Ice Cream Night

Hey, this is Randy....

For FHE Monday night, Mark gave a great lesson on missionaries. He talked about how to prepare for a mission. Later the boys were asking me about my mission companions, and I was surprised at how many I could name: Elder LeBaron, Elder Nielsen, Elder Murphy, Elder Blake, etc. Then Mark asked, "All Elders, huh?" I told him yes, Elders were always with Elders and Sisters with Sisters. Both boys were a bit shocked. "So, you never had a girl companion?" Dax asked looking relieved. Sometimes what they don't know surprises me!

Anyway, after the lesson, we went to the BYU Creamery for ice cream. We had a great time and the ice cream was really good. Because we wrote about the Creamery as an adventure for our blog, we were taking a lot of pictures, and some of them were really cute. Here are a few pics you won't see on the other blog:

All of the flavors were so yummy!

I don't want to use a spoon, mom!

But I love ice cream!

Mark and Mom--the only ones with jackets.

Silly Dax

Dad and Dax--matching green.

Seth has such big brown eyes!

St. Patrick's Day

Okay, so we don't have any Irish blood in us at all.

I have been trying to be a good mom and make every holiday FUN! So for St. Patrick's Day I planned lots of activities and lots of green food. We began the day by eating Shamrock shaped pancakes. I was going to make green eggs, too, but figured I would leave those for Dr. Seuss day. I even sent an all green lunch with Mark to school.

Dax made this leprechaun trap at preschool. It has been living in our house for a few days and the leprechaun has done a few crazy things, but on St. Patrick's Day that crazy leprechaun stole all the gold! He even busted out of the trap and left a trail of green so we knew which way he left.

Mark and Dax made Fruit Loop Rainbows, graphed how many Lucky Charms they had, and did a shamrock word search. Seth just ate the Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms! Once Dad came home, we ate our all green dinner: stuffed green peppers, green jello, green veggies, and a rainbow made of fruit. And of course, green Kool-aid!

After dinner, Randy gave a great lesson about how lucky we are--we listed all the blessings that we have including living with our family, having temples near by, being healthy, a living prophet to speak to us, and much more. It was a perfect lesson. We performed a science experiment for our activity--we made a Rainbow in a jar. We layered liquids of different densities. Mark and Dax loved it. We stirred it up at the end and some of the layers separated back out, but not all.

Finally, we had a fun treat to end our crazy day.

Dax made this leprechaun trap at preschool.

The leprechaun broke out, leaving a green trail behind.
All the coins were gone!

Did you know St. Patrick used the 3 leaves of the shamrock to teach about the Trinity?

Fun with Fruit (Loops)!

The nice thing about this green food is no food coloring.

Mom made a Twizzler rainbow with donut pot o' gold.

Dax's head fell off during the experiment.

We stirred it up, and the layers reseparated, but the food coloring didn't.

We are so luck to have 3 boys!

Abraham Taylor

Hey, this is Randy....

Abraham Taylor is my Grandma Benson's great-great grandpa. That makes him my great-great-great-great grandfather. For Christmas this year, I put together a book of collected histories for my siblings, which had an article on Abraham. (It's last in the book, if you're looking.) The article, which appears to come from a newspaper, has no citation at all. It states that Abraham and his father Thomas immigrated to Springville with the Mormon pioneers and built the first foundry in Utah.

One of the things that the Taylors built the foundry for was to make nails for the Provo Tabernacle and other major buildings in and around Springville. The article goes on to mention that some of these nails have been preserved and stored in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers in Springville. I was pretty excited because this is the kind of family history I like-- stories and artifacts that let us know our ancestors a little better. (I let others worry about dates, ordinances, and genealogies.) So, we decided to head down and check it out.

The ladies at the museum were really nice. They played with Mark and Dax, helped me find 4 new histories I hadn't seen before and showed us the nails in question. They even let us take them out of the case, and the boys held the nails that their great-great-great-great-great grandpa made 150 years ago. Surprisingly, the boys thought that was pretty cool.

We saw the nails sitting in the first case as you enter the museum.

The boys had fun dressing up like pioneers while dad did some family history.

We were surprised she took the nails out of the case for us!
Dax was very careful when he touched them.

Can you see how they are square instead of round like the nails now?

Everyone took a turn touching the nails.

We love Family History!

Dr. Seuss' Birthday!

Every year we do something fun for Dr. Seuss's birthday. Last year we turned the house upside down like Wacky Wednesday. This year I was having a hard time coming up with something new. We had green eggs and ham for breakfast, of course. And then I bought the boys a Dr. Seuss book that we don't have, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. In honor of our new book, I made blue jello and stuck some candy fish inside. It wasn't fancy, but the kids thought it was great. So here are a few pictures form our Dr. Seuss night!

We are all sitting down for our Dr. Seuss treat.

Dax loves Jello!

Seth digging in.

Cheese!

I also pulled out some of my Dr. Seuss games and activities.
They are always popular.

Day at the Zoo

We HAVE to ride the carousel.

We had a break in the weather last week (okay so it was last month on President's Day...I'm really far behind on the blog), and we decided to go to the zoo. We weren't the only ones. Randy's sister (Amy) decided to take her family, so we hooked up and made a day of it. As we walked past the elephant enclosure on our way out, we bumped into Natalie's sister (Melanie) and her family as well. It must've been a great day for the zoo.

Our kids love the zoo, and on spring mornings the animals are pretty active. The only problem we had is that we couldn't find the polar bear. It seemed he had been replaced by a brown bear. We looked for a while before we realized that brown bear actually WAS the polar bear. Apparently he'd been rolling in the mud.

The tiger was also out prowling around and we had a fun treat listening to him as he made lots of noise. Check out our video.

It was a really nice day at the zoo. And of course we made our traditional stop at Red Robin for burgers afterward!

Mark loves this huge elephant.
Dax asked why it wasn't spraying water.

Dax being goofy!
I think he might have been eaten by a polar bear.

We had a great time with Sam and Aiden at the zoo.

Seth wanted to give the meerkat a kiss.

St. David's Day

Wales flag display at my sister's house.

My sister Melanie is really into family history. It is great because she does all the work for me! :) Well, she has taken family history to a new level this year. March 1st in St. David's Day, a Welsh holiday much like Ireland's St. Patrick's Day. All of my paternal grandpa's family come from Wales, as well as many on my paternal grandma's side, too. We have been collecting histories for as many family members as we can and we read that Daniel Daniels (my great-great-great-great grandpa...yes, his name is Daniel Daniels and so is my dad's) immigrated here from Wales but once in Salt Lake City he kept the celebrating of St. David's Day alive. He played the violin for the dancing, and helped organize all the activities. Daniel Daniels later helped settle Malad, ID which is full of Welsh people and where they hold a Welsh Festival every year. My dad was born there.

Anyway, Melanie decided we should celebrate St. David's Day in honor of our Welsh ancestors, and especially for Daniel Daniels who brought it here to Utah. So we ate a somewhat traditional Welsh dinner and had a few activities for the children. We had lamb which Dax devoured. It seemed like he ate 2 whole sheep! It was my first time eating lamb, and Dax's as well, but it was good. (Randy grew up on a sheep farm, so he knew how greasy it is!) We also had Welsh cakes and Glamorgan sausages as appetizers, both of which were yummy. I wish that I had been better about taking pictures of things. I was in charge of dessert and I couldn't find anything that looked all that appetizing from Wales. Everything had currants in it (not the electrical kind). So I cheated and made trifle which came from England. (Don't tell Saint David!) I figure they are all part of Great Britain, right? And look how pretty it is!

The kids made daffodils and colored dragons (because the Wales flag has a dragon on it. Awesome, right?) It was a fun night and it was a great opportunity to talk about our family with the boys. Although Mark asked me later, "So, how are we related to St. David?" Oh well, hopefully he will figure it out as he gets older. If you want to learn more about St. David's day because your ancestors are from Wales, too, you can click here.

Randy enjoying a welsh cake!

We love (okay, like) St. David's Day!

A Fun Night

We went to see The Cat in the Hat show down at the Scera with Angee and her family. We had an awesome time. The show was great and we had good friends sharing popcorn with us! We even ran into some other people from our neighborhood that sat right next to us. We love going to the theater and this show was perfect even for Seth. It was so fun!

A rare family photo because we had a friend to take it!

They warmed the audience up with the hat song from the Cat in the Hat Movie.

After the show you can visit with members from the cast.
The Cat in the Hat was obviously our favorite!

Another Jazz Game

Randy's sister generously gave us some Jazz tickets that she wasn't going to be able to use. We were so excited to have the chance to go to another game. We didn't tell our boys we were going until we made them put their Jazz shirts on and then they got SUPER excited.

We've been to 3 Jazz games now, and we've never seen them lose. This one was a rout as they beat Phoenix by 25 points. They shot 56% for the game and had 7 players in double figures! Mark was really disappointed that Gordon Hayward missed a triple double by one assist.

We sat on the end, but with the new screens, there isn't a bad seat.

Mark and Dax are always up for a Jazz game!

Seth and Mom love a Jazz game, too.

Seth was thrilled to catch a Jazz basketball--
even though he had no idea what it was. 

Don't mess with Seth's popcorn...

A Mini Vacation

Okay, it is March now...time to replace the Valentine's Day post. The weekend after Valentine's Day we headed down to Delta for the Snow Goose festival. (All external links are to our other blog.) Every year snow geese migrate back north and stop in Delta for a few weeks. Randy and I went to this festival before we had children, but we haven't been back since. We had an amazing time! The boys loved sitting and watching the geese, even Seth. We also visited a few other sites including Fort Deseret and Great Stone Face. We just stayed one night, but it was a fun adventure for our family. The boys were disappointed that the hotel pool was an outdoor pool so it wasn't open, but they still had fun in our little hotel room. My favorite part of the trip was when the snow geese (all 4000 of them) flew over our heads and Dax said, "This is the greatest moment ever." I hope they will always love our family adventures.

We stopped at this museum in Delta--we can't miss a museum.

It is awesome to see so many geese all together.

This is when they flew over us while we were sitting on the edge of the lake.

A selfie of Seth and me...we did a little bit of wandering.

He is always ready to cheese it up!

They are so excited to stay in the hotel.

Mark loves to wear his mom's old BYU beanie.

Mom and the boys at Fort Deseret. As you can see, dad took this picture,
so mom's eyes are close and Dax is looking somewhere else. Oh well.

Do you think this looks like Joseph Smith?

Mark and Dax hiked up a pretty steep hill to see Great Stone Face close up.