Rob and the Girl's Trip to Vernal, UT

Last month when we were in Utah, Rob and the girls drove our camping trailer to Vernal, Utah for a fishing trip with Rob's side of the family. I wasn't on this trip, therefore it isn't as much fun for me to blog about (sorry Rob). I will do my best.

This is a picture of Rob and family with some of the fish that they caught. Apparently Rob is quite the angler...he caught most of these fish:)

Grandpa with some of the granddaughters
I guess Ashley got in trouble the first day for wearing flip-flops. Lucky for Ash, Rob carried her when the walking got rough:) The girls at Flaming Gorge dam
Ashley and a fish that someone(I have no idea who)caught

Alyssa

Rob helping Alyssa fish at a "kids only" pond
Brooklyn & Rob
My girls with their cousin Megan
Just a little plug for myself...I'm the one that taught my girls how to fish:)
You can tell I wasn't with them when they went out in public wearing these outfits:) Notice Alyssa's pajama top with jean shorts...interesting. Style over comfort Lulu...style over comfort!!!

Rob and the girls
More fish that Rob undoubtedly caught:) Go Rob!!!
The girls acting like...girls:)
My girls are lucky to have a dad that loves to take them on vacations. They will grow up loving to hunt, fish, arrowhead hunt (they don't collect them of course because it is against the law), camp, and everything else that Rob does with them outdoors. Luckily this year, Rob drew out for all of the deer hunts, not me. Too bad I didn't have my blog last year when I was the one with the license:)

Disneyland (I lost all of my pictures), Hollywood (lost all but one picture) and Huntington Beach

Does anyone know how to recover lost pictures on memory cards??? When we were in Hollywood, my camera suddenly stopped taking pictures and alerted me that there was a problem with my memory card. I replaced it with another one and had no more problems. I just tried to download all of my pictures from the bad memory card and my computer and camera tell me that there are no images on that memory card. Help!!!

I guess I will have to document Disneyland without any pictures:( On Friday we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Disneyland...an hour and a half later we were on the road. Every year we go to Disneyland during the months of Jan., Feb. or March. These are the best months because most parents are responsible and have their kids in school instead of on vacation. This year was extra busy and so we never made it until now. We have never been on a Saturday, so we were really worried that the crowds would be awful. They surprisingly weren't that bad. I think only 10% of the people there were Americans, so gas prices and the economy must be keeping people home. We finally broke down and bought annual passes this year so I guess I will have to post pictures when we go in Sept. Our kids are all at great ages now for Disneyland! Ashley can ride everything at Disneyland except for Indiana Jones. We had so much fun! The new fireworks this year are incredible!!!

Question 1

How do you lose a 2 year old at Disneyland??? When we were walking down Main Street, I noticed a little Asian boy walking alone in front of us. After following him for a while, we noticed there were no parents around. I grabbed his hand and asked a few people sitting on benches if they had seen where this boy came from. Nobody did, so I found an employee who directed me to the Lost Child building. (I was unaware that there was such a building). Rob and the kids stayed where we found the boy and we never once saw any parents frantically looking for a child. I sure hope he wasn't abandoned on purpose:(

Question 2

Since when did Disneyland stop hiring the "happiest people on earth"? When we were in Bug Land at California Adventures, Rob took all of the girls to ride the bumper cars. Apparently this ride has an age requirement for driving a car by yourself rather than a height requirement. I cannot imagine that this is effective seeing that most guests at Disneyland do not speak English. Rob's plan was to have Alyssa and Brooklyn each drive their own car while he drove with Ashley. When Alyssa got up to the lady that was running the ride, this very grumpy woman asked her how old she was. Alyssa said 6 (somehow forgetting that she turned 7 a month ago). The lady told her she wasn't old enough to drive her own car. Rob informed the lady that she was actually 7...that lady went off on Rob making quite the scene in front of everyone else in line. She was so convinced that Rob was lying and so she made Alyssa leave the ride in tears and left her to watch everybody else drive the bumper cars. Doesn't Disneyland have a policy of "the guest is always right"? If they aren't going to believe the age that the parent says, they need to go off height instead. Unbelievable!!!

Thanks to my memory card breakdown, this is the only picture we have left of Hollywood. We decided to take the kids to walk on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Have you ever driven down Hollywood Blvd? All I can say is we were trying desperately to distract our kids and keep them from reading the names of the stores. We started to get really concerned when we saw Batwoman walking down the street carrying a whip. We were relieved when we arrived at Kodak Theatre and discovered the "Superhero" convention that was going on. Unfortunately for all of you, I don't have the pictures that I took of all of those crazy people dressed up like those superheroes. My apologies! Needless to say, we did not get out of the car in Hollywood.

We also spent a day at Huntington Beach. The weather was awesome and the kids had so much fun playing in the sand and swimming in the waves.

Brooklyn is always such a great big sister...always taking care of "Choncho".

Alyssa and Ashley have no fear
Hunter has suddenly become a "daddy's boy":( Isn't this picture cute?

Happy as a Clown & Why Didn't Anyone Stop Him?

Hunter getting dressed up is a frequent activity in our house. This is the first time he has been dressed in something that is unisex...except of course for the pink lei.If you look closely at Hunter's forehead, leg and also his shorts, you will see yellow marker on each. While we were driving home from the mall, Ashley and Alyssa watched him take a highlighter and color himself yellow. Why didn't anyone stop him??? I guess they thought it was too funny, and since I have selective hearing, I only kind of remember someone saying, "Mom, Hunter is writing on himself."

Ashley Lost Her 1st Tooth

Last night while Ash was eating corn on the cob for dinner, she told me that her tooth was hurting really bad. I told her to come and show me because I thought maybe she had a cavity. She opened her mouth and I saw a permanent tooth growing in on the bottom, but she hadn't lost any baby teeth yet. Once I wiggled the tooth in front of the new permanent one, it was so loose that we decided we could pull it out. She wiggled it for about an hour, and it seemed like every 2 minutes she would come and ask us to look and see if it was out yet. I told her she would know when it was out. Rob went out to the garage and grabbed these pliers. Ouch! He convinced Ashley that it was just a tool to check her tooth.
After a few twists and turns, it finally came out.
It's too bad permanent teeth grow in so quickly:(

Waiting for a Monsoon??? Glitter Toes...by Me!

What is with the umbrellas on a scorching hot, barely cloudy day? My girls so desperately want a monsoon to hit, they get these darn umbrellas out every time they go outside. Mesa had a micro-burst a couple miles from my house last night, but it totally skipped over us. We saw some lightning, but that was it. Everyday my little weather girl (Brooklyn) either asks me what the weather is supposed to be, or she tells me what she has seen on the news. When Brooklyn was preparing for her tonsillectomy, she told me she would be fine being in her bed for a few days because she couldn't wait to just sit in her bed and watch the lightning and the rain from her window. Those darn weather men had predicted a major monsoon Sat. night and Sunday. She was so disappointed to just see a bright hot sun and blue sky out her window...maybe that is why I can't keep her in bed. So I have figured out how to do "glitter toes". At the salon, the lady used acrylic and glitter. When I was at the scrapbook store last week, I picked up some really fine glitter called "sugar coating". Start the process with a very thick layer of base coat quickly followed by pouring a lot of glitter on top. Then shake off the excess and let dry. Then apply two thick coats of top coat and let dry again. It certainly doesn't last as long as the acrylic version, but it looks just as cute and you can change it yourself.

Brooklyn Had Her Tonsils Taken Out:(

Yesterday Brooklyn had her tonsils and adenoids taken out. She was a little nervous to put on this hospital gown for fear that she would be exposing herself from behind...but, she loved the green socks that they let her wear and take home as a souvenir.You'd think if we were told to be at the surgery center at 8:15 a.m., we probably wouldn't have to wait very long for the tonsilectomy. After they took us back, we were informed we were 3rd in line with the doctor. An hour and a half later, they actually took her back for her surgery. Thank goodness we had the Nintendo ds with us to keep her busy.
Can you believe this girl just had her tonsils taken out??? She woke up smiling! Rob and I were really worried for Brooklyn to have this done because she tends to be incredibly DRAMATIC! You should see the show she puts on when we leave Utah to come home! I guess we forgot that even though she may be dramatic, she is also always happy. I couldn't keep her down yesterday. Life never stops for Brooklyn! I wish I had her energy!
We were so glad to finally be coming home! Her doctor Robert Mancuso was awesome by the way. If you ever need a Ear Nose Throat doctor, use him!
All along I've been telling myself that as long as I give Brooklyn her pain meds faithfully and never let them lapse, she will not experience too much pain. So last night I set my alarm for 11:40 to give her another dose of medicine. At 1:15 Rob woke me up and I immediately realized I had missed a dose. I had a dream that I had given her her medicine and so when my alarm went off I turned it off and went back to sleep because I thought I had already doped her up. You'd think being 30 years old, I could figure out the difference between a dream and reality?!!!

Rob Doing the Hula??? Family Luau & Jessica's Temple Sealing

Last week when we were in Utah, my sister Jessica and her husband Dave were sealed together with their son Jaxon in the Mt. Timpanogos temple. There is nothing more special than to see a child come into the temple to be sealed to their parents! It was such an awesome day! My brother-in-law Dave is Hawaiian, so after the sealing we had a luau in my parents backyard.

All the little girls learning a Hawaiian dance

My poor son doesn't stand a chance with all of his sisters. At least he cries when they dress him up like a girl:)

My parents hired a Hawaiian entertainment group to sing and dance. I sure wish my hips could move like this lady's!Dave is an incredible singer! He sang a Hawaiian song for us and I must say he was a lot better than the guys that were hired to sing!
Check out the handsome guy in the striped shirt standing in the back.
Still doing the hula...Still hulaing (is that a word???)...I wish I could figure out how to download my videos onto my computer. These pictures don't do this justice!
My favorite guys!
Alyssa, Kinzie, Brooklyn, Liberty and Ashley at the temple waiting for Jessica and Dave to come out
Hunter could not keep his hands off my niece Whitney. He loves babies!!!
Alyssa doing ring-around-the-rosies with the kids

Dave, Jessica & Jaxon Kahananui (I think I may be the only person in my family that can pronounce their last name:) Yay me!)
Does anyone know of a way to get 9 kids to smile and look at the camera all at the same time?
The Clark family minus my brother in Michigan and his family:(
My family

Young Love, Rob's Fireworks and More

It's official...Hunter has his first girlfriend. Every time he and Libby were near each other, they would hug and kiss. I am very aware that they are cousins, but it was too cute to stop:)

Rob spent a couple of hours organizing all of his fireworks and changing the length of the wicks. My grandpa was looking on with amazement.

Rob is somewhat of a pyromaniac. He has even been known to douse ants with gasoline and then light them on fire. He also almost burned down one of my dad's gazebos last year by trying to start a fire with "scout juice". I have never been near such a big explosion! He also succeeded in burning one of my dad's snowmobiles to the ground. This guy loves fire!!! In years past he has been able to stick with legal fireworks for the 4th of July, but he just couldn't resist lighting off the ones that he bought on the Indian Reservation in Nevada. He had assured me that he didn't buy any of the ones that shoot up into the air (other than the one that shot off 90 parachutes...also illegal). Anyway, this year was his best so far. He had multiple fireworks that shot up into the air. When they started to go off for his finale, all I could do was yell, "Rob!!! Rob!!! Rob!!!". I was so worried that we were going to get nailed with a big fine from the city of Alpine or even worse, light the field in front of my parents house on fire. Lucky for us, we were not the only ones lighting off those types of fireworks. I guess the Alpine City Police Department had bigger fish to fry.
Our favorite LEGAL firework
The grandkids on the trampoline
The girls on disney.com oohing and aahing over the Jonas Brothers