Gone But Not Forgotten

A couple of months ago we lost a good friend of ours. He leaves behind his wife and two boys. His friends and family organized a day to celebrate his life yesterday. During the day they had a party for the whole family. They had 2 huge blow up jumphouses and other activities for the kids and served lunch. Then last night they had a party for the adults at the Eagles Lodge. They had a live band and all kinds of raffles. They had raffle donations from businesses and individuals all over the valley. Businesses donated discounts for meals, free massages, all kinds of stuff and others donated things like homemade quilts. Beaver Mountain Ski Resort donated a pair of skis to give away and also gave their boys season passes, because they love to ski and go nearly every weekend in the wintertime. They also sold t-shirts, hats and bracelets with his name and picture on them and all the money raised throughout the day will go to his wife and boys. During the day the boys were there hanging out and last night Shelly came to the party. It was great to see them! Chad won a pistol worth $800, he was so shocked to win it! It has "Rock On Big John"engraved on the side.

The girls in the jumphouse

The gun that Chad won

It was definetly an amazing day the celebrate such an awesome man and it was great to know we could help out the family he left behind. We'll miss you man! Till we meet again.....

John Morris

May 30, 1968 - July 26, 2008

http://www.rockonbigjohn.com/

Finger painting

Savanah came to play yesterday and I helped the girls paint trees with fall colors. we painted their arms and made a tree trunk and then their hands were the limbs then they finger, or sometimes their whole hands :), painted the leaves with fall colors on their trees. They had a lot of fun with the paint, and boy was it messy! Brooklyn tried to copy what I did to help make the tree trunk and rubbed dark green paint all the way up her arm. Kenzie also got a little carried away the first time around and painted her whole paper and lost track of the tree so she got to paint her hand and arm twice.

Brookyln hard at work...

Kenzie, pround of her work...

Savanah wasn't to sure about it at first. She just looked at the paint at first then tried to wipe it off on her leg and the table and chair but after I showed her how it makes a "pretty picture" she loved it.

I didn't realize until after that the flash wasn't on on my camera so they came out weird. I had my hands full with all three of them painting and noticed after I had them all cleaned up that didn't come out very good. Anyhow, here's their masterpieces!

P.S. Thanks for the idea Lauren

Last week of Summer?!?!?

Knowing that this is officially the last week of summer since fall starts on Monday and the weather is supposed to change a great deal this weekend we made a couple trips to the park to play this week. Tuesday me and the girls went to lunch and then to the park with Michelle and Davin.

Kenzie

Brooklyn showing off her bellybutton :)

Davin, Brooklyn & McKenzie playing in the trees

While I have to say that fall is probably my favorite season, (because I love Halloween, the leaves changing and cooler weather and also because it means Christmas is not far away!!!) I am sad that summer is coming to a close. We had a lot of fun this summer, I seriously think we did something fun almost every weekend of it! It seemed to go by WAY too fast.

Hogle Zoo

We finally made the trip to Hogle Zoo Friday. I have been wanting to go all summer and we finally made it. It was me and the girls and Uncle Clint. Also Grandma came along and Judy, Courtney and Jake. We had so much fun! Kenzie loved seeing all the animals we read about in books and see on tv "for real". Brooklyn was just in awe of everything and got so excited about each new animal. Since she's not much for talking, unless SHE wants to so it was mostly uhh's and ooo's but still very cute. They did shows all day and had the animal do tricks. They had the penguins dive for fish, the elephant showing off its tusks and playing soccer (Kenzie thought that was so funny!) Then there was a bird show, they had all kinds of birds doing amazing things, they were taking donations to make the zoo better and they had a bird that would fly and get the money from your hand and take it back to the trainer and put it in his pocket or in a donation box. Others would swoop through the audience, so close one got Grandma's hair! We took a break and had a picnic lunch then off to see the rest. The girls all loved the giraffes because we went inside and one little baby was eating so we were able to get SOOO close to it. Then they had this house called Grandma's house that's decorated like houses would be in the countries where the big "cats" came from, they had drums and we practically had to tear the kids away from them. While we were in there Brooklyn is looking out the window at a lynx and it walks right up to the window and they just sat and stared at each other. We saved the gorillas and Orangutans for last and spent more time there than at any other exhibit. There was an Orangutan family and the mom and baby were hilarious playing together. Then in another window the HUGE Orangutan was sitting right up by the window. Again Brooklyn was face to face with an animal, I think it was the longest I've ever seen Brooklyn sit still :) We would walk away and she couldn't help but go back to that one over and over! We also rode the train and the new carousel. On the carousel both girls giggled the entire time. I think we made it to see everything there at some point. It was definetly a fun day, one we'll have to do again! I loved seeing them so happy! Here is a slideshow of our day.