Our Camping Adventure

We spent our Labor Day weekend camping at Jacob Lake. It's about a 5-6 hour drive for both us and my family in Utah, so we met there to rough it in the wilderness for a few days. This was the first time we've camped for 2 nights with the kids (we always just do one) - I was apprehensive, but I'd definitely do it again! Camping for just one night is a pain because you spend most of your time setting up and taking down camp with not much time for play in between. So, 2 nights was much more worthwhile. We had a GREAT time - we ate delicious dutch oven meals, played lots of games in the evenings (like bananagrams, BANG!, mafia, poor man's cranium), chatted by the fire, explored the wilderness, rode horses, took a field trip to the Grand Canyon, etc, etc... it was so fun! Aaron took the family pic of us above while at the Grand Canyon - this was on Day 2, and none of us had showered - I'd say we were still lookin' pretty cute. haha :)

Some sights on the drive up...

Ben told the kids that when he was little he always thought these sand formations were hiding sleeping dinosaurs underneath :)

Driving through the Painted Desert and Indian Reservation is beautiful

When we reached the campsite, Claire took a little outdoor nap - she seemed to really enjoy the breezes and nature sounds - she napped great! :)



Dad and Aaron having a riveting conversation about propane lanterns

Our campsite was right next to a horse pasture - the horses would come right up to the fence and the girls loved to pet them - Emma even named them... Dot and Starlight...




The horse pasture is also home to the actual Jacob Lake that the area is named after. It's not much of a lake, but it was very picturesque...


Exploring the surrounding woods...








S'mores!




Claire comfy and warm in her bear outfit...











Uncle Aaron helping Jake put caps in his cap gun



The Kaibab squirrel - these white tailed squirrels are considered endangered and they only live in the Jacob Lake area and North Rim of the Grand Canyon - this guy and some of his friends kept making appearances in our camp. :)



It's always a good time for silly YouTube videos... we may have been camping, but we had great internet reception! :)


The North Rim of the Grand Canyon was about a 45 minute drive from our campsite, so we made sure to make a little trip to see it. I've only been to the Grand Canyon once before when I was younger, and that was to the South Rim - this was my first time to the North end. The Grand Canyon is amazing and frightening - it doesn't even look real when you are right there... it looks like a painting or something. I'm definitely afraid of heights and the whole thing gave me the heebie jeebies.... but it was gorgeous!


















One of our camping activities included making marshmallow shooters followed by a big mini marshmallow war...






Emma, Becca, and Jake all got to ride horses at a local ranch. They were so cute up on those big horses!












Mom went out horseback riding as well... she looks good on a horse! :)



Delicious dutch oven cornbread and chili with fire roasted corn on the cob - oh my yum!

On our last day before heading out, the kids did a simple little nature scavenger hunt while we worked at taking down tents and packing up...







"Don't forget that I was here too!" -Claire

By morning on Day 3, I was especially thankful that we were all able to shower the night before - bonus points for finding a campground with showers! On the way home we stopped at Lee's Ferry - we bought some Indian jewelry, and crossed the bridge and enjoyed the view...








We also stopped in Cameron for lunch and ate some huge Navajo tacos. :) What a wonderful trip!

My brother Aaron is a really great photographer and he took a bunch of awesome photos from our trip - they sum up our wonderful weekend quite perfectly...

My Cute Preschooler

Sweet Rebecca had her first day of school on Friday. She's so excited to be back in preschool after the long summer. She's loves her new teacher, Mrs. Goodrich and is so happy to be carpooling with friends. This girl loves school! Let's hope she loves school for many years to come. :)

babies and secret messages

Here's some randoms from the end of August...

Caroline, Claire, and Scout are the cutest of cousins - we like to put them all side by side and take pictures of them. :)


Of course Claire was the first to get grumpy...


With Emma starting up school, I've been happily engaged in trying to create a new daily routine. In order to get anything done in the day, with a nursing baby, in regards to laundry, cleaning, or my to do list, I have to have stellar time management skills (which I'm currently NOT doing, as I type up this blog post). This has been a painful adjustment for me. I'm not sure that it's really been any more of an adjustment then when I had Jake, but it's still been difficult to try to create a day for myself that keeps me from feeling like an utter failure by the end of it. This week has been the best yet and I'm even currently caught up on laundry and I've been making dinners too. wahoo!! Emma doesn't get home from school until 4pm - I had thought that homework time would be well suited for that 4:00 hour before we have dinner... but I hadn't forseen how exhausted she would be when getting home. She just wants time to rest or play and not have to come home to immediately start up homework. So, instead of homework right after school, we have snacks and some downtime - either a movie, or a little at home activity...

Yesterday we did "secret messages" using a white crayon and then revealed with watercolors - I didn't have any paints, so I just added some food coloring to some water and that seemed to work well enough. :)







This past Saturday, Ben took Emma on a daddy daughter date (the last of the ok mommy bucket rewards) - they had SO much fun. I'm kinda jealous I couldn't tag along. They went to Jumpstreet to play and then out to lunch. Emma LOVES her daddy...

Pink Princess Tea Party

Remember the "Ok Mommy bucket"? Well, we've officially retired it until possibly next summer, but we still have had some rewards owed to the girls. Becca pulled out the ever coveted 'pink princess tea party' prize a few weeks ago. She helped me plan it out and we invited cute Clara and Alice (sisters) to come over to join our girly party time - oh, and Becca was also nice to invite Emma. :) You may wonder when I have time put together a tea party - well, Ben has been working overnight at the hospital every third night for the month of August (miserable!), so the night before our tea party, Ben was gone and the kids had gone to bed (including Claire- yay!), so I spent my evening making tissue paper pom poms, putting together little cookie bags for favors, and setting the tea table. Other resident wives I know spend their alone evenings reading books, or sewing, but I guess I find joy in preparing tea parties - haha.



I only wanted to make a few purchases to put this together, which included tissue paper, and a couple spools of ribbon... so I made good use of the ribbon, including hot gluing pink ribbon around the handles of the tea cups. I got these white tea cups from my grandma when Ben and I were first married - at the time, I didn't know if I'd ever use them, but now that I have all these girls in my house, I've found that I've used them quite a bit! Little girls love tea cups! :)

The little pink bucket was filled with slips of paper with princess related trivia and conversation starters, such as "what would be your favorite color ball gown?", or "what princess lives with a talking teapot?". From this exercise, I learned that girls know everything about princesses. I guess I can only blame myself for making sure the girls have seen every single Disney princess movie. :)


After enjoying our "tea" (pink crystal light), sandwiches, strawberries, and cookies, the girls decorated little princess wands, and then got a manicure of pink nail polish and girly nail stickers.

I'm so happy I have girls! :)

My favorite sister!

Yay! My wonderful sister came to visit!! I really love when Sarah is here. She is fun to hang out with, the kids love her, and she's the BEST help. Truth be told, I'm kind of a mess right now - since having Claire, I've never been so behind on cleaning tasks, or laundry, or errands, etc - and it was a huge relief to have such a great helper around the house. She cleaned, she did dishes, she put away tons of laundry, she entertained the kids, and was an all around stellar sister. Thank you Sarah!!

In addition to working around the house, we tried to do plenty of fun stuff too... We watched LOTS of movies... mostly just old movies we have in our dvd library (like Sandlot!), and we played some games too (quirkle!). I enjoyed the downtime hanging out with my sis. We even got to have a great girls night without all the kids. Ben was working overnight on Friday at the hospital, but Grandma Dangerfield wanted to keep the kids at her house for a sleepover. So we dropped off the kiddos and went out to dinner at Joe's Grill and then explored some girly stores (Charming Charlie is so fun!). The next morning we went out to breakfast at Paradise - I think we definitely took advantage of our time away from the kids.

This past week the temps reached to 117!! AHHHH!! But I didn't want to be cooped up in the house even though it was deathly hot outside... here's some more of what we did to stay busy and cool in this crazy heat...

Reading books at the library-



Phoenix Children's Museum-

Jake up in the HUGE climber - I wish I would have gotten a picture of the whole structure from outside of it - it's really amazing. It's 3 stories tall... the girls were both quite scared to go up very high. A lot of the climber has grate-like floors, so you can see through to the levels below your feet - Emma ended up going to the top with me, as long as I held her hand through it. :)





Becca and Jake getting artsy










MacAlpines Soda and Ice Cream Shop-

Don't interrupt Emma eating sweets... haha

Becca ordered "Bears at the Beach" and she spent the first 10 minutes playing with the gummy bears and placing them carefully under the umbrella. :)

Splash Park-

We stopped for slurpies before heading to the park - Jake loves slurpies!



It was so hot outside that Sarah and I both jumped in to get wet several times - we would get mostly soaked and afterwards we'd be dry within minutes... then we would go out and get wet again. No swimsuits needed! :)

After Emma got home from school on Monday, we made thaumatropes, or "magic turners". You draw part of a scene on one side and the other part on the other side of the circle... then when you spin it, both images come together. Very simple and very fun!







Side A

Side B

Sarah did a lot of cooking while she was here - here the girls are anxiously awaiting Sarah's delicious chocolate chip cookies...


On the way to the airport for Sarah to go back home to Utah, we stopped at Yogurtology for a last minute treat (it seems we ate a lot of goodies while she was here!)...


Thanks for visiting Aunt Sarah. You are already missed!

FIRST Grader!

Emma started 1st grade yesterday! I can't believe it! She's gone ALL DAY and it feels crazy long. She's riding the bus like last year, but it's no longer just half-day Kindergarten. She told me her favorite part of school today was eating lunch. :) I love my big grown up girl!