Solar Eclipse

As most of you know there was a Solar eclipse on Sunday. We just happen to be lucky enough to live a mere 20 minutes from what was deemed the "sweet spot" for viewing the eclipse.

We had front row seats in Grandpa and Grandmas pasture. Grandpa being the very wise man that he is ordered us all official Eclipse viewing glasses online. Saving us hours of standing in lines before they were all sold out in town.

Here's Kolby showing them off.

Dewey's birthday was yesterday so we squeezed in birthday cake along with our Eclipse watching.

Happy Birthday to my darling hubby!!

Since the glasses were big people size and the boys have little people heads there was much sliding on and off of glasses. Grandpa came to the rescue with baseball hats to hold the glasses in place.

Dewey also built a very official eclipse viewing devise. Also know as box with a hole in it. This was Lukes first choice for watching the eclipse.

Dewey took a bunch of pretty cool pictures during the eclipse, this is one of my favorites.

Ok so there is a real trick to taking photos of a Eclipse. Me with my severe lack of knowledge on all things photographic did not do very well. I finally figured out that if I held the glasses in front of the camera I could get something like what we were looking at.

Are you ready?????

And the total full eclipse, ring of fire is the official term. (I think)

Pretty cool huh? An amazing thing to watch, right up my nerd alley. I'm so thankful we were able to experience it.

Quick catchup

This post will lovingly be called information dump :)

In the past week....

One child has eaten cat food.

One child has drank out of the guinea pigs water container.

One child watched a seemingly innocent kids show with monsters in it and is now convinced there are monsters under his bed. Meaning there are 3 of us that have not had a full nights sleep in a week. (fun fact I am not one of those people that can sleep 4 hours a night and wake all perky and refreshed)

The kids now have friends that come over to play. I won't even get into (too much) how I am so not ready to have them playing on their own with friends. Even so I have given them a pinch more freedom, as long as they stay in the fenced part of the yard. I do realize its a healthy part of growing up. But still.... So at least 3 times a week our house and yard is filled with 4-5 screaming running, jumping, laughing soccer playing boys. I have stocked up on Popsicles and Dewey built them a soccer goal. Their playground is a work in progress.

It seriously just occurred to me yesterday that while I am falling woefully behind in cleaning the inside of my house the outside is now filled with weeds. Pretty sure neither area is going to magically take care of itself.

I know I totally missed a Mothers day post. So to all you wonderful mama's out there....

Much love and hugs from us. I hope you had a perfect Mothers day.

My boys spoiled me with breakfast in bed. Kolby and Luke decided I would love pancakes, scrambled eggs and strawberries. They both helped Dewey in their own ways, it was DELICIOUS. We spent the afternoon at Grandma and grandpa's having a mothers day BBQ. Very nice relaxing day.

As I am behind in pictures I thought I would post these super cute ones from a few months ago.

We bought these hats in Jamaica for the boys. While we were there our driver taught us the word "Irie" he said it was a staple of the Jamaican language.

This is the official definition....

To be at total peace with your current state of being.

The way you feel when you have no worries. "Everything is irie mon"

I think its perfect for me to remember this during this time in our lives.

This is the boys showing off their hats while saying "Irie"

I saw this on Pinterest and had to smile.... reminds me of someone I know ;)



Virgin River Gorge

After the past few weeks we have had we needed a little getaway. I came up with the brilliant idea to drive to Mesquite NV (about an hour and a half away) to place a bet on the Kentucky Derby. Having bet once in my life on the Derby it seemed a fine idea. But more importantly it got us out of town and down into some serious warm weather. Se we researched and by research I mean I looked at the pictures of the horses and said "ohh  that's a pretty one, I pick him" Dewey put a little more effort into the whole process. We had our picks and off we drove. The boys and I went to an arcade while Dewey headed to the sports bar. (I bet you   thought we dragged the kids through the casino to the sports bar....ha nope) The boys had a blast spending $10 to win .5 cents worth of little toys. It was actually a pretty cool arcade they had skee ball, remember that game. I swear at one point I had mad skee ball skills. Without realizing it I must have lost them because that ball went nowhere but the bottom hole. Kolby and I mostly laughed at each other while Luke did really well. 

Dewey came and found us and I asked how the betting process went as he did not look thrilled and brimming with winning anticipation like I expected..... So....um....apparently they do not let you bet on the Kentucky Derby this far in advance (one week) oopsie. Oh well live and learn. But I 100% guarantee that the pretty grey horse I liked is going to win now that I don't have any money on him. 

Part of our plan was to stop in the Virgin River Gorge on the way back home, we even brought swimsuits for the boys. Can I just say it was PERFECT. 80 degrees and the water was low and slow and oh so warm. The boys had a BLAST. I know I have mentioned (at least 102 times)  how much I love desert water but this place is one of my favorites. Tons of red sand, and no rocks. 

Dewey tried to show the boys how to float in the slightly deeper part. I love that he gets in a plays just has hard  as the they do. 

Kolby preferred to "float" with his belly touching.

 Isn't this place beautiful? Probably the last time we can enjoy until next year. It gets to be oh I don't know 130 degrees at least in the summer. I mean it is the desert. So I'm happy as can be my betting ignorance led to such a fun day :)

Busy busy busy....

Now I know that some people are masters at fitting in 1002 things into their 24 hours...... I am not one of those people. I know that some love and even thrive on running from place to place with a never ending list of things to do. Also not me. So on weeks when this just happens to be the case for our little family I fall behind on our blog and DO NOT whatever you do look at the inside of our house. 

So a little wrap up of the past week or so. 

Luke was is a Shakespeare play at school. A little background, our small town is known far and wide for our yearly Shakespeare festivals. Its actually a pretty big deal and the pride of all who live in the area. So not all that strange for Luke's  class to put on "A midsummer's night dream". This has to rank as one of the cutest stinkin things I have ever seen.

And these kids were Ah-mazing, they knew their lines and parts and just acted their little hearts out. 

I'm happy to say that Luke was not in the least little bit afraid of being in front of a crowd. So comfortable in fact that he would say a line then bend down to fuss with his shoes, totally unconcerned with all the eyes watching him. To me this is a wonderful thing, I wish I had even 10% of that kind of confidence. I have never said any lines in any play and to this day I'm petrified to be in front of people. And I am about 106 years past first grade.

They performed their play at the actual Shakespeare outdoor theater. If I was really smart I could tell you the official name but that's just not the case so you'll just have to use your own Shakespeare knowledge and kinda picture what it looks like. Grandpa met Dewey and I there, I think its safe to say we all LOVED it.  

Next was the Relay for life walk. Some of my friends asked me to be on their team. As I have never met a person  who has not been affected by cancer including myself I readily agreed. It was a moving and amazing experience.

When they lit the bags there was not a dry eye in the place. Each of the bags had the name of a loved one written on it with a light inside. Heartbreaking to see enough of them to circle the stadium. 

My team was on the small side so I ended up staying from 6pm until 6am walking. Yes sir 12 hours, up all night walking..... I'm happy to say I made the commitment and I did it.....and its yet another time I felt my age. 

Next up was our towns Spring Home and Garden show. I was on the planning committee so loads of time on the various zillion boring and mundane tasks that it takes to pull off a successful show. And WOOP-EEE it was last weekend (meaning its OVER and DONE) And it really was a success we doubled our attendance people seemed pretty happy, what more could I want. 

Hopefully now I can breathe for five minutes and maybe dust a thing or two in my house. (ok we all know there is no dusting getting done, but laundry for sure) 

Guess who lost their very first tooth??

Yep this kid!!

Last week Luke proudly showed us his very first loose tooth.

Every morning since he would say "I hope it falls out at school". Never one to shy away from attention, from the way he tells it they pile it on for this occasion. I offered to do it the old fashioned way by tying a string to the tooth and then a door knob. His exact words were "yea mom we are not going to do that"

Luke ended up getting his wish, Wednesday at school his tooth came out. He came home jumping with excitement to show us his tooth hanging around his neck in a little plastic tooth shaped necklace. And according to him even better was the fact that he was the very first person in his class to lose a tooth in the month of April. 

Thanks to Pinterest I found a "First lost Tooth award" And a little DIY envelope to put his tooth in to leave for the tooth fairy. He also wrote a letter to the tooth fairy asking her to tell him exactly how she was able to get the tooth out from under his head.

First of many to come. I should add I'm not surprised his little teeth are now starting to fall out. We just finished paying off his dental bills for the extensive work that had to be done on them. Only makes sense they start to fall out now :)

Family lessons

This was our house last weekend..... OK its our horse and tree but you get the idea, snow and lots of it.

So I thought I would share our adventure from last month. (the bruises are gone its safe to talk about) 

You might recall the Wilcox's that were up a few weeks ago. Their entire family are mountain bikes extraordinaire, seriously true talent, each one of them. So my darling hubby looks at all their cool pics on their blog and figures his own little family would have so much fun going on a Mountain Bike ride. I tried to tell him that even if you put the four of us together we are are maybe 5% of the Wilcox's capabilities, but being the optimistic man he is he researched to find the "perfect trail". He found a "beginner" trail in an area of St George we had not been before. In case you are not familiar with Utah it is an outdoors man paradise and a little on the extreme side. I know this and still didn't pick up on the fact that my idea of beginner is far different then a Mountain bike websites idea of beginner.

What follows is our adventure and the lessons learned.

We parked, unpacked bikes, helmets and backpacks and set off. Not 10 feet from the start of the trail we went around a corner and saw that the trail went uphill. Of the three of us Dewey is the only one that can do hills. Don't judge not even in my so called prime 100 or so years ago could I do them so its not an old outta shape thing, I swear......

So off the bikes to walk. We were sure that it would be just a small section that was uphill, surely any minute it would flatten out and we would be riding through flat soft meadows. First lesson learned I do not have a realistic view of certain situations.

After a very long time of taking turns pushing the kids bikes the ground leveled out a bit. We worked out a system that we continued to use the rest of the day. Dewey or I would ride ahead, stop and start walking back. The other one of us would start the boys and they would go as far as they could. Best case until they met one of us walking back. We did this hopscotch thing for 3 hours.  

Once we reached the top we hit the real trail. This brought our hopscotch thing to much shorter distances. And added in a lot of bike carrying.

Luke actually did pretty good for his first time riding a "slick rock single track" trail. Yea that's what our "beginner" trail ended up being.

I think Dewey managed to squeeze in a little fun. And no he or I was not wearing a helmet, remember my flat meadow trail picture in my head? 

Patience was our second lesson for the day, neither Dewey or I lost our cool can you believe it? For all you that know me you know this is exactly the type of situation that causes me to freak out. 

The next three shots are a good example of the day, Luke, Dewey and Kolby all coming down the same spot.

Its hard to tell but Luke has a very grumpy face on.

Dewey still smiling after 3 hours

Kolby walking his bike. This becomes important later on in the story. Because he walked his bike so much we did not realize that he refuses to use his brakes.

A trip through the desert is not complete without spotting a critter of some sort.

So after three hours we were all past exhausted and knew we were getting close to the end.... We came around a corner to an almost straight up sand hill. My muscles screamed in protest ans Dewey and I pushed our bikes, then the boys bikes up that last hill. I think I may have told Dewey to just leave me there, I was pretty sure I could learn how to live in the desert, there had to be a tree I could sleep under.

We did however all make it to the top. (yes you are right we started and ending walking up hill) And wonder of wonder a downhill curvy dirt road leading back to our car. All we had to do at this point was get on the bikes and coast down the hill. Luke went first then me, Kolby and Dewey bringing up the rear. From behind me I hear Dewey yelling for Kolby to brake. The yelling gets more intense and I turn to see Kolby flying down the hill screaming "I can't, I can't. Mom instinct took over at that point as he came along side me I reached out and grabbed him. (that's right as we are both speeding down a hill) I kept him on top but we still landed on a pile of bikes and road. Thankful neither of us were hurt more then scrapes and bruises. (in my case great big backside covering bruises)  I like to think that I don't often feel my age but that day and the week after I felt 40 and then some.
At the end of the day I was pretty proud of us. We pulled together as a team and worked together to get us out of a tough situation. 

In a strange (and exhausting) way it was a great family bonding day. And it ended with no trips to the hospital woot-woot
Lessons learned...check
And lucky for us there is not a hill or even a bump on our property. Kolby will be able to practice riding and  more importantly braking with no cause for concern.... knock on wood

Just another week in our lives..

On Tuesday Dewey had to drive across the state (12 hours round trip) on a work errand. I had the kids in their pajamas and it was supposed to be relax time before they went to bed. But as is the norm for them they were rolling around on the floor wrestling. I might add not five feet away from where I was standing. So I had a front row seat to Luke jumping on Kolbys back and Kolbys head hitting the tile floor. (I should also add this happens a lot to both of them) He managed to hit the exact spot he had his demoed cyst removed a few years ago...... opening the scar open again. I grabbed a towel to stop the bleeding and called Dewey. (I knew he was still 4 hours away but its my natural first reaction.) I told him what happened and he said "hang up and call dad". Dewey is well aware of my limitations in this area, I'm not good with blood ever, and even worse when the boys are hurt. However his dad who has a PHD in hurt boys thanks to dewey and his brother Jason spending a good part of their childhood getting themselves injured. (for example "I bet we could fly just like superman lets jump of the roof" type of behavior) In less then five minutes grandpa arrived making all three of us feel a lot better. (Luke was feeling guilt pangs for being part of the accident) He took one look at Kolbys head and said "get your shoes on we are going to the hospital". And 4 stitches later Kolby was back in one piece. Kolby was a trooper in big part to grandpa being their to hold his hand.

The next morning when Kolby was telling Dewey about the hospital it went a little like this "dad it was so cool, well not the medicine part (the shots in his head) but they gave me a bracelet (id tag), toys (a little bag with a coloring book, crayons, and a few trinkets) and they have a snack box (vending machine). I love how this child sees the best in everything situation. I pray he keeps his "glass is half full" attitude always.

It was Luke's week to be "Star Student" at school. I have known about this for oh I don't know EIGHT months. And I swear I have thought a lot about what we would do and the cute picture board I would put together for him. However time flew by and it snuck right up on me. After spending Easter weekend with Liz and Gary it was about 8:00 on Sunday night I looked at his list which had his activities for the week just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. For some reason I thought we had until this Fri to have his Star board in....negative it was supposed to be there Monday morning. FRICK!! Now you all know I have literally thousands of pictures of the boys, however I'm not the best at printing them out. (I know this about myself, that's the main reason for this blog, since I have not done scrapbooks or photo albums this serves as our family story) So I scrambled to go through the photos I did have and threw this together. Luke seemed happy with it and I guess that's what matters. (not my pride in having the perfect project put together)

On Monday he got to pick our five things to take to school to talk about who he is. He choose to take a little Lego ship he made, some Star Wars guys, a soccer ball, his Cowboys jersey and a globe to show where he was born (Kazakhstan)

On Tuesday they went on a field trip to Snow Canyon. That night he told us about it. "We went in a cave and there were spiders in it, and I'm not a "spider explorer" (he made the quotation marks in the air)". Having never seen him use quotation marks before dewey asked him about it, Luke said " quotation marks what does that mean I was doing spider fangs". Needless to say we were rolling on the floor laughing.

On Wednesday we wrote a letter to him that had to be in a sealed envelope to be read to him by his teacher. I deemed the fact that he is still only in first grade I could be a little mushy but I tried not to go overboard :)

Thursday is his buddy lunch, he gets to pick someone to come to school to have lunch with him. It was a toss up between dad and grandpa but in the end Dewey got to go. (hum... weird that I don't recall hearing my name mentioned)

I took Kolby in this morning and they said his stitches look great .(they look a little Frankenstein to me but I guess that's why I'm not a doctor) He gets them out on Sunday.

So all in all just another week in this adventure we call life.