Boating

Even though we live close to a lake, we rarely go boating. But a very kind friend of ours invited us to spend the evening on her boat. We took all the kids and Isaiah's two brothers Helaman and Gideon came along. It was so much fun. Isaiah tried skiing for the first time. He did great.

Amita was a little fish. One time she jumped off the side of the tub and ended up going under the water (she doesn't know how to hold her breath yet). When she came up I asked her if she was ok. And she smiled and yells, "I drowned, I drowned."

Melody liked being in the water if she was with me, but when someone had to lift her back into the boat and I wasn't there she cried.

The three oldest kids got to ride on the tub with Helaman. I was worried they might be a little scared, but nope. They kept begging to go faster. It was so fun to see them having a blast.

Canoeing

We have done a few canoeing trips this summer.
The first one was on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. All of Isaiah's family went on that trip. We only took the three older kids and left Melody home. It was so much fun, even with Amita being sick and it raining on us for a few hours. The sad part is I forgot to bring the camera, so no pictures.
The next trip we did was right here at Caplinger Mills. This time we took all four kids. It was lots of fun, but way harder with Melody. She pretty much wanted held the whole time and fussed about having to wear her life jacket. The other three kids swam a lot of the time and had fun finding clam shells.

Utah Trip: Salt Lake

After our stay in Delta, we drove up to Salt Lake and stayed a few days. We did so much fun stuff and didn't get to do a lot we had planned. There just wasn't enough time to fit it all in.

Some of the highlights were:

riding the trax

eating at the Mayan

visiting temple square

lots of swimming at the hotel

Hogel Zoo

Isaiah went hiking with all his brothers one afternoon, so my mom and I took the kids to the zoo. We had a lot of fun. The kids' favorite part was a bird show we got to watch, then afterwards they got to have their picture taken with a golden eagle. This was also my first time driving in a large city, so the day ended up being quite the adventure.

Here is a five generation picture with my mom, and grandma.

Saturday morning, we got up and walked a few blocks to a huge farmers market. It was so fun to see all the neat things for sell. The kids each got a little balloon animal made. Amita's was a little turtle, Carter's was a mouse, and Benjamin had a ladybug.

This is a picture of Isaiah's brother, Jacob and his wife Christine walking with Melody. One of the main reason we made the trip out west was to attend their reception/bbq.
It was so nice to get to visit them. Christine is such a wonderful person, and I am glad she is part of the family (it is nice not being the only sister-in-law any more).

Isaiah and Helaman found a little cherry tree in the park where the bbq was. They climbed it and through the cherries down to the kids, who were total thrilled with the treat.

Melody eating the cherries. She was so mad then Dad and Helaman stopped picking them.

We left the bbq and headed home that afternoon. For dinner we stopped at a rest area and ate peanut butter sandwiches. There were tons of prairie dogs running around. The kids had so much fun feeding them their sandwiches from the top of the rock.

Utah Trip: Delta

Isaiah & I decided to make a family journey to Utah to visit family we have out there. The trip was awesome. Everyday was jammed packed with fun adventures. The kids traveled really well for how long of a drive it is (24 hours). We chose to drive through the night, so Melody would sleep a large portion of it. We also had installed a dvd player in the truck, but sad to say it only worked twice and then the rest of the trip we had to survive the old fashion way.

Leaving Missouri it was hot, but once we got into the Rockies it turned cold and stormy. We had to stop and do a wardrobe change. You can see the storm behind us. We spent the first few days in Delta with my family. Everyone landed at my sisters house, and we ended up with 32 people there. Lets just say every inch of floor space was taken. Of those 32 people, 10 were kids under the age of 8.

Isaiah took the three oldest kids hiking up Oak City Canyon by himself. They had a great time.

Carter pretending to touch the cactus.

They ended up hiking to the top of a mountain. What a beautiful view.

They also found this giant mushroom. We could barely fit two of them in a large garbage bag.


Everyone had brought four wheelers to go riding. The first day we went to an old volcano out on the desert. It was a lot of fun.

This is the trailer of bikes and quads Slade and March brought from Missouri. It was quite a sight to see.

Grandpa and Daxton getting ready to go riding.

On the back side of the volcano was this awesome lava flow. Isaiah and I with the kids hiked to the top of it. It was so a incredible thing to see.

It was hot out in the desert, so we had to have a watermelon brake. Melody and Elisa loved it.

At lunch time, everyone crammed under this little cedar tree to try and get some shade. Lets just say by the end of the day everyone was dirty from sitting in the sand and hot.

The next day everyone went up to Oak City Canyon and rode around. Benjamin got to ride with his best buddy Brooke on her little four wheeler. They were so cute together.

Anniversary: Hot Springs, AR

Isaiah and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary on June 2. It is crazy how fast time has flown by. Since Melody was old enough to leave over night, we decided to take a little trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Our dear friend Jeannie was kind enough to watch the kids for us. We ended up staying a really cute bed & breakfast. We had never stayed at one before and it was a lot of fun. It was really neat to have breakfast with the other guests and get to know them.

The only way to actually get into the hot springs water is to go through a bath house. So Isaiah and I got up and went to one at 7am one morning. The whole processes takes about 1.5 hours. You start by soaking in a bath tub, then you do a sitz bath. After that you do a steam room and then you get wrapped in hot towels. Last is a shower and then a massage. It was a very interesting experience.

This is one of the few places the hot springs water runs out and is open to the public. It comes out of the ground at 140 degrees, so you can hardly stand to touch it.

There were lots of hiking trails, so we spent one morning just hiking through the beautiful forest. We ended up hiking to this tower. The view from it was spectacular.

We had a great trip and the kids did really well for Jeannie.

St. Louis: animals, science & tornados

On our second day in St. Louis we went to the zoo during the morning. It threatened to rain on us all morning, but it didn't start raining until we were just leaving. The zoo wasn't very crowded, which made it really enjoyable to walk around with the kids.

They boys had so much fun goofing off. Isaiah ended up taking them to a 4-d dinosaur movie, which they loved.

Melody loved all the animals. She would get as close as she possible could, then she would make the animal noise over and over. She was really happy the whole time.

Amita wasn't her usually happy self this morning. She was really quite and gloomy. I couldn't get her to hardly smile.

After the zoo, we went to the Science Center. We were thinking it was going to be way better then the little one that is in Springfield. We were really disappointed with it. It was so crowded you could hardly let the kids just walk by themselves. All the exhibits had long lines. We ended up only staying about an hour and then we were ready to leave. The coolest thing there was the dinosaures that moved.

After the Science Center, we went back to the hotel and had a good rest. I decided that I wanted a coffee, so we walked around downtown and found a Starbucks. After we had gotten our coffee and were walking back to the hotel, the tornado sirens went off. We finished walking to the hotel and went up to our room were we turned on the TV. They were saying a tornado in east St. Louis had been reported. Our hotel room had a balcony, so we opened to door to it and watched the storm roll in. We never saw the tornado, but the rain poured so hard that we couldn't even see the hotel across the street. It was totally awesome and a great way to ended our trip.

St. Louis Trip: The Arch

We decided it was time to take the kids on a mini vacation to St. Louis. We love going to St. Louis because it is only a 4 hour drive and there is so much to do there that is free: the zoo, the science center, & the arch museum.

We headed out Friday morning and got to the city by afternoon. The older kids were really good on the drive. Melody, on the other hand, was good while she was a sleep, but cried most of the time when she was a wake. It ended up she had an upset stomach because she throw-up just as we were parking at the hotel.

We decided to spend the afternoon walking around The Arch. There is a beautiful park around it. The kids just ran and ran all over. There is also a museum at The Arch that is underground between the two legs. I thought the kids would love to go underground, so we took them. Isaiah decided to see how much it cost to go up to the top of The Arch. We know it would be expensive, but thought that maybe he could take Benjamin if it wasn't to bad. It turned out they were having a special, so we all got to go for just $25.

To get to the top of The Arch, you have to ride in a little capsule. It doesn't really have any windows or any thing. It is very small. Only 5 people can fit in it. I couldn't even sit up straight because my head would hit the ceiling. It reminded me of the inside of a dryer. We told the kids it was a spaceship, and we pretended to be going into outer space.

At the top there are little windows on both sides you can look out of. The kids had fun pretending that the people were ants and the cars were toys.

Here we are at the top enjoying the view.



This is the view looking at downtown St. Louis. It you look out the other side you look across the Mississippi River into Illinois.

When we were ready to go back down, Benjamin asked if he could take the stairs. He said it really loud and everyone around us heard and laughed at him.

The museum was fun too. Melody loved all the stuffed animals they had. There was a big stuffed brown bear and once she saw that the rest of the time she walked around growling like a bear.

To Be Continued...