Backyard findings

We were sprucing up the backyard a bit today....and came across this.

Yes - I believe this was last nights hot dog dinner....in the bushes.  Apparently Logan didn't eat all his hot dog like we thought.  He chucked it off the back deck into the bushes in the backyard.  We got a good chuckle out of it.

Dustin hard at work laying down some new bark.

End of April and our backyard looks AWESOME!  Look how green the grass is.

The boys are also having fun in the sandbox.  Apparently the kids snow shovels also double to remove sand from a sandbox!  I am not sure there will be any sand left come the end of this summer.

Jen's first 5K

What?  Jen did a 5K?

Yup.

We will just call it peer pressure :)  One of Jen's friends started with 5K's last year and is starting to run half to full marathons this summer!  Another one of Jen's friends has just started getting into triathlons.  So this is where the peer pressure came from.  Jen and Kristin did the Thanksgiving Point 5K and Morgan did the half marathon.

Jen's goal - just to finish....even if it meant walking the whole thing.  She did some running and some walking (okay, so mostly walking)...but she finished!

Every participant received a 'medal'....Jen's first medal (and probably her last!).

Jen can now cross this off her bucket list.  She wishes she loved to run, but alas...she does not.

Tulip Festival

The end of every April the Thanksgiving Point Gardens puts on a tulip festival.  The gardens are beautiful  year round - but this time of year they have tulips planted everywhere.  The gardens are absolutely enormous.....what a perfect place to take our kids and let them run around before bedtime :) Here are some of the adventures the kids had tonight.

Lots of running....

Playing with water...

Running through trees....

Hiding behind doors....

Watching mini donuts being made, and having dad buy some....

Finding the magic sequence of numbers to get $$ out of an ATM...

I believe this one takes the cake...check Logan out.  He goes up to some tulips.....

Checks to see if someone is watching him....

Then picks the flower....

Yup - that was what we did tonight.  I think this last picture pretty much sums up mom and dads feelings at the moment....

More whoa's for Zach

Well - given how Zach's health over the weekend was so wishy washy we decided to take him to the doctor for a check up.  He had a 100 degree fever off and on all weekend long and kept complaining of a stomach ache and a headache.

The assistant at the pediatricians office walked us to the patient room and asked what was going on.  We told her his symptoms.  She took a throat sample and left the room.  About five minutes later the pediatrician walked in and said....."well, I know what is wrong".  Dustin and I looked at each other a bit confused, and the pediatrician proceeded to tell us that Zach has strep throat.  We never suspected strep throat because Zach never complained about his throat hurting.  Apparently stomach aches and headaches are the common symptoms of strep throat in kids under the age of 7 years old.  The pediatrician then proceeds to check out everything else on Zach.  He starts by looking inside his right ear....he is looking for a really long time, longer than normal when we have brought Zach in for ear infections.  The pediatrician looks at us and informs us Zach's right ear drum is ruptured.  The fluid hasn't drained completely, but it should in the next couple of days.  Again we are shocked because Zach hasn't complained of any ear pain.  Zach's right ear is the one we have been having our ENT watch the past two months to see if the fluid would drain on its own so we could avoid a second round of ear tubes.  I explain this to the pediatrician and he isn't pleased.  He is adamant Zach needs ear tubes again.  He gives us a referral to a different ENT.  We feel like loser parents knowing Zach's ruptured ear drum could have been prevented if we pushed our original ENT for ear tubes two months earlier.

$15 co-pay, prescription for Augmentin (for the ear and strep throat), and a referral to a new ENT with an appointment in two weeks.....

Hogle Zoo

We decided to hit up the zoo in Salt Lake today with Jen's parents in town. The weather was beautiful and even though we could tell Zach wasn't feeling any better....he was presenting he was so he could get out of the house.  We doped him up with Tylenol and took our wagon with us so he could sit and enjoy the zoo instead of having to walk around so much.

Dustin had a secret plan...that involved buying a membership to the Hogle Zoo.  When we looked over all the prices, it only takes 2-3 trips to the zoo a year to have the membership pay for itself.  The zoo membership also allows you to take in one guest with your family for free!  So we did it.  We now have memberships to Thanksgiving Point, Living Planet Aquarium and the Hogle Zoo.  Yes, we do get out and about quite a bit on the weekends and make use of all of the memberships!

We are always amazed by the elephants every time we come here - they are so active.  Logan could stay right at this spot in the zoo for hours just watching the elephants.

The giraffes were also out and about.  This is the first time we had taken the kids inside the giraffe house. Logan was so kind, he offered one of the giraffe's some fruit snacks.

We saw the tigers too!  Zach and Logan decided they wanted a pet tiger for the house - so they could play with him and ride him like a horse....uh, sure.

The final event for the day was to ride the Merry-Go-Round.  Check out the smile on Zach's face.  He is riding a tiger! 

We finished up with some soft serve ice cream cones.  Zach ate about 1/4 of his and said he was done.  We all just looked at each other confused....a 4 year old refusing an ice cream cone?  This can only mean one thing.....a trip to the doctor is in order, the kid really isn't feeling well (no matter how hard he pretends he is NOT!).

Saturday Adventures

Jen's parents were in town this weekend - the kids LOVED having Grandma and Grandpa Twogood around.  Zach tends to stay glued to Grandpa's.....that didn't bother Logan this weekend, because he had a Grandma all to himself :)  Grandma Twogood attempted to take a nap with Logan (that didn't go too well for Grandma).  Logan was also glued to Grandma during TV time....

Since Zach wasn't very well today and was running a fever - Dustin stayed home with Zach while the rest of us headed out for some errands at Cabela's and the grocery store.  Dustin built Zach this awesome fort - which he proudly watched TV and took a nap in.

By late afternoon Zach wanted to bust out of the house - so we finally blew up the inflatable pool we bought a few weekends ago.  The kids were so excited about it.  We only put about one foot of water inside - it isn't warm enough outside consistently for us to leave this pool up for more than a day or so.  Maybe in the July time frame we will leave it up for a longer period of time (without killing our grass?).

Great Saturday of hanging out and having fun (even if Zach had a fever!)

Easter Day

The Easter Bunny made his stop at our house last night!  He left plastic egg trails for both the kids from their bedroom to the kitchen table where their Easter buckets were waiting.

The boys were super excited to see what the Easter Bunny brought them.  Their buckets were each filled with a movie, coloring books, matchbox cars and of course lots of CANDY!

Let's just say the rest of the day was spent in a sugar induced high.....

Logan the explorer

Sometimes I wonder what is going through Logan's mind. We played outside this afternoon and he was all over the place!  Checking out the sprinklers in the backyard, sitting in the middle of the street, playing with sprinkler parts...he is 500% boy!

Easter Eggstreme

We decided to join the madness and attend the Thanksgiving Point Easter Eggstreme event this year.  They stepped it up a bit by adding about 5-6 egg hunts per age group in hopes of not having as big of a mad rush of people at once.  We got there right when it opened so we wouldn't have a hard time with parking.  They had some bouncy houses, so we let the kids play on those as long as they wanted.

The event coordinators still haven't learned the lesson that five bouncy house IS NOT enough for an event this large....they need to double that number!  The kids play for a while and then get tired of getting pushed around since there are so many kids crammed in each one of those five bouncy houses.  We spot the Easter bunny and decide to go get our picture with him.

Then the kids spot the Chick-a-fila cow and they go WILD!  I guess the Chick-a-fila cow ranks high on their list...higher than the Easter Bunny! We found two cows....a girl and a boy.

Next we headed over to the field games.  The kids were excited to get some small toys to put in their Easter buckets.

We were lounging out for a bit before the first Easter egg hunt was going to start.

Now it was time - finally ready for the first Easter egg hunt.  They had different areas of the park roped off for different age groups.  All age groups did hunts in their assigned area at the same time.  Zach and Logan were in different age groups, so Jen went with Zach and Dustin went with Logan.  Here is a picture of the staff spreading eggs right before the hunt.  See the massive crowd of people behind the rope?

When they said, "go" - Zach was all for it.  See him in the MIDDLE of the field?  He ran right to the middle and started filling up his bucket.

A few seconds later it looked like this.....uh, where is Zach?

Quite the haul!  His Easter bucket is pretty much full!

We met up with Logan and Dustin and found out Logan did just as well as Zach!

We went to the tables and the kids started going to town opening their eggs to see what they got.  Logan had quite a bit of candy.  Zach on the other hand....all his eggs were full of stickers.  He was quite sad.  Dustin then informed us that the boxes of eggs they were spreading around on the field were all labeled.  He saw the one labeled 'candy' when the poured the eggs out on the field and directed Logan to that location.  Zach apparently picked all his eggs from the area the box labeled 'stickers' were dumped.  The next thing we did is what any parent would do.....Jen stayed with Logan (so he could keep eating the candy he just got) and Dustin took Zach out for the next egg hunt.  They went a bit early and carefully looked at the boxes as they dumped them on the field to find the 'candy' filled eggs.

The second hunt for Zach was a success.  He came back with some candy and some neat toys...NO STICKERS!  The kids were happy, so the parents were happy.  At this point we decided to head home :)