Jovie's beauty secrets

Jovie brought an empty mustard can and a little ladle to me and said, "Can you open this? It's eyelash mix." She dipped the ladle in the can and held it up to my eyelashes and said, "Blink."

Jovie said, "We should buy a convertible." Grandma Rainey said, "Ross has a Corvette that is a convertible." Jovie said, "We should buy a Corvette and crash it into Ross's Corvette."

After our full day of fun yesterday, Grandma Rainey said, "I had a fun day! Who had fun?" Jovie laughed and laughed and said, "I had a rotten day!"

Snowbird & Octoberfest

We hiked on Snowbird's Barrier-Free Nature Trail. It was pretty, but it was only a mile so we didn't come close to wearing out any kids.

 

We ran into an old friend on the trail who said, "There's a fort by the observation deck." Ikey yelled, "Mom! There's a FORD up there."

Ikey and Jovie said they lived in this fort with their kids, Clancy and Woody. After the hike, we dropped in on Octoberfest where we didn't eat or drink any of the food, we just danced in a polka-y fashion. Reminds me that I need to teach the kids the Chicken Dance.

Ogden Union Station & Prairie Schooner

We took Grandma Rainey to the Ogden Union Station where she got a Senior National Park Pass which gets her into every NPS location for the REST OF HER LIFE. I'm so jealous. I can't wait until TB is 62 or whatever...

Ogden is such a cool town to visit! The children's museum is awesome, 25th Street is full of cute shops (A Sock Shop!) and restaurants, the dinosaur park is great, and there are decorated horses everywhere. This is Spumoni Pony.

 

Our favorite, of course, is Union Station with the Utah State Railroad Museum and old car museum where we drove the elderly museum volunteers crazy, watched the greatest model train, and we sat in a super-cushy velvet train seat.

 

My best find for the month were these posters of Jupiter and No. 119 which are the locomotives that met at the Golden Spike. The posters are signed and numbered by the artist and I just had to have them. (Who's obsessed with trains?) I was so excited that they cost 13% of what I was (pretty much) prepared to pay. Grandma Rainey went to a store with us to get poster sticky stuff and helped hang them over Ikey's bed. Grandma Rainey also gave Ikey a caboose with a pencil sharpener in it which made his day. He picked out a little plastic chest of drawers at the store. "I can organize my pencil sharpener and all my pencils!" He is in heaven right now because I let him take all this stuff to naptime. Jovie is ticked off because I didn't give her a pencil sharpener for naptime, even though "I PROMISE not to stick my tongue in it!" I told her you have to be three to use scissors and pencil sharpeners.

 

Grandma Rainey treated us to lunch at Prairie Schooner where we ate good food in a covered wagon. It was just the perfect thing.

Jovie borrowed my camera and took more pictures of her feet and of me in my pre-fancy, early morning finest. I think she messed up some settings because the photos from our latest adventure are pretty bad. We didn't get even one decent photo of Grandma Rainey, even though she was integral to this trip.

Occupy Lehi

We took over Grandma and Grandpa Faucheux's yard with five tents, eight extra adults and eleven kids. We had fried chicken for Andrew's birthday, watched Kung Fu Panda 2 on the big sheet-screen outside, ate zucchini brownies (not the kids - too messy!), slept peacefully in sleeping bags while the boys snuck out to see Batman Rises, and had a panda princess party in the morning for Sarah's birthday.

 

 

Clancy, Heber, Chloe, Ikey, Jovie

 Avi Mateo had the best face painters at his birthday party. They could paint anything! Ikey got a blue train on his arm, Jovie got purple fireworks on her arm, and I got a rainbow flower on mine. That afternoon, the Burrows made s'mores in the firepit, swam in the hot tub and read three chapters of Doctor Dolittle.

Cousins at the zoo and tap dancing

We caught the bird show with a bunch of cousins at the zoo today.

Heber, Clancy, Henry, Isaac, Jovie, Chloe, Sarah, Toby

I brought home tap shoes for Ikey and Jovie and they were in heaven. TB was in shock. While he replaced a bike tire that blew out on his ride down Emigration yesterday, the kids went nuts! Check out the first few minutes of tapping on the driveway, which is the only place TB has authorized it so far: http://youtu.be/f2r2kHnZQns

New tap shoes, part 2: http://youtu.be/r0OhmjS2Nuc

Look at me tapping daddy!: http://youtu.be/XkqwSXm_F3o

Ikey's version of shuffling: http://youtu.be/4G074uL4COs

Ikey does "Make 'Em Laugh": http://youtu.be/a7DI0n6ODbg

Jovie jumps in the pool and "dives" for a ring: http://youtu.be/JVeivQzdNrM

It was an awesome day. I hope the neighbors aren't alarmed at all the tapping that will inevitably go on in our driveway every evening from now on.

Olympic Park Adventure Course

Ikey's favorite TV show is American Ninja Warrior. More than once, I've discovered the kids doing an obstacle course in the basement (climb over the back of the couch, then jump to the ottoman, then stand on a stool, then run around the room, etc.) with no shirts on, because that's the way it's done. We were so excited when Sean told us he got permission to take Ikey on the junior adventure course at Utah Olympic Park because it's supposed to be for five and older only so we thought we'd have to wait. Sean and Nikki and Dallin and Parley were nice to come to the park with us on their day off and the day was just beautiful! Ikey was really excited to put on a blue helmet and a harness and attack the course. It was about 20 feet off the ground and he was so brave! He was too small to reach the rope railings most of the time, but he made it through every obstacle by himself. Sean and TB and Dallin and I did too, but we're big and tough so no surprise right?

He's so fearless! Sean, me and Dallin watch from the platform and Parley watches from below.

He was so serious on this section! He had to take a few deep breaths.

Jovie hung out with Nikki and Parley, rode her first "snowlift", and cheered for everybody. TB and I rode the zipline, did the Advanced and Expert Adventure Courses and TB did the Drop Tower where he had to step off a platform 65 feet in the air. We had the best time and will head back anytime.

Want to be blog friends?

I've never been good at making friends, although I really do love friends. TB is the best example in the world of being a good loyal friend and I'm trying to learn from him and hopefully doing a better job. Now I'm ready to be more blog friendly. I wonder if anyone reads this blog because I don't get any comments, even though the view counter makes it look like people are looking. At any rate, I'm cool with blog stalking as evidenced by the fact that our blog isn't private. There's a chance that I'm blog stalking you too if you've got one.  Do you want  to be real blog friends though? Do you want my blog to link to yours? If yes, leave a comment or send an email to aimeebees@gmail.com with your blog address and I'll add you to that linky column. You can link to me too and next time we see each other we'll feel like old friends and have nothing to talk about since we'll already know EVERYTHING!

Six years ago...

 ...and whatever it was, it's still funny.

Jovie PROMISES...

When you give Jovie instructions, she tries to anticipate your reasonaing and instantly replies with a good argument. Some actual examples:

Mom: I don't want you to climb on that wall. 

Jovie: I promise not to fall off.

Mom: Don't run around with those scissors.

Jovie: I promise not to poke myself.

Mom: You can't ride your bike in the road.

Jovie: I promise not to get hit.

Mom: You can't go in the office.

Jovie: I promise not to bother dad.

Mom: No more candy for you.

Jovie: I promise not to make a mess with it.

Mom: That's not the problem.

Jovie: I promise not to get full.

This is Jovie with Sarah who is her favorite person in the world.

Isaac was playing with Jack's airplane today. Jack (5 years old) told me that he told Isaac he wanted it,, but Isaac wouldn't give it back. I told Jack to try to work it out with Isaac and then overheard the following conversation:
Jack: It's very special to me and I don't want it broken.
Isaac: I have a fragile train that I don't drop anymore, so I won't break your plane.
Jack: If you like trains so much, why are you playing with an airplane?
Isaac: There are no trains here.
Jack took Ikey to his room where he had a real model train with a track and everything and they played peacefully for almost an hour. It is amazing when kids learn how to debate and negotiate without a fight!

S&S Shortline Train Park and Davis County Fair

TB discovered the coolest park in the world/Farmington. 

 

We're coming back on the first Saturday of every month when the trains are running.

Ikey ran the miniature golf course five times. Next time we'll bring our clubs and teach him some golfing etiquette, but this time was just for speed.

We went to the Davis County Fair where a pretty girl curled Jovie's hair and we checked out a lot of vegetables and art and crafts. It was a great hot day!

Ikey's triathlon

Ikey told me he is going to do a triathlon today. We started out at swimming lessons where he is committed to swimming by himself so he can jump off the diving rocks at Emily's super fun pool. Today was the first time he jumped off the edge and went to the side by himself.

http://youtu.be/HUh5fxMeY68

After a really slow transition that included jumping on a trampoline and changing all of his clothes, he rode his Skuut (wooden bike with no pedals) between Emily's house and ours. This was his first time ever riding a bike outside of our yard. It was scary for me and it took a long time, but Jovie was a patient little one in the bike trailer and Ikey cheered and cheered when he made it to the "finish line".  

The final event was running through the sprinklers with Jovie. It was a very successful triathlon day for the little guy.

Then, we saw a snake by the sportcourt and I screamed and the kids came to see it. Ikey ran really fast when it seemed like it was chasing him. This was the biggest snake I've seen in the yard, probably a foot a half long. The video is shaky because kids were crawling on me and I was a little too close to this snake for comfort. Ikey is the one screaming in the background.

 

Home schooling and allergies

The kids have been asking to go to Kids' Club at the gym for a week. I guess they think I've been lazy =). The gym calls the nice girls at the Kids' Club "babysitters", but we call them "teachers" so the kids have a "school" experience to talk to friends about. I know they're only 2 and 3, but most of their friends are going to school this fall. One of my friends said that I am "home schooling preschool", and I thought she was joking, but now I'm not sure. I feel like the school will probably have to come charge us with truancy before I send them off for the day. I'm not opposed to school for anyone else, I just love to do whatever we want every day and I think the kids are good company so we just do worksheets and singing programs and reading at home and call the babysitters at the gym "teachers". The Kids' Club has a new sign-in program so they were asking me a bunch of questions. I always let the kids answer adult's questions when they can, so the girl got Ikey's name and spelling and birthdate from him. She said, "Do you have any allergies?" He said, "I'm not allergic to anything, but I don't like cole slaw."

His first little bit of graffiti. He drew a train on Grandma Rainey's chair with his fingernail.



Jovie really wanted me to take this picture.

Tour of Utah - Stage 6

Once again, super-Mitch gave us VIP passes to my favorite local athletic event so we headed up to Park City to see the Tour of Utah. The kids wrote messages to the riders on the course just before the finish line. Jovie and I wrote "Go" and "Allez" and an ice cream cone and Ikey drew a .... train.

This is what she does when you say you want to see her beautiful eyes.

There they are!

Levi Leipheimer won the stage.

Here are all the jersey winners.

Here's the podium for the overall race.

Radioshack-Trek-Livestrong won the team race.

Tour of Utah - Stage 4

Mitch gave us VIP tickets to Stage 4 which finished in downtown SLC. I've never passed up a chance to be a VIP, so Grandpa Joe and Grandma Pat watched the kiddos and TB and I made a break for it. 
The peloton caught the breakaway within 1 km of the finish line which was really exciting and caused a lot of yelling from the announcers, although it was difficult/impossible to see from the finish line where we were.  Here are the top three on the stage...

Tyler Farrar wins third place. Those scrapes on his knees are from the TOUR DE FRANCE people.

Here are the jerseys after Stage 4.

Here's a video of the finish. http://youtu.be/y2Vl-hPmjSg

This is all of the race that we saw. Luckily, VIP tickets get you good food and a TV screen on which to watch the action leading up to the finish line. I think I'd be disappointed if I went all the way to France and only saw three seconds like this. What am I saying? I'd be over the moon if I went to France and saw three seconds like this.

Also, I was wrong in my Stage 2 post when I said Tyler Farrar put on the yellow jersey after posing half-naked with me =). Christian Vande Velde actually got the yellow jersey that day, and he wears it still!

Check out my close encounter with Christian!

Cottonball Bomb

We were making Shaun the Sheep cards for Mitch's birthday so the bag of cottonballs was more easily accessible than usual. I found Jovie throwing them all over the hall, saying, "I'm feeding the ducks!" Ikey asked a little while later if he could make a train out of the cottonballs. Of course I said yes, and expected to see a long line of cottonballs down the hall, but he actually drew a train with them. This train has four wheels and a window for the engineer to look out.

Jovie told me this morning in her playroom kitchen, "I need to put my dishes away so cats don't poop in them." I guess I need to explain to her that that rule only applies to putting the cover on the sandbox.

More swimming movies and yard work

Am I getting to be a broken record? Our summer is comprised of swimming and yard work I guess. 

Ikey floats across the pool!
http://youtu.be/RPyxXaA6AJ4

Jovie jumps in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfDXuVuc_uU

Ikey jumps in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiHt8lDMnZw

I recruited TB to take out more laurel this week. Before...

After...

 I know the Karl Foerster grass is a little wimpy this year, but it will look great next year.
This is a reminder of the other laurel by the courtyard...

And after with new sod, bleeding hearts and lupine.

Here's the new front walk with less spider webby laurel and trimmed Japanese maple trees. We hope you feel more welcome to come on over!

 I saw snakes in the yard three times in the last couple of days. Little baby garter snakes. I was alone each time and I screamed to be rescued, but no one came. The little snakes just slithered away, but not into the neighbor's yard or anything, so just be warned that we have snakes.