Pirate's Cove...again

Our friends, Jed, Alisha, and their boys River and Diesel, invited us down (a couple weeks ago) to Pirate's Cove near Las Vegas, and we coudn't turn them down. Ben (and River) missed a couple days of school, and their first lacrosse game, but as you will see, it was all worth it. We went to Pirate's Cove for a day back in June as we began our Route 66 trip, so we were excited (esp. the boys!!) to spend more time playing there.

We picked up Ben from school on Wednesday and headed down. It was a long drive, but nothing that a little Scooby Doo and Indana Jones couldn't handle. The boys fell asleep about 15 minutes before we arrived...at midnight...and this was the beginning of being thrown completely off their sleeping schedule! Photo 2 shows the entrance to Pirate's Cove--you can see our car in there, just in front of our casita. (I took a ton of pictures, and I couldn't resist putting quite a few in.)

Bright and early the boys were up at 6AM the next morning!! (It never fails on the days they can sleep in they are up early, and then it's like trying to wake the dead on school mornings) Each morning they got up a few minutes later, so by the last day they were up at 7am-nice! We ate breakfast every morning outside, overlooking Lake Mead. It was a gorgeous sunrise on this first morning!!

From sun up to sun down the boys made the most of their time at Pirate's--they found some lifejackets, and were off to play. Jake jumped off the pirate ship over and over, which was pretty impressive for a four-year old, Will liked checking out all the pirate stuff around, and Ben headed up the mast first thing to jump in...

Photo 1: rules of the mast. Photo 2: if you look close you can see Ben standing on the mast, trying to psyche himself up to jump off. Photo 3: Ben's view looking down from where he was standing on the mast--with a skeleton pirate heading up to get him! Photo 4: the jump!!

Just some cool pics of Will and Daren jumping off the rocks.

Most of Jed's family was at Pirate's Cove as well. It was fun to meet them and hang out with them, and there were plenty of kids around to play with. One evening I crashed the girl's "Hannah Montana party," and after I painted Grace and Addison's nails, they painted mine and brushed my hair. It was fun to play with them, and I'm pretty sure it will be quite a while before something like that happens to me again. One of the highlights was dinner every night. Jed has turned into the master pizza maker, using the pizza oven they have there. I didn't get any pictures of the pizzas because I was busy making salads and such, but they were very creative and very good!

I'd have to say that, without a doubt, Will's favorite thing there is the ice cream machine. If ever there was a time you couldn't find Will, he would be found loading up another ice cream cone, and he got quite good at it! You can see what eating too much ice cream can do to you, though!! That's why he followed up a cone with playing in the water. He loved the rope swing, and still sang the Indiana Jones song every time he was on it.

If ice cream was Will's weakness, this was mine--the slushie machines!! All-you-can-drink for days on end. Does it get any better?!

On Saturday afternoon Jake, Ashley, Ben, Jackson, and Matt decided to all jump off the pirate ship at the same time--what a blast! Daren and I did this too with all our boys, but no pictures.

While the kids were jumping off ships, the big boys were hanging out inside the cove watching a little college football, and Will was enjoying his own free time while not being heavily supervised so he could finish off the rest of the Doritos...

...and everyone else was playing in the outside section of the cove. It was a glorious day!

Later in the afternoon Jed's mom, Joyce, and Leah put together a treasure hunt for the kids. The hunt took them all over Pirate's Cove, and in the end was the big prize--skulls! (What else?!)

We popped a bunch of popcorn for a late night movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. It is one of Will's favorite movies right now, and he does a mean "Jack the Pumpkin King" face! He knows all kinds of songs from the movie--"This is Halloween, this is Halloween, trick-or-treat." Or, "What's this? What's this?" He cracks us up!!

Ben got to sleep outside with River, Diesel, Leah, and I'm not sure who else, on the last night there. What a beautiful view to wake up to!! This picture is Diesel and Ben.

So on Saturday night Ben and Jake were messing around near the waters by the pirate ship and the mast. Jake thought he would be funny by pushing Ben off the rocks into the water, and as Ben was coming to the surface of the water, Jake jumped in right on top of him! Their heads collided and this is the result of what happened. Photo 1 is Jake the next morning--he looked like Igor or something, it was so puffy. A few days later the swelling had gone down, and all that was left was a black and blue eye. School pictures were last Wednesday--looking good!!

The following pictures are some of my favorites I took around Pirate's Cove. I could take pictures there forever because there are so many fun things to see:

Photo 1 is standing on the mast looking toward the pirate ship and to the cove just past it. Photo 2 is standing on the opposite end looking back at first the cove, then the pirate ship, and then the mast. You can just click on any of the pictures to get a better look at them. Our casita is on the top left of the picture.

The band and the flowers. These beautiful flowers lined the sides of the stairs, and got to see them a lot with all the stairs (there are 4 levels of stairs) I climbed up and down there! Seriously, it didn't matter that I didn't go running there because I'm sure this was a better workout--I must have climbed the stairs from the cove up to our casita (and the slushie machine) at least 75 times!!

Top of the mast, pirate dude on the side of our casita, and the rack of lifejackets

I loved all the treasure boxes there! This is just a sampling of them.

The last photo is the entrance to our casita--I just wanted to remember it.

And then it was back to reality--thank you so much Jed, Alisha, River and Diesel!! We had a blast there.

boys and their weapons

In the past few days Will has re-discovered his Star Wars gun he got for Christmas last year. It shoots off those nerf-type bullets, and much to his dismay, he could only find a couple of them around the house. So, today I took Will and Jake to Target to get another pack of them--of course, we did end up in the Halloween section, and we'll just say that I could have spent a lot more time and money there than I did, but that's a whole other story.
Will broke open his new bag of "bullets" and started shooting at the TV. Then he went outside with Jake and their friend, Nathan, and a few minutes later I heard something keep hitting the windows at the back of the house. It didn't take long to figure out what was going on...

What is it about boys and weapons?! They couldn't get them to stick to the windows, so I taught them the trick about licking the end before they put it in the gun. Wasn't that nice of me?!! It was a success.

utah state fair 2008

This year we made it to the Utah State Fair after all--we went on Tuesday afternoon with Jake's new friend, Will, from his Nursery 4 class at school, and his mom Jessica. Since his brother, Will, can't be in his class this year, it's only fitting that there is another Will in his class!

We met up at the ferris wheel, and that ended up being the first ride they went on. Before Daren and I had kids, we used to go to the state fair every year, but mostly in the evenings to see the concerts...oh, how times have changed! We saw some great concerts back in the day, like Toby Keith, Martina McBride, .38 Special, Bellamy Brothers, etc., and now I don't even recognize anyone on the ticket, except for Veggie Tales which was in concert that night. I actually would've liked to take the boys to it, but that was too much for one day for us. Also, Daren and I never paid attention to all the rides available, but I'm sure they have always been there...and I'm sure they have always been a rip-off! I hate reinforcing their ridiculous prices, but the boys had to go on some rides.

This is a picture of brother Will, Jake, and friend Will. We go through this same name game in our family because I'm married to Daren, and my brother Darren married Heather, so our get togethers can get to be quite interesting. One of the best things EVER at the fair was the "Little Hand on the Farm" activity for children. It's a hand-on exhibit to help children understand the agriculture connection between the farm and the grocery store, and the boys had a blast!

Jake on the farm, and Will heading toward the apple orchard.

They learned about planting seeds, and then got to harvest some on the other side. In the second photo Will is gassing up his "tractor" to take to the store. It was such a great exhibit for the boys and they really had a great time.

We took time out to see the gi-normous pigs and the "cow-wash"

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this cute little cowgirl, who was helping out her parents with their cows.

The boys cooled off with slushies, and soon our time was over at the fair. Thanks to Jessica and Will for a great time at the fair, and for making a whole new set of memories!!

p.s. The new logo on the side for the "Trivia for Charity" is just a fun website that one of Daren's firefighter friend's, Daniel, created. It's fun to play and learn and earn money for different charities, so if you get a chance give it a try. Good luck Daniel!!

back to school...and other fun stuff! GO UTES!!

We woke up to a very stormy Labor Day morning last Monday. We drove to Morgan for the annual Labor Day Mortenson reunion, but on our way we stopped at Brenda's for haircuts. When we pulled up in front of their house, we saw hail gathered in the corners of the roof! Is that considered the first snow of the season?! It was a chilly day, but we have since pulled out of it. Thanks for the cute haircuts Brenda! The boys will take any excuse to play with cousins, even if it is haircuts...

...and then it was on to Morgan to play with more cousins. We forgot our yellow dump trucks, but Brandon and Lori remembered theirs, so at least there were a few to go around. That's kind of a big deal to forget to bring the dump trucks to a family gathering!! Daren and his brothers played football for a while, with an interruption by Will showing off his fishing stick/whip (not sure which one it was this day). After all the playing and eating was an aution to end the reunion. They do this each year to raise money for the next reunion. Some years we have gotten some real good stuff, and other years are kind of a dud (like this one).

Cousins in camouflage with their trucks--Aydan and Jake

BACK TO SCHOOL!

And just like that summer was over and it was back to school!! Alicia took this picture of Jake, Ben, Diesel (his first year of preschool), and River looking out the back of the bus--they have claimed this part of the bus as "theirs."

This year we had to separate Will and Jake, and I have to say that Will is taking it much better than I thought he would. He loved riding the bus last year, but he loves that his new school is the "apple school." I guess it's pretty common with twins to find one more dominating than the other, and that was Jake in the classroom last year. Will really didn't learn a whole lot because Jake would answer most of the questions for him, thus Will has a little catching up to do. Newcastle seems like a good school for Will, and he really likes going there (today was his first day). It's nice to have a little bit of free time for myself, but along with going back to school is back to homework. Trying to get Ben to do his homework has always been a major battle, but he is showing signs of getting better at doing it. The one thing he loves is reading. No wonder he has such an active imagination!!

So Ben is in 2nd grade and Jake is in Nursery 4's (M, W, F, 8-11). Ben was so excited to go back to school! Ben loves his new teacher, Mrs. Duke, and his new class. For some reason he loves her hall passes, and since we couldn't find any more at Target (where she told him she got them), he decided to make up his own. On Saturday he and a bunch of the neighborhood gang played school all day, complete with a principal, teacher, and students (and hall passes!). They really got into it and had a great time.

In Young Women's at church I am an advisor with the laurels, the 16 and 17-year-old girls, and I love it! They are so much fun to be around. For our activity this week on Wednesday, we went rock climbing in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We got Tiffany's dad, Dennis, who is an avid rock climber, to take us up there. He was so good and very patient with all of us. We not only did rock climbing going up...

but also a little repelling off the top going down. It was a little scary looking down from the top!

I even learned how to belay someone! I have been wanting to learn this for a long time, but dang--it is hard work!! My arm was so sore after just a couple of people.

Nan and I went repelling down the mountain at the same time. It's hard to tell in the second picture what the mountain was really like, but we are standing straight out and there are other girl's at the bottom. It was so much fun!!

At the end of the evening Dennis gathered all his stuff from up top, and then came down the mountain facing down, as you can see in the picture. It was like he was spiderman or something!
And last, but definitely not least, our beloved Utah Utes had their first home football game of the season on Saturday night. They beat Michigan at Michigan last week, which was a sweet way to start the season. We have been season ticket holders for a few years now, and the games are so fun to go to--plus I have learned a lot about football from the guy who can't stop talking behind us! The Utes had another impressive win, this one over UNLV, 42-21 and are ranked #22 in the polls. Ahh, it's nice to have a good team again, but we stuck with them even when they weren't so good. GO UTES!!