Fun with Grandma Chloe

For dinner Sunday, Grandma Chloe brought over a specials surprise for the kiddies...

Gingerbread haunted house!

You know how we love gingerbread around here. I gotta raise 'em up right if I'm to throw them any future gingerbread house contests.

Ahem...pardon my dark pictures. Don't worry, I eventually learned that a flash was needed.

We gave each of the kids their own piles of candies and then...

We let 'em loose!

Nobody but Grandma is looking in this picture, but I just really liked Everett's face in this one!

Check out Everett's sleight of hand. He's looking directly at the camera while snaking a few candies. Hilarious!

The finished product.

It was all over but the eating!

And of course my kids have to play in it.

Thanks, Grandma! The kids had a blast!

California Vacation

For fall break we joined the Rowley clan in California for a reunion. Frank and Elaine were kind enough to pay for a beach house for all of us to stay in.

For the most part, we hung out at the house and on the beach. It was quite the relaxing vacation!

One morning we were walking down to the beach and it turned out to be high tide. The waves were rolling clear up to the cliff's edge at the stairs we took down to the beach. So we hiked a ways down the beach to a larger beach area. Mabel and Gray were completely traumatized by this. They were sure the waves were going to take us out. They screamed the ENTIRE time.
Here's Mabel when we reached our destination:

None too happy.


Gray and I built a merman:

Mabel and I built a sand castle:

The weather was PERFECT the first two days. I actually braved the chilly waters! I tried to boogie board. It didn't go well.

I think I'd just gotten overrun by a wave when this picture was taken. I haven't boogie boarded since I was a teenager. It was a lot of fun even though I totally stunk at it!

Aiden braved a few waves:

Bret boogie boarded as well. He may have been better at it than I was.

All the cousins built a giant sand city.

Here's the view from the balcony of our beach house.

We went to the Mormon Batallion Museum. It was really good!

The kids panned for gold.

Mabel quickly got tired of it and found some stick horses to tool around on.

Aiden and Jackson (I can finally tell Chad's twins apart! Now, to work on Cade's twins!) were selected to show us what the gear looked like back in the day.

Since Frank and Elaine were on their mission over Easter, we held a late Easter egg hunt. Sadly, none of the Bret Rowley family found any of the golden eggs :(

Here's Grandma Yellow with the older grandkids.

Mabel isn't entirely aware of the need for speed in this hunt!

Gray with his winnings.

The fam.

All of the grandkids.

The WHOLE fam damily:

Dances with Wolves?

Tuesday night was Aiden's first Pack Night!

He earned his Bobcat. In order to get his patch he had to do what cats do and dig through "kitty litter" (with his mouth) for "cat droppings".

Here he is finding out what he had to do.

Go, Aiden, GO!

I think he fished out nine pieces of black liccorice.


He didn't appreciate the black liccorice. What ever happened to using tootsie rolls as cat pooh?

Here are two boys I teach/have taught in primary...Hunter and Wyatt.

I don't have Wyatt any more, since the ward split. He was put with a new teacher. I'm sure he misses me since I am THE BEST Primary teacher EVAH!

But they both earned their Bear awards! Go boys!

After the awards were handed out, the boys were split into groups of a mixture of Wolves, Bears, and Webelos. They had three challenges. Here's the first...

SIX-legged race!

I'm just going to say, Aiden picked a bad day to wear flip-flops! But his team won and his sacrifice was not in vain!

The next challenge, they had to build the tallest structure out of straws and tape.

Aiden's team did not win.

Mabel and Adelyn were dancing to their own music while the challenge was going.

The last challenge they had to shoot down a plastic cup pyramid with rubber bands. I think their team won again, but I'm not sure...it was never officially announced over all the chaos that was going on by that time. "Some" people don't know how to control their kids ;p.

It was a great time though! I think Aiden is really going to love Cub Scouts!

Soccer

Our neighborhood soccer league has started back up. After a lot of complaining and whining from the boys, we went ahead and signed 'em up anyway! Our boys lack motivation to step away from their electronics. They are their mother's boys (me no likey the running so much either...a slow jog I can do!).

They ended up enjoying themselves for the most part...

Aiden scored a goal! which I missed because I was going back and forth between his game and Gray's :(

He really seemed to be getting into the action!


That is, until Aiden took a hard kicked soccer ball to the gut. He had to take a short time out and I thought he was done. But he put some mud on it and got back in the game!

Bret is once again the coach for Gray's age group.

Gray would really just rather sit and watch. But he did get in there and try! He came VERY close to scoring a goal at one point!


I'm glad they're back at it! I'll be more glad when the heat decides to give it a rest!