Fish farm fun and festivities

So the Cold Springs Trout Farm does a corn maze each year and this year they did a "kiddie" corn maze that was just smaller and really quite impossible to get lost in (which I think is a great idea), but really it was a little scary for a kids corn maze. The scary decor did make it more interesting for the adults though. We went for family night a few weeks ago (Sean usually works until 10 so we can't really have family night on Monday nights but this was a week after his tonsillectomy so he was still off work recovering) with my sister Stacey's family and my parents and most of the siblings that still live at home, it was lots of fun (though I would have preferred the maze itself being a little wider so we wouldn't have had to walk single file through most of it) and the kids (that's all you had to pay for. . . ) got to pick out a cute little pumpkin or gourd out of the patch at the end of the maze. Then to top it off, they gave each kid a cup of fish food to feed to the trout. They all had a ball!Tanner (Stacey's 3rd child) touching the rubber snake at the first of the maze.

Emma (Stacey's 4th child) petting the scary spider at the maze entrance.

Everybody walking single file through the maze.

Brad (Stacey's 2nd child) being "scared".


Best of friends, who would guess that Kaylee (my youngest sister, who's on the bottom) is Brooklyn's (Stacey's 1st child) aunt?


Emma being snugly with Grandma and Grandpa.


Mike played a dirty trick on us all. There was actually a mannequin lying the other way in this coffin but her got in it from the other side and closed the whole thing and lifted the lid and probably said Aahhhh or something as we walked by. Stacey and I probably jumped above the corn! We had to make him get back in and pose for a picture afterward.


Emma and her own little pumpkin.


Cousins, Emma loves Cadence so much and always wants her to come over and play, Cadence doesn't always want to play the same thing as Emma (like dress up for example) but she loves her cousin and they have learned to get along quite well.


Cadence had a blast throwing food to the fishies and watching them swim and jump to get it. She also loves being in the limelight and after a while she wasn't even watching the fish jump as she threw the food she was just looking up and smiling because she knew we were all watching her and thinking how cute she was. I actually have a cute little video of her doing this but I don't know how to post it. . .

For the very first time. . .

We went on a little outing to the Salt Lake with my family last weekend. Sadly, I've lived within 30 miles of the place my whole life and this was my very FIRST time to actually go to Antelope Island! It was really, really windy (my plate blew over and dumped my food multiple times) but still lots of fun. I just couldn't stop saying how cool it was that you float! Here are some pictures of our adventure.

(PS Cadence LOVED the sand, she cried if we tried to take her away from it for even a moment, for any reason.)We rode with my parents in the big red van (aka Clifford) so we wouldn't have to pay $9 to get into the park. Brad doesn't look very happy but he actually talked his head off the whole time!

My cute sister Stacey and her daughter Emma. (They just moved back to Utah from Colorado, yay!

Cadence decided she really wanted her mommy as soon as I headed into the water. Sean stayed on the beach with her so she wouldn't get salt in her eyes but she was not happy about it. As soon as I got out of the water she came right to me and snuggled right up. The towel was around her head to block the crazy wind (yes it was still blowing) from hitting her. By the time we got up to the showers my arms were dead and I was all dry, so I had to get wet again and shower the salt off.

I would definitely recommend going to the Salt Lake to anyone who hasn't done it yet, it's pretty darn cool and with your family, anything is fun!

By popular demand...

We have been receiving requests, OK 1 request, for more updates on our house projects, and since looking at then and now pictures makes me feel like we've gotten a lot done (sometimes I feel like we're moving as fast as a snail) I am more than happy to oblige.


This first picture is of the North wall in our kitchen on the day we took possession of the whole house (when the upstairs tenants moved out).

It took us a while to get to it but just before Cadence's Birthday party we ripped the paneling off the walls and patched, primed, and painted. (This is my sister Heather helping.)

The at-least-somewhat-finished product. (I think the green paint is a big improvement on the paneling, really anything would be.)

Now to the glue lam beam. (Which is this beautiful piece of wood that holds our roof up now that we tore the wall down.) This is from the day we put it up. (Please notice how dinky looking our beloved love seat now looked, see later replacement couch.)

We finally bought the sheet-rock to cover the beam with and turned our house into a mess all over again [this seems to be happening a lot :( ] to put is up.

I was trying to capture the mess that we were living in but these pictures really don't show how bad it was.

Cadence's only safe play area . . . needless to say, she wasn't very happy.

Current state of the beam. Moldings are up and we're finishing the prep-work so we can prime and paint. We can't wait for this project to be done! (PS. yes there is a big pile of carpet pad in my front room, we were lucky to get some VERY nice carpet (and pad) for free. With everything else going on we just haven't installed it (in the front room) yet. So we're just living with it where it is for now.)

The replacement couch picture I promised, we bought this probably about 1 1/2 months ago at the DI, we have loved it, and we said goodbye to our faithful love seat and gave it to my parents.

Last, but not least, we haven't been working much on the hallway lately, but here are some progress pictures of the once frightening, now not so scary hallway.


Once again, a day we took possession of the house picture. (Nasty carpet and ugly paneling included.)
Tore out the nasty carpet...

We put beautiful laminate wood flooring in both bedrooms. (Don't worry, we'll finish coming down the stairs with it after we tile to the bottom of the stairs) And wallah the paneling is gone! Hooray, the walls are primed but we haven't decided if we should carry the green from the front room and kitchen into the hall or use the taupe (tan) color that we used in Cadence's room.

And that's basically where we are today, with a lot done and a lot to go.

This and That

Here are a few random pictures I've been saving just for you (you being my blog) so here they are:

I got out the easy cheese and either before or after I tasted it (this was a few months ago) I looked at the expiration date and realized it was LONG past. I was getting ready to just throw it away when I realized what fun Cadence and I could have with it first. (PS Yuck! In the above picture you see an ugly wood paneling in the background, don't worry, it's gone, replaced by a beautiful green wall. Whew!)

:)

Now for exhibit B, the exotic Zebra grass:


At least we know the fertilizer worked, just not so much the method of application.




I thought it was pretty cute how Cadence just zonked out in her swing. (It's funny how you can try to get them to be comfortable and take a nap {like at church} and it hardly ever works, but other times they're just gonna sleep no matter what.)


I painted this and put is up on Cadence's wall, it matches her crib really well.



I put together a Grandma brag book (as my Mom called it) for a mother's day gift for my amazing Mom. She loved it! (PS Thanks to all my siblings for supplying me with the pictures for it.)



That's all for now...

Tender Mercy

I had a neat thing happen to me tonight. One of those things that you think might be a prompting but you're not sure so you follow it just in case...

I was ordering some pictures on Walmart.com for a photo book for my mother-in-law's Birthday (100 photos to be exact) and got to the confirmation page. You have to understand that I really NEVER print off the confirmation page even though it says print for your records. I set up and pay for things online all the time and I think I save a lot of trees by not printing that page every time. Anyway, I got to the page this time and had an idea (now I KNOW it was a prompting) to print the page and take it with me to pick up my prints, even though I couldn't even think of a plausible reason why I would need it.

Fast forward a few hours and I'm at Walmart with the prints in front of me and the cashier is telling me I owe just over $20. I was a little surprised because my total before taxes online was $10 exactly and I'm sure that taxes haven't gone up that much. After some confusion on both ends and the cashier telling me that the ones I ordered were $ .19 and not $ .10 like I thought they were I remembered that I had the confirmation page in the diaper bag and pulled it out to show the cashier. Now she was confused, but after a few minutes she realized the mistake that had been made and I was able to leave with my prints (which were really only $10.69) and save almost $10. I'm glad that I followed the prompting.

As I was paying she mentioned something about the shirt I was wearing, a girl's camp shirt that says "All things bear witness of Him". And as you can see, they do!

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks... well at least for a while. . .

Sean graduated! YAY!!!
Sean received his Bachelors of Science from Weber State University April 23rd.We have had so much more time to spend together and to work on little projects here and there on the house since graduation. Sean also quite his lab aid job at Weber State when he graduated. So he's gone from one full-time job, and one part-time job, AND full-time school to just a full-time job. He still works nights so we don't get to have dinner together but we get breakfast and lunch together and he's not gone from 8 AM to 11:30 PM so I'm not complaining!!!

Graduation day was rainy, luckily I brought our umbrella!

Sean is SO Happy and Cadence can't believe we just made her sit through such a long ceremony.

President Monson spoke at the commencement exercises, it was really neat and he gave a wonderful talk.

Now we're on to the Graduation Ceremony for the Science Department. Sean is Patiently waiting his turn.
Here is Sean shaking hands with one of his favorite professors Dr. Oberg.

Look at those proud parents! (and the diploma, yahoo!)

Yay! Sean, you are amazing!

Cadence was pretty patient with the whole day and all the graduation events...

But eventually she just zonked out.

Here's everybody that came to support Sean. (Notice the sleeping baby on Grandma's shoulder.)

So now Sean is working on getting a few letters of recommendation (since Weber state lost a few of them) and then he can submit his Dental School application for the Fall of 2011. We are applying to 12 schools and his application looks much more promising than it did the last time around. We'll see what happens now...