Thanksgiving Trip - Playing with Cousins

On Sunday morning, me and Lucas went and played with toys by the fire.  Lucas loves having a fire in the fireplace so it was fun for him to be able to turn it on whenever he wanted.

We played with blocks.

And then practiced our jumping skills. I love this picture.

On Monday, we went to the dinosaur museum with Ava, Penelope, and Rose.  Lucas was a little terrified that the dinosaurs would come to life and start chasing him, like they do on Night at the Museum, but he calmed down after a while.  

 Playing at the sand and water table.  I'm not sure why the best activities always have to be the messiest.

 Another messy activity, digging for dinosaur bones.

 Later that night we went to this sporting good store called Scheels.  It was just built in Draper this year and it's actually pretty amazing.  It's huge and has pretty much anything you could need that is sports and outdoor related.  And it has a huge Ferris wheel inside.  I had Dash and Lucas with me in my chair.  They were a little scared, but we had a good time.

 And here's Ryan posing with his favorite animal of all time, a Grizzly Bear.  We may make this our Christmas card picture.  :)

 On Tuesday, Lucas, Paige, and I all got colds.  I think over half the family got sick at one point during the week.  It put a damper on things and we didn't get to do nearly as much as we had hoped since we spent a lot of time over the next few days taking turns sleeping and taking care of sick babies.  We did venture over to Mike and Jessica's house to let the kids play, though.

 Lucas was in heaven having new toys and kids to play with all the time.

 Here's all the cousins that were there for Thanksgiving, except for Rose who really was not feeling well enough to get her picture taken.

 We had pizza for dinner, and it was seriously the biggest pizza I have ever seen.  This picture does not do it justice. It fed three families and there was still pizza left over.

Stay tuned for the rest of the trip, there will be at least one, maybe two more installments.

Thanksgiving Trip - Dinner at Julie's

We just got back from a long trip to Utah for Thanksgiving.  This was Paige's first road trip, and she was an angel!  She did really well, and pretty much slept the whole time.  These next few pictures were taken with Ryan's phone so they are a little grainy.  Here's the car before we left.  We had more stuff in here than we ever thought we could.

Stopping to "stretch our legs"....

 Such a good traveler.

We stopped off at the new Marriott in Elko.  Lucas loves hotel rooms.  He always thinks that this is one of the main reasons for the trip, to go to a hotel.  He loves continental breakfasts too.  Here we are getting ready for bed.

One of the first days that we were in Utah, we went to my sister Julie's house for dinner.  I went over early to help make dinner and to watch a good chick flick.  I have missed hanging out with Julie and making yummy food together.  We made Boeuf Bourguignon, and home made artisan bread, and a salad.  Everything was so good, especially the Boeuf!

 

Here we are getting ready to eat.

My sister has a fitness pole.  The kids had a fun time climbing on it.  After dinner Julie showed me a few moves.  My muscles we so sore the next day.  Apparently it is quite the workout.

For dessert we had homemade lemon, chocolate, and lime cardamom ice cream.  Julie also made this chocolate tart with raspberries on top.

It was all SO good!  The lemon ice cream was my favorite.

We had such a fun time with my family.  We have a whole week worth of pictures left to post, but I'm going to have to do them a few at a time since apparently my children are not as in to blogging as I am.  Pretty much every time Lucas thinks I'm taking too long on the computer, he starts taking every deck of cards we have and throwing them down the stairs.  You'd think I'd start putting the cards somewhere he can't reach them, but no, I guess I never learn. Anyway, stay tuned for more family festivities, hopefully tomorrow.

2 Months

October Wrap Up

There were a few pictures that I never got around to posting in October.  My Grandma Blank came out to visit one week and we got a picture with 4 generations.

 It was nice to be able to visit with family, and have my grandma get to see Paige.

On Halloween we went trick-or-treating with some friends.  Here's the kids before we left.  They were very anxious to get candy.

 Trick or Treat!  They are super close to the door because it was a 3 year old little girl passing out the candy.

 There's a street nearby that goes all out for Halloween.  Almost every house on the street was decorated with lights and spooky stuff.

 And there was one with a huge pirate ship on the front lawn that was almost as big as the house.

 They had the whole street blocked off for all the trick-or-treaters.  It was really fun.  Paige slept in her stroller the entire time.  That's okay, since she can't really eat much candy yet anyway.  I pulled her out afterwards to take a picture of how cute she was, though.

Lucas has been doing a good job of not eating the entire bucket of candy at once.  He's a big fan of Halloween, though.  He keeps asking if we can go trick-or-treating again.  Not for another year buddy!  October flew by, and I have a feeling November and December are going to go just as quickly.  I can't believe we have a two month old baby already!

Family Days at LLNL

The same weekend we had Paige's blessing, they were also doing family days at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where Ryan works.  Since Ryan works in a classified area, we had never gotten to go and see where he works, but once about every few years they put away all the classified stuff and let people come and see the lab.  Lucas was so excited to see where his daddy works!  It was still considered a classified area, even though it was open to the public, so we weren't allowed to take any pictures while we were there.  They did have a few spots where they took pictures for you, though.

Here's the whole group in front of "Fat Man".

An air launch cruise missle (AGM-86B).

 A Mk21 Reentry Vehicle

We got to tour the building with all the supercomputers.  And we got to see Sequoia which is currently the world's fastest supercomputer.  It was actually pretty cool.

About halfway through the day we went back to the house to drop Lucas off for a nap.  My mom was watching the babies, so we decided adding one more couldn't hurt.  Then we went to see the National Ignition Facility (NIF).  This was probably the coolest part of the lab.  Here we are with Niffy, the NIF mascot. A mammoth is the mascot because during NIF contruction, mammoth bones were found during excavation.

And here we are down inside a big Fusion chamber getting pummeled by lasers... or standing in front of a big poster of what it's supposed to look like inside.

Apparently part of the next Star Trek movie was filmed inside NIF.  I can't wait to watch it and see if I recognize anything.

All in all we had a good time.  It was exciting finally getting to see where Ryan works, and getting to spend some time with family too.