We finally made it to the sprinkler park

Well our mothers group has been going to the sprinkler park all summer and we finally went this time! It was our last change before they closed it for the winter.

As expected, Gracin loved it and Rhylan thought it was OK. Gracin tried out all the sprinklers and fountains. He went through the arch that was like a shower, stepped on water squirting from the ground and ran around in heaven. Rhylan took a while to get wet. She avoided getting sprayed for a while but eventually she went through the arch as well and had fun chasing her friends. She did ask to go home early. We were the first to leave. Poor Gracin could have stayed a while longer. He wore himself out, and fell asleep in the car on the way home!

Rhylan got brave and ran through the spray arch.

Gracin's turn. He came up with the idea all by himself. He went through multiple times.

Soggy Gracin

Rhylan wanted to sit out for a min or two.

Preschool--birds, and other fun things we did

So Riley had a few days off of school between semesters. We stayed home but we still have fun. Here are some more of the things we did!

Rhylan and I made a cake and had fun eating it!
Riley and I both played in the stake volleyball tournament.






Gracin played and relaxed. This picture of him sitting in the chair, he is watching Cars, his new favorite movie.




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Preschool--I didn't plan anything for preschool this week because it was vacation. But it ended up being a week about birds.

ART: Last year on July21 we went to Goodwill, Riley wanted to buy a shelf for him and Rhylan to paint the next day. He wanted a special father daughter craft. Well, 6 hrs later we went to the hospital to have Gracin, so they weren't able to do their craft. So this week Riley helped her paint a little bird house while he painted the shelves.







Science: Riley and Rhylan made a bird house feeder from an old milk carton. They used markers and stickers to decorate it.



Field trip: We went tot he zoo, and Rhylan got a special lesson about birds...

Backyard pets

Rhylan reaching in to get him.

We found this cool frog in our backyard the other night while Riley was mowing the lawn. We have found 4 different types of frogs/toads playing around back here! We filled up the baby pool and watched him swim around. Gracin is just as brave as Rhylan when it comes to these things. He walked right up to the pool and reached into the water and grabbed the poor little frog, just like Rhylan. He just isn't as gentle:)

Do you remember...

it being this fun?!!!!

Family slip and slide!

Riley has a few days off of school before the new semester starts on Monday. He is an ambassador for the school and has new student orientation all day today and tomorrow. So...we couldn't go anywhere. We are having fun as a family though. One night after dinner we got out the slip and slide and got all wet! Everyone took turns going. This was Gracin's first time sliding. He was having a great time. He would get down on all fours by himself and crawl as fast as he could. He thinks he was doing what we were doing! I gave him a few pushes to help him along the way. Riley of course wasn't happy with regular sliding. He had Rhylan pose as an obstacle and dove over her before sliding.

5 years!

Aug 20, 2005

Well we hit the first big one, 5 years!!!!! Here we are 5 years later! 5 years happier, 5 years older, 5 years smarter. We have spent the last 5 years living in Utah, AZ, and Mississippi, moving 6 times, having 2 kids, 2 college graduations, 5-6 pets, and 1 great friendship. I seriously know how lucky I am to have Riley. He is so amazing. I love every little thing about him. He makes me happy and I always feel loved, secure, and beautiful because of him. He is by best friend and I am so glad these 5 years were only the beginning of our eternity.

Aug 20, 2010

We had a fun anniversary, Riley planned our date, we grabbed some Lenny's Subs (we HEART that place) and drove to Memphis for some Lazar tag! We have been wanting to go for a while. We love reliving the teenage days. What a better way than to kick some teenage butt! Just kidding. I did okay, but I was on the winning team. Riley was put on the other team. A few funny things: Poor Riley wore his bright yellow soccer jersey... and well it was like a beacon in the black light. He was the brightest glowing thing in there! Good thing he has skills, he did great! And Riley made up my code name it was ARMD--age related macular degeneration (oh optometry school.) But they pronounced it armed, it made me look like I couldn't spell!

Preschool--Frogs

This week her stuffed frogs helped us sing the alphabet and do our letter hunts. She also practiced Aa with her magnadoodle, a lot.
ART: Water color painting. We read a book about a pond. Frogs and many other animals live in ponds. So we studied the pond and painted a picture to look like the pond. I used water and food coloring. I propped up the book where she could see, gave her paper, paints, and a brush and she came up with a beautiful water color work of art. After it dried she put frog stickers in her pond.

MATH: We played a dice game. It helped her in so many ways. I had two bowls, one with frogs, and one with lizards. Then I made 2 dice. One had 3 pics of frogs and 3 of lizards. The other had numbers 1-3. She played by herself at first. She would roll both dice and draw the corresponding creature (3, frogs.) We went until one bowl emptied. Then she discovered all by herself, to line them up and count, pointing to each one. This helped so she didn’t recount some. Then we played taking turns over and over again.

I love these pics!--they made me laugh (click to enlarge and zoom in)

SCIENCE: Ice painting. I made 3 ice paints mixing paint, and water then freezing with a popsicle stick. First we looked at a regular ice cube, talked about its properties, and compared them to the paints. Then we want to know how to melt them. We finally decided to go outside and paint. We left the cube of ice on the hot cement. Rhylan kept noticing it was melting. She loved painting with the paints and watching them get smaller and wetter as the lesson went on.

LANGUAGE: We didn’t do the planned lesson for the day because Rhylan had a better idea. At breakfast she started making letters out of her dry cheerios. So I kept that idea going. We practiced for a while making letters. Then I had her draw A a on a paper with glue, and then line with the cheerios. I also let her do a little freestyle gluing.

Gross Motor: First day of gymnastics. She loved it!! It is a class for 3-4 year olds. She did stretching, lots of balance beam, vault, and trampoline.

happy in the car

This is what they looked like after a day of mall window shopping, and half way into the 45 min drive home. Aren't I a lucky mom?

Park Day

Tuesday was park day. We were only ones who showed up. After about 3 min of being there, I got freaked out. There was this very suspicious guy watching me...really, he was just staring at us from a walking path. I kept waiting for him to move along with his walk, but he just stood there watching us. So I collected my children and moved to the car. As soon as we started walking to the car, he started walking toward us. Luckily our car was in the very first parking spot. After I got the doors locked I looked up and he was sitting on the bench right where we were playing. Rhylan was pretty sad that we had to leave but I got teach her a good lesson on strangers. Later I found out she thought I was talking about butterflies called strangers...

So we drove across town to a different park. Instead of playing in the playground the kids wanted to explore the "forest." Here are some fun pics I took with my phone. Rhylan was setting up a camp, digging in the dirt, and checking out caterpillars and Gracin was eating dirt, hauling sticks, and checking out trees.

(This was one thing she got to do before we left in a hurry)

Spider

The other day we had to wait for a while in an office. So I brought this for Rhylan to entertain herself. After a few min of drawing, she proudly said "Look mommy, a spider!"