Field Trip To The Zoo (what was I thinking?)

Now that Sara is in kindergarten, I have been so excited for her to get the chance to go on field trips. Fall passed, as did winter, and the end of the school year was fast approaching with still no field trip. Then a note came home: field trip to the zoo, need volunteers!! I was so on that. I was never gonna miss my kid's first field trip and first ride on the school bus. So I quick told the teacher, "ME, ME, ME!!! I wanna be a volunteer and help watch the kids." (Nuts, I tell you, nuts.)

When the day arrived, Sara and I packed lunches and ran to the school. I learned that I would be in charge of a group of 5 kids from her class. No biggie. We got on the bus. (Oh, did I mention that ALL the kindergarteners were going to the zoo? ALL the morning classes and ALL the afternoon classes? That's a lot of 5 and 6-year-olds.) The bus. I had fogotten how loud the school bus can be. Before the bus ever left the parking lot the kids were yelling, "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! Blastoff!!! Ten, nine, eight ... It was a long ride to the zoo.

When we finally arrived, there were kids everywhere. I had to get my group as far away from the other kids as soon as possible because I knew I would lose them in the sea of small-folk. We ran from exhibit to exhibit, barely looking at any animal. I had 2 runners in my group who would just look at something for half a second and then take off before I had a chance to tell the others what kind of animal we were looking at. We ran from the giraffs to the hippos to the elephants. Then we had lunch. Lunch was good--no incidents. Then more running.

Somehow, we got to the small animal house when it was pretty empty. A zookeeper noticed our group and asked if the kids wanted to feed the birds. So they got to carry these big food dishes into the middle of the tropical junglely place, in the center of the building, and go behind the gate to feed the birds. Way cool. If there were a contest, my kids would win for coolest thing done at the zoo.

Pretty soon, time was up. Time to get back to the bus. The ride back to the school was considerably more quiet. Some kids even fell asleep. At the school I talked to several other volunteer moms who were just as worn out as I was. They all said the same thing: "This was a lot harder then I thought it would be."

Smiling at mom.

Feeding the birds.

Looking for snakes.



Climbing at the playground.

Later that night, at dinner, Sara exclaimed, "This was the best day of school ever! NO LEARNING!!!!!"

Dancin' in St. George

Sara has been taking dance for a couple of years and this year she is on a dance competition team. It's been quite an adventure. She has 5 competitions and now has completed 3 of them. Her last competition was down in St. George, so we made a really mini vacation out of it. We were planning on leaving at 10:00 Friday morning, but traveling never goes quite as planned and we had some errands to run before we could leave, so it was noon when we got on the freeway and were headed out of town. The kids did pretty good in the car. They ate snacks, played their Leapsters and just talked to each other. At one stop, Aaron picked out a giant kit kat bar for all of us to share as a treat. He didn't like the mess that it left on his hands. But Sara scarfed it down!

After we checked into our hotel we went swimming at a rec center. There was a pool at our hotel and people were swimming, but it was still a wee bit cold to me. The rec center was awesome. We'd been there before last year and had a blast. I put a life jacket on Aaron before we got in the pool and he loved how it made him float. The kiddie area was really shallow so he could walk in places but then it would get a little deeper and then the life jacket would flip him up on his back. At first that was funny to him, but soon he got frustrated and was just crying and crying about it. But he wouldn't let us take the dang jacket off of him!! That was our cue to leave. We got some yummy dinner and then headed back to the hotel for bed.The next morning it was all business. Breakfast and then get ready for dance. Sara has 2 dances for each competition. She has a jazz dance to "Who Let The Dogs Out" and a ballet to "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." It was a crazy day because they performed their first at 10:45 and then their second a half an hour later. Thirty minutes is not a lot of time to get changed and redo makeup and practice before hitting the stage again!

Sara has been having a lot of fun with dance this year. She loves performing on the stage and goofing off with the other girls between dances. In her ballet dance she gets picked up by 2 other girls and that's her favorite part. She gets a medal or trophy for participating each time and she LOVES that. They've been pretty consistent at 2nd place each time. It's such an amazing feeling to watch my little girl up there. She looks so big and independent.

After she finished dancing, we grabbed some lunch and headed to a park for a picnic. The weather was so nice. The grass was green, the trees were blossoming. Beautiful. All good things have to come to an end, so before we knew it we were back in car, heading home.

The Best Way to Watch TV

In our house we have the ever-so-popular-TV-over-the-fireplace situation. This is good because we didn't have to buy an entertainment system for our house when we moved in. But it is bad because the TV is way high in the wall and almost touches the ceiling. For me, this is not the best viewing angle. Sara must agree, because one day she decided to assemble her own seat for watching her shows. I maybe assisted by putting her on this seat, but the idea was 100% Sara.

Oh, yeah, that's Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! that she's watching. Nick Jr., I am so sick of you!

Excuses and The Rocking Chair

Than has been bugging me for weeks to get a new post on the blog because he's tired of looking at Aaron in a dress. I think it is so funny that he checks the blog at work to see if I've posted anything new. Aww, shucks.

The truth is that I haven't posted anything because it seems like nothing interesting is happening. Since Sara started kindergarten I feel my life is just the same routine everyday and I've fallen into a bit of a rut. I spend the days running errands and cleaning and reading to the kids and cooking and doing laundry and setting up forts in the living room. I guess that's just being a mom and it's nothing to complain about. In fact, I actually really do have a great life and so many things to be thankful for. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. But, I just haven't been taking time to notice the moments that make life super special. Or at least, if I do notice them, I don't record them. So everyday just flows into the next.

And the next thing you know, Christmas and New Years and Thanksgiving and Sara's birthday have all passed and I have no desire to blog about them at all. But at least I've taken pictures. Though, let's be honest, they will be stored on the computer for months, if not years, until I finally decide to get them printed. Oh, I sound like such a slacker. Maybe it's just January blahs?

On a happier note, since we've moved, Sara and Aaron have found a special spot in the house where they love to get their picture taken. It's in my bedroom on this rocking chair that was my mother-in-law's when her kids were itty-bitty. They are always asking me to take their picture on this thing. Usually, when I'm folding laundry on my bed, the kids wander in and that's when the magic happens. So now I present my collection, entitled "The Rocking Chair."

My Little Tough Guy

I guess this is what happens when you have a big sister.

The perfect combo: sports pjs and Cinderella slippers.

Oh, but he's such a cutie!!

I love that face!!

We've got some royality at our house. He may be wearing a dress but he knows who he is. He loves to tell us, "I'm a PRINCE!!!"

Family Pictures

A Jazz Game (of sorts)

Does Than loves sports? Of course he does!! And basketball? Loves it. Utah Jazz? Loves 'em. He found out that the Jazz were holding a scrimmage that was open to the public and free, so we decided to check it out. Than and I try to go to at least one game a year and Sara is always asking if she could go with so we thought this would be a good trial run-through. The doors opened at 6:30 (not too late) and they were only going to play for 2 quarters (not too long). What a perfect way to test out how they would do before we to go to a real game and spend a bunch of money!!

The result? Well, they started the festivities by filming a couple of commercials with the crowd in the background. That was long and boring and afterward Than said, "I feel duped." Then the new radio announcer did this Q&A thing while the players did some exercises on the floor. That was pretty boring to me too. But probably interesting to all the people there who went to get a sneak peak at what the team looks like before the season starts. Then the music started!! The kids loved that. The scrimmage was interesting but the kids spend most of their time playing with our phones. What did parents do before having cool cell phones? By the end, they were both so ready to go. So it was a good experiment for us. Maybe we'll try a real game this year, maybe not. I guess that's really not a good experiment if we came to no conclusion afterward. But at least we had some fun.

At the end of the game, Aaron had no smiles. But Than did!