Visiting the farm in Durango

We made it to Durango on Saturday night and was quickly put to work. My parents spend all day picking raspberries while we were driving to Durango and when we arrived the counter was full of raspberries. So after dinner, we made two batches of jam. After driving 9 1/2 hours and making two batches jam, I slept very well. Work began again on Monday when we picked more raspberries. We picked and picked and then made four batches of jam and froze 27 pints of raspberries. Tuesday was more a play day. Parker and Madison were ready to go swimming at the rec center and climb the rock wall. We played a good four hours which made everyone nice and tired. Wednesday, another picking day. We woke up early since it is nice and cool (about 75 degrees). We picked 2 1/2 hours and ending up with 26 pints of raspberries. I asked my Mom how many pints of raspberries they have picked since the 4th of July and the running total is 200 pints to date. My Dad keeps saying this is a bumper crop the most they have picked in years.
We try to keep the excitement limited but yesterday we had a day of excitement. Parker started off by slipping on the gravel road while walking West and face planted in the gravel. Just a few scraps and a fat lip. Madison got stung by a baby wasp while we were playing at the school's playground that I attended as a kid, Jim's flight was delayed in Denver so had to stay over night since all flights were cancelled for the evening due to servere thunderstorms, and finally West decided to play with a skunk at 10:30 in the evening making the whole house to stink. Today, I hope will be not so exciting.

I just love it when visitors come to town.

Last week, June 20-27, 2009 we had a very special visitor. Ariana Baggaley came to visit us from Roy, Utah. Ari was the very first friend Paige had. They met when they were 18 months old. Her family moved in just up the street from us in Tooele. They were very good friends for four years. When it was time for us to move to Las Vegas, I thought it was important to help Paige keep their friendship a live. Thanks to modern day technology they are able to keep in touch. Paige really wanted to share Las Vegas with her very first friend so we invited her down for one entire week. It was a very busy week. We tried to do something everyday to show her the good sites we do have here in Las Vegas. First on the agenda was to take both of Paige's very good friends to the Mall to go birthday shopping since both Ari and Amity have birthdays in June. It was a lot of fun taking three girls to do some fun shopping. Below is the picture of Ari and Amity wearing their necklaces Paige bought for them.

Tuesday we were able to go down to the Ethel M's chocolate factory and walk through the cactus gardens.

Yummy chocolate samples!!! Can we have two?

After touring the cactus gardens, Paige wanted to show Ari the Bellagio gardens. These gardens change every season of the year. Going to the Bellagio is one of our family favorites because it is always so amazing what they can do with flowers and organic material.

Of course, you can't go down to the Bellagio without also seeing the amazing fountains. I could sit and watch the water all night if my family would let me but we only stay for three shows. The water is in sync with music and it flows perfectly with the beat of the music.

Ari is waiting patiently for the next show with the Bellagio behind her.

Wednesday I took the girls and Parker to play in our parks here in Las Vegas. Of course, our parks are just not any parks. Most all come equipt with water features for the kids to play in. Since we can get pretty HOT down here in Vegas it is nice to see parks to help keep the kids cool. This park we went to is in Centennial Hills right next to the new library. It is right next to the "Butterfly" park, but well hidden so it is not usually very crowded (until now since I have told everyone about it).

Wednesday night was young women and young men's youth activity for our church. They went ice blocking and got very dirty. I was not there so picture are not available of the very dirty kids sliding down hills on blocks of ice. It did sound like they had a lot of fun though.

Thursday, was a day of swimming over at my brother-in-law's home in Summerlin. Pictures below are Steven's pool we went to. He does have a very beautiful backyard to enjoy.

I didn't get pictures of Ari and Paige swimming because I forgot my camera, but here is Paige jumping off the rock cliff the week before. My brother-in-law's pool is cool!!

On Friday, we went to Red Rock Canyon and took the hike on the Children's discovery trail. We were going to take another hike, but I missed the turn and the girls didn't want to endure the

13-mile loop twice so we just went on the Discovery trial. It was fun but the temptures starting getting warm so we took off down town to go to the M&M store on the strip.

We finished up the week by taking a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon early morning Saturday. We got up at 4:30am and left the house by 5:15 am. We drove down to Boulder City where the helicopter terminal was located. We had a 7:00am take-off time. It was pretty neat to fly over Lake Mead and fly over the Grand Canyon.

We had so much fun!!!!!! Let's do it again sometime. Thanks Ari for coming down and spending time with our family.

Summer activities

Okay, I really have been bad about keeping up the blog page. I thought I could sit down and update it weekly but I have not. In fact, I have just finished downloading ALOT of pictures from my camera and have found I have left out ALOT on the blog. So here are the pictures of Meghan and me repelling at Red Rock canyon for her 4th year hiking acitivity. What fun we had. There weren't very many girls that came so those that did come had many turns repelling down the rocks. It was so fun it brought back many memories when I was in high school.

New look for a new year

Meghan wanted a new haircut on her birthday, so after school we took her and got the new look. Here is her hair before the haircut.

....and here is the new look after.
Looks good!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGHAN

WOW!! How time does fly. I woke up this morning really early to wish Meghan a happy birthday and can't really believe she is 15 years old. Thanks so much for being such a great child and teaching me a long the way how to be a better parent. I Love you so much Meghan. I hope you had a great birthday.

Happy Birthday Paige.

Happy Birthday to you Paige. Yesterday, May 5, Paige celebrated her 12th birthday. I can't believe it has been 12 years. She was only 6 lbs. 8 oz. 19in. long when she came to our family.

Now she is growing up way too fast and she will be going to her first Young Womens activity tonight. She is way too excited for this next step in her life. My biggest question is, "Why do my kids grow up sooo fast?"

Thanks Paige, for being the great kid that you are. I hope your day yesterday was as terrific as it could get. Love you lots!!!

Spring Break activities

We began our week by celebrating our friends' 20th anniversary. Tami and Steve Parisot came down from Utah and enjoyed a night out on the town with us. The benefits of being locals is that we got some great deals. We started off the night with reservations for the TOP OF THE WORLD restaurant located on top of the stratosphere (107 stories up). While the tower doesn't turn, the restaurant does (one revolution every hour and 20 minutes) and there isn't a bad seat in the place. It was an amazing view and as our reservation was for 7pm when the sun was setting, we were able to see the city go from daylight to dark and see all the city & strip lights turn on. It took about one hour and thirty minutes to have dinner so we were able to make one complete rotation and see the whole city in every direction. As the food is very pricey, we'd recommend that anyone wanting to enjoy the view just pay to go up and then sit in their observation lounge. You'll get the same thing we did for a whole lot less.'

After dinner, we had show tickets for Le Reve located at the Wynn. Tickets were 2 for 1 and the show wasn't until 9:30 pm, but with dinner being some distance away and us taking a wrong turn along the way, we just made it. We sat 1/2 way up, and the "stage" was a pool of water, so we were just out of the "splash" zone. Loaded with acrobatics, dancing, special lighting, and of course swimming, there were no dull moments. Of course, no pictures could be taken during the show but the after shots were beautiful.

On Tuesday, Jim took the day off and we headed to the adventure dome to play all day. Thanks to Jim's free tickets for giving blood and the buy one get one free tickets from the Las Vegas entertainment book we paid for a total of TWO TICKETS.

Since Madison was not quite tall enough for the BIG rides, she and Parker had to get the junior tickets. Needless to say, Madsion was very disappointed. She wanted to go on the sling shot ride the most. Because she couldn't go on the big rides, Madison and Parker got to rock climb and bounce on the trampoline at the adventure dome. Madison LOVES TO ROCK CLIMB. I think that is her sport. Everytime she gets and opportunity, she takes it and does amazing things. She was able to get to the very top of the climb and ring the bell. All other kids her size were giving up/falling off after just 5-10 feet up.

Parker getting ready for his big jump. It was so fun watching him try to make the trampoline work with being strapped into the harness.

Finally, before heading back to work, Jim took Meghan & Paige to see: "Escape to Witch Mountain". Fun movie with good special effects, and they even tried to tie in some of the story line/characters from the original movie, but you can do so much more in today's movies than you could 30 years ago, so they did. We finished up the week with taking Meghan to the oral surgeon for a consultation for her wisdom teeth. She will have to get out all 4 teeth this summer after school is over. After that, we headed over to Jason's Deli for a great lunch. I ended the day by taking the kids to a park and letting them play for about one hour. We finished our spring break activities and the kids slept in a little bit before we prepared for Easter activites. More on that later. Needless to say, I think we got a lot of spring breaking done and I don't think the kids will want to go back to school on Monday.