Memorial Day Weekend Part I: Saturday

My parents visited us for Memorial Day weekend and Brian's birthday!

On Saturday we enjoyed a lovely breakfast at Lucile's and then we went geocaching up past Flagstaff Mountain at Walker Ranch.

We found it! (the tupperware thing is the geocache)

 Cameron said that he was dragging the stick because he was "leaving a trail" for us

Grandma and Grandpa gave this little cat to Liesel when they arrived and she instantly became attached to it. Here she is making her cat "walk" :)

Easter!

This is a pretty tree just out our front door!

At our Family Housing Egg Hunt that I helped plan. It went as well as could be expected! Brian was the Easter Bunny. We also had University Police come and bring their cars for the kids to look at. The EASTER BUNNY made a grand entrance in a siren-ing police car! When he hopped out, he ran after Cameron. Cam just ran away and then stopped and shielded himself with his basket. It was so funny. When Brian tried on the hat the night before I couldn't stop laughing.

An Easter/Spring/Earth Day "project" (as Cam likes to say) we did together. Little nests! I got the idea from this neat-o blog: Pink and Green Mama.

We colored our eggs on Saturday night. It was kind of a disaster. But they look nice here, eh? I REALLY wanted to do marbled eggs, and we spilled 3 of our 4 mugs of color allll over ourselves and the table and floor. Each of us took a turn: me first (I had to change right away), then Liesel, and then Cameron. I almost cried and then said, "WE'RE DONE!"

Finding and enjoying the Easter basket loot. Thank you dear Grandparents for sending some great Easter packages!

Then Cameron and I made Bunny Buns for friends. Aren't they cute?! Find the recipe here.

Dandelions and Soil Blocks

The kids making soil blocks here. What are soil blocks? They pretty much look like brownies when they're done. And you put a seed in the middle of the block and start growing it inside before your last frost date. What's the point? Well, you've probably seen plants in the cheap-o plastic containers at Home Depot or somewhere. Or sometimes people will start seeds in an egg carton. The issue with that is root shock. By using a soil block, you can transplant the seedling without causing root shock. How's that for garden nerd talk? Was I accurate, Brian? There's a lot of soil block making around here. I think we currently have soil blocks with asparagus pea, tomatoes, and a ton of flowers like poppy, aster, sweet pea, four o-clocks, columbine, hollyhock, forget-me-not, and delphinium in our soil-block tray. And there's already a lovely honeysuckle out there thanks to the Fairbanks. And the snapdragons and some of the sweet peas are out already too. I went wild with the flowers, yes.

Picking dandelions. Cameron laid down on his stomach to pick some and of course his sister has to do exactly what he's doing. I told them they can pick as many dandelions as they want without asking. But any other flowers, they have to ask first. So now we have 3 glasses full of bright yellow dandelions ;)

Lieselspeak

It seems like everything this little girl says ends in an "ee" sound:

Fix it? =  "Fikee?"

Open? = "Opee?"

Helmet= helmee

Jacket= jackee

Sock= sockee

Cracker= cackee

Touch it? = touchee

Brush (toothbrush)= brushee

Blanket = blankee

Do you wanna hear what else is Liesel-cute? She "cheers"s everything. Just a minute ago, we were shaking maracas together and she touched hers to mine and said, "cheers." And wanna hear yet another awesome thing? I got this picture just a minute ago, and I wasn't doing anything funny. She was just delighted with something she was playing. She is hard not to love.

On This a Rainy Day in April

Today we listened to General Conference, transplanted some tulips, and jumped in a few puddles.

Zoo

Miss Liesel with a lizard.

Cameron with the very quiet and bored-looking Howler monkey. He said it was his favorite animal at the zoo. Maybe because it hung on the fence like this while people got up close to him, or maybe because of a picture book we read about monkey (one of which was a Howler).

On the train

Elephants!

We got to the Zoo nice and early hoping it would warm up soon (the high was supposed to be 57)! But no real luck. Thankfully the Zoo has plenty of indoor exhibits. We were able to catch the Sea Lion demonstration and the Elephant demonstration. The kids did really well the whole morning and liked seeing all the animals.

Some more conversations

We got a little plastic rocking chair that the kids like to turn over and slide down and just go crazy on. Seeing that it could produce injuries, I said, "Cameron, if you guys don't slow down, you might get hurt..." And he, in typical random fashion says, "But Jerusalem is coming!" 

Me: "Do you know what Jerusalem is, Cameron?"

Cameron: "What?"

Me: "It's a city. It's a city that Jesus taught in."

Cameron: "Well, we're going there!"

Me : [under my breath] "Hmm..it's a place where there's a lot of fighting now..."

Cam: "Well, we're going to go and teach them to be nice."

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At lunch today, Cameron starts talking about "the paleontologist."

Brian: "Are you going to be a paleontologist when you grow up?"

Cameron: "No..."

Brian: "Well, what do you want to be?"

Cameron: "Just Cam."

:-)

The Poofy One

The other day, we were returning a movie rental to the movie store. It was Cinderella. Cameron was talking about it and the mice. I was reminding Brian that one of the mice's names was "Jacques. " Then Cameron chimes in with, "And the poofy one's name is Gus."

Ha. "Poofy." Gotta love a 3 year-old's way of describing things. :-)