Zoo Trip

So we went to the zoo on Friday.  It is about an hour away in the quad cities in Illinois.  My visiting teacher invited us with her and even let us use the free passes that came with her season pass.  Hooray for cool new friends.  She has two kids that are almost the exact same ages as mine.  Seriously, Ben and Charlotte are 3 days apart and Penny and Eleanor are a couple weeks apart.

The weather was great and the Zoo was awesome.  It was just the right size.  Not so big you could never see all of it, but just big enough to have all of the best animals.  Ben kept wanting to see the dinosaurs.  I tried to tell him there are no dinosaurs at zoos.  Luckily, they did have some dinosaur sculptures and skeletons.  He and his new friend Charlotte took advantage.

This picture is cute, but the lighting is all funny.

We also saw a pond that had ducks and geese and fish.  Both kids got a kick out of this.  Although Penny was still in the backpack carrier when we were near the water.  She loves water and is just a bit too fearless.

We moved onto the petting zoo, and I set Penny loose.  She got a major kick out of the chickens.

In this picture, she was a little bit bugged that I kept trying to pull her attention away from the chickens.  Both kids loved the goats and each tried to feed them.  Ben was funny because he would drop the food and shriek and laugh as soon as the goat touched his hand.

They had this cool little enclosure where you could walk in with all the birds.  Ben was excited, but also a bit freaked.  I got him to stand by the birds but he kept thinking they were going to land on him.  You can tell in the picture.

I love that picture.  We saw lions and giraffes and ate some lunch and played on the playground.  It’s hard to tell in these pictures, but both kids liked climbing on the killer whale statue.

The little boy with Penny was following her around and helping her climb stuff.  He even caught her when she went down the slide.  It was pretty cute, but I have no idea who the kid was.

And last, we went on a train ride.  Both kids loved this and waved and said hi to all the animals as we passed them.  Penny says “choo choo” now, and it was pretty adorable.

And last, one quick family photo before we left for the day.

Phew

OK, so a lot has happened since my last post, which is bad since I am already woefully behind on posting.  Namely, I STILL haven’t posted about Christmas, or Penny’s birthday.  So, to throw a bone before moving onto more recent things, here are some pictures of Penny’s birthday.  It was pretty low key, we had a family from our ward over and ate dinner and had some personal sized cheesecakes (made in cupcake tins) and opened some presents.  Penny was pleased as punch.

		Penny’s Birthday VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m in the process of putting together a “best of” photo album of the last several months for everyone to see.  The videos are still a long way off.  It just takes so long to sort through them and edit them and post them.

Still, prepare for a synopsis of the last couple of months.  I can’t promise that it will be brief, there is a lot to cover.  Firstly, Ben turned three.  Sadly, we didn’t do anything too big.  We were halfway packed and the house was a mess, and Ben was so excited about presents and cake, it didn’t seem necessary to have a big party.  We had a friend over for dinner and had cake and opened presents.  Apparently I didn’t even take any pictures.  Yipes.  I did take some videos, so I’ll get to it.  Just let it be noted that Ben is now three. 

He is so fun and sweet.  He is much better with Penny and tries so hard to be patient with her.  Conversely, she tries very hard to test his patience.  She is constantly taking his toys, biting him, pinching him, pulling his hair, and generally being very difficult.  He knows all of his letters and the numbers 1-10.  He can count with varied success.  Sometimes he’ll just count to ten perfectly, but other times he is all over the place.  I don’t think he totally gets the concept that the numbers are always supposed to go in the same sequence when you count.  He likes to sing songs and dance.  The best thing is how fun his little imagination is these days.  He can entertain himself really well.  Yesterday, he was playing with his friend “bike” and they were fighting monsters.  Admittedly, most of his imaginary games involve monsters.

He chatters pretty much all day long.  The other day, he was just finishing lunch and I was cleaning up the kitchen.  He was just talking.  It was so funny, I had to write it down on an envelope.  It’s probably not as funny if you aren’t hearing him say it in his “big boy” deep voice.  Anyway, this was the gist, as I wrote it down: “Fire trucks shoot the monsters, not sharks.  Sharks live in the ocean, not in houses.  Houses are great things.  Sharks are in the ocean, they eat fish.  Fish are my favorite food.  I eat it all the time”.  It should be noted that Ben does not eat fish.  It turns out he has a loose definition of the word “favorite”. 

Anyway, onto the next event.  Jon graduated from Medical School.  Yay!  It was very exciting.  I only have the one picture of my family because most of those were on my mom’s camera.  My mom also got great pictures at the graduation.  The kids had a great time with grandparents and aunts and uncles.  As you can see, they got tossed around quite a bit, and loved it.

		Jon’s Graduation VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It was a momentous occasion, and I am so proud of Jon for making it.  He is now officially Dr. R. Jonathan Willes, or R. Jonathan Willes, MD.  It’s pretty cool.

The next big event was my family reunion in St. George.  My little big brother was running the Ironman Triathlon there.  For those of you uninitiated, the Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride topped off with a marathon, which is 26.2 miles.  It is insane.  I got worn out just from going around to all the spots to watch him all day.  It was an amazing feat, and I was very impressed with him, even if I do think he is insane.  He did pretty well.  He finished in about 14.5 hours, which is pretty good for a first-timer.  Especially in St. George.  It’s a very difficult course with the altitude and crazy hills on the bike.  Plus, the bike was into the wind a lot and it was really hot.

Here is Brad with the family at the end of the ordeal.  I was actually impressed with how together he was at the end.  He wasn’t falling apart like some people were.  I was ready to have to scrape him off the pavement.  As you can see, we were all wearing matching shirts for Brad to spot us.  My sister designed and ordered them.  They were awesome.

We couldn’t get them in the right sizes for all the grandkids, so my mom just ordered some blank pink shirts to match and I ironed on the logo.  They turned out pretty well.  The sizes weren’t small enough for Penny, so I cut it up and made a little dress.  I was pretty pleased with myself.  Here is the only real picture I got of it before Penny knocked the camera out of my hands and broke it (RIP).  I may be able to get it fixed, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Of course, the protection plan I had on it had expired about 2 months before this happened.

After the reunion, I went back up to Salt Lake for a couple of days.  My mom, my sister and I took the kids to Kangaroo Zoo.  It was a blast.  Mostly the day was a success because we got this picture:

I mean, seriously, those boys are so stinking adorable.  Ben had such a good time with his cousins.

As a result of the Pennyfied camera, I have very few pictures after the Ironman.  I didn’t take any pictures of our empty house or the moving truck (although that was such a fiasco I’m not sure I want pictures of it), or the new house.  However, on Friday, I finally found my old camera from college and the battery and the charger.  It was miraculous.  As a result, I got to take some pictures of our latest adventure, which was a trip to the zoo in the quad cities in Illinois.  I think I’ll do a separate post about it. 

So there you go.  I’ll keep working on the videos.  Also, stay tuned for a video tour of our new home and the story of our move.  Also, look for some cute pictures of the kids in our new favorite mode of transport, the bike trailer (thanks grandma).

Pittsburgh Trip

So, at the beginning of the month, the kids and I drove out to Pittsburgh to keep my sister company while her husband was out of town for several days.  It was a long drive, but the kids did great.  Here are some of the highlights, as documented on my phone:

Penny and Ben on my Grandma’s little rocking chair that Rachael inherited:

And Penny on her own:

And here’s a little video of Ben and Ollie having a picnic together.  They got along pretty well, although Ollie was kind of sick.  Ben actually had a lot more fun with Owen.

And a couple of pictures of the kids playing with the play food.

Tobin and Penny with Ollie in the background.  Penny and Tobin sometimes played near each other, but it turns out that Penny is a bit of a bully.  She kept stealing Tobin’s pacifier, so he wasn’t her biggest fan.  Still they had a couple of cute moments together.

The four younger kids playing together.  Ben, Ollie, Penny, Tobin.  Owen was at school most of the time.  I’m not sure I have any pictures of him, but he was so cute with my kids.

Some of you may or may not know that while we were in Pittsburgh, Ben took a spill and split his face open right above his eye.  Here is an up close shot of the injury at the hospital before we got it stitched up:

And after the stitches, as you can see, Ben was very upset by it.  He thought it was pretty cool that he had “hairs” on his face:

Of course, he wasn’t that calm and pleased the whole time, but he was very brave.  He screamed when it first happened and was asking for his “boo-boo bear” which is a little kids ice pack we have.  Of course we hadn’t taken it to Pittsburgh, but we got him calmed down with a sucker.  When we got to the hospital, he actually recognized it as such.  He knows that daddy works at a hospital, and when asked what daddy does there, he says “he fix people”.  So as we were walking up to the emergency room he said “We going to the hospital mommy?”  I told him yes, we were.  His little lip started to quiver and I could tell that he was fighting back tears and trying to be brave and said, “I have owie”  I told him it was a hospital like where daddy worked and asked him what they do at hospitals.  He replied that they fix peoples.  I tried to reassure him that they would fix his owie too.  He perked up a bit and said, “Yeah, because they crash” and started making car crash noises.  Apparently, when Jon first taught him about hospitals, it was when they were passing some ambulances at a car accident.  The hospital was great and we didn’t have to wait at all.  He did really well.  Since the cut was so close to his eye, they had to strap him down to a little mummy board while they injected the anesthetic and put the stitches in.  He was not pleased about being strapped down.  He freaked out for the shot, but who can blame him, that part is extremely unpleasant.  Once the cut was all numbed up, he actually calmed down and was very curious and sweet while they did the stitches.  He was talking about getting more suckers and seeing Nammy (who was on a plane to Pittsburgh at that moment) and asking Grandma for a present (I may have mentioned that he could ask for a present to calm him down during the injection).

Here is one more close up the next day that my mom took with a real camera.

On to the rest of the trip.  Here is an adorable picture my mom took of Tobin.  Can you believe those blue eyes?

And a picture of Tobin and Penny being super adorable after their bath.  They are two such happy little babies, even though both of them were cutting their molars.  Yipes!

And a picture of me with Owen, Penny, Ben, and Ollie, all in our jammies

One day, mom, Rachael and I ventured out with the four little ones.  Here is a picture of Tobin and Penny in the cart at Sam’s Club.  Penny is using the car keys like a cell phone.

And here we are on the road.  These kids were such good travelers.

It was a great trip.  There were many more pictures taken by my mom, who is a great photographer, but she accidentally deleted them from her memory card when she uploaded them to Rachael’s computer.  I guess Rach will have to post them.

Phone Dump

I know it’s been a while since I posted, and that I still owe my loyal followers (if there are any of you left) documentation of important things like Christmas, Penny’s birthday, and our trip to Wisconsin Dells.  I’m still too lazy, and a little bit overwhelmed by our impending move to do so.  Sorry.  Maybe once we get settled in Iowa City, I’ll do some backlogging.  Oh yeah, that reminds me, Jon Matched!!! Yay!  We will be going to the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital in Iowa City.  I am feeling super pumped about this.  We took a trip to Iowa City, and it is a lovely little college town.  I think we can be very happy there.

In other news, I just dumped my phone’s memory card so get ready for a bunch of photos.  Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of months since I got my new phone:

The view from our back door in early February.  We had some pretty killer icicles. 

Mommy trying to get a good picture of us all nice in our church clothes.  This is about as good as it gets:

And this is what should be expected:

Daddy is a slightly more cooperative model:

Sometimes they get along:

and Ben lays one on his little sister (though he’s not always gentle in doing so):

Ben is learning to draw.  Here are some “peoples” he drew on his magnadoodle:

and a fire truck.  I swear he drew this by himself.  I gave him some directions on what shapes to draw, but he really drew it:

My camera doesn’t take great videos, especially if the lighting isn’t perfect.  But I have to include this one.  Penny likes to put this little cloth box on her head and walk around running into things.  It kind of reminds me of the kid from the Parenthood movie:

And here is Penny at one of her first attempts at feeding herself.  She actually does pretty well:

And Penny running around in her beautiful dress that Geri gave her.  Seriously, can you get any cuter?

I think I’ll end this post now.  I might post later with phone pics and video from our Pittsburgh trip and the rest of March.