The Rest of August 2011

Long post ahead. Trying to get caught up, so I'm bundling the rest of August together! A few days after our camping trip, Bryce had a really bad accident that scared us all half to death. He got grabbed a glass bowl and as he was holding it, he slipped on the tile and fell onto it. It shattered and sliced his cheek open. :( At the time I was standing at the stove making dinner, and it happened right behind me. I turned around and immediately saw what happened. Blood was just gushing, it was so deep; so I grabbed a clean towel and pressed it to Bryce's cut and had the kids get Josh. We all piled into the van and rushed Bryce to the Urgent Care here in town. It was a deep cut and they had to sew several layers shut, but they got it all stitched up with Josh and two nurses holding him down. It is the most awful thing as a parent to see your little boy having to endure something like that and not being able to do anything to help him. :( We were all really shaken up. The poor little guy was just covered in blood. Just broke my heart to see him like that.

After they got done stitching him up. Josh was trying to cheer him up.

Here's a picture of the cut all stitched up:

On a lighter note, August was a really busy month for us with summer coming to an end. The second weekend in August, my mom came up to go school-clothes shopping with us. This year, we decided to go to Park City and stay the weekend. We ended up having so much fun we decided we should do it again next time. :) Bryce stayed home with Josh because he just doesn't enjoy this kind of thing at all and we knew he would be happier at home with Dad. He and Josh had lots of fun together! The first day, we drove up to Park City and got checked into our hotel. Then we went to Downtown to walk through all the shops.

We decided to eat dinner at an Irish restaurant on Main Street. It was really fun! I can't remember the name of it (Flannagan's maybe?). Mom and I decided to try some traditional Irish food just for fun. Mom had shepherd's pie. I had corned beef and cabbage - just to say I'd tried it at least once in my life. It was pretty food. Not my favorite kind of food I guess.

The restaurant was really family-friendly and fun for kids. They had a bunch of games that you could play while you waited for your order. Isaac and Parker had lots of fun playing Checkers and Battleship.


The next day was our big school shopping day. The hotel we stayed in was great. It had a free breakfast which was a breakfast buffet in their restaurant. So actual good food, not a prepackaged muffin or something. :) After breakfast we went to the outlet stores. The deals weren't quite as good as I had hoped, but we ended up finding everything we needed. We shopped until early afternoon, then we decided to take a break and go see a movie at the theater. We saw Smurfs. It was a pretty cute movie. After that we went to dinner at a restaurant called Good Thymes Bistro. We had a good coupon for it and Josh and I had been there before and liked it. However this time, the experience wasn't quite so good! The waiter took forever to take our order and then took another long time to bring us our food. It was 1.5 hours before we ate! At least the food was good. :-) After dinner we went back to the shops and got a few more things. The boys had had enough shopping, (Parker especially is NOT a shopper...haha) so we went back to the hotel and let them swim in the pool for a little bit before bed. It was a productive day and we had a lot of fun! Oh, a funny thing happened while we were at one of the stores. We were looking at clothes and out of the corner of my eye I saw these three child-sized mannequins holding hands. Then I did a double-take. One of the "mannequins" was Parker. Haha! We were dying laughing. He was a little embarrassed after that so I had to talk him into getting back into the pose for a picture. :) Too cute.

Baby Quinn did pretty well with all the shopping! He got a bit fed up with the stroller at one point, but for the most part did okay. He was happy to be back at the hotel though. :) We stayed another night and went home the next morning.

This is a picture of Isaac working on a rock-digging kit that he got. I have struggled and struggled to get this boy to learn to ride his bike without training wheels. He just had no interest (and some fear). I told him at the beginning of the summer that if he learned to ride it without training-wheels by the time school started that I would get him a fun surprise. He did it! :) So since he wants to be a geologist when he grows up, I got him this little kit where you can scrape and dig through this plaster type stuff and find hidden rocks and gemstones inside. It ended up being really fun for him! Wish I would have taken a picture of everything he found.

Every year IKEA has a Crayfish Party at their restaurant. We decided to go check it out. They have an all-you-can-eat dinner of crayfish and different Swedish foods. It was kind of fun! They also had activities for the kids and a bunch of door prizes.

We won some Swedish Fish (Uncle Tim would be proud!):
The kids all got their faces painted. It was kind of comical because the guy who painted their faces asked them what they wanted painted, and when they told him something instead of painting a little thing on their cheek, he painted their WHOLE face! They loved it of course. :) Bryce asked for a Mickey Mouse:

Isaac asked for an army guy (or something like that), then Parker wanted the same thing:


We got lots more yummy veggies from our garden in August. Lots of yellow summer squash, TONS of tomatoes (no pic), some carrots (orange and purple ones) and some lemon cucumbers. I'm not a huge cucumber fan, but I liked the lemon cucumbers. Might try those again next time!

Right before school started we took a trip down to St. George to visit Josh's parents. Isaac and Parker had lots of fun playing games with Grandma. Isaac built a big tower out of the Jenga pieces. :)

Playing on Grandma's laptop:

Josh's parents wanted to take the kids to the splash pad, and we hadn't realized we would be needing swim suits so hadn't brought any. We ran to Kmart and luckily all their swim stuff was on clearance. We got the boys each a swimsuit for a couple dollars each and we were all set. They had tons of fun playing in the splash pad and the little wading pool/stream.

We dared Parker to run straight through the big line of geysers.

After they were done playing, we walked over to a little carousel that they had nearby, and then we went and got some frozen yogurt, and later we went out to dinner.

While we were in St. George, I wanted to drive by the two houses I had lived in when I was a kid down there. The first one (where my parents lived when I was born) had become really run down. They had torn out all of the trees and lawn. It looked really old and sad. :(

The second house looked mostly the same as I remembered it. I miss this house and neighborhood. Lots of fun childhood memories from here. It was fun to show the kids where I used to live.

The next day was Sunday, and we were needing to head home, but before we left, we went to the Temple and went through the visitor's center. It was a nice visit. After that we headed home!

Also in August, we got a case of tomatoes for a great price and decided to make a big batch of salsa! We go through a lot of salsa in our house. :) Normally we would make it from our own tomatoes, but we just didn't get quite enough all at the same time to make a whole batch - and we wanted to eat a lot of our tomatoes fresh anyway. Maybe next year! I think Josh and I have finally perfected our recipe for salsa. It turned out SO good.

One night we played UNO for our Family Home Evening activity. One of our favorite games:One day I decided to make the kids some fun sandwiches for lunch. There's a show on Disney that the kids like to watch called Phineas and Ferb. I made sandwiches that look like those characters. I think the top one is Ferb and the bottom one is Phineas.

And the first day of school! :) Bryce started Kindergarten this year! He is in a great special education class that they call self-contained, which means he is in a classroom with other kids that are at about his same level developmentally. The class is actually in a school in the next town over. He had a great first day! He had so much fun.

Parker started 1st Grade this year! He actually got the same teacher that Isaac had in first grade. He likes her as much as Isaac did. He had a fun first day of school too.

Isaac started 3rd grade this year! Wow! He loves his teacher and had a great first day as well this year.

We also got lots of turnips this year! This is a gigantic one we found in our garden! The kids thought it was cool. :)

This year both Isaac and Parker played soccer. It was Parker's first year. They both had a lot of fun! It was kind of hard with two players because oftentimes they would play at the same time at different parks. I think I did more driving back and forth than I did actually watching their games this year. :( It was fun for them though.

And last, a picture of Bryce helping me make snickerdoodle cookies one day. He had so much fun rolling the cookie dough balls in the cinnamon-sugar. :)