Miriam's Birthday Party

In June Miriam had her first birthday party ever.  Now that she was in school and had friends and it was her turn we did one for her.  We just met at the school playground, we played took a break for snacks and a quick snack and cake, and played some more.  It was easy and fun.  Miriam loves elephants so we had a slight safari theme.  We gave them animal headbands and they made animal necklaces.

Miriam Graduates preschool

So Miriam finished preschool.  And she got to wear a cap and gown and sing on the stage (with her class) and get a diploma.

She is the one in red further back in line, the phone stopped taking pictures when she actually got her diploma.

There are a ton of kids in her ward that are Miriam's age. And several of them went to the same preschool though most of them were in different classes.  Here are all the ward kids that went to that preschool minus one.

Fishing in Utah

One of the last things we did in Utah was that the grandparents took the kids fishing.  Well Joshua and Minna. Miriam was more interested in playing at the playground with her Aunts and Uncles. 

And actually my parents did most of the fishing. My mom evaluated what should be done and my dad put the bait on the hooks. My kids just basically reeled in the fish. 

The kids loved it though and I said they could take fishing lessons when they can bait their own hook.

What the kids did while we were in Zions

When Brian and I went to Zions the kids stayed home with my parents and my sister Emily.  My mom really likes puppets and the kids enjoy her hobby.  She got this puppet tent and the kids put on some shows.

Emily helped them learn science.

And then they got to go to a BYU baseball and women's softball game. The games were going on at the same time, so they went back and forth.

While in Utah we Rode the Horses

Minna wrote a report on this for school so I am just going to post some pictures and use her words.

I will keep Minna's spelling the same. I may add some notes for clarity.

hors back rideing in Utah by Minna Nix

I went to Utah with my famly.  When I got to Utah I went hors back rideing.  I rode Zowy.  Zowy is a nine yeerold [year old] horse. I trotted with grampo [grandpa] and Zowy.  Then Nathen led me on Zowy.  Me, mommy,  Joshua, Nathen, daddy and Miriam past echuther [each other]. Then grampo wold [ either walked or held] Zowy.  Then grampo trotted Zowy again.  Then Hether took a picture of me and Zowy.  Then I rode destny [this horses' real name is Dixie] with dad.  I got to get rings on a stick.  Then Hether took a picksher (picture) of me and destny.  I loved it in Utah.

Utah Trip Rock climbing

Because I am too lazy to put all the pictures in order we are doing Rock Climbing next even though it was one of the last things we did. 

Their rock climbing gym made me nervous because we had to tie our own knots.  I kept making Brian check the knots. 

Emily and I got to do the demonstration climb. 

Miss Minna loves to climb. 

Her favorite thing this trip is she went upstairs were you can do bouldering, where the walls were shorter so you didn't have to tie off, but they had ledges and things.

She would work the same part over and over again going just a little bit farther until she could make it over the edge.

Brian had to help her down because she is so short her dangling to get down still leaves a lot of space between her and the ground.

Joshua enjoyed his climbing too. 

Joshua also did some bouldering.

Miriam's favorite part was this kiddy wall she could go up and down and back and forth on. 

I like this picture of her looking up too.

And here is one of Brian doing a ledge.

And thanks to my sister Heather for the picture taking.

Utah Trip Zion National Park

The end of April we packed up a ton of stuff including an entire small bag of books (we flew southwest so free bags)

This trip's blog posts will not be in any particular order.  But just kind of how it happens.  So anyway one of the first things we did was leave the kids in the care of my parents and sister and go to Zion National Park for a couple of days.  We first went and visited my grandfather and his wife.  We spent the afternoon and evening with them.  We first went to the Saint George temple.  It was my first time being in one of the older temples, and my grandfather had worked there for 17 years so he enjoyed showing us the details of the temple.

Then we went and toured the house where Brigham Young lived when he would come down to St. George in the winters and to see how the temple building was progressing.  Brian really liked the tree surgery they did to keep this tree alive.

 Then we went to Zions.  We stayed in a cute little inn right outside of Zions.  The owner suggested that we ride the shuttle up and bike down stopping to do our hikes on the way down. (Zions does not allow cars up, you have to shuttle in to the hikes you want to do).  We weren't too excited about it, but after thinking about it decided to try.

We rented the bikes and the bike rental people said to at least bike past the first few shuttle stops because there is a really long line for the shuttle and there is an awesome bike trail.  So we did, and the trail went right by the river it was really pretty.

The weather that day was beautiful and it was a really pretty time of year.  Even the cactus were blooming.

Well we were enjoying bike riding so much that we decided to bike all the way up to the top.  Its not very steep and there was hardly any traffic on the roads, mostly the very full shuttles, and we could stop whenever we wanted to take pictures.  It was about 7 miles up the canyon, and 7 easy miles down.  We didn't do all the hikes we had planned because biking took longer but it was so worth it.

We stopped and did the hike at the very top of the road.  And then we lost the bike lock key and had to hunt for it, fortunately we found it after some praying and frantic searching and were still able to enjoy the hike.

The squirrels on that hike were obviously very well fed from people, they were fat and would let you get ridiculously close to them.

The second hike we did was the Emerald Pool trail.  We hiked up to the third one which let us get some closer up views with the rocks and see some amazing views.  It was chilly up there too, it was quite and elevation change.  Actually for a while I wondered why I was getting so tired and having such a hard time breathing then I remembered I am not used to high elevations anymore.

By this time we were pretty worn out and it was getting late so we biked the rest of the way down and headed back to the inn.  We finished the night with a delicious dinner from the local steakhouse and then went to go see the stars come up that night.  It was an awesome anniversary trip.