More Balloon Building

We sent Jeremy off to another fair over Labor Day Weekend, this one was in Twin Falls, Idaho. I love my husband and miss him when he is gone but love to see where his creative talents take him.

This time he built bugs... again. Bugs have been a popular theme lately. I love it. 

Other May thins

Went out for a walk and some birding. Could only go so far because the Spring bugs got annoying.

The birds sure enjoyed them. It was fun to watch them snapping at the bugs while sitting in the tops of trees.

 

Lucky is a voracious reader and got even more rewards from school for reading different genres.

Libby the Librantula was out several times when I visited the library. It is always fun to see her out of her burrow.

Butterfly Biosphere

We're trying to do things again. I took Jet to the Orem and Provo Libraries a couple times since he's participating in "1000 Books Before Kindergarten" program and he's had some prizes to pick up.

He enjoyed looking at the display cases and got really excited when walking between the shelves with all those books. You know we love books in our family... and libraries.

He got a nursery rhyme book and got excited when I read/sang a few to him because he recognized them. Then he enjoyed looking through the book himself.

He also got a kazoo and as soon as I showed him how to use it, he was so happy and enjoyed playing it in the van as well as on a walk around the botany pond and terraced gardens at BYU.

 

As a family we went to the Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point. It's been a few years since we've been there. Jet had never been there before. There were so many neat things to see. 

Jet thought it was great when we went in with the butterflies and he could see them flying around (Have you ever seen a see-through butterfly before? It's crazy. And real. They have glasswing butterflies at the Butterfly Biosphere). 

He was not happy, though, when we wouldn't let him touch the one on my finger. Lucky really wanted to hold one so I got it for him but got a few pictures with me first.

Good family activity. Starting to do things... preparing us for a fun Summer of library reading programs. Woohoo.

Did We Celebrate That?

Sometimes I take pictures of our celebrations and sometimes I don't. Then if I don't write anything down about it and I'm too busy to blog until much later, I don't remember if we actually went through with our plans. Oh well. Here are some things in June we may or may not have celebrated.

Saturday, June 5, was Veggie Burger Day. We had plans to make black bean burgers and I think we did because I remember there being cut up lettuce and onion and tomatoes in the fridge. I think it happened on that day. Maybe.

Monday, June 7, was Chocolate Ice Cream Day. Jeremy brought home chocolate ice cream but I don't think we had any that day. I know we had some the next day.

Wednesday, June 9, was Johnny Depp's Birthday. I do know that while the older kids were gone, Jr. Jr. and Lucky got to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Jeremy also gave them treats. Things were too busy that night so the older kids had to wait until later to watch one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Thursday, June 10, was Black Cow Day. The kids had root beer floats and I had ice cream with chocolate syrup in it. I don't know why I did that. I must have had a reason at the time. It was also Egg Roll Day. We had egg rolls a couple times in May/June. I don't remember if that was one of them.

Friday, June 11, was King Kamehameha I Day. We ate Hawaiian haystacks.

Sunday, June 13, was Kitchen Klutzes of America Day. The kids made dinner. They helped each other make sloppy joes and pull-apart bread. Anything else? Apparently Nichole had a root beer float according to the picture. Did other people? Who knows?

Monday, June 14, was Flag Day. It was also Pop Goes the Weasel Day. We drank soda pop and went to the park. I tried to get a picture of the kids with the flag like I did on Memorial Day. I tried.

Tuesday, June 15, was Nature Photography Day. We went to a park. Nichole didn't get as many pictures of birds as she wanted but there were lots of bugs and plants.

Wednesday, June 16, was Captain Picard Day. We decided to have cream soda and ginger ale because we wouldn't have anything to do with Romulan Ale. Lucky accidentally spilled mustard on "Daddy" so I put him through the wash a couple times. His head came out like Captain Picard's. 

Thursday, June 17, was Apple Strudel Day. I was going to make apple strudel. I didn't.

Friday, June 18, was National Splurge Day so we had Winco pizza and I made cherry cheesecake from a box again.

Saturday, June 19, was Garfield the Cat Day. I had good intentions to make lasagna. I didn't. Jeremy reassured me by saying, "It makes more sense that we didn't have lasagna. Garfield would have eaten it all."

We may or may not have celebrated other things.

Camping in the Sun and Rain

It looks like I never blogged about camping as a family last year.  Well, we did, and the time before that was when I was pregnant with Jr. Jr. so you see, it had been a while.
This year, we made sure to go camping again, especially since one of Jr.'s requirements for cub scouts is to go on an overnight campout... and because we wanted to.  It was fun.

We went to Jordanelle State Park- Jordanelle Reservoir.  The kids were all helpful throughout (except for the times they weren't). 

We had a beautiful campsite with lots of trees (read: lots of birds).  There were various other critters who visited us from time to time as well.

It was somewhat warm when we got there, then cooled off a bit during the evening. 
We had fun playing games in the tent (the kids loved Uno) and Jeremy told us half a Jackerina story, "Jackerina and the Chickadees of Terror."

It rained most of the night and next morning (good thing we put the rain fly up when we set up the tent- ask me about last year's adventure).  We were flexible however and changed some meals around since we wouldn't light a fire in the rain.  Even though we did have the rain fly up, some things in our tent still got wet.  Oh well.  All part of the adventure, right?

We went for a drive while the weather was as it was and found some marmots, a cute weasel, and many birds, including bobolinks.  We got a much better view of them this year than the one we saw from quite a distance last year.

The bobolinks were also being quite vocal.  They make some interesting sounds to go along with their interesting look.   

Click on the picture to see it larger.

When we got back to the campground, it had dried out a bit, so after lunch we went down to the reservoir because the kids wanted to learn how to skip rocks.  There was some skipping and some rock (and log/stick) throwing and it was fun.

 
We had another good evening.  The day before, the kids explored around our campsite and found some secret passages through the trees and a sandpit where they enjoyed much drawing with sticks.
Jr. was tired enough that by the time we finished that day, we didn't play any card games and he was asleep while Jeremy finished the Jackerina story.

The next morning we packed up and left the campground. 

We drove around the reservoir to another section of the state park.  Another of Jr.'s cub scout requirements is to go on a 1-mile hike or walk and note animal signs.  That was very easy for him since as soon as we got out of the van he heard a cicada buzzing, saw leaves that had been chewed by some bug, heard and saw several birds, and we all got bitten by mosquitoes.  It was still a nice hike/walk, but there were some areas that we couldn't go to because the river was so high.

 Then we headed home.

Now to talk about food.  Several people on facebook gave us good suggestions.  We did some experimenting and kept with some traditional camping food.  I already mentioned that we moved some meals around, so here's what we ended up with.
For dinner the first night, we had hot dogs and watermelon and grilled corn on the cob (yumm) and s'mores.

For breakfast the next morning, we ate donuts in the van.
For lunch we had quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks, Jr., for making the quesadillas) with carrots.

For dinner we tried out pizza (with and without foil on top) in pie tins.  I baked crust before we left so we just had to put toppings on.  Everyone got their own personal pizza.  We had salad and whatever watermelon and carrots people wanted to eat.  We also made wafflecone s'mores again.  We tried jiffy pop, but it didn't work very well for us.

For breakfast before we packed up and left we had breakfast sandwiches and hot chocolate.  We also tried pudding-filled biscuits like we did last year.  I don't think I want to try those again.  You wrap a biscuit on a stick and cook it over the campfire then fill it with pudding.  The inside of the biscuit doesn't get cooked very well, though.

Now to talk about celebrating holidays on our trip.  The day we got there was Magic Day.  We kept telling Lucky that everything we did from lighting the fire to setting up the tent was magic.
The next day was Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.  And lookee what I did.  Dropped the eggs (not intentionally).

Sigh.  Jeremy was going to cook them for breakfast the next morning, but nicely fried them up that night instead.  Sigh.  It actually made it faster the last morning when assembling and warming up breakfast sandwiches.

Speaking of the last day.  That was Pop Goes the Weasel Day.  Since we had seen that weasel the day before, Jeremy suggested we go look for it again since it was so cute.  So... Pop goes, "The weasel.  Let's go look for it."  Unfortunately we didn't see it again.  But we did see more bobolinks and marmots.

And that's about all I am going to say about our camping trip.