portion. Thursday we just hung around the city for a bit. The bridge that you cross to go into the city is a big attraction to base jumpers.

So we were able to watch some crazy people jump off the bridge and land on the ground below. These are some nice "professional" pictures taken of us on the bridge looking down and with the bridge in the background. They have a golf course in the bottom of the gorge that we heard is a great course for those golf enthusiasts.

Thursday and Friday night we stayed at a place called Miracle Hot Springs. We stayed in these things called geo domes. Have you ever gone camping and wished that you could bring your bed with you?

Well this is basically what it was, luxury camping. Inside the go dome were tile floors, and a queen sized bed. But outside our room was a picnic table, fire pit, etc. all the things you need for camping. The hot springs were awesome. It was so nice to get in the pools at night after a long day. They had one pool that was about 93 degrees, and they had another pool that was about 103 degrees, and they had private pools also that were probably somewhere in the middle. I didn't get any pics of the pools, whoops, so if you want to see what the pools were like click on the link above. One really random thing about this place was they had 3 live alligators.
Friday morning the grounds keeper was in their pin mowing their grass. This made Dean, the male alligator, a little upset. It was definitely interesting to watch. The females didn't care about what was going on so we didn't get to see much of them. They stayed under the water.

Friday we did a bunch of exploring. The first place we went to was called Mammoth cave. It was about 1/2 mile long path through the cave. It was pretty cool.

A few miles up the road was another cave called Indian Ice Cave. This cave has a floor of ice that is 25 feet deep. We didn't think it was as cool as a cave. It was a lot shorter and guided, so we couldn't really explore what we wanted ourselves. The pictures below are the pathway to the entrance of the cave, and then some of the ice on the bottom of the cave floor.

After those 2 caves we went to the Crater's of the Moon National Monument. It is a huge lava field that was formed forever ago. The lava flow caused a bunch of lava tubes which are now caves. We took a guided tour through one of the caves called Indian Tunnel. It was pretty big, and had a lot of ceiling collapses so you didn't need a flashlight.

After the guided tour we decided to go through some of the other caves close by. The next one was called Boy Scout Cave. This cave was pitch black inside so we had to take flashlights. The entrance of this cave was quite a bit trickier than the stairs that we took into the other one. Once we got in it opened up big, but then we noticed that the ceiling got really low up ahead. We thought about going back, but continued on. We had to army crawl through most of this part. We were definitely not prepared for this type of cave exploring. Our hand, knees, heads, elbow, etc. were very sore. We had a lot of laughs as we were crawling slowly through the small space. You can see in the picture of Jeremy the small space that we had to fit through. It was fun, but we decided that we were done with the spelunking after that.

This is a picture of some of the lava fields. They stretch for 60 miles north to south. It's crazy. There's that awesome professional photographer again. She followed us everywhere.

Saturday we went to a place called Thousand Springs. They just happened to be having an arts, crafts, and blues festival that day as well. We walked around the booths for a while, had some lunch, listened to some music, and then went on a canoe ride. This was hilarious. Jeremy has a slight fear of the water and doesn't always feel safe around it. So as we're taking off he starts freaking out that we're gonna tip over. The only reason he felt like we were gonna tip was because he was panicking. Once he calmed down a bit and got his bearings we did just fine, for the most part. We did decide that we would not make a good team for the Amazing Race.

The canoe ride took about an hour. We went around the island that they were having the festival on. Throughout the ride we were able to get pictures of the different springs that are in the area. It was really pretty. These falls go year round because they are springs. The other falls that Twin Falls is famous for weren't flowing because they are mostly from snow runoff, so it was fun to see these falls. We did make it back alive to the docking area with only a few mishaps of paddling us into some of the shrubbery on the sides of the river, mostly when I would stop to take a picture and stopped paddling. Jeremy took most of the mishaps since he was at the front. He he he.

That night we decided to lay low and went to a movie. We saw Eagle Eye. It was pretty good. On the way back home we stopped by the new Twin Falls Temple. It was really pretty all lit up at night.

That night we stayed at this cute little cabin. It was pretty simple with just a bed, a bunk bed and a small desk. I didn't feel well that night and went to bed early so we didn't get to sit outside on the cute porch swing like we wanted to.

We had a great time. We did miss the kids though. We kept saying we wished the kids were here and how much they would have loved the things that we did. So we might just have to make another trip back up in the spring. The falls will be going at that time with the snow runoff.
Thanks to my mom for coming up from TX to watch the kids. She is such an amazing grandma and the kids love her to pieces. The night before she went back home Mikkele had a bit of a melt down because she didn't want grandma to go back home. I explained that she needed to go back home and take care of papa now that she had been at our house for almost 2 weeks. I told her we would take some pictures the next morning before she left so she had something to look at when she got sad. So here is one of the pics that we took of grandma and the kids. Thanks mom! We love you and miss you!

10 years ago today....

I can't believe that we have hit our 10th anniversary already. It's really making me feel old. As I was looking through our wedding album this morning I was amazed at a few things. 1. We look so young. I really don't feel that much older, but to look at us now we are definitely older. 2. We look so much thinner. I know it happens to the best of us, but it would be nice to go back to the days where all you cared about in life was looking good to the opposite sex, so all you did was things to benefit that. There is just not as much time to do that anymore. 3. Photography has changed so much. Our photographer did not have a digital camera. All of the effects that were done were from different lenses instead of altering them on photoshop. That was probably the biggest thing that hit me. Technology has changes SO much in the last 10 years it's crazy. Here are some things that i remember from this day:

***My dad about passing out when he saw his oldest daughter kiss a boy for the first time over the alter.

***Jeremy forgot to bring his Tuxedo to the temple. He says that he wasn't told to bring it. Woops, minor detail. We could pretend that he did it on purpose to make me look that much better on our special day. :)

***The weather was crazy that day. It was really windy outside the temple. Everyone that didn't have a gallon of hairspray on their head had had issues during pictures. Because of the wind we had great clouds blowing by. I love the clouds in the pictures. It rained in between the temple and the reception. It stopped raining about an hour before our reception, so it really wasn't a big deal, as our reception was in doors.

***We had our luncheon at Hometown Buffet. I'm definitely looking back at that and thinking that was kinda tacky. Oh well. It pleased everyone with the variety of food options. During the luncheon Jeremy's Uncle Kelly stood up and told about how when Jeremy was little he had a problem saying his T's. He said them as an F. So when he would say Truck, it sounded like something else. Thanks Uncle Kelly for giving us all that lovely memory.

***During our pictures at the reception, we had some in front of a huge mirror. I grabbed Jeremy's butt forgetting that everyone could see my actions in the mirror. He he he. :)

***We stood in line for over 3 hours. People started coming early and showed up late also. The line was never ending. We had so many people show up. Don't get me wrong...I'm grateful for all of our guests, but my feet hurt BAD. We didn't end up leaving until like 11:30. What an extremely long, but enjoyable day.

***Apparently we had great food. We wouldn't know. We were in line for so long that we didn't get to eat any of it.

***I loved our cake. (I should have included pics of it, but oh well) It was one of my favorite parts of our reception. It was so pretty. Jeremy was nice to me and didn't make a mess everywhere, but I wasn't as nice. I got cake everywhere when feeding it to him. It didn't taste very good a year later. Uh duh, why do we do that anyway???

***I loved our flowers. Our good friend Becky Sohm did the flower arrangements for us. She did a great job. Thanks Becky!

***Miranda caught the boquet, and Pete caught the garder. Haven't seen those two for almost the whole 10 years. Miss you guys.

***We had a limo ride from the reception center to the Anniversary Inn that night. So our car didn't get destroyed with decorating.

***At the Anniversary Inn we stayed in the Lighthouse room. The bed was inside the lighthouse, so it was circular. We had a fish tank above us. It was pretty cool.

I feel like I could go on and on about the things I remember from that special day. It's fun thinking back on it. Thanks Jeremy for all you do for me and the kids. I love you! Here's to 10 more years!

Grant's New Bed

We had a friend tell us about a lady that had a hospital grade crib that was sitting in her garage, that she was wanting to give away to a family that could use it. So we gave her a call and arranged for us to take it off her hands. It's huge! It will be able to grow with Grant for quite a while. He has been in a toddler bed for the last year and it is just not as safe for him as this will be. We had him try it out after we had it assembled.
Mikkele got in and tried it out also. The bed can hold up to 350 lbs. so if he's having a hard night I can get in with him.
It can also incline at the head and feet. It will be really nice to have this feature in the winter time when he gets his respiratory issues going on. Now we just need to get some cute, I mean handsome bedding for it. Thanks to Jenny for giving us the heads up on this bed.