4th of July

I feel like I just posted about going up to Island Park. Sorry, I know its probably not super exciting to read about again, but here's my post about going back for the 4th of July. I love Island Park for the 4th of July. Its so much fun, its warm, and there's lots to do. Island Park is a popular vacation destination for Utahns and most people you meet up there are from UT. And I think everyone in the state of Utah goes to Island Park for this particular weekend. Church on Sunday is so crowded. It takes about 30 minutes to pass the sacrament, and theres 2 chapels side by side both of which are filled to the brim, and people are scattered around in classrooms as well to listen over a broadcast system. Mike and I "reserved" the cabin for this weekend weeks ahead of time, thinking it would just be our little family all alone up there because we didn't know if anyone would be able to join us (friends, family, anyone). We were excited when most of Mike's family decided to join us! (We missed Derek, and Kyle & Tyne who were days away from having their first baby). 

We started off the weekend with the Bills Island 4th of July parade.

People decorate their 4-wheelers with patriotic decorations and throw candy to the little kids. Or if you have a boat.. that works too. Emmett and Pixton got tons of candy.

After the parade we loaded up the kayak, rented a canoe and boat, and floated the river. Its a 5 mile lazy-river float. It takes about 3 hours to float the whole way down. Its so beautiful and relaxing.

I think the lazy-river was making Emmett particularly lazy....or tired in this case. I was wishing I was small enough to do that!

"Cheesy" smiles:

Emmett's first sparkler experience:

The boys loved playing with the rockband drumset. Being a little bit older than Pixton, we had to keep reminding Emmett he had to share the drumsticks with him. So usually they each got 1 drumstick, and in this case, shared the chair too:

Love my sweet little Claire. She's finally big enough to sit up in the umbrella stroller. We got tons of mosquito bites on this walk. I hate putting stuff like bug repellant on my babies, so I just sprayed a blanket with bug spray and laid it on her. Miraculously it worked, I think she was the only one that walked away without a bug bite.

We also played some fun games, ate some amazingly good food and watched a spectacular fireworks show.

Flooded With a Mess

On Sunday Saratoga Springs got a huge rainstorm. It was coming down in SHEETS, if you know what I mean. The "sheet-rain" lasted a good 20-30 minutes and then it "regular" rained about another 2 hours after that.

After the sheet-rain Mike was outside on the porch and went around to look into the basement walk-out. This is what he saw:

And this is what we saw inside:

The water coming in through the door:

After the boxes were moved:

It most likely occurred do to poor drainage outside (there is a drain, and it was clogged) and the runoff from the neighboring lot as well. All the boxes that got wet were my parents belongings, luckily we think we caught it in time and there wasn't too much damage done. We were probably lucky we were home during the storm because had we been gone (which we almost were) we probably wouldn't have thought to go downstairs and check the basement at all and the water would've sat for who knows how long. (We rarely go down there).

As we were scrambling around I noticed Emmett had escaped the house and saw him tromping around in the rain puddles. He was getting soaked but I didn't have the heart to bring him inside. 

And this was Emmett tromping around in the basement as Mike was cleaning up. There's all sorts of treasures in the basement (I call it our "warehouse" as there's at least 3 families belongings down there so its cram-packed with boxes, furniture etc.) He's got an old ski pole and a bike helmet on. So, at least one of us had fun!

Baby Birds Update

Well I have good and bad news to finish the baby birds story.

Bad news: another baby bird died 2 days ago.

Good news: The last one to survive......survived!!! As of yesterday the momma bird and the last baby bird were gone and haven't returned. So I can only assume they both flew away!

1 out of 6 is not good odds. But at least it wasn't total failure for that little mom and her poor choices. I'm glad that perhaps we played a small part in saving a life. :)

Now for the cleanup. Its NAASSTY. Anybody have good ideas for a really strong chemical cleaner to clean this out, send it my way!

Baby Birds

About 3 weeks ago Mike noticed something funny about the bbq. A bunch of weeds and twigs were coming out of it:

So he opened it up and this is what he saw!

About a week later I peeked inside the grill, and lo and behold they hatched!

They were sooooo cute! They were no more than a day old in this picture.

I like their little mouths open in this one.

You might be wondering how the momma bird gets inside. There's a gap in the back that she gets through to feed them.

I was really surprised how fast they grow. This is them at probably 6 days old.

Hungry little things. :)

I've really enjoyed these baby birds. It almost feels like we have a pet. The barbecue is right outside the kitchen door to the deck and the sound of their chirping carries into the house all day long. I always know when the momma bird is feeding them because their cries get REALLY loud for about 30 seconds as they get all excited and start begging for their food. I hear it continuously throughout the day and its fun to hear. The momma bird is funny to watch too. If we are hanging out on the back porch she sits in a tree close by (usually with her mouth full of bugs) just squawking at us in a concerned way. If we stay long enough she'll eventually get brave and fly into the bbq even with us only a few feet away. I see her on the back lawn constantly pecking her little beak into the ground digging for their food. She must be exhausted by the end of the day feeding 6 hungry babies all day long. Even one baby is hard for me.

Unfortunately this is where the story takes a sad turn. The momma bird wasn't very smart when choosing her location to lay her eggs. We started to realize that it would be difficult for the baby birds to get out when it was time to fly away and leave the nest. We also realized with the bbq in the sun it was probably getting pretty hot inside.

A few days later I noticed their noise had diminished and I wondered if some had died as a result of a couple of warm days. I was nervous to open the bbq again though, because the last time we had done it (the above picture) they were pretty mobile and I was afraid one might fall out with the lid open. But after 3 weeks we knew they must be getting closer to leaving the nest, so we had to check.

Last night, for the first time in a week, Mike went outside and checked on them. He found that four of the six had died. We think it must've been the heat. The remaining two are not ready to fly yet, but we decided we had to prop open the lid to let heat escape and to allow them to get out. The problem with propping the lid is that the gap in the back (where the momma gets access) closes as the lid opens. By shutting off her access to the back we worried she might abandon her babies, thinking someone had tampered with the nest. But we knew if we didn't do it, the heat would kill the two remaining babies. It was do or die for these birds. We propped it open and hoped the next morning the momma bird would come back.

Well, this morning we woke up and sure enough, that momma bird was in there feeding her babies and she's been feeding them all day long. I'm so relieved!

I guess its a game of survival of the fittest for these birds and I hope these two make it.

Story to be continued....

These Days

We've had a fun month with family these last few weeks! Emmett has spent so much time with his cousins he doesn't really know what to do with himself anymore now that the house is quiet again. Every morning for about a month he had cousins to wake up and play with. Now when he gets up in the morning and we ask him what he wants to do that day, he says "play with Claire!" Poor Claire has gotten the 2 year old treatment thats not exactly fitting for her. But she usually just smiles at him as if she's just enjoying the attention.

We went to Island Park last week. My sister Kacey and her family made the long drive from Oklahoma and spent a week there, and since it had been 2 years since I'd seen her (and 1 year since I went to Island Park) a visit was necessary! My mom came (my dad is back in Korea right now), and so did my brother Eric and his family.

It was fun to have all of the 8 grandkids together:

From L to R: Rebecca, Isaac, Emmett, Daniel, Henry, Claire, Ella, Lillie (with Grandma W. in back).

Our "hooray!" shot.

I saw 3 moose (meese?) while we were there. Emmett saw 1 of the three that I saw and he got excited and said "Wow! Like Bambi!"

This little guy was right off the back porch. Mike thinks he looks starving. Maybe he was looking for our leftover s'mores.

This picture was earlier while we were in Utah. Emmett and Lillie decided to take the recorder and electric keyboard and give Henry an impromptu music recital. Henry very much enjoyed it I think.

See for yourself:

(Also note, the recital was in no way put together or arranged by me or my mom) :)

Now that the company is gone we've been working on our next challenge.

And doing a lot of sittin around.

Our California Adventure

Here's a few fun pictures of our recent trip to California. We drove up with my parents and spent a week vacation with my brother Eric and his family. My brother graduated from Dental School at USC which was the main purpose of the trip, but you can't go to southern California without making a few pit stops at these places:

Sea World

Emmett and Lillie are either the best of friends or each others biggest enemy, (usually when one or the other's toys are being threatened). Towards the end of the day at Sea World Emmett was getting tired and starting to throw a few fits, he wouldn't let anyone carry him, but he was ok with one thing and that was letting Lillie escort him around Sea World, as he would tell us "Hold, Lillie, hand!"

Our end of the day group picture at Sea World

Disneyland

My parents with the 4 grandkids outside Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

One thing I've learned about the trip is traveling with little kids is HARD, and everything takes twice as long. There's always a lot of crying going on, and sometimes you wonder if it was worth it since they won't remember a thing about the trip anyways. But on the positive side I love watching Emmett play with his cousins, I love spending time with my family, and I love seeing the happy look on my child's face in anticipation to get on Dumbo, or giggles on rides, or the amazed look on his face when he saw Goofy in real life.

It all makes up for the running around with big strollers, changing poopy diapers or nursing a baby in between waiting in line for rides (or having to exit a line right before I was about to go on because of a blow-out by miss Claire) and dealing with major meltdowns in public. In the end we had a blast and wouldn't trade it for the peace and quiet of home.