Memorial Day Weekend Trip

Brent finally took a day off on memorial day so we drove up to northern Utah and had tons of fun with the Weight family. The girls had so much fun with their cousins. We drove up Friday night and while we got there early enough to get the girls in bed at Carolyn's house. Taryn however didn't want to go to bed and I walked in at 11:15 to find her going strong on the top bunk bed (I don't know how her little legs actually climbed up) with her cousins Natalie and Jakob.

The next day we had a blast swimming at Lehi pool and both girls are significantly braver than they were last summer. After that I decided Taryn NEEDED a nap in a ginormous way. She I took her to the bedroom and laid her down. Usually this is all it takes and she goes to sleep. I went to check on her a half hour later. I opened the bedroom door and saw her holding an empty tic tac container in one hand and the last tic tac in the other. She hurried and popped it in her mouth and then just smiled sooo big knowing she was busted. She had obviously snuck out of bed, into my purse and gorged on a full container and loved every minute of it.

Later that we played at a park and had a picnic. The family game of soccer was all fun and games until Amy got burritoed by Fred and John. She retaliated by kicking their bums on the field. :) (nothing like smack talking when they can't defend themselves) We spent Saturday and Sunday with all the cousins and Ryan/Sharon at grandma and papa's which is always a blast. Monday after a little BBQ action we were all sad to leave. And yes we traveled safely.

Cami and Jake playing hide and go seek.

A very tired Taryn trying to play at a park.....

Amy just whooping it up and Fred trying to keep up... :)

Who needs a park when you have a sprayscape?

Now that it is consistently in the 80s everyday we have been having tons of fun at several sprayscapes. You might wonder what a sprayscape is...It is a park but better because all the toys squirt water. Cami loves dancing around in the ones that spray like a shower and Taryn gets a ginormous kick out of the toys you point and squirt (at other unsuspecting children....) Anyway this summer has all ready proved to be the kind that memories are made from...good memories...

Party Crashers or just bringing the party to the party?

A few Saturdays ago we crashed my mom's block party. She has a neighbor who's business is the blow up slides and jump houses etc so once a year she gets the city to block off a portion of the block and blows everything up. Taryn our no fear child all the sudden was unsure of the tractor train but Cami told her she would take care of her and wrapped her arms around her back. It was a very sweet thing to see. It is so rewarding to see them being the kind of buddies to each other that we hope they always will be. Cami was incredibly brave. She slide down the big mother slide with only screams of excitement and even asked to climb on the climbing wall. YEA!!! She's finding her guts!!! Anyway it was a fun afternoon.

Taryn nervous and Cami loving her. Good Girls.

The wind blown look of 2 miles an hour.

The jump house-but only without big kids in it....

The girls sliding with cousin Madison

Cami conquering the climbing wall and daddy assisting with encouragement.

Today as brent accellerated away from a red light Cami yelled "Daddy your speeding. That's illegal! Bad Daddy!" Nothing like a 4 year old enforcer...

Potty Potty Potty

So it is pretty common knowledge that Taryn likes to be naked, get naked, run around naked....So it has been normal for her to streak into a room without a diaper on for quite sometime. Lately she expanded her skills and has taken to taking it off when it is wet and she is
done with it...So Monday after a long day of redressing her many many many times I said "Taryn you have to let me put your diapie back on!" (Imagine WWF wrestling with a mommy and a two year old and she was definitely winning) She busted out with "No MOMMY!! No more diapers for me!!!" So ready or not we are now officially potty training....

Brent's been asking for a while why I don't just try potty training her. I kept telling Brent she does things her own way and I just want to wait until she is really ready to minimize my pain. So I guess this is her way of saying she's ready...no more diapers for her.....


Now if only she would make it to the toilet..... :) Just for the record though-She does give us many reasons to laugh....usually at ourselves.....what a joyful little spirit she is.

The beginnings of logic and magic

So the other night Cami asked "Why do unicorns have horns?"...I told her because they were magic...A minute later she asked "Mommy are rhinoceroses magic too?"

Sneaky...Very Sneaky...

Growing up in the Rice house everyone was familiar with the "End Cupboard." It was the last cupboard in the kitchen and my mom hid the school lunch food in there. No one was allowed to sneak in there because if we did there wouldn't be enough treats for school lunches without going to the grocery store. Well I don't make school lunches yet and the girls know they can have snacks out of the cupboard but they usually have to ask because they are on the higher shelves.....But Taryn has taken on a whole new level of sneaky and independence. She has discovered how to scoot chairs over and get her own snacks out. Her particular favorite right now is teddy grahams.....It is not really a big deal that she sneaks her own snacks especially since she is pretty careful and coordinated with the climbing and opening cupboard part but it does give me a good laugh every time I walk in the kitchen and there she is sneaking a little "snackie" as she calls them.

Strike a Pose

I promise we don't watch America's Next Top Model or the making of a top model or any such shows and we certainly don't inflict them on our children, but somehow Cami has learned how to strike a pose. She has always been easy to take to sears for birthday pictures because she cooperates with anyone but she has taken it a step further. A few weeks ago at a soccer game she said "Daddy take my picture" and then much to our shock and amusement whipped out some amazing hilarious poses. She just kept going and going until Brent told her he didn't have room for any more pictures. So we thought that was pretty funny until she did it again and again and again. We don't know where she gets it but she definitely comes up with some serious model moves. She'll out grow this I'm sure but in the mean time we will take a lot of pictures and have some good laughs.....

San Diego Baby!

Brent has had a few business trips to San Diego lately and this time instead of leaving us home to miss him terribly we all decided to go and play. We drove down on Thursday evening and came home Monday after Brent was done with all his meetings. As usual we packed way more into those few days than any rational person with two kids should. The trip was not sooo relaxing but it was really fun to build so many memories with the girls. All said and done they did really well considering the lack of sleep they got and we did really well considering the lack of sleep they got (and us :) ). Friday we went to Sea World. Saturday we checked out the San Diego Zoo and looked for a light house. We never exactly got to the lighthouse but toured around a very nice ocean side neighborhood despite stopping for directions. Sunday we checked out a local church, the San Diego LDS temple, and rode on a train in the Wild Animal Park. Monday the girls went shopping while Daddy worked and we headed home. As we were driving we became aware how desperately we need to replace our car DVD player and how much Taryn really likes Dora the Explorer and how insanely catching the tune on Dora is...It is finally fading a little from our memories after a week. Cami really loved the hotel and was so excited to check out every nook and cranny. Taryn slept in a sleeping bag for the first time and only got out once-not sure if that was because of the very serious way we told her "no way get back in" or because she was really excited to be a big girl out of the pack and play and have a princess sleeping bag. Anyway, it was really fun just to spend a couple of days with each other especially since Brent has been putting in some loooong days at work. Every day we realize how lucky we are to have our funny girls and to have each other.

Sea World

What they were watching

What I was watching

Taryn's favorite of the day...petting the rays and getting seriously splashed

Cami busting out dance moves all over sea world and singing songs about what a beautiful day and season it is....

If you know our children you know they are not big fans of loud noises or being scared. At first they liked looking then the next picture is Cami running from the Polar Bear exhibit after hearing a recording of Polar Bears growling....

So do you really think that removable fence thing is going to hold up against the hoof of a clidsdale? That is what was going through my mind as the guy told us to smile for our picture....

Zoo

There is nothing remarkable about this silly picture except they have these picture backboards set up all over all three parks we went to and the girls really wanted to take pictures in every single one...so to spare you all the pics I just added one...

The Zebra Exhibit (and the Elephants) won out for the coolest animals at the zoo...

By the end if the second day of animal immersion our tentative child was willing to touch goats...Amazing what a little exposure will do for a kid...

Cami busting out in random song and dance again but this time she was thankful the the beautiful beautiful animals...

One last favorite at the Zoo

Balboa Park

The Carousel and train were big hits despite the wind and rain...at least for Cami....Taryn was nervous at first but was yelling YE-HAW by the end so overall it was a success.

Wild Animal Kingdom

Unfortunately the camera was out of battery power by the time we got here....no surprise after all these pictures.....

We Caved

So last summer while visiting my mom my cousin invited us to a dance recital for her kids. Knowing that Cami would probably get a kick out of it I agreed to go and took her. Little did I know I wouldn't be able to get her to stop dancing. So after a year of dancing in the living room, the kitchen, the grocery store, the church, most restaraunts, the petting zoo and anywhere she felt the urge, I caved and signed her up for dance classes. Who would have ever thought my girls would be soooo girly? Oh well! They are happy and Brent reminds me I should not try to make them hate certain things just because I do. I should support and encourage them in whatever talents they seek to build even if it is girly....But seriously....dance classes?! YIKES! Yes Taryn is involved too as she felt left out when Cami got all geared up and they had a BIG discount for siblings and she has learned some moves from Cami all year...Cami is most excited to dance up on the big stage in May. So if any of you are around on May 31 Cami and Taryn will be performing on the big stage and would love you to cheer super loud for them....What did I get myself into?!

These pictures were taken right before we left for their first big day of dance class...

The Innocence of Children

I just can't help but post this.

Cami has been really cute lately as she begins to really question things to gain a better understanding.

Tonight for family scripture study Taryn picked a story about the birth of Jesus. We have read this story a hundred times.

Anyway, we get done with it and Cami asked, "What about the foolish men? Did they visit Jesus too?". Amy and I just looked at each other with a question and then we both started laughing (as silently as possible). Amy then made up a great excuse about the foolish men were still building their houses on the sand.

Lets just say Amy didn't make it through family prayer without some chuckles.

Repentance

So Cami must be learning something from church despite both Brent and I feeling like we have a weekly date with WWF wrestling every Sunday. Today I heard Taryn screaming and saying "no no Cami!" and "I called hey what is going on in there?" Much to my surprise Cami called out "I hitted Taryn but it's ok because I all ready repented." To which I said "What?!" She said I said "I hit Tar but I said a little prayer to tell Jesus sorry then I told Taryn sorry and gave her a smooch to make it all better...." And Taryn had apparently forgiven her by then...So how can you argue with that...Let's just not make it a habit (the hitting part)....End of story...:)

Cami did give her first talk in primary two weeks ago and her first scripture yesterday. She did really great both times. She was a little nervous about using a microphone but she sucked it up and told the story of Noah and how people wished they had listened when they saw the rain...I love my funny girl!

BDay

As hard to believe as it is, we now officially have a four year old. She is such a joy to be around and we feel blessed everyday to get to have her in our family. We try to make birthdays a big day in our family and the anticipation this year started months ago. She counted down from Halloween to Thanksgiving then Christmas then my birthday! So in the morning we went to get her picture taken at Sears. She really likes to have her picture taken so, despite the sloooooow picture taking lady and Taryn bee lining it the the door several times, she had fun. And for those of you who have seen the picture no she is not wearing lipstick. She just has really red lips sometimes. We are not a Jon Benet Ramsey family...Then we hurried to Wal-Mart to ride Dumbo as many times as she wanted. I offered this open endedly because I figured the excitement of not going anywhere would wear off after a minute or two. No such luck. After going through at least twelve dollars (I lost count after that) and breaking the dumbo (he hadn't seen that much action for awhile from the looks of him) and moving on to the Lion King guy I convinced her that we needed to go home so Taryn could take a nap. After nap time we made fruit loop necklaces and had the Thompsons and Grandmas over for a BBQ. Cami wanted Ravioli so she had that while everyone else got burgers. Then we had a princess birthday cake and opened presents. She got her first big girl bike (with training wheels) and tested it out in the kitchen immediately. The next day she took it for a road test and did really well. She also was obviously into the accessories that came with the bike. It is way more exciting to get a bike for a January birthday when you live in St George rather than Michigan.

Hold on tight! He might take off.

Cami loving her new friend.

Lookin' Good Cami! Lookin' Good!
It was really tricky to pedal without accidentally using the pedal breaks. She is still working on this.
Thumbs up for a bike ride and Hannah Flat Stanley.

Hiking in January-Man you've got to love it!

So now that we live in St George people actually come to visit us! It is so much fun. In January Carolyn and Fred and cousins came then in February Grandma and Papa came. The Fergusons also came in February and that was tons of fun too. In January it was in the 50s so we decided to go hiking. First we hiked out to a little known arch out side of Snow Canyon State Park. The girls did really great but of course wanted snacks the whole way. Later we hiked on the Red Hill. (For those of you not familiar with St George there is a big mesa made out of really red rock on the north side of town) There were tons of people there because it was such a nice day. We then went and had a picnic at a park in the historical part of St George. There was some splashing in the water feature but mostly the cousins played freeze tag. It was a really fun weekend and here are a few of the pictures.

Mommy holding on the the girls for dear life on a steeper part of the Red Hill.


Johnson's Arch with the sun shining through.


The midway snack attack. You've got to love those granola bars after a rigorous mile!

Taryn being her independent little self and refusing help over some of the rocky terrain.

Cami cheering Taryn on and Taryn deciding she could make it.