Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Rest of May

In the fourth grade, the kids get to work on earning their a "Fourth Grade Degree".  All year they do service projects, have to complete all their homework and assignments, as well as some extra projects.  Depending on how much they do, they can either earn an Associates, Bachelors, Masters, or Doctorate.  Isaac worked really hard this year, and he earned his Fourth Grade Doctorate!  He was so happy that he pushed through it all (with a little extra nudging from Mom) and earned the highest degree. :)

 

When school got out for the year, we took the kids out for sushi to celebrate a good school year.  They all did such a great job in school this year!  We were excited for Summer to start too! :)


Look at all the fresh rhubarb we got!  That wasn't even all of it.  Yum!

We found a ladybug and Quinn got to hold it.  He thought that was pretty cool!

On Memorial Day we met my parents down in Beaver area where most of my Mom's side of the family are.  We saw my grandparent's graves in Beaver, had some Chinese food for lunch, then went to Greenville to visit the graves of my great and great-great grandparents and some other ancestors.  I remember going to this cemetery as a kid and always loved it.  It's on a quiet green hill and just seems really peaceful.





After we were done at the cemetery, we headed West.  We wanted to go rock hunting for some obsidian.  When I was a kid, my grandma took us out there and I remember gathering little pieces of obsidian that were all over the ground.  We couldn't remember exactly where it was, so we stopped in 
one spot to look around.  We didn't find any obsidian, but it sure was a pretty spot!






Josh caught a lizard!

We drove on and stopped at another spot.  We ended up finding a few pieces there!

Pretty cacti in bloom.

This was a cool find.  It's a Pedio cactus.  They hide in the ground, and only pop out every now and then, so they are hard to find.  I happened across one while we were searching for rocks.

We ended up driving over closer to Milford and found a great spot with
tons of obsidian.  It was a blast searching the ground and finding all the shiny 
black rocks.  We built a fire and roasted some hot dogs and had some other foods that we had brought along, along with a yummy watermelon.  Such a fun trip!  I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of the rocks though!  Haha!




Isaac had a scout campout that Josh went with him on.  The other boys were sad that they couldn't go, so we went and got an ice cream cone. :)




Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Josh's Birthday 2013

For Josh's birthday this year, I surprised the whole family with a little weekend getaway to Salt Lake.  I secretly got everything prepared and packed, loaded up the trunk of the van and hid everything under a sheet.   Friday evening we all got in the van (Josh blindfolded) and traveled up to Lindon to one of Josh's favorite restaurants, The Smoking Apple, for dinner.  After dinner, I think everyone thought we were done with the surprise, but I told Josh there was one more and we headed up to our hotel in Salt Lake.  Everyone was super surprised and excited that we were spending the weekend!  

The next morning was Josh's actual birthday.  He opened his presents, then we went downstairs to have continental breakfast.


After breakfast we headed off for the next surprise.  We went to Planet Hollywood and played miniature golf and miniature bowling.




We took a lunch break and made sandwiches from makings I had brought in the cooler, then we headed to the next surprise:  A hike on the Temple Quarry Trail.  This was really cool!  We got to walk up to where the early Mormon settlers got all of the granite for the temple.  There were still pieces there.  It was cool to see the rock they made the temple out of, and it was a really pretty spot and nice day as well.




Parker wasn't happy about going on a hike, but he ended up having fun in the long run. :)






The rock they made the SLC temple out of:













For dinner we tried a new place: Curry Fried Chicken.  The kids had shwarma and we had the curry fried chicken.  It was really good!


When we got home, we had Josh's birthday "cake".  A key lime pie that I had made ahead of time and brought in the cooler.


The next day we decided to go to Temple Square. It was fun to look closely at the walls of the temple and other buildings and see how it was the same as the rock we had seen at the old quarry.


And of course I had to take a picture of Quinn looking out of the window at the visitor's center.