Hair today, gone tomorrow

It was time.

Now we're ready for the heat.

And this child and her golden curls - oh my lands.  It kills me!  She has the most gorgeous head of hair.

As she sat on my lap the other night looking at a book, just as the sunset was glaring through the living room, this was my view. 

Pure beauty.

(Um, please pay no attention to the brother apparently streaking by on the way back from the shower.  Thanks.  Hey, at least he had a towel on).

Silly girls

I babysat my niece last week.  This is a pic of the girls patiently waiting for me to take this little pool outside and fill it with real water.

Almost done with school

I never have a lot of money to spend on my kids' teachers, but when the end of the year rolls around I am so indebted to them for what they do to help each one of my boys.  I know a personal note means the most anyway, so I made cards this year with some cute clips inside, and room for both me and their student to write them a note.  I am thankful for teachers.  The teachers my kids have had this year have been perfect for them.  Just enough love, just enough toughness.  

Cost: $1 for 32 colored metal binder clips on clearance at Michael's.

Now for the exciting project to share.  My main craft for the end of school has been so fun! After reading this post on my friend Tracy's blog I knew what I should do for Potter who is finishing sixth grade.  What a great time to make him a memory/autograph book.

I had a hard time finding a chipboard book but at Michael's they directed me toward this aisle called Fun Finds where there are $1 packs of chipboard shapes.  They had packs of graduated squares, and I combined the three largest sizes for a tiered look.  The largest is about 7 inches, and I also used the 6.5 and 6 inch ones.

The paper line is Dude, from the Paper Loft. It is the perfect hip boy look.

Just as I was going to go buy some of it, kind Tracy gave me her leftovers and I think I used up every scrap!  The amount was seriously too perfect.

Here is the end result:

Isn't it cool?!

This gives you a better idea of the cover detail

Here you can see the graduated "steps"

And some of the pages:

Here is the back cover where I stuck a denim pocket.  I plan on filling it with some "keep in touch this summer" cards for him to pass out so he can stay in contact with his classmates.

I can't decide when to give it to him; maybe Wed?  I sure hope he likes it.  I absolutely loved putting it together for him.

Cost:  $2 for two packs of chipboard shapes

Utah's Dixie

Bugs had to do a report on Washington County, Utah.  He decided to do a model of its principal city, St George.  My apologies to anyone who actually lives there or loves the place.  I'm sure he didn't do it justice, but we didn't exactly have time to dither.  

I went in to volunteer last Monday and saw strange groupings all over the room of various projects, floats and dioramas.  I knew nothing about it till that moment.  Yep, you heard me right.  I found out about this huge project midway through the day it was due.  

Oh, we had a fun little talk at home.  And then we did the fastest paper mache red rock formation you have ever seen. Day late, but not terrible.

Mini Vacation, Day 3

Thanks, Kristy.  I forgot to link to the pass.

Go to Visit Salt Lake and you will see the spot saying "third day free" or something like that.  We paid $36 for adults and $30 for kids (baby was free).  That's the two-day price but thru part of July it's buy two days get one day free.  We figured it pays for itself in 4 outings.

So, on to Wednesday.

We planned on going to Snowbird for the tram ride.  Didn't open till 11, so there was no need for an early start.  We had a lazy morning before heading out.

We were just driving along - and we were in Sandy before we realized we never turned onto the right freeway to get us toward the mountain.  Doh!  So we thought, hmm, what the heck - we'll just head to Thanksgiving Point and head to Snowbird after.


Here is our visit to the Museum of Ancient Life.  The kids have asked for years when we would ever go to "that dinosaur museum".  Here was our chance.

 

It is enormous!  Seriously so many things to see.

Huge dino replicas

A very cool sand/water area with little plastic trees and

dinosaurs. They loved recreating the flood that

wiped them all out LOL.

If you know my husband it is no surprise to see him joining in.

So, we leave Lehi and, um, major storm brewing.  I'm talking GRAY skies and you can't even see the mountains.  Shoot.  And I knew the tram only runs "weather permitting". 

Plus it's after 1 pm and everyone's starving to death. 

We drove up to Draper, gave the kids a corn dog and their very first Jamba (it was $1 day!!) and they were calm.  Yeah right.  There was so much fighting in the car I couldn't even hear Strider right next to me.  We had a spilled berry smoothie (glad it's an old van), a toddler who wanted everyone else's food, and big brother bullies.  Should we head home?  Should we leave them there and go on a date to see more stuff?  Should we leave them at grandmas and pick them up in July?

We need to get our money's worth, dang it!

We decided on Clark Planetarium, carried over from the sick day.

They have gorgeous displays.

Here is Princess on the moon.

I always knew at least one of my kids was from Mars.

We could barely pull Bugs away from this two-story

 "Newton's Daydream" kinetic/inertia machine

The pass included tickets to a 3-D film; we chose Hubble.  I don't know how it was - after 3 minutes the baby was freaking out so I got to take her out and chase her all over play with her during the show.

So we had fun, but I might have gone into a trance after very much longer.  It's a little hard for my kids to have that much family togetherness, I suppose.  I do think it's a great deal and worth it if, like us, you have yet to see many of the neat places around here.

Mini Vacation, Day 2

We continue with last Tuesday which began with This is the Place Heritage Park.

Once again, I had never been there and was really excited to see it. 

We wanted to take advantage of the coolest weather, so we were there when it opened.  Well, at least when the website said it opened.  At 9:00 sharp we were at the gate with no employee in sight.

After a few minutes of impatience we were greeted and headed right in.  For quite a while we were nearly the only ones there. 

We got fun little stories and house tours from early

pioneer perspectives

So much of it was "hands-on" learning

I knew the kids should be learning how to do laundry this summer

And they better be excited to work in the garden more now, too

Princess prepared wool for spinning

This woman is using a traditional drop spindle,

more portable than a spinning wheel

I have never really seen a spinning wheel in action.  Pretty awesome.

We rode the big and mini trains, and each time our family was the only one on it!

This is the view from the train ride

You can see the mountains all the way out by home

The boys liked the teepees

And making things with arrowheads

We made a stop at the old fashioned candy store

Here we are in front of Brigham Young's Farmhouse. 

We spent 4 hours there and enjoyed it very much. 

We estimate we only saw about 1/4 of it though.  I guess we need another stop on a date night!

Everyone was hot and tired so it was a perfect time to stop for the lunch included in the pass, the Lion House.  We could break, recharge, etc before the planetarium.

Jedi was feeling a little under the weather, and the baby was exhausted.  We parked in the parking garage downtown and Jedi felt feverish so I gave him some Tylenol.  Rosebud was out cold, so Strider decided to carry her and allow her to sleep (hopefully).  We made our way out and through the Joseph Smith building and into the restaurant. 

I didn't know it was a cafeteria-style line to get your food.  Imagine 7 of us, one sick, and the other adult with no available hands (holding the sleeping baby).  Nice.  Let's just say there were moments of sheer panic, lots of frustration, looks of i'm-glad-that's-not-my-child annoyance, tantrums (once the baby WAS awake), spilled drinks, yadda yadda.  What a nightmare.  I bet they'll be happy if we never come back.

So, with Jedi ill and literally sprawled out over the table we decided the day was over.  We might try to squeeze in the planetarium the next day...