Art City Days

*This is my fourth post today, so you might want to scroll down and read them all.  I am playing catch up!*

It is that time of year again.  Art City Days!  I love art city days.  There are fun things for the kids to do and all kinds of activities all week long.  There is even a baby contest which I totally should have entered Emery into because I am just sure she would have won.  :)  ha ha.  Anywho.  We only did a few things this year.  We went to the carnival and the parade.  The kids loved it.  At the carnival we let the kids do the carousel and a few little rides.  Then we walked around a looked at all of the booths of people selling things.  Fun.  Then on Saturday I was going to skip out on the parade because Rob was gone all day (from 5:45 am to about 5:30 pm) doing the leopard test for kung fu.  I will let him tell you about that.  It sounded like a lot of fun.  But I was brave and walked down to the parade with all three kids in tow.  THey did very well.  We found a great place to sit and set up our blanket and waited for the parade.  Emery fell asleep as the loud firetrucks with sirens drove past.  How she did that...I have no idea.  But it was nice.  The kids loved running out and grabbing candy and waving to everyone that went by.  We actually stayed to the very end and walked all the way home without a meltdown.  Success!  ha ha.  It was a lot of fun and I am glad that I took the kids after all. 

 This is the first thing that the kids did.  Just a fun little walk up really high to a fun slide.

 Zac was a little nervous so Sadie helped him along.  It was really cute.

 He went down the slide first...

 Then Sadie. They liked it I think.

 Then the Carousel.  I didn't really get a good picture.  This was the best one I got.

 Then Sadie got to ride one all by herself.

 Love that face.

 Waiting for the parade.

 Sadie really wanted to see Cosmo...there is the van, but no Cosmo.

 There he is...he waved right to us!

 And gave the girl next to us a high five.  They thought that was really cool.

And this is what Emery did most of the time.  It was a fun day.

I forgot to mention that the night before this, there was a sale at a store called modbod.  It has like undershirts and cute skirts and stuff.  This was a parking lot sale where you could go and stuff up to ten things into a bag and pay 25 dollars for it.  So my friend and I left our kids with our husbands and took off.  We got there right when it was supposed to start and there were already hundreds of people there searching through boxes and boxes of clothes.  Crazy.  My friend and I ended up finding some stuff and went to get some bags to stuff it in.  Turns out the bags are smaller then a gallon ziplock bag.  ha ha.  But we stuffed and stuffed and I think we got 8 shirts in one of our bags.  I also found some fun skirts.  We had 4 bags of stuff.  Then we went to pay and I discovered that my wallet was not in my bag.  I was so embarrassed but my friend offered to pay for mine and I could pay her back.  Oh man...it was sooooooo crazy there.  So many women trying to stuff as much stuff into those tiny bags as they could. We also had to be able to put a twist tie on the bag.  ha ha.  Kinda comical.  We are so cheap!  :)  We decided that we would go an hour early next time!  It was a great weekend!

Snake

Yesterday while Rob was gone, we walked out the front door to eat a popsicle and at the bottom of our stairs was a snake.  Just sitting there.  I didn't know if it was dead or alive, so I did what most people would do...screamed.  Then I ran in and got my camera and found out that the snake was very much alive.  The kids and I followed it around for about 10 minutes until it slithered into our neighbors yard.  We have seen snakes quite a few times in our backyard, but this was the first time I had ever seen one in our front yard in the four and a half years that we have lived here.  Yuck. 

 This is what I saw coming down the stairs.  Sadie saw it too, but she didn't scream like I did.  She just shuddered because it was so gross.

 Going across the rocks.

 I thought he was going to go down the stairwell and get stuck...but he turned around.

 He hid here for a while.

 And the kids waited for him to come out....but he didn't.  So I moved that fence thing out of the way to get a better look.

 

 That is when he made his escape.  He slithered over under our van...

Then over to our neighbors yard.  He is their problem now!  ha ha

Six months old!

 Our adorable little one is six months old already.  We really love her to pieces and she keeps us all in awe at her utter cuteness!  I just love those puffy cheeks and he little dimple is the cutest!  I have been getting comments lately about how chubby she is.  One of our neighbors even asked if we are feeding her whale milk.  I didn't know if he meant that she was chubby, or I looked like a whale.  ha ha.  Just kidding.

 She learned a new trick.

 She does really good in the grass because it kinda helps her to balance.  But she does great on the floor too!

 I also get a lot of comments about those pants.  I love how bright they are.  Ha ha.  Garage sale special.

 All of my crazies.  So cute.

 Happy.

 This picture really shows well what happens when I want a picture of Zac.  He keeps getting closer and closer yelling cheese at the top of his lungs.  So silly.

And then I got this awesome picture of Sadie.  I love it.  She is such a big girl.  She is a great big sister to Emery and Zac.  

But this post is about Emery....

Some things she is doing lately:  

-She loves food.  Anything we will give her.  But I think her favorite it sweet potatoes at the moment.

-She loves to squeal.  

-She is such an easy baby still.  It makes it so easy to take these three out shopping or to the park or wherever.  It is great.

-She has been having trouble staying asleep in her crib.  She will move around and get her arm or leg stuck out of the crib and then cry and cry.  I guess I should put the crib bumper on.

-She smiles all the time.  Especially at other people.  I guess she is tired of looking at my face.  

-She is mostly bald with a little mullet in the back.  I thought she would keep her hair, but it fell out about a month ago.  

-Zac calls her "ree ree".  I think that nick name might stick!

We love our little emery

Memorial day novel

 So this is a major catch up blog post.  These pictures are from Memorial day weekend.  Better late than never right??  The top picture is from the gardens at Thanksgiving point.  We went there for story time with our friends one day and Zac loved this spider thing to climb on.  I was there with Emery strapped to my chest...so I was VERY nervous about him going so high.  I couldn't really help him.  But he actually did really great.

 When it was time to climb down it was pretty scary.  He was too high for me to really help him and so my friend put her hand under his bum and he just let go.  So she had most of his weight and I kinda grabbed him and kept him from falling off her hand.  Poor Emery was squished against the ropes for a little bit...but she was a champ.  Pretty funny.

So we had an extra extra long Memorial day weekend because drum roll please.....Rob got hired full time at the church!!  Yay!  We have been waiting almost 2 years for this...so it is great news.  I am so proud of him.  Anyway, because he was going to officially start full time for the church the day after memorial day, he had to take his time off that he had accrued through his contracting company before he was done there.  Well, he didn't HAVE to, but we didn't want to lose it!  So he took Thursday and Friday off...so we had a five day weekend.  What did we do???  Just relaxed and enjoyed having daddy at home.  It was great.  We also moved all of our stuff back upstairs so that we can rent out the basement again.  It was nice having all the extra space, but we are happy to all be upstairs again.  It was such a hassle having to go outside in order to go downstairs!  Anyway, so we will be living upstairs until we move up north closer to Rob's work (hopefully in a year or so...we will see.)

Anyway, so here are some (tons of) pictures from our long weekend.

 Rob holding Sadie, Sadie holding Zac, Zac holding Emery, and Emery holding a baby.  Funny.

 Our cute little dinosaur.

 Pegacorn and dino.  Note the unicorn slippers Sadie is wearing to match her costume!  ha ha.  Thanks Grandma!!

 The kids and dad were washing the car, and so Emery and I chilled in the shade.  Isn't she adorable!

 Working hard.  I think the kids lasted all of 10 minutes...and Rob did the rest.  

 Our house was such a wreck that weekend with all the moving of stuff.  The kids didn't seem to mind though!

 We finally got new tires for this bike that has been sitting in our garage.  Took it for a spin to find out that the brakes are shot.  Luckily I wasn't going that fast so I just stopped myself with my feet.  haha.

 We got the grill out and Rob grilled hot dogs for lunch.

 Which we ate in the front yard on a blanket.  Fun.  We even tried grilled corn...I really liked it, but nobody else did.  

After lunch we packed up the kids and the car and headed out to Salt Lake.  We were going to hang out with Rob's brother Duncan for a while.  We went to Temple square and the new mall right across the street.  More about that later.

 On the way there, it was nap time so we told Zac he could close his eyes and go to sleep...so a few minutes later, I was surprised to see he actually did!  It was great.  And there is Sadie trying really hard to go to sleep.  Ha ha.  She never actually fell asleep.

 Then I had to move to the back to entertain this little one.  

 Rob was really proud of himself for "doing everything".  ha ha.  And there is Duncan's arm.  :)

 The kids at the visitor's center.  I couldn't get both kids to look at the camera at the same time...I kinda felt silly saying anything in there because it was so quiet.  So I just snapped a few pics and then we were out of there.

 The kids loved the fountains.

 Cute.

 It was a chore to keep these kids standing there for like two minutes.  They wanted to go find more water.

 Brothers.

 There is a children's section at the church history museum.  It is really neat.  This is our second time there and the kids love it.

 Dressed up for the dancing.

 Zac and daddy too.  Zac was the only boy there to dance. 

So after temple square the plan was to visit the mall and play at the splash pad.  We knew there was a great one at the Gateway mall, but the brand new mall was RIGHT across the street so we opted to go there instead because of convenience.  What a mistake.  We heard there was a splash pad there, we I got Sadie in her swim suit.  First Zac got sent back to us by an actual security guard to put his shoes back on.  That was fine.  But then they sent Sadie back because she needed to have shorts on over her swimsuit.  So they build a splash pad at the mall, but they don't allow kids to get wet and have fun unless they are fully clothed and have shoes on.  What a nightmare for parents!  They wouldn't even let boys take their shirts off.  Sheesh!  It kinda ruined my day a little.  I was just so confused why they would do that.

Then I got over it and the kids started to play and have fun.

 Sadie with her skirt and swimsuit.  But I mean look at tall those kids in their soaking wet jeans and shirts.  It just makes me cringe.  They will get their cars all wet! Anyway...

So we had a great weekend and we were sad that ROb had to go back to work on Tuesday.  We loved having him home.

I just like this

I just really like this picture.  It makes me laugh.  Ha ha.  ha ha.  ha ha...look at that gummy smile!

Sadie's dance recital

Sadie had a dance recital two weeks ago and it was so fun to watch!  She did great!  My friend did her makeup for her because they are supposed to wear "dance makeup" to their performance.  I have like no makeup...so my friend with three girls in dance offered to do it for her.  Sadie was in heaven of course.  I am just so proud of her for doing so well!  I don't have a video to post yet, but hopefully soon.  For now...enjoy the pictures.

 Sadie was acting silly after her recital one our way to get ice cream!

 Before the recital.  Yes...this side of our house is pretty ugly!

 Special thanks to Crys and Alan for coming with us!  Sadie was so excited that they came to watch her and I loved the help!  Here is Crys with a sleeping Emery and Alan.  Ha ha.

Sadie loves to have all the attention so on her recital night...she was loving it!