Category: family

E’s day out

I didn’t get a chance to post these pictures yet: last week when Ken and Mindy and their kids were here we went to a local “farm” and then stopped at a park. It was a nice outing.

E anxiously waiting for a pony ride.

E enjoying said pony ride.

E and N saying ‘hi’ to some horses.

E swinging with his cousin C.

We’re looking forward to spending more time with Ken and Mindy and their family: in a few weeks we’re going to fly up to Seattle and stay with them for a weekend and then E and I are going to visit my family for a week while N returns to work. It’s going to be a fun trip–I love visiting Washington. I miss living there.

E’s First Trip to the Zoo

We’ve been having some pretty unusual (for Utah) weather lately: we’ve had rain and/or a thunderstorm almost every day for the last week and a half. I’ve kind of enjoyed it but it has put a damper on taking E around outside.

So when the weather was nice on Friday and Miranda called about going to the zoo we jumped at the chance. Jan, her boys, and my mom and Steven also thought it sounded like fun and they ended up coming too. Half of Salt Lake also showed up; it was super crowded.

But it was really fun. For E the highlights were attending the bird show (I highly recommend it.) and riding the carousel and little train.

E and me on the carousel and my brother Steven in the background.
E LOVED it and cried when it was time to get off.

Us on the train ride. I know he looks terrified, but he was just startled by some overgrown branches that whipped out at us. He actually really enjoyed the ride and kept saying “choo, choo!”

After a while E zonked out in his stroller.

It was a fun day but was definitely a bit of an outing. The zoo is kind of far from our house to go regularly but I’d like to take E back at least one more time this summer when N can come with us.

Lumberjacks!

We first heard about Timbersports on the Colbert Report last year.

I thought the whole thing was oddly fascinating in the same way that I’m intrigued by traditional aspects of small town Utah life like rodeos and parades. I didn’t grow up in Utah and to be honest I don’t want to live here forever. But I like experiencing the local flavor while I have the chance.

And I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for festivals. So on Saturday I took E and went with my mom, brother, and nephews to the wild outdoors festival.

The lumberjack part of the festival turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. They were taping it for ESPN and so there was a lot of waiting around for the cameras to get set up. I was hoping to see the events where the competitors climb up super tall poles or balance on floating log booms but we only saw them chopping logs in half with hand axes. Which I guess is actually pretty impressive, but was kind of meh to watch.

Manly men at work.

The best part of the event were the Splash Dogs, dogs that competed to jump the longest distance into a pool of water. E loves dogs and freaked out in joy every time he saw one jump.

On of the splash dogs in mid jump.

A splash puppy in training.

There were a couple of other things to do beside watch the dogs and lumberjacks.

Cowboy A in training.

J taking a turn at the bow.

Wrapping it up and heading home.

It was fun, but I probably won’t go again unless they drop the price. It was $15 for adults, $10 for kids which was simply way too much. The mechanical bull, the archery station and the splash dogs were pretty much all there was to do and watch besides the timbersports. More than a third of the grounds were devoted to showcasing boats and tents and other merchandise that we weren’t interested in. To be fair, I don’t think we were really the target demographic but I still think admission should have been half the price they were charging.

Maybe we’ll have more luck at some of the other festivals this summer. There’s a Scottish Festival this coming up weekend and tickets are more reasonably priced. Maybe I can talk N into going–we’ll see.

Jumping!

My mom and brother Steven are in town visiting my sister Jan for a while and so E and I went over to Jan’s house yesterday to hang out for a bit. Sadly, E had apparently been traumatized by us dropping him off at Jan’s when we went to the Camera Obscura concert earlier this week because as soon as I pulled into the driveway he started crying, convinced that I was going to leave him.

E’s cousins A and J are really great with him. Nine year-old A wanted to cheer up E and so he built him a rattle out of Legos which was a big hit. But E cheered up even more when we went outside to play. He loved bopping around on the trampoline.

His cousins were really good about making sure E was safe on the trampoline.

J and E.

A and my mom with E.

J’s Birthday Bash

My nephew J turned seven last week and so E and I went to his birthday party.

The birthday boy and his cake.

The gift-opening frenzy.

The birthday boy’s brother, A. (I have no idea where he learned to make that face, but the little ham did it every time I snapped a picture of him.)

The party was held at one of those inflatable toy places. After a little while E got pretty freaked out by all the kids shrieking and running around and by the huge bouncy castles and slides. And surprisingly, me taking him down the down the big 25-foot tall slide did nothing to improve the situation. (Yeah, I know. But I thought E might like it; after all, he loves the slide on our swing set…yep, I think this little escapade just sealed my nomination for Mother of the Year.)

“The horror, the horror (of the bouncy slide)!”

But E quickly cheered up when we went into the party room to have cake and open presents. Mostly because I got him a balloon to carry around. E LOVES balloons.

Relaxing in the birthday boy’s special chair while the other kids ate pizza.

The balloons contined to be a big hit once we were home and also throughout dinner.