A Fond Farewell

Guest post by Mommy:

You remember all my Disneyland adventures that didn't include my children?  Those trips all happened because of my good friend, Sarah.  She might be more of a Disney nut than I am.  I've enjoyed my friendship with this crazy woman for the last two years or so.  She's been in my neighborhood and my ward at church.  She's helped many of us develop friendships simply by forcing us out of our comfort zones and into monthly girls nights that involve running around in the dark after midnight.  My life was forever changed in the positive because of her.  And I am sad to say that she left today to begin a new adventure with her family in a city TEN HOURS away.  And not in the California direction.  She went north.  To Casper, Wyoming.  Sorry, Sarah! I will probably never visit you there!

Her mark in St. George was clear.  We threw her a surprise going away party complete with a Disney theme and she had more than twenty women make a very concerted effort to be there.  (We even had someone travel just to be there!) We just had to let her know how much she has meant to us and we did that by each giving her a framed Disney quote that reflected something about her or us or whatever.  We made her cry.  It was great.  We basically decorated her new house for her!

We even had our gifted friend, Marci, make a Tower of Terror cake in homage to our disastrous final ride back in January.

Here is a very silly picture of Sarah.  But I just couldn't resist taking it.  She had laid down exactly so it looked like she had Mickey ears!

Anyway, we actually had this party almost three weeks before Sarah finally left St. George.  Which meant of course we had a smaller final send off on her last night with us.  I promised her she could straighten my hair and it had never happened.  We made it happen last night.  And then we had some fun chalking up our other friends sidewalks and decorating their doors!

It's been 18 months since I've had straight hair!

I will miss you, Sarah, along with a slew of other people.  I'm pretty sure you will be infamous in the Cotton Manor ward!

Swim Lessons!

As June comes screaming at us, our Mommy finally got us signed up for swimming lessons!  She even decided that Cara should partake.  Cara can be a pretty big chicken in water where she can't touch.  We're hoping that will change over the next 8 lessons or so.

We are taking lessons from our Uncle Eric's friend Chaz's sister.  Did you get that?  We love Chaz's Mom and always ask to go for a play date at their house.  Well now we get to go swimming there!


Cara did pretty well in her very first lesson.  Luckily, other kids couldn't come so she got a private lesson.  Mommy thinks it was good for her.  She kind of warmed up to Shayli and took a few attempts before she would do what Shayli asked!  But she agreed to keep going!

I was a pro.  I enjoyed showing off my swimming skills.  My technique with my swim stroke needs some work, but I appeared pretty fearless.  I also can float on my back for almost 30 seconds without a problem!

Summer is just getting started and we've been swimming twice a day every day for the last 4 days...Mommy promised on Sunday that we would have a "No Sun Day".  Our skin might need it.

Aunt Rachel's Birthday!

What did we do for Memorial Day Weekend?  We went to Salt Lake City of course!  We couldn't miss a big weekend.  Aunt Rachel had a birthday and we just had to be there for cake!  (Actually, I'm pretty sure that Cara and I didn't eat one bite of cake.  It had coconut on it and we are kinda lame when it comes to new and interesting foods!)

We kept our weekend busy though!  We squeezed every moment of play out of our cousins that we could.

We went to the zoo and saw the Animal Lego displays and ate popcorn!

We also got to hang out at Aunt Margaret's and play with our big girl cousins.  We ate a yummy meal and played Apples to Apples.  (Okay the grown ups with Chase and Romney played.  Cara, Emma and I took turns coloring on Kate's legs.)

On Memorial Day itself, the temperature dropped almost 10 degrees but we decided to take advantage of our newly acquired Pass of All Passes and head to Seven Peaks Water Park.  Initially both of us were really excited! (And so were our cousins!)

Cara went to play in the little kid area.  And went down the slide.

Which ended with her back on the towels, crying because it was too cold!

Daddy and I were off playing on some bigger slides and deeper water.  It was still cold, but not too bad.

We decided to go play in the Wave Pool....

Cara even broke out of her funk and played in the splashing waves at the edge.

But man!  That water was cold in the wave pool.  So we quickly left.  Just in time for our cousins to join us!

Before we left, Mommy decided that I needed to take advantage of our tube and go on one of the bigger slides with her.  I was very nervous.

But after heading down the first time, I wanted to keep going!  (Despite the shivers!)

I made Daddy go with me after Mommy.  Cara spent the rest of the day resting on the towels in the sun with whatever grown up was hanging out.  We think we will go back when it's warmer and probably have more fun!

And before we could pull out of town, we went back to the zoo.  Daddy didn't go before and we somehow didn't see a lot of animals!  It was fun to be there right before closing even though most of the animals were dozing. 

Summer is HERE!!!!

We love summer.  We love swimming.  We love ice cream.  We love sunny, hot days.  We love just hanging out.  We are headed into our favorite time of year.  (Okay maybe Mommy is slightly influencing us....)

We were so excited for summer to be here that we went to the opening day of the St. George City Pool.  The Hydrotube wasn't working but that was okay with Cara.  She was grateful she didn't have to throw a tantrum to avoid going on it.

Grandma and Grandpa gave us these awesome snorkeling sets for our "graduation presents"!  We LOVE them.  Cara is still figuring out how to really use the snorkel.

I could barely wait to try the diving boards again.  I had to be the smallest person jumping off!

I even started doing tricks!

Cara got into the action too.  She just prefers to jump from the side into the shallow end.

Actually, Cara has gotten much braver with the pool.  She even jumps around in the pool, off of the stairs, without Mom's help.  This is big for her.  Maybe she'll even get to do swim lessons!

Siena's Graduation Take 2

Guest post by Mommy:

Siena and Cara have loved going to the preschool that our gym started offering in January.  Siena has done a fantastic job and I think it really helped prepare her for kindergarten to go five days a week for the last half of the school year.  Miss Traci has done a great job and just loves my kids which is all I can ask for right?

I know I posted a lot of video of Siena already but I just had to risk my phone camera crashing and torturing you all with video that you might not watch because Siena was being such a ham and Cara and I were the only witnesses in the family.

I figured out that Siena was getting double duty in preschool and had learned some of the same songs in both which might explain why she was always singing so loudly and assuredly.

Please enjoy this video.  It's so funny and sweet.  I really did have more than one parent approach me after and tell me that my daughter stole the show. I have no idea where she gets it from.

With Miss Traci!

Cara's "Graduation"

Cara got to have a preschool "graduation" too!  Her class is the 3-4 year olds who will all be doing at least one more year of preschool so really it was more of a program instead of a graduation!

Her class was so funny! There are 9 boys and only 2 girls which led to a lot of just Miss Traci singing.  Cara and the other girl Keyona did their best to sing, but have you heard Cara talk?  She has a pretty tiny voice anyway!

If you've been following our computer issues, it will not surprise you to learn that Mommy's iPhone also thinks it's pretty funny.  Her camera kept crashing after trying to take videos.  Thus we only have 37 seconds worth of video of Cara's program and a million blurry pictures.  Cara was adorable and even did great signing the end song.  Mommy will have to try and get her to do it by herself!  And oh well!  Cara will have another preschool graduation program, right? Hopefully!

And here are some photos.  Cara's hat fell off right away and some how she was the only one with a gown that wasn't zipped up!

Daddy did ANOTHER race?!

Seriously.  He really did.  Two weeks after the 70.3, he figured he was in shape and why not?  He signed up last minute to complete the St. George Tri.  And he'll do the same course in September in the Kokopelli.  He's pretty silly.  We got there just in time to see him head out on his run (just a little 10k...nothing like the half marathon from two weeks ago!)

We waited (not) so patiently at the finish!

And gave him big hugs when he was done.  Yea Daddy!!