some outings are a necessity

Last week was made up mostly of Gabriel and I being homebound. He was sick with gross green goo constantly making an appearance – which meant no school and no gym play place [they frown on that sort of thing]. I, being the awesome mother I am, thought we’d wait out this cold until it passed. Only by Friday, I noticed he wasn’t getting better. At closer inspection, he had a really bad ear infection. I’m super observant. Saturday night (late) was spent at the Urgent Care – getting antibiotic shots. In my defense (cause I’m feeling defensive), when Gabriel’s sick, he acts fine. No rubbing the ears, no whining. He still wants to run around and play outside.

A late night at the Urgent Care meant a late morning at our house. So by the time we woke up, the big kids were already bored. That brings on arguing. Which creates an intolerant mother. We needed to get away from our four walls pronto!

I packed up a quick lunch and we headed out for a picnic/short hike. Breathing in some fresh air can be so helpful to my irritable soul.

We lunched:

We hiked:

Gabriel made it a quarter of the way up holding hands with Paige:

(As a side note: I love this, for her sake. Because generally Gabriel favors Taylor. When they come home from school, she’ll open her arms wide for a hug, and he’ll scurry past her to get to Taylor. It’s not personal, just the way it is. Hiking = bonding.)

Soon he got wise, and took an easier way up the hill:

We danced atop the hill and posed for pictures:

(Can anyone guess that my good camera is broken? It’s killing me!)

We spotted interesting new (to us) lizards:

After Todd told the kids frightening stories of how poisonous this beast was, we looked it up. On our ride home, we did a little research via the iphone: turns out the chuckwalla lizard is harmless.

It was fabulous to get a 2 hour breather from the monotony and the boredom. Yay for family picnics!

no girlz allowed

Lest anyone should think that we don't give Taylor enough blog love, I'm going back a bit to share the boys' trip. Since Todd's love for picture taking is lacking, I was able to mooch a few pictures from the Hoopes (thanks guys!).

Just after the New Year's festivities, the boys packed up their fishing gear and headed to Roosevelt Lake to meet up with our friends the Hebb's and the Hoopes'. It was an all boys affair that included roughing it in the loaded RV (satellite tv, shower, warm beds) and lots of waiting around for the fish to bite.

A little example of 'like father, like son'....:

day off

Today there was no school. Happy Veteran's Day.

The kids plotted with their cousins last night at our weekly Yancey-Cederstrom family dinner to play all day. They wanted to meet up at 8 am. We compromised and met up at 10:30.

They've been having a great time. The boys played xbox and the girls played outside until there was an inevitable injury - tears and all - and then they resumed play with a tea party and coloring.

We met up with our friends the Hoopes and had a picnic at the park. There was alot of excitement to be had there. I forgot only one thing - my camera. How can I blog without a picture?

So, here's a recap of our afternoon at the park:

• The boys rode skateboards and the girls skipped around and..... hmmm... did girl things?
• They played on the playground for a long while. It had everything a kid could want - including a tire swing. After playing on it a couple minutes, Paige reminded me that she sometimes gets sick playing on the tire swing. So we kept her off, given that she is prone to motion sickness.
• Gabriel was having a great time climbing and sliding, but it never fails that he'll need a diaper change when the diapers are across the park and in the car. Of course it wouldn't be one of those easy to clean kind of experiences, either.
• Who brings a pit bull to the park???
• On our way back, Austin was skateboarding up a hill and jumped off and the skateboard rolled back and slipped into the lake. We stuck our hands in and felt around (eeewww) to try and find it with no luck. Austin was a good sport though when we told him he was going to have to go in after Uncle Todd's skateboard or pay him back for it. He took off his shoes, socks and shorts and waded up to his waist looking for the board. He was successful! He did get a little nervous when we told him to take off his wet underwear before putting his shorts back on. So what if there were photographers around? It must have been quite entertaining to the onlookers. We tried our best to make a human wall and again, he was a good sport. What a trooper.
• Gabriel and Paige both fell asleep in the car on the way home and just as we were pulling up into our driveway, Paige woke up.... and threw up her entire lunch. Luckily, Todd was home at this point and he helped to clean the car - but he was curious if she had even chewed any of the lunch she had. I know, eewwww. On the bright side though, she felt better immediately.

New rule: No more tire swings!

the farm

We finally made our way to the farm! The kids were so excited, and it worked out that they even got to meet up with their cousins Hayden, Jonah, Isaak and Ethan.

I was hoping I would go and take some exceptional pictures of the kids in the pumpkin patch, but there was no such luck. We got there as the sun was going down, which made the pictures dark, and the kids were all running every which way and I couldn't keep up with the madness. So, these are the pictures we are left with.








After our failed photo op, we had some dinner and then made our way to the kiddie rides.

Paige, Hayden, Taylor & Mommy rode the roller coaster, which was surprisingly more adventurous than I expected and left me with a bit of a crick in my neck. But the kids loved it and Taylor even rode with no hands.

We rode the big swing ride, the carousel, the planes..... all of them, really. Daddy rode the bee ride with Gabriel (although, their bee mysteriously never did take flight - is there a max. weight limit?) while I got in a bit of excercise pedaling racing tricycles with Taylor - he kicked my booty.

At the end of the evening got to wait in a brief 40 minute line for the train. That was so much fun with 7 tired children, but was made tolerable with lots of kettle corn. Every time the train would leave and we weren't on it, Jonah would exclaim sadly, "Aw no, we missed the twain again!". Lucky for us, the train turns into a haunted train ride at night, and all of the zombies and scary guys screaming and reaching out to us perked the kids right up (okay, some were less than thrilled). Gabriel didn't seem to mind though, he would just reach out to them and scream back.

After that, it was closing time and we got to see the fireworks - which were much better than the ones we got to see on the 4th of July.

Everyone was more than ready to end the evening, and this is what we got within 3 minutes of getting on the road...