Scary Geese

Last week my brother in law Brigham and I took the kids to Floyd Lamb State park to feed the birds. It was a beautiful day, and seemed like a fun thing to do. The intent was to feed the ducks. The geese had other ideas! See the goose up on the deck? This was just the first in a major invasion that the geese conducted to get all the bread! These geese tried to take the bread right from the bag! That takes all the fun out of it! These crazy geese followed us all around the park. They thought Riley's bag of leaves was more bread... I really don't like geese (not sure if I've ever mentioned that?).. in fact, they kinda scare me a lot! I remember taking Riley to Floyd Lamb before Emmaline was born, and getting surrounded by these same evil geese... Riley and I were perched up on top of a table, and the geese completely surrounded us! I was really scared (the picture above, which I took 2 years ago, shows about 1/3 of the crazed geese that had us trapped!). But anyway, I still love this particular park! It's a beautiful oasis from the brownness that is Las Vegas! But I think next time, we will check out the historical building and the less scary peacocks!

Sunday Fun

On Sunday I decided I just HAD to get out of the heat. So we took the kids up to Mt. Charleston for a little hiking. Allen has gotten into a new game called geo-caching. Basically it involves using a gps to locate places were people have left little prizes. He really enjoys it, so we spent the ride up looking for a couple. We hiked Robber's Roost which is only 0.3 miles. I figured I might be able to do that hike without too much problem... the baby belly is getting kinda big! We had fun. It was so nice up there! The temperature was perfect! Every year at this time I begin to wonder if it will ever be cold again!

The one thing that made Sunday kinda sad was Riley's boo boo. We invited my parents over for Sunday dinner. After dinner, Riley and Grandpa Peterson were playing and Riley ran into the arm rest of our couch. The arm rest won. It's made of wood, and has no give at all. Riley gave himself a really good black eye! This is how it looked the next morning. Very black and blue... You should see it today! It looks really bad!

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?

We hosted Emmaline's second birthday party last Saturday. She LOVES Sesame Street, especially Cookie Monster and Ernie. So, I based the party around that. We had dancing with Big Bird, where we set up our kids' karaoke camera (the sound doesn't work, but the kids love seeing themselves on the TV). Then we had a duck grab with Ernie. This was cool. I found a baby inflatable pool and put about 30 duck inside. We gave the kids spatulas and they had to get as many ducks out of the "pond" as the could in 5 seconds. Weldon totally won this game with 5 ducks! We then went to Cookie Monster's cookie walk. We taped colored paper to the floor and had the kids walk around to the song "C is for Cookie". We stopped the music and gave out a bag of cookies. We did this until everyone had gotten a bag. The cookies were SO good. I made chocolate chip and snickerdoodles. YUMMY! After the cookie walk, we went over to visit with Oscar the Grouch. He had his garbage can, but need more garbage put in. So we had a tissue paper garbage toss. We played the song "Oh, I Love Trash." It was so cute! Finally, we had story time with Elmo. We read some of Emmaline's favorite books: The Monster at the End of This Book and It's Not Easy Being Big. . It worked out well. It slowed the kids down a little after the excitement of the games. We had dinner after the stories. Of course it was Emma's favorites: hot dogs, plain potato chips, gold fish, orange slices (which must be circles, it's the only way she'll eat them) and watermelon. We also had capri sun juice drinks. She had a ton of fun opening all of her presents which included 3 new dolls and a very exciting soccer ball! I have to admit, the cake was one of my favorite parts. I found a bakery that makes a cookie monster cake! So cute! I think everyone had a great time. After everyone left, Allen and I gave Emma her gift from us: a chair of her own. She LOVES this cute fluffy chair. It's just the right size. Thanks to everyone who came and shared this fun day with us. Happy birthday Emmaline!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Sea World Rocked!

I've been meaning to post pictures of our trip to San Diego for a long time... I just haven't been motivated. But we had a really good time. The kids LOVE Shamo and Riley asks us about once or twice a week when we are going to go back. We had so much fun seeing all of the animals. We spent part of the next morning at the beach. It was a blast! I really hope we can go again someday.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Emma's birthday invite

This turned out pretty cute. Emmaline wanted to do a Sesame Street themed party, but she isn't a big Elmo fan. This makes finding invitations and other party stuff a little hard.. She LOVES Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Bert. So, this is what I came up with: Emma really liked it. I'm hoping the other ideas for the party turn out cute too....

So What Do You Do?

So what do you do when your two year old grows out the dress you just finished making her... the one she's worn twice? Here's my solution: I think it turned out pretty! Best of all the lace was about $1.99 a yard. The fix took 1 1/2 yards, so I was able to fix the length on Emmaline's dress for about $3! Yeah for me!!!