Friday, June 27, 2014

Calderwood cousin fun

My brother Carson drove into town last weekend with his family for their summer vacation.  Our kids love to get together with cousins and do stuff, so we have planned a few fun activities this week that they have enjoyed.  Saturday night we went to Draper park.  We ate pizza and let the kids play.  It's funny how there were ample options of swings, slides, and other playground equipment, but invariably the Calderwood kids all ended up down in the ditch playing in the water and mud.  They were in heaven.


I had work off on Monday so we went to lunch together then headed over to the new Thanksgiving Point museum.

It's a very hands on museum that is great for wiggly, rambunctious kids like ours.  They all got a kick out of the Water Works section.



Tucker and Beckham dressed up in outfits of their choosing.

Outside they had fun riding the zipline.

On Wednesday Lisa met up with my mom and they took the kids to the aquarium in Draper.  That place never gets old for our kids.

Aubrey just loves having Aspen around.  In a family full of boys, she is really enjoying having another girl to play with.




We took Caeden and Aspen back up to Midway with us that night for a sleep over.  The next day Lisa took them to see the Zebra and Buffalo in Park City.  Always a favorite with kids.




It's been a fun week for the cousins to get together.  Next up, a weekend at Sand Hollow state park!

Monday, June 16, 2014

Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day and I got spoiled with a delicious breakfast and gifts from the kids.  Tucker put together a booklet of some drawings he made of some of my favorite activities.  It was so creative and fun. I love it.  I'm sure I will look at it years from now with great pride. After church we invited up my parents, Lisa's parents and her grandpa Foster for a fun dinner.  I ate so much I had to extend my belt another notch.  It was so delicious.  We had thick, juicy hamburgers, fresh corn on the cob, an awesome fruit salad that Lisa's mom brought, and a yummy desert that my mom brought.  I wish I had an extra stomach for moments like that.


We all had a great time talking and hanging out.  The kids especially loved their popsicles.  Blake's turned his entire mouth and lips blue.  Funny kid.


Here's a photo of all the dad's that came.  Lisa's dad, her grandpa, my dad, and me.

And a picture of Lisa with her dad and grandpa.

I gave my dad some elk steaks for his gift and Lisa gave her dad this piano quilt that she has been making. Both presents were big hits.

Lisa and the kids bought me this cordless dustbuster to use in our trailer and boat to clean up all the inevitable crumbs that our kids create.

After dinner we went and walked through the new home that is being built in our neighborhood.  The kids thought that was so cool.  

We are grateful for our dad's and for all their sacrifices throughout our life and their great examples.  Happy Father's day to our dads!

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Utah Lake

The weather around here has been awesome the past few days, so we decided to take advantage of it and go boating at Utah Lake.  Even though we have two lakes within 10 minutes of our house (Deer Creek and Jordanelle) we decided to head down to Utah Lake on Friday to take advantage of the warmer waters.  The water temps are currently about 10-15 degrees warmer at Utah Lake than our local lakes this time of year.
We headed to the Provo Marina and launched the boat.  There were hardly any crowds.  I back the boat up while Lisa drives the boat.  She's got it down pat now after some practice.  We did some swimming and practiced the kids newest swimming skills from their recent swim class.

We busted out the tube and had fun with the kids. (check out "Y" mountain in the background)

 Tucker is hard to knock off the tube.  That little kid has claws of steel and does not let go.  It's funny to see him out there.  Lisa tried just about everything, but to no avail.

Aubrey and Cole decided they wanted to start showing off and perform some stunts while they were out there.

We set the timer on the camera and took a family photo.

I had work off on Monday so we headed back down to Utah Lake that afternoon.  We met up with Lisa's parents at the marina and had a great evening together.  We bought some kiddie trainer skis for the kids and decided to put them to use after practicing on the lawn with the kids a couple days prior. I would float out in the water with the kids to help them float upright and keep the ski tips up. It's kind of difficult to do when you only weigh 40-50 pounds.  Once the boat started I would let them go and they took care of the rest.  Tucker, Aubrey and Cole all did great. (Blake isn't quite ready to give it a try yet).
Ken used our camera and was the photographer for the evening.  He took some fantastic photos.  You need to click on them to enlarge them and get the full effect of the telephoto lens.

Here's a photo of Tucker concentrating hard.

Aubrey was funny.  She would look down at her skis, then back at me, then down at her skis.  She seemed to be in awe that she was actually skiing.  She is our smiley little girl and always has a grin on her face.


Cole was so excited to do what his older brother and sister were doing.  He was a champ and got right up.


After the 3 older kids all got up we decided to get the tube out.  Cole got to go out with Lisa's mom first. He had fun with his grandma being towed around at a leisure pace.

So we decided to speed it up and make it a little more exciting.  I love their faces in this one.

Then Tucker and Cole went for quite a while.

Blake isn't a fan of swimming by himself and still isn't too comfortable in the water, but he loves to ride on the tube with Lisa.

After all the kids had their fill of tubing, Lisa decided to christen her new water ski that she got for mother's day.  Ken captured a neat photo of her intensely digging in to get up.

She got up, did a lap, then decided that was a good first one for the year.

Then we just swam for a while and the kids convinced grandpa to get in the water.  The grand kids hold extreme influence on their grandpa.  There's not much he won't do for them.  They loved swimming around and playing with him.

We've been having fun so far and look forward to more warm, sunny days together on the lake.