Leavenworth

Still Catchin' Up.......Leavenworth

Here are some pics from our trip up to Leavenworth with my parents. It was so fun and all the credit goes to Rob for the fabulous idea and lodging arrangements. We had a blast. I can't remember the last time I saw both my parents playing putt putt golf and laughing at themselves. We had the best German food, surprising I know, and we enjoyed all the amenities of the Enzian Inn. Golf, swimming, racquetball, basketball, hot tubbin, a featured piano player for the evening, Bavarian breakfast buffet, ....even a morning horn player complete with liederhausen which unfortunately we missed. But we will definitely stay there again.

We hit the shops while Rob and the boys went to the fish hatchery. Can you even imagine the disaster Carter could produce in small shops filled with collectibles, glass, cuckoo clocks, and small trinkeets! Yah, he was definitely not coming along.

Okay wait, I need to go back to the beginning. My parents stopped to visit us after their trip to the Oregon Coast. They came the Saturday night before Mother's Day and stayed with us until the following Thursday. The day they arrived we went out to dinner and the entire time, Carter was hooked on Grandpa. He kept running back and forth around the table wantingeither "papa" or "dada." Me and my mom couldn't catch a break, which was fine with me. It was so cute though, he just loves being with the guys I guess. After dinner and later that night, we thought we'd watch a movie and Rob insisted that we needed snacks even though we had candy bars and ice cream. "But we need some popcorn, hon." So he threw a football to Spencer and if Spencer caught it I'd go to the store, but if he dropped it, Rob would go. Well, Spencer caught it so off I went for popcorn, oreos, and licorice.
-Ya know I should have known something was up, but Rob is just too good when it comes to surprises.....Anyways, so I get home, put Carter to bed, and it was getting pretty late, so I said lets watch Dan in Real Life (an absolute classic, love it so much!) and Rob says, yah, put it in. ----So I don't know it yet but I'm about to open my Mother's Day surprise!!! ....I go to open the doors to the entertainment center and there's this black box sitting on top of the tv. ( a Playstation2!) and to the sides of the tv are one box on each side ----Guitar Hero!! Oh my do I love my husband! Ever since our spring break trip, I have been trying to find someone who has this so we could borrow it and jam out a little. And I've looked on ebay, craigs list, ksl for a package deal on the set. ----I am completely addicted! I will literally be listening to the radio and can hear just the guitar part and can picture myself playing it to Guitar Hero.
After all this excitement of talk I guess Rob had been looking and planning this for a good month. He got a good deal and I got Guitar Hero! plus a whole bunch of other games, so you can imagine what we've been doing late at night almost every night since. I know it's pathetic, but we've held off buying a gaming system for so long because Rob was in school and we knew that as soon as we bought one, we'd never get anything done. So my ironing stack is almost as high as the top of the bookshelf, the bathroom hasn't been cleaned for awhile, and you can just imagine what the rest of the house looks like, butttt I'm gettin' pretty good at medium level, Rob's been called up to the Big's in MLB 08, and NBA Jams is kind of fun too. Yes that's right we're hilarious parents addicted to PS2. I think we've watched tv once this whole week, which is amazing for us. So anyways, that was my big surprise and I loved it, obviously.
Mother's Day was wonderful. Rob made us all breakfast and he makes the best breakfasts! He also made me a candy bar bouttenniere (how do you spell that!) for one of his mutual activities and I proudly wore it all through church. Surprisingly it stayed together and Carter didn't rip it apart during Sacrament meeting. Lots of people thought it was so cute and yummy.
Spencer sang songs with the Primary after the meeting and did a great job. ----there was a bit of trauma during the singing......I didn't know the kids were singing as it wasn't on the program. Rob says he told me they were singing and it was Spencer's big surprise for me, but I for some reason don't remember him ever saying this, so I was in the foyer with Carter cause he'd had it. Debbie tracked me down in a frantic saying that Spencer was having a fit because I wasn't in there and they were about to sing. I dashed in to my seat, waved to him, but he was already worked up. And to make matters worse, the little boy standing in front of Spencer had started a pushing match, and Spencer WOULD NOT GIVE UP HIS POSITION! He wouldn't back down, puffed out his little chest and would not budge! Me, Rob, and my parents were trying to signal him to move over, but he would not (he's so stubborn) Things were nearing melt down. The little boy didn't mean any harm and even turned and gave him a hug after the last bit of shoving. But Spencer had finally had it. His face turned red and the tears started to come. I was a bit upset that the Primary ladies sitting on the front row hadn't done anything up til this point, but finally one turned to me, and I said will you move him next to Martin?! She did and he was okay after a bit. Sad, huh? What do you do? I replayed this in my mind, but knew that if I stood up he would have had a major melt down, and the mother of the other boy moved to the front bench and told him to stop pushing, so in my expert opinion, either something should have done immediately at the beginning with the boy pushing Spencer, or else they should have removed the other boy after the damage had already been done so he really knew that he'd done something wrong and not my poor tenderhearted Spencer who was so excited to sing to me all week!
Spencer wanted to go home after they were done, but luckily Rob took him on a walk and got him to go to Primary. THe rest of the day was great. I made dinner. My mom was a good sport. It probably wasn't her first choice, but she was a good sport and ate it fruit and all. (she does not like fruit) It's one of my favorites, and they really liked it barring the pear, apple, and raisins. I know it sounds weird, it's called savory italian stew, and it's just scrumptous. It has stew meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bell pepper, zucchini, squash, onion, the fruit, and some spices. Maybe I'll post the recipe later. I highly recommend it.
I gave my mom a sour cream lemon pie. It's like tradition and I didn't want to let her down. We enjoyed a relaxing day and finished it off with a rousing game of The Farming Game.
I had to work Monday, so it was pretty uneventful. Tuesday, my parents watched Spencer at his swimming lesson then came down to catch the end of my tennis lesson, which was fine until my dad whipped out his camera, came on to the court and took a few pictures. Gotta love parents! Some things never change.

Okay so I'm a little out of order, but after this, was our trip to Leavenworth.
Whew! I think I got it all.

We love it when Grandma and Grandpa Harris come to town!

Spring Break......I know I'm a bit late

Spring Break 08

I have some posts long over due, so the next few will be random and packed, but so many fun memories, don't want to forget them!
Our trip down to Idaho/Utah over Spring Break was absolutely wonderful. The boys traveled well, we had a great visit with everyone, and it was so much fun. First, we visited Rob's Dad, Dave & Terri and his 2 sisters, and celebrated Rob's 32nd birthday! Wow, you're getting up there honey! It was so much fun with all the chaos and to see our nieces and nephews who we don't get to spend enough time around. Terri-Lynn, Jeff, and Ashlee came up from Logan for the night, which was so awesome of them! and spoiled the dickens out of the boys. There's no stopping that woman. And Teresa, Cam, Skylar, Tegan, Carson, & Zack came too. Tegan was hilarious and full of energy, and Carson just plain won Rob and I's hearts. Those two boys are so cute and played so well with Spencer and Carson. It was so much fun to get them all riled up, wrestling Skylar, sharing birthday cake, playing Bionicle, and even having Tegan sleep over. After the birthday celebration we were able to just relaxingly spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Mackley in the hot tub, out to eat, a little shopping, and we even caught a little bit of General Conference.

Then it was on to Grandma Noni, Auntie Misty, Hannah, and Mo (short for Morgan) Again we had a blast and love our family! They have both grown so much and are so mature for their ages! It helps that they are so smart, too. They graciously introduced us to the Wii and Guitar Hero. It was so much fun playing those games! We went to the Idaho museum and they had an exhibit about Egypt which was so cool. The best part of the museum was they had a separate corner for kids where they could play, climb, color, laugh, scream, and play till their heart's content. But the topper of the Museum day, was when Grandma Noni mounted a play wooden horse for $20 bucks on a dare from Rob. She popped right up there without any hesitation and just cackled her laugh in complete satisfaction! -In your face Rob! Who knew she was so spry?

We headed down to Utah and had our last, final and amazing visit. We saw my parents new kitchen which I just love, but have no idea where anything is! We went to Marissa's soccer game and cheered her on as a family. The cousins played and played and played. We snuck in a little guitar hero at Alayna's house, where Bryce and Michael schooled us all!
Our last night there we went to a church Family Home Evening with my parents where they had a whole bunch of different games. It was so much fun. Rachel and I played guitar hero, Dance, Dance Revolution, and even a little karaoke. I talked her into this by saying, we don't know anyone here, so we can go all out and hopefully never see them again. We sang some Cyndi Lauper and oh yeah, we rocked. It was fun, something I've never done before and the kicker was when we received a compliment from some girl watching, which by the way we had quite a crowd watching us, Rachel said that our mom made us perform a lot as kids. What the heck does that have to do with how awesome we were? All kids sing right? I don't know why, but I just thought that was the funniest reply. Anyways, love ya Rach, thanks for the duet. We'll have to do that again sometime.

On our way home, we made sure that we got to our hotel early enough to go swimming and let the kids out of the car awhile before bed. This is because in our last few car trips, no matter what time we get to the hotel, or if Carter's slept for a period of time or not, he gets his second wind and just wants to play. He's running around, jumping on the beds, investigating every drawer, talking crazy about who knows what, and just can't wind down. So we went swimming, had yummy Chinese, and we all went to bed by 10pm. This was a success. Yay!

We had a great time and just miss everyone so much already. I wish we were able to stay longer, or were able to visit more often, but at least when we do we have a blast!

Spencer's First School Project

Here's Spencer's first Discovery Quest project.

He was to choose a topic of his choice, learn about it, and display those things he learned. I thought for sure he was going to pick football, but to my dismay, his 3 choices were clouds, eagles, and volcanoes. He decided on Eagles and I was happy about that. We checked out 3 books from the library and read them each a few times. Then I sat down with Spencer and asked him what things he remembered learning about Eagles. Those were the things he displayed on his poster. His main focus was about all the different things Eagles eat, how fast they can fly, and how many feathers they have. We were quite proud of him. He chose how we would put the pictures on his poster and had a great idea of an eagle tracking his prey from far away because they can see a mile away. He did almost the entire poster by himself. By far the kicker and excitement of the poster was the Eagle sounds Rob recorded with Spencer off the internet. It had Spencer's voice recorded saying, "This is the sound of a Bald Eagle." Then a whole bunch of screeching erupts. He practiced saying it a few times and was very clear and articulate.

This whole experience was great. But it wouldn't be complete without a little bit of drama.....The night of Discover Quest, I took Spencer to hang up his poster. All was well until- the button stopped working. Spencer was a mess. We thought that maybe the battery died after all the "testing" that took place of pushing the button the day before. (I am very tired of the sounds of a bald eagle) So we hurried home grabbed a few batteries, more tape, and back we went. Unfortunately this was not the problem. Spencer was a real wreck by now, and Mom just had no idea how to fix this gadget, sooooo we hurried up to the church where Rob's activity was with the Scouts. He tried his best, but was unable to fix it. So we all jumped in the car and drove to Radio Shack to purchase another recorder. Well, of course they were all out, soooo- we went back to the school, put his poster back on the wall. I then dropped Rob back off at his activity and then drove to Kennewick, (what us parents will do for our children) bought 2 recorders, (there's no way I was chancing another recorder malfunction) and Rob and Spencer re-did the recording. The very next morning, I dropped Spencer off for school, went to the gym and installed the new recorder, and went home.
This time it worked and just in time for all the other classes to tour the school gym and admire those students' projects who participated in the Discovery Quest. Rob went with Spencer that night to take a closer look at all the other projects and they even gave the students a medal and certificate for all their hard work. Spencer was quite happy about that! He loves to finish, do it well, and of course...be rewarded.
Good job Spencer!



And here's my wonderful boys wrestling on the school gym's floor. Love 'em!