happy 2922nd day to us!

dearest muffin,

this is for you:



you are my favorite. that is all.

xxx

beehive state adventures: part 8: rollin' rollin' rollin'

here we are. still in utah. we have exactly one [busy] week left. it's gone by surprisingly fast, the past five weeks. when we arrived here back in june, mount timpanogos  was still covered with quite a bit of snow:

it's mostly gone now. i guess we brought some of houston's sweltering weather with us. the girls continue to play outside as much as they can:

here's the much anticipated video of hazel cruising around on the ezroller:

she's kind of a show off.

another addition to their playtime is a tea set. hazel has been longing for one for ages and she finally earned it:

it's great. they haven't been drinking enough water since we got to this dry place but that changed as soon as they could pour it from the teapot themselves:

last wednesday we visited discovery park:

i don't know if y'all have noticed but lucy has a new pose:

hazel, as rapunzel, climbed up into a tower and let her hair down:

then she hid in a beehive-thingy:

and wandered through the tunnels:

i ran across lucy again, took this picture:

and then the battery died. c'est la vie...

beehive state adventures: part 10: blast from the past coming soon...

beehive state adventures: part 9: heeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy!

yesterday morning was special. we went to the living planet aquarium:

everyone started out so happy to see the aquatic creatures:

we even got there in time for the feeding of the archer fish:

plus the aquarium now has penguins! here's a video of the archer fish eating krill and the penguins:

pretty cool, eh?

we continued wandering through the exhibits:

eventually things began to unravel:

lucy and hazel crawled through a tunnel:

and began fighting over who got to look at the small tank of fish. lucy didn't want to share and decided to block the tunnel:

what followed was noisy: reproofs, tears, squeals of despair and a time out on the bench:

once the tempers had cooled we moved on:

the end.

beehive state adventures: part 8: rollin' rollin' rollin' coming soon... (yes. i know 8 should come before 9 but i'm still working on it. be patient)

beehive state adventures: part 3

the next day (sunday the 26th), we headed up to south jordan to carl and velvet's house for some super tasty tacos. it was great to catch up with them and the girls had a fantastic time playing. most of the night they followed lucy and hazel's lead and pretended to be dogs, crawling in and out of the doggy door. later they played with the dress ups and put on a ballet show:

when they finally wound down, grace, laura and kate gave hazel and lucy their first taste of yo gabba gabba: 

the next thursday (june 30th), we went to deer creek reservoir and met up with the professors and students from grant's papyrology thing: 

the girls both had fun playing in the frigid water. lucy didn't last long though:

she was a little under the weather. hazel continued to have a blast. she even begged grant for a ride on this: 

so he took her for a short, slow ride:

afterwards she made a little friend:

boy, did she love that little roly-poly. so much so in fact that when she tried to return it to the wild, it didn't move. she was extremely upset but eventually pulled herself together for one last jaunt in the water: 

friday was a big day. this little monkey (who's wearing her "bootifool shirt" and holding her "bootifool card") turned 3:

so we had a family party. i made some butterfly cupcakes (to go with lucy's favorite shirt). they were really simple: pretzels for wings, twizzler pull 'n peels for antennae and caterpillar bodies:

they were chocolate cuppies with vanilla frosting. i also made almond cupcakes. yum.  our family came and chatted:

and played:

and ate:

until the time came for singing and candles:

at this point we found that grandpa had something up his sleeve....the candy cannon! the chilin's hurried into position: 

and got ready for the show:

"if all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops, oh! what a rain it would be......"

it was kind of a hit. finally it was time for pressies:

lucy received many wonderful things (thank you again, everyone!) and she was excited about them all:

next: beehive state adventures: part 4: hold to the rod