BYU & UEA, FYI

I know, I know, you've heard all of the jokes before. But it's not often I get a chance to say it and mean it without feeling guilty afterward, so allow me this indulgence - We went on the best dam trip ever last weekend!
Jef was going to go the the BYU game in Las Vegas with some members of his family. Somehow at the last minute we all managed to get ourselves invited. It was fun all around with lots of good memories. My mom always says that no matter how much fun you have on a trip, it's always the things that go wrong that you remember the most. Not much went wrong, luckily, but here are some of the weird things that we'll all remember:
-Frantically packing late Friday night and leaving early Saturday morning.
-Lots and lots of gas station and fast food restaurant bathrooms.
-Jonathan's heart-stopping sprints away from us in crowded places.
-Seeing the funny looks people all gave us as we walked through the casino to go bowling in the bowling alley that had like 100 lanes.
-Explaining to the kids what slot machines are. (Later Jane described them as machines you put money into, but not as much money comes back out.)
-Jef gambling away the kids' college funds in a matter of minutes. Ha, just put that in to see if you were listening... Our kids don't even have college funds!
-Hannah becoming enchanted with Jef's cousin Kevin and not leaving him alone the rest of the trip. Don't worry little brother, she called him "another Kevin."
-Jay and Taylor in their new BYU hats, and Taylor's first Cougar football game.
-Taylor exclaiming every time we passed a sports car.
-Jane falling out of the hotel bed in the middle of the night.
-Hannah waking up and realizing we'd moved her into Jane's bed and then wandering around the hotel room requesting me to get her towels from the bathroom so she could make her own bed on the floor.
-Waiting in lots of dam traffic.
-Logan being amazingly good most of the time and then inexplicably screaming his head off on the way home.
We've been talking lately about trying to get away and take a long road trip and discovered on this one that a 6 hour drive and two days was plenty long enough to do for quite a while. How did we ever manage to drive from Minnesota and back? Anyway, thanks to Jef's parents for the fun time!

Outside a Carl's Jr. No matter where you go in the world, isn't it comforting to know that all fast food restaurants basically have the same facilities?

Sam Boyd Stadium or Bust

While some of the kids argued that they most enjoyed "swimming" in the hotel's hot tub, the rest of us agreed that going to Hoover Dam was our favorite part of the trip. We didn't take the dam tour, but we did think just walking around looking was really cool. They are building this HUGE bridge above the dam so that people don't have to drive on the dam anymore. The bridge was nearly as cool as the dam. I hope we can go back someday when it's finished.

Come on, vamanos!

Possibly the first person ever to cross Hoover Dam while simultaneously devouring rice cereal.

"I'll turn this bus around!"


Jane was really worried about getting back by Monday so that she wouldn't miss her handwriting segment in school, but she tried to have fun for our sakes.

Jono trying to explain to Sandy that he "NEEDS to run faster."



Now Jono is trying his tricks on Ray, but he is foiled again! Thank heavens for quick grandparents.

The whole dam family
(Sorry, but it's just not getting old for me yet.)

What could cause such awe? We were passing a train when I took this picture.

If the trip last weekend wasn't good enough, we had UEA this weekend so there was more fun and two days off school. On Thursday the kids and I went to my Mom's and we all visited my Dad in his office at the BYU.

Thank you, Mom for always being willing to help me take the kids on fun expeditions.

Grandpa has the coolest stuff in his office!

Thanks for the candy Grandpa!
But maybe we'd better go now - I don't think this office is used to such "excitement."

Nothing like the good old Bean Museum.

Tarzan, meet Jane

Taylor and the Kodiak

Just when you thought this post would never end, here are more pictures. Logan's first haircut. Doesn't he look different and older?

He's learned to tilt his head. Quite a fun diversion when you're 5 months old. It makes everyone around you laugh too.

Suckers are necessary equipment for haircut night. Only the boys got the cuts, but apparently all enjoyed the suckers.

Last but not least, Jef doing more really neato stuff with our camera. Have each kid take a different glowing device and wave it around. Fun for them, fun for Jef, and makes a really cool picture.

So, some much needed fun and vacation. We have not seen much of Jef lately with his new school schedule, so we were excited that he took a day off on Friday. He spent the last two days doing some projects around the house and hanging out with us, which was really nice, especially since Logan has been sick and the extra hands are welcome. The older kids played with their friends like crazy in the nice weather. Since we moved into this neighborhood, they actually like to stay home and hang out instead of constantly begging to "go somewhere." Jono even managed to run away yesterday and made it to the next neighborhood over, but that's another long story.
Today Hannah and Jono are getting sick, too. It's getting to be that time of year, I guess because I've heard that lots of kids have been missing school lately. What can you do? Just give them lots of love and attention, and enjoy the excuse to have some down time, I guess. The result is this very long blog post, so there you have it.