Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Burgers and Shakes

 

We love going to Hires as a family.  It's a great tradition.  The burgers, drinks, and shakes are great, but just being with family makes it awesome.  Everyone has their favorite burgers and their "usual" orders.  I particularly love the Roquefort burger and the onion rings.  So good but not so good for you!
The whole crew!
 Grandpa and Grandma
 Benjamin and Easton
 Samantha, Kate, Kaitlyn, and Kamryn
Aunt Janelle and Landon

Chilly Delight

Always love to get a shaved ice while we are in Utah.  We just don't have these things in Georgia and it's a nice, icey treat!

Easton enjoying blue raspberry.
Grape was Landon's flavor of the day. 
 
Refreshing lemon-lime for me. 

Cowabunga!

 
It was a wonderfully hot summer afternoon when we grabbed the cousins and headed to the Cowabunga Water Park.  We had never been there before and we really loved the small feeling of the park.  It was a very manageable size and we didn't have to worry about the children.  They just ran all over the place going down slides.  Janelle and I, the old ladies in the group loved floating down the "Lazy River" with an occasional water fall to keep us cool.  We have from left to right in this picture Landon, Easton, Benjamin, Kaitlyn, Kamryn, Samantha and Kate.
 My sister, Janelle and I
 Kaitlyn and Landon
 Easton and Benjamin in the orange
Easton, Samantha and Benjamin


 
Bren and Janelle

Benjamin and Easton

Landon and Bren just hanging out



Kaitlyn and her Mommy


Janelle and I had a relaxing afternoon just sitting and talking while the kiddies ran around having a blast in the water and sunshine.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Traveling

 
 As a child, I spent many summer vacations driving across our great country to Utah and Wyoming to visit our cousins, aunts and uncles and of course, Grandparents!  Those long car rides in the back of the family station wagon were fun and challenging at the same time.  Try to imagine three rowdy boys and a girl cooped up in a car packed to the roof with suitcases, pillows, and a huge red and white cooler cruising at the amazing speed of 55 mph from Connecticut to Wyoming.  We didn't have video games, ipads, tablets, laptops and dvds.  I feel sorry for us!  We passed the time playing the ABC game, looking out the window at signs trying to find all the letters of the alphabet or playing with our travel bingo cards.  We always brought crayons and new coloring books.  You started at the beginning of the coloring book and colored every page from front to back.  You never skipped a page, even if the picture you had to color was dumb.  We played games....Yahtzee, cards, and backgammon were some of our favorites.  I crocheted blankets.  The whole family sang every song we could think of to sing, sometimes adding harmonies and parts.  Songs like My Brother Bill was a fireman, When Sammy put the paper on the wall, Oh the deacon went down, White Coral Bells,  and Sippin' Cider through a Straw were some of my favorites.  When we saw a heard of cows along the highway my Dad would always make his unique super low cow mooing sound. When moving trains were spotted we sang, Choo, choo choo, It's coming down the track.  I wonder how many times we sang that song on our trips.  I enjoyed helping my Dad navigate and would follow our progress on the map.  I would tell my dad which towns were coming up and how many miles to each large city.  I watched the signs and for mileage markers.  We especially loved it when we would stop early for the night and got to go swimming at the hotel!  Because we took this cross country trip so many times, we had special places we liked to stop at every year.  I loved the Buffalo Bill trading center in North Platte, Nebraska.  We would often make stops at various church history sites, Independence, Liberty, Carthage, and Independence Rock.  These stops were nice diversions from the monotony of our drive.  We ate picnic lunches at rest stops with food that my Mother prepared from home and kept in the big red and white cooler.  Keith and I had many adventures in the hotels trying to find the ice machine so we could add fresh ice to the cooler each night.  Our meals were wonderful, healthy well balanced meals with cold fried chicken, grapes, ice cold carrot and celery sticks, chips, and various cookies.  We always had a batch of homemade cookies in a Tupperware to nibble on and there was always a thermos full of ice cold water that we could access at any time.  When we were thirsty and would say we needed a drink my dad would say, "Just turn your ear" as he demonstrated a twisting motion on his own ear.  Naps helped pass the time and we were fortunate to live in the age of no seat belts.  As a matter of fact, my dad actually cut all of the seat belts out of our cars because they got it the way.  We could roam anywhere in the car.  We often slept on the floor or in the back of the station wagon so that we could stretch out.  Everyone had their pillow and a blanket and a bag of their "activities" that would keep them occupied.  My favorite landmarks along the way were kissing rock in Wyoming and going through the tunnels by Green River.  It was always a challenge to see if you could hold your breath through the entire tunnel.  My dad would honk the horn all the way through the tunnel adding to the excitement of the dark tunnel.  I also enjoyed seeing the Lincoln monument in Wyoming.  We always ate a meal there, usually lunch.  Getting an ice cream cone at the Little America was also a favorite stop.  We would count the cute billboard advertisements with the black and white penguin for Little America all through Wyoming.  There seemed to be hundreds of them and that helped us pass the time.  After days in the car with the family and having some serious family bonding time we would arrive at our destination and begin the fun time with our relatives.  I am grateful that my parents made the sacrifice with time and resources to provide us with memories by taking us on these vacation adventures.  We drove for miles, but it was worth it to keep our family ties strong.

Farkle!

 
 
 We love to play games with Grandma and Grandpa and that's exactly what we did Sunday evening.  A little Farkle with the dice and some intense moments playing Mexican Train was great entertainment.
We had some seriously high scores and everyone was pretty lucky.




Mexican train was a fun way to end the evening.  We played three rounds of that until we just were tired and couldn't focus anymore!  Landon was our winner of Farkle and Easton won Mexican train....woohoo!

Notice Grandpa eating popcorn...what the heck?  He never eats popcorn, not sure what got into him!

Family Moments

 Janelle's crew and Keith's crew came over to Grandma and Grandpa's for a yummy salmon dinner.  We hadn't seen Keith and his kids yet, so that was a fun treat! 
 Benjamin, Kate, and Kamryn sitting at the cool kids table!
 Kaitlyn and her yummy ice cream.
 The boys enjoying another great Utah night.

Visiting

 
 It's always fun to play with cousins!  We spent the afternoon with Janelle's family on Friday and had a grand time.  Janelle and Bren have just moved into a new home in Draper so we got the grand tour.  I'm so excited for them to be finally landing somewhere and just live life.  Kaitlyn and Kamryn had fun with the boys and Charlie.  We ate dinner there and then spent some time just sitting on the patio.  It was such a pleasant evening with no mosquitos and humidity.  Utah summer nights are the best!






 The ball kept going over the fence so Easton and Kamryn got to know the new neighbors really well as he ventured into their backyard to retrieve the ball!

My little niece, Kamryn....what a cutie!

We're On Our Way

We started our driving trip to Utah at 9:17 in the morning.  We worked really hard to get the car loaded the night before so we could try to get an early start.  What an accomplishment for us to get on the road at such a reasonable time.  We made great time and everyone did really well in our travels!  Charlie was a great little traveler, spending most on his time sitting with Landon in the front seat.  He had a hard time jumping from the back and into the front but by the end of our trip after two days, he was able to accomplish the feat! 
 We spent out first night in St. Joseph, Missouri and stopped around 11:00.  We had debated about driving on for another hour because I was feeling OK, but after Landon did some research on hotels, we didn't feel like we would have very good options after we passed through St. Joseph.  It turns out that we made a great decision because there were literally no hotels for another two hours past that.  It could have been real ugly with a tired driver, a dog, and two children. 
We got up the next morning and were in our car leaving the hotel driveway at 8:03.  That's seriously got to be an all time record for us.  We don't do early very well on trips but we were determined to make Utah in two days and that required some discipline!  The second day of travels was pretty uneventful with our short pit stops, good driving weather, a great car, and great travelers.  We pulled into Grandma and Grandpa's driveway at about 10:20.  We were happy to be done driving and grateful for a safe arrival to our destination.