Our Utah "Vacation"

Okay, so I'm looking at pictures to add to my blog and realise that I didnt' take as many pictures as I had planned on taking and the ones that I do have, aren't the best. However, I've included a few from what we have done in Utah.

Ashton is usually always smiling in pictures, but he wouldn't in this one. We were at my Aunt's home with other cousins which always is a fun thing! new cousins are coming out of everywhere it seems when we go home.

Brit always poses when we do pictures, she is a really starlet waiting for the camera to snap away at her. This one is at the dinosaur musuem at Thanksgiving point in Lehi.

Cole is making some wierd hand signs. I have 10 more pictures of his hands in odd places (is he trying to make gang signs???). Any way, we spent our last free day at 7 peaks. The kids LOVED it! It's too bad that Jared wasn't there to experience all the fun of taking kids down a waterslide for the first time! Ashton "couldn't" open his eyes on the big tube slides, even though he was saying that it was fun. Cole's just 48 inches and was able to ride all the "adult" slides. He was so excited to be Uncles Jake's shadow for the day, but I'm sure he didn't help attract any single chicks for Jake.

Cole, Ashton and Jayden (Jared's sister's oldest) are at the dinosaur museun. This is a rare shot, because they never stayed still long enough for me to take pictures of them. :)

This is Brigham, Jared's brother. I hadn't met him, but had spoken with him on the phone once or twice. It was really nice to meet him. I still can't believe how much Jared looks like Brig. It's kind of neat to see who all of Jared siblings look like and compare them to one another. When I looked at Brig, a few times I had to do a double take cause I thought it was Jared. Funny what your mind thinks of when you've been away from a loved one for a while.

Okay, so I have to include my "funnies" in this blog cause I don't want to forget them and I'm sure to do that cause "I'm getting old". :) When we were walking through the airport in Seattle Cole sees some guys with turbans on their heads and long beards. He turns to me (and points) and says "I think those are the guys that my daddy is trying to kill." I grabbed his hand and said "walk faster". I laugh about it and think he is just to darn smart!!!

When we were waiting for the plane to arrive in Seattle we looked for gas trucks to fill the planes (this is Jared's job in the AF, so it's not the weird for my kids to look for a gas truck over a plane). When we got on the plane we still hadn't seen even 1 gas truck. Again, Cole turns and says "I don't think that they use gas at this airport". Luckily, we did see a gas trusk during take off.

Our flight leaving wasn't very full so we were able to take up a whole row and have 2 extra seats to spread out on. Cole and Brit sat on one side of the Aisle and Ashton and I on the other. During take off Cole and I held hands over the aisle (he gets nervous). Ashton was so excited to fly again! He knows exactly when we leave the runway and are in the air. He was so exctied he said "we're almost there, we're almost there, oh, now we're flyin. We're in the air!!". People around use were laughing. As we were landing he says "don't worry people, the ground is coming." He is so silly, but I totally love him!

When we were driving down to 7 peaks I was pointing out the letters on the side of the mountain. The kids were so exctied to see the G for Pleasany Grove. When I asked what letter they saw Brit says "I see a Y". Ashtons chimed in "I see Hawaii too! It's on the mountain." We laughed a bit at that comment because Ashton LOVES Hawaii! He tells everyone that he is from Hawaii!

In Utah we usually make it up to visit my grandma's grave. This time around we didn't. Brit was up our very first day there at 4 am demanding that we go visit grandma. I held her off on getting dressed until 6 am (I was up at 3 am body time telling her to go to sleep for a few more hours, so I'm dead tired! ) She gets up and dresses. Then she goes up and heads right for the back yard. Brit walks around a bit and comes back in with some mint. She shoves it into my face and says " it smells minty, here smell". This reminds me of my dad, he'd always pick fresh mint and tell us to smell it. Then Brit says to me "I have to tell grandma that gunga (grandpa's nickname) isn't keeping up on her gardens. She's gunna be so mad that there are weeds! But, there is lots of mint!" How true, there are lots of weeds and lots of mint! She is so silly, but we love her and so did her grandma.

I think the highlight of my trip is when Sarah, my 23 year old sister, started one of her rants. She never swears (I don't think that Dave and Jake and I knew that she knew those types of words), but this one really put her in the mood. I had called her to ask how things were going and she just kept saying this one word over and over again. I was laughing so hard, but trying to hide it by coverin the mouth piece. My brothers were trying to figure out what I was laughing about so I put her on speaker phone. (now I know some of you will be so offened that we are laughing at her swearing, but to us this is word is very common in our lives - blame it on the Australian influences- any way, we are just glad that Sarah has some sort of emotion coming out of her since her childhood included innumberable hours listening to the song "don 't worry, be happy". And Sarah, just so you know, we don't approve of your swearing habit, but we understand and we probably would have been saying the same thing if we were in your shoes.)

All and all, we had a good little trip home, despite some of the hiccups we faced. The kids really miss all the time we don't get to spend with our family when we are out of state. I feel sorry for them because they are so starved for attention from family and their uncles (dad is gone), friends just aren't the same. I can't wait to take them back "home" because it's the little things that bring so much joy to them. Brit loves shopping with Lee. Ashton loved going to the rodeo and seeing the bulls, despite, possibly being scarred for life (I'll have to devote a whole blog to our day at the rodeo) and Cole absolutly worships the ground of anyone who wil let him play their gaming systems.