Bo Bear

Since the beginning of time, kids at Ellie's elementary school have got to take turns taking BO(prounced Beau, or BOW) Bear home for the weekend.
He is their Class bear. When it is your turn to take him home, you're suppose to do fun activities with him. Write in his journal about what you did over the weekend and then you get to present it to the class on Monday.

Quite some time ago, it was Ellie's turn she was very excited, he did many ***activities, and Ellie's sweet Mom found him some work clothes to do chores in and even knitted him a *hat to keep his furry ears warm.

Taking a ride on MayBell. (A life long dream)

*see HAT

Collecting eggs








*** Don't even ask me about how nasty I think this idea is, and about the places this bear has probably been, not to mention the germs and nastiness that has been shared (we tried to do our part, hehe ;) ) but HEY, the kids LOVE it!!

p.s. please forgive me if I have already posted these pics, I honestly couldn't remember.

Happy Easter 2012!!!

I tried real hard to get a nice pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes, but these are the best I could do. Ellie wanted to bounce, James wanted to hold Laurens hand, and Lauren wanted out of there... oh well. They're candid.

Lauren loves to play the piano, she always wants to sit on my lap while I play.

I tried so hard to get a picture of Lauren standing up in her dress. But she would laugh and run away every time. I even gave her a cookie, but I didn't win.

We ate smoked Steelhead, pasta, and french bread for Easter dinner, it was tasty.





We had our Easter egg hunt last weekend, to keep this weekend just for real Easter stuff. The kids had a lot of fun. I think Lauren found the most eggs with Daddy's help.

Mini Vacation#3

The kids were enjoying Grandma's house, so Barry and I took a rare opportunity to spend some alone time together.

We went to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. It was awesome!!!!
Definitely on my list of top 5 dates ever.


The building and exhibits are cool,

but this time we drove out through the refuge with our binoculars. It was absolutely beautiful and so peaceful.
We spent a little over two hours and saw tons of cool birds. I wanted to see a Great Blue Heron most of all, and I got my wish. Barry spotted him and he was very close to the road and truly magnificent.

a white faced Ibis



SO if you're ever driving through Brigham City and have some extra time, don't miss the Bear River Bird Refuge.

This is an Avocet, we saw hundreds of these beautiful birds.














***yes I borrowed the pictures, mine didn't turn out.


P.S. I almost forgot to tell you.

Recently we found some orphaned baby birds. ...You know they were just sitting there in their nest, and the mother was nowhere around, even when we called.
So we decided to bring them home with us. I'm sure that's okay and everything. ;)

I think they're a rare breed of something, Barry says he's pretty confident they're a decedent of the Meleagris gallopavo.

I think time will tell.

Mini Vacation #2

For Mini Vacation #2, we visited Massacre Rocks State Park, Registration Rock and American Falls Dam.

Ellie woke up still feeling rather sick on Tuesday, she threw up twice before breakfast. Barry felt a bit bad for her, so he asked her what she wanted to do for the day.
She surprised us by saying she wanted to go HIKING.
SO hiking we went, and she only threw up once more and that was in the parking lot of Ridleys before we even made it out of town. :)

We hiked out to the overlook.

The gap in the cliff, is where an ancient waterfall, drainage from Lake Bonneville, flowed down into the reservoir

These rocks were carried and placed here by strong water currents.

My cute kids.

Ellie asked me. "Mom, can I climb that?" pointing up to the rocks. "I said, I have no idea, can you??"
Yep she can. Being a climber wasn't something I ever expected of Ellie, but she has found something she loves.

Even Lauren wanted to get in on the climbing.

Always a smile ready from my girl.

The kids and Barry went canoeing, it was a little cold for Lauren and I, so we stayed on the dock.

I thought these windmills were cool. Barry said the big ones cost more than 2 million dollars each and supply about 50 homes worth of electricity ...if they're running. Good thing the government subsidizes them ...with our tax dollars.

This silo is out in the middle of the reservoir, we wondered the story behind it.

American falls is all dammed off. It's rather ugly, but an impressive sight. The kids missed it, because they were all tired and asleep.


We went and saw registration rock, sorry no pictures. It was really neat to see the names carved from the 1800's. Even their writing looked different. A 7 year-old boy sketched a drawing of an Indian on a rock and signed and dated it. Later as an adult, a sculptor, he went back to inspect his drawing and signed and dated it again. -sorry no pic, couldn't get the flash right.

We had fried chicken, apples and corn chips for lunch, ...well except for Ellie, I let her lick some of the salt off the chips, because her stomach was still kindof feeling queasy, and I didn't want partially digested chicken all over the car. Aren't I nice?? :)

We came home and the kids said they wanted to go down to Utah for our next adventure, so we quickly packed a few things, forgetting most everything, and we're off on another adventure....

Sunday spring break

For Sunday of our spring break.

We made cinnamon rolls and invited some friends over to play games sunday evening.

Monday
We stayed home. Nobody was feeling very well. We rented a couple of movies, including the new Muppets Movie. We stayed close to home and ate warm cinnamon rolls on a cold and rainy day.



P.S The movie quote about the egg was from The Music Man.