It was a great time in Utah. Here's some last photos:
We drove to Arches on the way home, and Grandpa Hansen came with us for the first part. This is a double arch:
And here is the hike we did to Delicate Arch, which I really wanted to go to. The kids put up with this hot hike pretty well. Good job, guys!
And the scenic drive home, going through Colorado. Very nice.
(August 2008 - As always, click on photos to enlarge)
The Hansen group all met up at some condos in Solitude. We ended up with a lot of space for just the 6 of us. We did some hiking...
Now, all I was trying to do here was show how much smaller cousin Maddie is than Jeffrey - Maddie is one month younger. So I laid them side by side, but Jeffrey just then decided he was extremely hungry. So my mild, mostly quiet baby started screaming his head off...
...And then look what happened.
Seems he told Maddie about being hungry and she either felt sorry for him or remembered that she, too, was hungry.
We spent a day at Snowbird, and there's a whole lot to do there. We were there last year as well and the kids (K & T) had a blast then too. There was the alpine slide, a zip line, climbing wall, electric bull, bungee trampolines, and some moonbounces for younger kids.
One thing I thought was fabulous was that when EV and Kayleigh got in line for the trampolines (and unfortunately it was long just then and they waited over an hour), EV was just going to jump, but the nice lady working there helped her and taught her how to do a back flip. And she got where she could do it all by herself. Yahoo. Kayleigh already knew how to do the back flips from last year, and was flipping all over by herself.
2 things about this next photo. First, Grandpa Hansen had fallen out of bed the night before and really whacked his face on the table there. Seems he was dreaming and sorta lunged out of bed, something about saving the US Olympic swim team, as I remember. So in some of these pictures he's sporting a pretty nasty black cheek. But also in this one, Melanie has fallen asleep on his lap while riding the chair lift down the mountain.
We definitely had a great time hiking around and just getting completely worn out.
(August 2008)
We had dinner 2 different Sundays at Chad's folks house. The first time was with Grandma Hansen, who'd come up from St. George and was leaving soon to catch a flight in SLC.
A week later, Chad flew out to drive back with us, and we gathered for more good food and photo joy.
Wrestling poor Grandpa
Melanie had been getting Uncle Michael confused with Daddy. At first I thought she was just playing, but then realized that she thought Michael was her Dad. I even tried calling Chad on the phone and letting her talk to him while Michael was sitting close by, but that didn't seem to help. She hung around Uncle Michael quite a lot (she had stranger anxiety for everyone else and they had to work at getting to know her) and finally called him either "My other Daddy" or "Uncle Daddy". This was probably a drag for Michael, as he had his hands full already. Mel would ask Michael for help, ie, going to the bathroom.
(August 2008)
Jeffrey had a big time in Utah. He did lots of sleeping and lots of smiling, meeting all of his family except one Uncle and one Aunt (Chris and Rachel). He was 3 months old and put up with a whole lot of hours in the car.
(This is from back in August, when we were visiting in Utah. As always, click on the photos to enlarge)
There are 16 grandchildren on my folks side. And there were 16 grandchildren at their house, all at the same time. Yes, 16 grandchildren but only 2 moms. The oldest is in college (Aubrie), then there are 3 teenagers. The rest are relatively closer in age to each other, and in available noise making manners. But I must say, it was a lot of fun.
Maximizing trampoline fun by adding water and plastic...
Group grandpa hug!
And the ever popular photo on the back steps.
BUT, tell us how you really feel!
Yes, lots of good food...
Then good naps...
Yes, a good-looking pile of young-uns.
But, once again, this is how they were REALLY feeling about all these photos!
Then one Monday evening, we got together at the park...
...And Grandma J told everyone stories about her life.
And just one last one. There's a blue phone in this photo that I remember playing with when I was about this same age. Grandma's toys were always (and still are) the most popular toys.
Just one more of Megan with Jeffrey. They were so cute!
(As always, click on these photos and they enlarge)
Well as you will see, the kids and I had a fabulous time in Utah. It was a long drive there, and we were all getting sick of the car. But Mom made it easier for us - we just kept driving into the night until we got there, arriving about 3 in the morning, I think.
First off, THE TENNEY COUSINS!
They were staying with my folks for a week, while their mom and dad went to a wedding in Nauvoo, Illinois. So my kids got to spend a lot of time with the cousins they've seen the least (my sister Lori Tenney lives in Washington).
Here's Grandpa Paul with Megan, EV, Hailey.
This is cousin Megan, and she was batty about Jeffrey. They were tight, right from the start.
Grandpa Paul took the kids to see some horses, owned by a wonderful nice friend of his named Odell Minor. He was terrific - he let the kids ride his horse, even coming out and saddling him up for them.
These were 2 young horses, not broken yet, that Odell let the kids feed apples and alfalfa (growing on the ground close by) to.
Here's each of the kids that came that evening, on Geronamo.
The next day, Grandpa took the remaining 3 kids.
Gramma J with Jeffrey - she loved all his smiles, and he sure gave her lots of them.
Gramma wanted us to help her make an apricot pie. She prepared the fruit, Kayleigh and I did the crust. With the remaining dough and filling, Kayleigh made small tart-things. She wanted to make them herself - NO HELP.
This is as far as I can go b/c my blog manager has gone to bed and I'm out of photos. The rest will be forthcoming. But my last photo is when Grandma Hansen came over to my folks house...
It's been a month since our trip to Utah, but I'm going to go through and do some catching up. I'm finally figuring this blog thing out, little by little. So I'm separating things into smaller subjects.
First up, Chicago. I drove with the 5 kiddies to Chicago where we stayed a day with Krista and her fine family. Also saw Kevin there, who kindly drove over after picking Mom up from the airport.
Mom drove the rest of the way with us - poor lady. But she was a trooper. It seems that if the hotel has a pool, everyone's happier. And after we left Chicago, the one hotel we stayed at in Omaha had a pool.
We've lived here for 8 July's and never braved going all the way downtown for the nation's capital's fireworks. This year, Ashley happens to be here for the holiday and needed to get her national parks passport stamped downtown. So how about we all go downtown together and stay for the fireworks. Is this a wise idea?
Getting downtown on this day is not typical. You can't drive - most of the roads are closed, including the bridges to get there. So it's metro only - FOR EVERYONE. We left around 2 pm - we got home 10 hours, 2 potty accidents, 22 passport stamps, 1 picnic, 1 heart attack, 2 rainstorms, 1 lost purse, and 4 sleeping-children-on-the-train later.
Mel's accident was the funniest (always better to assume these things are funny - alter the perspective as much as possible). We were about 15 feet away from the port-a-potty, and walking towards it. Chad thinks she took a look at them and didn't want anything to do with them. But I think it was how you need to go so much more once you actually SEE the bathroom. Anyhow, picture wet footprints as we're walking across the pavement.
Ashley has a national parks passport book that you take to national parks and monuments where you can stamp them for free. And on the Mall, there's one visitor's center that hold all the stamps for that area. All 22 of them. So Ashley, whose family is very diligent about searching out stamps, filled up several pages in her passport.
Then we plopped our stuff down on the grass with a blanket to save a spot for the fireworks. Chad, Ashley, K&T went off to buy souvenirs. Pretty soon it started raining. EV was sitting in the double stroller with Jeffrey, holding the umbrella over the 2 of them. Mel and I huddled under a water-proof-on-one-side blanket. And it really rained. For over 30 minutes. I was getting pretty ache-y under that blanket and tried calling some people to find out if by looking at the weather online, they could see if there was going to be too much rain for us to stay. Michael (poor guy) was available and said it didn't look like much rain.
After this first rain, we enjoyed an hour or so of nice weather, only now everything was wet. It was during this lull I had my heart attack. Kayleigh decided to walk off with Ashley. Only she didn't decide to mention it to anyone. The place was so incredibly packed with people and I went a bit nuts. I'm all in favor of putting micro chips in children and keeping track of them with a GPS system. I hear you can do this with pets. So if you see my kids wearing pet collars in the future, that's why.
The second rain was shorter. This time, everyone but Chad and I huddled under the umbrella. The 2 of us stood there getting soaked. Kinda romantic, only not so much. We talked again about leaving, but by this time it was too late to get home for anyone else's fireworks. And it sounded like the kids were keen to see some fireworks - somewhere (there are oodles of places shooting off fireworks).
But when they finally came, the fireworks were phenomenal. They shoot them off by the reflecting pool, in front of the Lincoln Monument. There's so many trees all over there - they must be constantly rushing around putting out mini fires. You could sometimes see sparks landing and causing some trouble. The guns that shoot them off are visible around the pool and are going off like crazy. And there was music during the show.
Chad was full of great ideas, including how to get back on the metro. It's famous for being super crowded getting home from the fireworks. Which only makes sense. EVERYONE has to ride it to get out of DC. So the metro stops are going to be horribly crowded, trying to get on a train. So Chad decides we should walk down to a further away stop to get on. This proved to be genius. We get on a nearly empty train. Only, at the entrance we realize that Ashley has left her purse by a bench we'd had to stop at to feed the baby. That bench was a very long ways away. She had her camera, passport, etc in it. But no money - that was in her pocket. So we all got on the metro. Chad and Ashley rode it to the next stop, got off there, and ran back to the bench to look for the purse. Luckily, the bench was in a sorta secluded spot and the purse was left in a not-so-visible spot. Still, when they got there, it wasn't there. But then a stranger walked up with it. That part was mysterious. He sorta walked out of the shadows, then walked back into the shadows. Still, a miraculous recovery, I say.
The rest of us, me and 5 kids (pushing a double jog-stroller), rode the train back to our car. Jeffrey and Mel both fell asleep in the stroller. I draped a thin blanket over it and they never saw the hordes of people crammed in all around them. EV tipped over on my lap and fell asleep. Thomas took over Kayleigh's spot and scrunched up on the seat, falling asleep. When we got on the train, it was nearly empty. The next stop filled up all the seats. And the next stop filled up all the isles and door areas. People were packed in all around us. Getting on with a stroller with all those people would have been next to impossible, and no way we would have gotten a seat, much less space to tip over and sleep. So props to Chad for coming up with this plan. He also pointed out that bringing the umbrella was also his idea, only he intended it to keep out of the sun, not rain.
We met up at the car in the parking garage. Somehow, Chad and Ashley were only about 10 minutes behind us. They'd run a lot of the way. Chad reported that the lines at the other stations were indeed long. In fact, so long that they had to leave and go to another station to get on a train. It would've taken at least an hour just to get on a train.
We sang Happy Birthday to Kayleigh in the car, just after we pulled out of the parking garage - it has just become the next day (midnight). And K&T had a swim meet the next morning. (Which will explain why Thomas accidentally swam the free style instead of breaststroke in his relay. Oops.)
Loving this beautiful baby, Jeffrey. My folks have been here for about 2 weeks now and we've been loving that, too. There's a lot of lovin' around here these days.
And Jeffrey had his baby blessing last Sunday, the 8th of June. Afterwards, we took a picture. Brother Grisgsby, the Clements, and Rita had already left and didn't make it for the picture.
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