Spending Time with the Keel's

After spending a couple of fun days with the Fallstroms, we drove five miles to visit Jake and Liz, who also live in Lehi.

I love their backyard--so green and pretty! Plus it has a green park right behind their house as well. The kids had fun playing around in the sandbox.

 The kids had a great time and they all got good and wet.

 It was fun to see cousins we don't get to see very often.

As soon as Jake got home from work, we loaded up and drove up American Fork Canyon. It was pretty and relaxing.

The kids loved playing around in the stream. Except for Finley, who fell in and got all wet. It was pretty cold, at least for us Phoenicians, and it was a good thing I had some clothes in the van for her to change in to.

 KeeKee and her daddy.

 Cute Finley girl.

 Me and baby William.

 More fun in the water.

Then it was time for dinner. Before leaving their house, we had made up some tinfoil dinners, and Liz had the makings for s'mores. Yum!

 I couldn't believe that William would just hang out in his playpen. Seriously--that has never been any of my children.

 They're more into things like this:

 Isaac loves talking to babies and making them laugh.

 And Sareny loves posing.

 So does this girl.

That night, Keith and I slept in Josh and Charlie's twin captain beds, and the kids had a campout in the backyard. What a fun idea!

 Here they are in the tent, ready to settle down and go to sleep. Yeah right! They were pretty good and let the adults play a game inside before Liz came out and slept in the tent with them. What a good sport she is! Anyway, it was a really fun day.

Ostrich Ranch part 2

After the monster truck tour, we fed the ostriches. I think Finley had the right idea here--chucking food in their general direction is about as close as I am willing to get to the business end of an ostrich.

Isaac would sometimes actually place the food right in the containers, but the rest of us tossed it.

I like this picture of these three guys and Picacho Peak in the background.

KeeKee staying hydrated. I have found I really like water bottles with the sports caps--it makes giving a baby a drink a lot easier.

And a couple more of the ostriches. These birds were all female. They only have a few males, and they do not keep them up front. Somebody asked why, and our tour guide told us there would be a little too much nature going on...

The female ostriches all have brown feathers and the males have black feathers.

Behind us here are the prairie dog burrows.

They were pretty fun to watch.

We threw peanuts in to them, and they would crack them open and eat out the nuts. If they could manage to do it before one of the other animals took it away from them. There was a bit of scrabbling going on.

Then we fed the ducks.

Lastly, we went into the lorikeet house, where we found this giant tortoise. I thought it was fake at first, but nope.

I love feeding these birds! They are so pretty.

If you hold out your nectar cup to them, they will come over and take the lid off by themselves.

The kids all loved this room.

If you're patient and hold really still, you can get them to land on your arm.

KeeKee being a bit of a grabby guts.

Sareny really wanted one to land on her, and she waited very still for a very long time.

She kept waiting and waiting, and finally one landed on her.

It didn't stay very long though.

So she tried again, and finally got another one to land on her.

After leaving the ostrich ranch, we headed home, but not before a stop at the "blue store," or Ikea. So by the time we got home, we were all pretty tired out.

A Campout

The kids decided to have a sleepover out in the clubhouse. Actually, although he is pictured here, Sareny and Finley decided to have a campout, and Isaac opted to sleep inside in his nice warm bed. Isaac and I went outside to check on the kids, and as soon as I opened the back door, I could hear the lovely sounds of a child screaming their head off. The above picture is blurry, and the only reason I included it here is because you can see that Finley holds nothing back when she is upset. And upset she was!

Still angry...Despite the bloody murder types of screams that would have led you to believe something major and shocking was occuring, I believe it was something along the lines of, "Sareny is crowding me."

She finally settled down and promised to be quiet...I'm surprised we didn't have the cops over here for a noise violation! After these pictures, the girls snuggled down and went to sleep, and Isaac went back in the house. Fun times!

I've been working on the swingset, all the livelong day...

Keith has been building a swingset in our backyard for a couple of months now, and the project is finally nearing completion. A friend from work lent him a jackhammer, and that has been very helpful digging out trenches and the area for the sandbox. Plus, there's just something awesome about using a jackhammer that looks tough and cool.

 

One of the best features of the swingset is the skateboard swing. Kids and adults alike think it is pretty cool. We saw the idea online, and Keith ordered a skateboard base and built one for us.

This swingset has a station for each of the kids to use simultaneously.

Sareny is the undisputed champion of the skateboard swing. Seriously, I have no idea how she gets it that high.

Keeley loves the baby swing. Plus she has vampire teeth. Strangely, her upper outer teeth grew in before her middle teeth--silly and cute.

Finley has lots of fun on the swings.

She looks cute in both these pictures and I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I went with both.

Here is the clubhouse, slide and fireman's pole. This was before the roof had been put on.

Monkey bars.

All three kids on the skateboard swing.

So glad we finally have something in our backyard for them! The best part about this swingset--it's sturdy enough that adults can play too.