Our new favorite park!

As I write this, the kids are all fast asleep in a naptime dreamland--it feels quiet and calm.

It's just me, the clicking of the keyboard and the hum of the air conditioner. It feels peaceful and I feel content...like I could just wrap up this moment and all my emotions and package it for sale as 100% pure happiness.

We had a wonderful morning. We were all up, ready, in the car, and on the road to take Brandon to school at 8:40 a.m. I love it when we get going early and can fill our day with fun things at the beginning of the day. It makes the time fly by! We are definitely morning people in this house!

We decided that today was all about the library, and that we would go library hopping (go from one library to the next). I set aside 30-45 minutes at each one and figured we would have snacks in between and then go home for lunch before our final stop. But we had such a great time at the first one that we ended up staying longer. :) As we were leaving the parking lot, I saw a little line of playhouses out of the corner of my eye. I was so CURIOUS as to what it was! After pulling the car around, I saw it was a big park with a safety town attached. Our library hopping plans were out the window and the kids were out of the car and headed straight for the park. How have I never seen this???

This place was downright COOL. It had a big kid play place and a little kid play place...

climbing walls, cars to "ride" in, dinosaurs to climb, swings, etc. It had this great little gazebo in the middle for nice shade, and benches all over. The best part (is this the part that shows I am a parent??) is that there were NICE indoor bathrooms and drinking fountains.




Even little Spence got in on the action. I just know he will LOVE the playground next year when he can make his own way around...I can't believe he will be walking soon!
Jenna wasn't sure what this pole was for...so, they used it as a horse. :) Took some explaining...
Here is the little Safety Town (the houses I saw). SO cute. It has several real street signs, a traffic light, etc. and is lined with little houses. I can't wait to take the kids and their bikes back for a fun bikeride through the town and the little countryside. :)

I'll spare you all the pictures, because you know I ALWAYS post way too many. But if you are interested in more, you can see the Ohio adventure blog...I will post more there.

All in all, a successful morning...I think we are getting back into our routine rather well. See? Nothing to be scared of! :)

Celebration!

I have to preface this post by saying that I am now on point and shoot camera #2--and I hate this one as well. The first took about 5 pics and went right back. It was terrible. This one I have used for a little longer, but it is just not what I am looking for. It too will make it's way back to the store.

The hunt for the perfect point and shoot is tough...why can't they make an SLR in a point and shoot camera's body? :) Am still open for suggestions. So far I have tried the Canon Powershot a590--it was SLOOOOOOOW (and I think it was broken when I opened the package). The one that took the following pics was the Canon powershot sd750. I just hate how SMALL it is. It's hard to get a creative view or even see my subjects looking through a screen instead of an eyepiece...and the picture quality is just so-so. Out of the hundred or so I have taken, only a handful have actually turned out. Not worth the money to get only a few decent pics.

So--that's that. Camera stuff aside, we went tonight to celebrate Brandon's birthday and first day of school and Spencer's birthday...we have both of their birthday coupons from Red Robin and that is our family tradition. I think Red Robin has one of the best birthday offers ever! You get an free gourmet burger and bottomless fries for your birthday, PLUS a free ice cream Sundae! You can sign up online...and it's totally worth it! We got to use both free meal coupons and the server brought us 3 ice cream sundaes (I'm tellin' ya...we ALWAYS get extra free food when we take the kids out to eat..I am not sure why, but we do!) We had a great meal and had fun celebrating.

Since Brandon's meal was free, he picked out the most expensive thing he could (that qualified)...the monster burger. See, we're cheap like that. :) He ate the entire thing at dinner...which he later regretted.

It was a good night...the kids were in bed by 7:30 and we relaxed the rest of the evening. Played a game of Rack-o before bed and then hit the sack. I like uneventful evenings...

Road Trip 2008--Washington, DC--Saturday/Sunday

After our stop in Gettysburg, we continued on to our final destination 90 miles away--Washington, DC. At this point, the kids were really ready to be out of the car...they were tired and we were all ready for a great nights sleep!

We had a place to stay--my sister and her husband had been in D.C. on an internship this summer and have back to Utah already, but their apartment was paid through the summer, so we jumped at the chance to stay there for free.

It was the perfect location--2 blocks from the capital building, right by a park on a shaded street. But it also came with a certain "old" charm (is charm really the right word??)...we joked that we went from 5 stars to 4 locks. :) It was not what we expected--really, I don't know WHAT we expected. But the kids were tired, we were tired, and we just didn't sleep well there the first night. So, we made the decision to call our trip a success and go home. Before we left we were able to spend one day in the city sightseeing and spending time with our friends the Braniffs from our old ward in Rexburg (anyone see a theme to our trip?!?) They are some of the most amazing people I have ever met...It is an extra special thing to actually get to be a part of their lives. Stephanie wrote the sweetest post about our time together--she really is an excellent writer and she described our time perfectly!

Our first stop was the Library of Congress. What an amazing building! Can you believe we didn't know where the stroller/wheelchair entrance was and so we lifted the strollers up all those stairs!?!?! :)
There is a sense of peace in the Library of Congress. I don't know what it is--but even with the hustle and bustle of everyone around us, I felt a reverence...

Here is the Supreme Court building.
A street sign on Capitol Hill--
We had a wonderful lunch on the grounds of the capitol building...Steph and Sean were nice enough to share their HUGE nectarines which Spencer took full advantadge of!

And this picture below is from her blog...mainly because this is one of the only pictures of me on our whole vacation! So, all credit goes to her--thanks Steph!
We didn't make it all the way down the National Mall, and I wasn't feeling like changing my lens on my camera, so the Washington Monument stands tall in the distance...interesting note: This is the tallest building in D.C. and by LAW there will never be one taller...hmmm....interesting.
We headed to the Air and Space museum which was completely fascinating!

One of my favorite parts was seeing the stuff about the Wright brothers. What ingenius men who have changed the history of the world! (and, they are from OHIO!!) :)

The National Archives...
And a view of the Lincoln Memorial--which we didn't get to see up close. I was SO bummed! This was taken on our way out of town and Brandon said that as soon as the kids fell asleep, we should hit the road. Well, they fell asleep within 10 minutes...so we'll make another trip out to D.C. and see the things we missed in a year or so.
The heat of the afternoon got to be too much, and we found ourselves back at The Braniff's apartment lazily enjoying the cool waters of their pool. It felt SO nice!

After swimming, we made our way back upstairs to enjoy a delicious lasagna and breadsticks...I just must point out that Kaden had to eat off of their cutting board because we were afraid for him to break their all glass dishes. :)
And Spencer enjoyed himself immensely! We had to bathe him before going home because we were finding chunks of noodles and meat in places we didn't know could hide food! :)
Our evening was full of stories and playtime...
And Jenna found herself a new best friend...it's hard NOT to love Steph!
This picture is from Steph's blog too...I had to borrow it because I didn't think to take a picture of the most EXCITING thing of the evening...snow cones. Yes, I brought my snow cone maker on vacation...black cherry cheesecake flavoring and all. Yum....

What an exhausting, but memorable day...thank you again Sean and Stephanie! We loved seeing you and spending the day...it ended far too soon!

Everyone went right to bed--I just wish we could have slept well! We woke up Sunday morning and started the drive home. It was So nice to pull into our driveway and see all our out of control weeds...so nice to hear the hum of our window air conditioner and clean out our car...so nice to put the suitcases away and feel back where we belong.

The best part of ALL though, was the kids seeing their toys and books again. WOW! It might as well have been CHRISTMAS!

It was such a great vacation while it lasted...and I think we will remember it for a long, long time.

Next up, my trip to see my sister in San Fransisco! Yep, I decided to take the plunge and leave Brandon with the kids for several days. I leave on Friday...am nervous, but excited!

Road Trip 2008--Gettysburg

Friday we packed the car and then went to our little timeshare tour--I had actually been pretty interested in seeing how much it would be, because we had SUCH a great time there...but alas...we just couldn't justify that kind of money at this point in our lives. So, we took our loot for participating ($75 in Visa gift cards, $25 to Fuddruckers, and a 2 night free vacation) and hit the road to Gettysburg...

Now I must say that at this point, we had almost decided to skip the other half of our trip all together. We'd already had SUCH a great time...why push our luck? But, we ended up going on.

I made my way through the CROWDS of people in the Gettysburg visitor's center. There were a couple options for taking the tour--hire a guide to the tune of $55, buy some pamphlets and work your way through, or get the guided CD auto tour--$20.00 and includes a really cool booklet about Gettysburg. We chose that option--I waited in line forever behind a lady who bought $334 in Gettysburg merchandise (and yes, if that lady happens to be reading this, I DO think you are crazy!) and finally escaped with the goods.

(p.s. if you are ever going to Gettysburg, we now have a CD you can borrow!)

Estimated time to tour Gettysburg--they said to plan on a minimum of 2 hours, depending on how much time you spent at each stop.

ACTUAL time to tour Gettysburg (with 3 kids under 4 who are tired of being in the car)--34 minutes. :)

The kids really were troopers. We drove to as much as we could see listening to our guide, but eventually ditched the tour route and headed for the cemetary because I really wanted to see that part before we left. We ended up listening to the remainder of the tour on the rest of our trip, and it was really amazing! Hopefully we will get to go back and do the complete tour sometime. :)

I can't believe how FAR canons shot. Almost 2 miles! Maybe that isn't a big number to anyone else, but 2 miles seems pretty darn far to me--


I loved listening to the history of Gettysburg--but really, it made me realize how LITTLE I know about our nation. I am sure I knew at some point, but there are so many details that I suddenly WANT to know and I find myself wishing I had paid more attention in class...

What a humbling experience to be in this cemetary. People are buried here not only from the civil war, but from pearl harbor, world war I and II--just to name a few. Many of the headstone had their wives name on the back--

I had to really hold back tears when reading Lincoln's Gettysburg address. I just have to put it in here:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the so-called "Bliss Copy," one of several versions which Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final version.

I felt such pride in our country...such admiration for all those who fought. They, far more than I, understand LIBERTY and standing up for freedom. I am merely a partaker of those great gifts. I think many of us are...but being there and seeing what we saw really made it so much more real to me. It became more important to me...and I am so greatful for the chance I had to be there realize all this
These are all the headstones of the known soldiers-- (there were lines and lines of them!)

And there were numbers for each soldier that was unidentified or missing...

It was really such a special place...

I had big plans for after our historical Gettysburg Tour--a trip to the Boyd's Bear Country store (the world's most HUMUNGOUS teddy bear store!) I knew the kids would have a ball here. I just had to convince Brandon it was worth the stop. Well, we couldn't find the address and our GPS didn't find it in it's database, so we were going to have to scrap the whole thing. We decided to just start our drive to Washington, D.C. All of a sudden, rising up from the dust (okay, not quite) there appeared the Boyd's Bear Country store! Angels sang praises--hooray!

What kid WOULDN'T be in heaven walking into a store where the first thing you see is a 6 foot tall teddy bear?!?! :) I can't even begin to describe HOW BIG this store was. They had TONS of bears (and other animals) in every size, shape, theme...it was amazing!

We were running behind schedule so we got there half hour before closing, and after a quick potty break we made our way to the Bear Factory. This was a splurge for us because we have never done build-a-bear or anything like it--but I thought it would be so fun for the kids!! And as soon as Brandon saw the kids run in and get excited, he was wrapped around their little fingers and he agreed it would be good for them to each get one. :) HA!

They got their little hard hat and an employee badge with a time card that they had to punch in with. They then picked their animal (Jenna chose a stuffed Elephant and Kaden chose a puppy) and went to fill them with little colored beads--the colors each represented things like laughter, courage, friendship, etc. and the kids picked which things they wanted they animal to be like. Kaden hoped for a few of those characteristics himself and popped several in his mouth...sorry Kaden, just don't think that's gonna work! :)


THEY WERE SO CUTE, IT MELTED MY HEART!!!!

When the animals were stuffed and the magic gold bean put inside, the kids punched their time clock and put their animals in their little "barns".

(here is Kaden loving this big bear while we were paying)


TOTALLY FUN....even Brandon will admit that. And THAT is saying something! :)

Back in the car to hunt for dinner and finish the trip to our final destination...Washington, D.C.

---To be continued...

(yes, there is more...I can't believe it myself...but stay tuned)