Tracy Aviary

We went to Tracy Aviary today.  It was a pretty fun place to look around.  First we saw the bird show, where Millie the crow will "catch your cash" in her beak and put it in the fundraising box.  Tess and Miles thought that was pretty cool.

Bree was her usual happy self.  She is such a little sweetie.  I'll tell you what, I'm knocking on wood that her mellow disposition will continue as she gets older, because she is just sweet as can be!

Miles was pretty sure there were crocodiles in this river.  I think he was disappointed when we didn't see any...

We went back for a second show called the Eggsmasher Demo.  They were showing how tough a bird's shell is by showing how much weight it can hold.  They put a regular chicken egg between 2 thin pieces of foam in this box and then put weights on top to see how much it could withstand.  Tess was called up as a volunteer.  She weighs 50 pounds and then they put 20 more pounds on her lap, but it still didn't break.  Eventually they had a kid come up who was 120 pounds and it finally got smooshed.  Pretty amazing.  (Here's an interesting tidbit that we learned...when farmers used to use DDT as a pesticide, it eventually went up through the food chain to the birds and it caused peregrine falcons' eggs' shells to thin, until the mothers were accidentally smashing their own chicks because their eggshells were too thin.  Peregrine falcons were on the endangered species list at the time, but since the government banned the use of DDT, the falcons are doing great and were recently removed from the list.  Crazy, huh?)

Simpson Springs 2012

For our long Memorial Day weekend, we went camping out at Simpson Springs with Papa and Melanie's family (minus Bayli, who had graduation parties to attend!)  We knew the weather might not cooperate so I brought a few "rainy day activities."  One really fun activity was making balloon animals.  I had never made one before, but thanks to the magic of Google we quickly learned how to make a simple dog.  The kids experimented with different shapes after that and had a great time.

Tess figured out how to make a giraffe.



Miles with his sword.  (Of course he made a sword!)



Bryan's crown.

The weather did let up enough to do some shooting.  Here's Miles and Bryan with the .22. 

Everyone had a good time shooting....until we noticed that my sister's little yorkie dog, Lily, was missing. We all thought she was in the trailer at the time, but she wasn't and I guess she ran away from the loud shooting. Everyone split up (3 four-wheelers and 2 motorcycles) and went all around the mountain, asking every campsite that we could see if they had seen her.  We looked all afternoon and evening on Saturday, and posted signs all around, but still couldn't find her.  This morning was pretty traumatic for my sister and her family, wondering if they'd ever find their dog (they've had her for about 7 years, so she was very much a part of the family.)  Around lunchtime a truck pulled up to our spot and they had Lily!  They had come out of their trailer and Lily ran right up to them.  We don't know where she was Saturday night; we can only assume that she slept outside in the sagebrush somewhere, in the cold rain, poor thing!  Thankfully she was OK and only had a scratch on her belly from running around in the bushes.  We were very grateful that she was back!

Tess with Papa.

We were all tired and dirty when we got home.  Here's a good "future-blackmail-shot" of Tess on the drive home.

Joy School Graduation

Last night was Miles's Joy School Graduation at our house.  I have loved the Joy School group this year.  We had 6 kids (and 5 moms because we had one set of twins), 4 boys and 2 girls.  They were so sweet and well-behaved at school, but they had lots of fun and learned so much too!  One of the moms had a cute idea for graduation--the kids wore one of their dad's short sleeved white dress shirts as a "gown" to go with their graduation cap.  They looked so great!

Miles is singing "Kiss Your Brain!"

Our group:  Shannon & Emry M., Heather, Colin, & Cambri B., Emily & Gabe L., me & Miles, Hilary M. (her son Ryder was being camera shy during this picture)

Tumbling Review

Tess had her year-end Tumbling Review last night.  She moved up to Level II this year by passing off her "back-bend kickovers."  We are really proud of her.  She is a strong, flexible, energetic little gal, so tumbling is a lot of fun for her.  Way to go Tess!

Here she is doing a round-off.

She was thrilled to have a trophy!

Solar Eclipse

When we found out about the solar eclipse, we decided to try making one of the viewers.  But instead of the pinhole method, we also heard that you can use binoculars...so here's our contraption.  It worked really well!  First you attach the binoculars to the cardboard box (the longer and narrower the box, the better).  Then you focus the light shining through the binoculars onto a piece of paper taped to the other end of the box.  You just watch the paper to see what is happening to the sun behind you.  It was pretty cool!  (The kids didn't seem to care much, but Bryan and I thought it was pretty cool at least.)

Our May, so far

We haven't been doing too much lately... One new thing we bought is a new bed.  Bryan has hated our bed ever since we've been married; it's too firm for him and he wakes up with sore shoulders everyday.  So when we went on our trip to CA, we both really liked the bed in the hotel.  Bryan e-mailed the hotel to find out the exact make and model of the bed and then we bought one like it.  He wanted a king size...I at first thought that that was way too big.  But here's a picture of one reason I like a king size--this is after church last Sunday.  (I had just gotten up from the spot between Tess and Bryan.)  All four of us had a nap on it and nobody was squished!  It was really great.  

 In other news, our Joy School went on a field trip to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden.  Since our class is mostly boys (we do have 2 girls, but both were absent that day) they really LOVED the dinosaurs!

Miles and his best buddy Gabe

Bree has learned how to wave; it's so cute!

Just the boys...

Our smiley Bree, just happy to be there!

Our other new fun purchase is a new swingset for the backyard.  The kids have loved our other one, but they were starting to outgrow it a little bit.  We found this one on KSL and set it up Saturday morning, just in time for our Mother's Day party with the Terry cousins on Saturday afternoon.  It kept all the kids entertained for a long time!

Bryan added a sprinkler to the front so that the kids can have a waterslide. 

I had a great Mother's Day yesterday.  I slept in and Bryan made breakfast for me (he was going to do breakfast in bed, but I came out before it was all ready--oops!)  After church I had a nap too.  It was a nice, lazy, relaxing day.  I'm so thankful for these 3 kiddos (and for Bryan of course!)  I feel so lucky to be a mama.