New England Part V: Canobie Lake Park

Our funnest day of the trip was our day at Canobie Lake Park. It's an amusement/water park in New Hampshire, and it was just FILLED with things that Sophie loved to do. There's an entire Kiddieland section with rides only for kids 48" and under. She loved going on those, telling us that we were too big for her rides.

Kiddie Cars

Dune Buggy









Flying Rooster (Sophie yelled out
"This ride is TOO FAST!" the whole time)

Spinning Cars

Caterpillar
(Sophie & Jake appear at about 14 seconds)

We spent several hours in the early afternoon riding all the rides, and then changed into our swimming suits to go on all the wet rides and into the water park area.

Can you spot Sophie in this picture?

We were so glad we decided to go. Both kids were fast asleep the second we got on the road home (one may or may not be asleep in this family picture). It was a great day!

New England Part IV: Candlepin Bowling

On Monday, all of my siblings and their kids went candlepin bowling. It's different from regular bowling in that the pins are thinner, the balls are smaller, and you get 3 chances to knock down your pins instead of 2. Oh, and it's awesomer in that with my high score of 82, I beat everyone else there.

We Interrupt this Vacation Recap . . .

. . . to give you a hair cut.

Sam Before:
Sam Now:

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

New England Part III: Reunions

While in New Hampshire, we got to attend family reunions from both sides of my dad's family. We met new people, got reacquainted with our cousins, and just enjoyed socializing.

And these girls couldn't have been happier together.

This was Sophie's favorite part of the reunion:

She somehow convinced Granddad to come into our cottage, sat him down, and read an entire book to him. Luckily, I think Granddad enjoyed it too.

New England Part II: The Cottages

After visiting family in Massachusetts, we jumped onto the Seacoast highway and headed north to New Hampshire. My whole family stayed in separate cottages with views of the ocean.



Our closest access to the water was at a rocky beach, but it was still fun to explore. We walked over there several times on our trip to get wet, play in the waves, and for some of us, pop salty shells in our mouth.

New England Part I: Granddad's House

We just returned from an incredible trip to New England. (if you're really interested, you can see more pictures here, here, and here) We started the trip with a red eye flight to Boston. For some reason, we thought it would go really well.

Instead, we all experienced our first Whole-Family All-Nighter! Luckily it didn't phase the kids for several hours, and at 7am (4am Arizona time) my kids were happy and playing and running around Granddad's back yard.

Right before Cathy took this picture, she said "Sophie, show me your stick!" and so here we have Sophie proudly displaying her stick for Cathy. (click to zoom)

Makeup Artist

Sophie has been interested in my makeup recently. Today, she decided to practice with some gel-like eyeshadow that I have.

The key, she found, was to REALLY dig it into her eyebrows.

Swimming Lessons

Sophie, lover of all things swimming, just finished up a month of swimming lessons. They were at the local pool and she was in a class that ranged from 2-5 kids every day with 2 teachers, so it was really nice.

Perfecting her kicks

Pushing off

Kicking back to the wall

She learned how to hold her breath under water, retrieve objects on the bottom of the pool, float on her back for several seconds without any help, and can kick and glide across the pool with assistance. It was a great experience for her and gave her a lot of confidence to be in the pool without her floaty.

And now, despite our best sunscreening efforts, the girl is DARK.

34 Hours in SLC (with 27 hours of driving)

We took a trip this weekend that was almost equal parts driving and destination. Friday afternoon as soon as Jake got home from an early day at work, we loaded ourselves, some clothes, some junk food, and like all of Sam's belongings and hit the road.

A potty break within Phoenix city limits, another at some dirt road exit (involving new underclothing) and yet a third in Flagstaff got us off to a rocky start. After removing all beverage-like substances from the back seat, we started again. After that, albeit long, the trip was pretty smooth sailing.

We arrived in Salt Lake City around 3am Saturday, completely exhausted, only to find our 10-month-old bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to play. Jake took him because he was still pumped full of caffeine so I could get some sleep.

A couple hours later we were waking up and getting ready for the day. We were in Salt Lake to attend the funeral of Jake's grandpa Mont. It was very nice and we all were glad we could be there, but I really wish we could have spent more time all of Jake's family and cousins. Unfortunately we saw everyone for about 15 minutes afterward before they all had to leave for Idaho for the burial service. Since we were still recovering from our journey, we didn't continue on with them. Instead, we headed back to where we were staying so the kids could nap.

After naps, we headed down to Temple Square to visit the gardens, visitors center, and Tabernacle. It was really nice and the weather made me question why we live in the desert.



The next day we slept in, packed up, and headed for home. This trip was much better, and we would have cut an hour and a half off of our drive time if our battery didn't die 90 minutes out of Phoenix, leaving us stranded for an hour and also if we weren't the first vehicle on the scene of a rolled over semi truck (they were OK, luckily).

But, you know, besides that, everything was just great.

Open For Business

Welcome to GoodieSupplies!

This shop probably isn't very interesting to most people, but I'm starting a supplies etsy shop and I'll be selling these flower cabochons and some hair accessory supplies too. I'm super excited about it, and anxious to see how it goes.

Wish me luck!

Oh, and speaking of luck, congratulations to lucky #11 in my givaway. DRUGGIST! E-mail me. Or I can just get in contact with your wife :) .

Exhausting

3 hours of church with no naps can exhaust a guy.

This is Sam within minutes of coming home from church yesterday. We tried to get some milk into him before he fell asleep, but sleep won.

LAST CHANCE to enter the giveaway (here). Winner will be randomly chosen tonight!

Don't Forget!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway! It's basically for $25 free dollars.

Here.

OK, Seriously. (with a GIVEAWAY)

So, I went ahead and placed my order through CSN stores on Tuesday afternoon like I mentioned I would. Yesterday evening (WEDNESDAY), the order was on my doorstep. THE NEXT DAY. I feel like I have a personal shopper with them and they hand-delivered my order. (Did you, personal shopper?)

Anyway, I'm 100% satisfied with the envelopes I ordered, and will definitely be using them again in the future.

AND

I'm giving you a chance to use them as your personal shopper too, with my very first GIVEAWAY! This giveaway is for a $25 gift certificate to be used at any of their stores.

Just leave a comment and make sure I can get a hold of you. Get an extra 2 entries if you blog about the contest (leave 2 extra comments please). THREE chances to win! Contest ends Monday June 14th.

(Just a note before you enter: the gift certificate can't be used on shipping fees)

GOOD LUCK!

Play Time

This kid. When he gets bored, he just crawls into the playroom
all on his own and finds something to play with.

He's such a good kid. Lucky for him, today his sister was in there too.

We like her too.

So, I'm Planning a NEW Adventure

Pretty soon, I'll be opening a new etsy shop (details next week hopefully). I'm just getting everything prepared this week. Shipping supplies are being ordered, packing materials are being collected, etc.

I think I'm going to try and order my envelopes from CSN Stores. They're a website with over 200 stores where you can buy anything from a sofa to a suitcase (or shipping supplies). I'll let you know how it goes with their website.

Wish me luck! I'm pretty excited about this new adventure.

Home Tour Part VI: Guest Room

BEFORE:

AFTER:

This room isn't nearly as impressive to view until you know what it looked like before. Each wall was divided in half diagonally, with red paint on one half and black on the other. This included the walls, baseboards, closet doors, bedroom door, and all trim.

Several coats of primer later, we were able to paint. And by that point, we didn't care what color it was. Luckily, the house came with two 5 gallon buckets of mystery paint, so that's what we used (we also used the same color on the play room, the office, and 2 of the bathrooms). It's a nice neutral soft brown color.

Throw in a headboard found for free on the side of the road, our old bedding, and a chair ALSO found in the road, and the room was basically free. But I still think my free room is better than what used to be there.

Memorial Day/Housewarming Party

After a YEAR of living in our new house, we finally threw our housewarming party. I was so busy from start to finish though, that I forgot to take pictures until it was already dying out.

Friends & Family having an AWESOME time

Our sparking blue pool, new lounge chairs,
and newly painted/reupholstered (by yours truly) deck chairs

We had a really great turnout, awesome food, and tons of fun! Chairs and lots of tables of foods were set up in the back yard, the pool was constantly full of kids, and I set up "before" pictures in all of the rooms of our house so that people could see the improvements we've made on the house since we moved in.

One of the three food tables

More screaming good times

Thanks to everyone who came. We had a really fun time!