To May

We didn't have as many "planned adventures" in May, but we did have one or two, and several other things worth noting. 

First, we went to the Gem show up in Ogden. they do it every year and Peter has been going with his grandparents since he was 2, I think, and I went last year with him and Andrea came this year. It's really cool! I mean, it's not like disneyland or something, but there are tons of cool rocks and fossils, and there are little activities for the kids, and theres a guy who has these dinosaur puppets and he goes around chomping kids heads with the T-rex. They love it! 

This is a cool display where you see the rocks in the light, then push a button and see them under a black light. Peter was excited to see that there was a ruby in there. (That's his birth stone.)

Afterward we played at Mom and Dad Perkins' house. I schooled these kids in hide and seek. Sprained my ankle doing it though ;).

They just did this cool thing to their backyard. It started as a project to just help the hill to stop eroding and get some better steps down to the creek, and it grew from there. It's beautiful. 

The boys are almost always up before Andrea and I on the weekends, and I was delighted to find them playing together one morning. 

Max cozy-ed up to Kaden one day. As you can see, it was probably for the chips. Max LOVES chips. That's all he ever wants to eat. He's always asking for chips "noo-noes" (noodles), or "pees-Ket-eee" (piece of candy.)

My parents have pictures of me sleeping like this with my butt up. 

Speaking of butts, I unintentionally captured Caleb's in this picture. He came over a few weekends ago and helped us lay a laminate floor! My Mom helped too and it turned out beautifully. We really love it. 

One day Max woke up from a nap and was sad and cranky. He was whining for Andrea to hold him but she was busy in the kitchen, and then Peter said "I'm big enough, I can hold him." 

. . . WE MELTED.

I don't think there's been a sweeter moment between the two of them! Max turned around whimpering with his hands out and reaching for Peter. I helped them over to the couch and they sat for a minute. What sweet boys!

Peter saw a buzz lightyear at his friends house and he HAD to have one. He told me late one Saturday night and I said "Talk to me tomorrow and we'll count your money and see if you have enough." Sure enough he approached me that day after church and said "How are we going to get my Buzz?" We found the one he wanted and counted his money. He was $5 short. I said that if he did special chores around the house that he could earn 50 cents per chore and earn his buzz. The next day he was up before Andrea and I and he came into the room and said "Mom, I'm ready to work for my Buzz!" So this week he has vacuumed, weeded, cleaned toilets, and scrubbed baseboards to earn his toy, and yesterday, he finished! We're so proud of him and I hope that the experience has helped to teach him that he can do anything he wants if he's willing to work. 

Everyday I walk through temple square and see these stunning tulips. They are amazing. I can't believe that I work in such a beautiful place. 

Max got a haircut this month. The first real cut. I was worried that there wasn't a "look" that would ever suit him like those curls, but this one does! He's cuter than ever and I'm so happy for him not having to deal with that long hair. 

Andrea broke her pinky toe one night. 

She was very sad, and I unfortunately didn't offer the sympathy she was looking for. Caleb seemed to break his toes all the time so it wasn't anything new to me and I didn't react properly. 

I did make her a nice cane though :)

Here's Peter vacuuming. 

We've been buying ice cream cones from the store lately. We all love them! There's nothing like an ice cream cone on the back porch on a warm evening. 

Max and Peter trying to get warm one morning. 

Peter, the time it snowed last month. He was excited to wear his new jacket and boots. 

For preschool Peter got to take home froggy and he was supposed to draw a picture of what they did together. Froggy is a stuffed animal by the way. So Andrea asked if I would help him draw a picture. It was fun! I would ask him what they did, then I would kind of draw on my paper to give him an idea of how to do it, but I let him have full creative freedom. 

This is the end product. Froggy and Peter eating chips and playing outside. I want my kids to enjoy drawing. I love it so much, I hope they do too. 

And heres Max sleeping with his Rex. Since he got Rex in the beginning of April he has continued to sleep with him every day and he drags him around the house saying "Mah-Wex. Mah-Wex." 

Some other things he does:

Every night after Peter goes to sleep and Max fakes Andrea out and doesn't go to sleep, he comes downstairs and says "Dad, Wes wats tee-bee. Wats tee-bee Dad. Wats tee-bee." (he wants to watch TV. 

If he likes something, a song or a game he said "Gen! Gen da-won! Gen da-won" (again, that one!)

If I get in bed before Andrea, Max climbs in and lays next to me, inches away from my face, and he says "Sy-dow, Sy-dow" which means he wants me to sing "itsy bitsy spider" to him. He usually joins in and laughs and laughs. Sometimes we switch to "doggy" which is a different song that Andrea sings sometimes. He's always sad when Andrea comes in and kicks him out of bed :)

Easter

This weekend has been pretty busy, but with Grandma Wrights help we were able to have a great Easter Egg Hunt for the kids!

Friday night we dyed eggs. I LOVE dying eggs. I love carving pumpkins, gingerbread houses . . . I just love any seasonal activity or craft and I get as excited as I did when I was little to do it. I don't understand how anyone ever grows out of liking it. 

Peter was old enough to be fairly interested this year as well. I hope he thought it was fun. He helped me make the dye and color some of the eggs with crayons prior to their color bath. I read somewhere this year to color the eggs while they're still warm with crayons and it worked really well! Here are some of our creations:

The next morning the kids went on the hunt. Grandma Wright added . . . like an extra 100 candy filled eggs to the hunt!

 

Tim, Amanda, and Shepherd joined us for the hunt too, which was fun! Shep is such a lively little boy! Whenever I've been around him he's just excited and ready to play hard :)

Kid's Choice

Before telling you about our chosen weekend activity here's a few pictures of the everyday at the Perkins home:

Peter loves to sing and Andrea and I were very surprised on day last week when he spouted off just about the entire "let it go" song without any prompting or help! Andrea had him re-do it on video, and he did a pretty good job again! Enjoy:

Max received this stuffed Rex last week at a family party and, for now at least, it has become his essential sleeping companion!

Both of the boys are loving playing like dogs these days.


These moments always tickle me; when kids are being weird or wild or precarious in some way and their parents or anyone else who has kid experience is just going about their business as usual.



There was another moment like that on Friday when we had some good friends to dinner. They also have two little boys and there were toys everywhere, food messes on the table and floor, kids hooping and hollering . . . and none of us were flinching or skipping a beat in our conversation! It's so nice to have lots of friends in the same phase of life.


Now to the activity!

Kid's Choice: Burger King

Peter noticed the other night as we were driving around that Burger King had some sort of playground inside and he asked if we could go there, so we decided that this would be a good weekend to go since we went far away last weekend.

Location: Main Street in Layton, by Walmart

Cost: At least $1 to buy a food item so you don't feel bad about using the playground

Kid friendly: mostly for kids 4 and up
Time Spent: 1 hour, Peter could've spent 2 or 3
Worth going back: Yes

We bought some french fries and two dollar menu sandwiches and then let the kids loose. The playground was WAY cooler than I was expecting it to be! It was all space themed and very imaginative which was PERFECT for Peter since he's been crazy about space for the past few weeks. He went straight up into that white rocket and that's pretty much where he stayed the whole time. It was funny because we could tell that he was talking to us, telling us something about the earth or the universe (pretty emphatically), but we couldn't ever make out what he was saying. I'm glad he was having a good time!

He did come down for a minute to eat some fries.

And here's Andrea and Max eating fast food (a rare occasion.) I'm probably posting this because, as Andrea may put it "Luke doesn't like to seem aloof or uppity in any way." So there you have it. We're just like everyone else! We like fast food!

Most of the playground would be pretty difficult for kids under 4, and difficult for their parents if they got stuck way up in there for some reason. There was a section for little kids though and Max thoroughly took advantage of it. 

I didn't get any pictures of the rest of the day, but in brief, we went to my parents' house. My grandmother's doctor who has become a dear family friend was visiting from China and he made us a plethora of authentic food. The kids had a fun pre-easter egg hunt and we shot bows and arrows. We never got to play hide and seek like I hoped we would (we've played every single night at our house during the past week and I've really gotten into it) but I'm sure we'll manage it another time. 

Another lovely weekend.

Spiral Jetty & ATK

Spiral Jetty

Location: Near Promontory Point . . . look it up ;)Cost: Free

Kid friendly: Yes
Time Spent: 1 hour, could've/should've spent 2 or 3
Worth going back: Yes!

Have you ever heard of the Spiral Jetty? I first heard about it in an Art class in college, then I heard my brother say he had gone to it with a few friends, and then my friend at work said that he goes there yearly with his scouts. We had to see it! It's about a 2 hour drive from layton and not very difficult to find (there are signs). The other cool thing is that the Golden Spike railroad thing is right there on the way, and you can also stop by ATK and see the rocket/missile display!

So here's the Jetty. Pretty cool looking!

There's a nice little plaque that tells explains a little about the Jetty. Andrea was trying a whacky hairstyle. That's all I have to say about that.

The boys had fun walking out on the spiral.

Beyond the spiral there are salt flats. It seems like you are walking on Ice out there. The salt is so smooth and even. 

The edge of the lake is almost imperceptible because the water is only millimeters deep in the beginning. It makes for some cool reflective photos. 

There's an area where the salt crust has buckled against itself and created "mini-mountains." Peter has been interested in how mountains are made recently, so this was a great visual aid to help explain plate tectonics! He also enjoyed peeling the crust off of the sand. I guess it's like picking at a giant scab :)

Poor Max got salt in his eye at one point. 

That was seriously one of the coolest places I've ever been! It's so secluded out there and the landscape feels like you're on a different planet. I hope to go back several more times over the years. Next time we should bring some things for the kids to play with in the sand. Or we could make mini-spiral jetties like Andrea saw.

ATK Missile Display

Location: Near Promontory Point . . . look it up ;)Cost: Free

Kid friendly: Yes
Time Spent: 1/2 hour
Worth going back: Yes!

One of Peter's current obsessions is Space and Astronauts, so this rocket/missile display is what actually put us over the edge and made us decide to go and see the spiral jetty this weekend while Peter's interest is still hot, because this rocket display is right there on the way. Seriously, it's like a 3 minute detour.

Isn't it every boy's dream at some point or another to go to space?

Peter was so happy to see all of the rockets. I was happy too! I didn't think it would be as cool as it is! Seeing the actual size of some of this stuff is jaw dropping. Like that vertical thing right there in the picture below, that's actually just a missile. Wow.

That big horizontalish cylinder in the background is one of the rockets that they use to launch space shuttles. It's. Huge. 

This is a segment of that type of rocket. Good place for a family picture. 

It kind of echos when you're in it too, so the boys liked stomping in there for a while. 

So yeah, another must-see.

These last pictures are from the birthday party we had this afternoon for Max and Cache. Lauren and Caleb were already having the family gather for Caches birthday which is tomorrow, so they invited us to piggy back on there party since Max's birthday is in just a week or so. Caleb made Cache a tiger cake, and I made Max puppy cupcakes. It was fun!

It was a fun weekend, but very busy. I realized that if we keep going on these outings every weekend we'll run ourselves ragged, so we'll need to rethink and adjust some things. Maybe we don't need to physically go somewhere, we just need to plan a dedicated family activity.

It's funny, I asked Peter what he liked best out of the things that we have done so far this year and he said "I liked it when we went to the solar system (aka the park)." It's amazing to me how simple children are. They seem to prefer food that is as plain as possible. They don't care about going far and wide to explore the world. They just want our attention. I think getting away and doing something different helps to focus my attention on my kids and my family, but I can just hear Peter in his head thinking "why does this have to be so complicated, Dad? Just play with me."

I love those boys. I love Andrea. I'm so happy.