Memorial Weekend

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I'm going to post about our memorial day weekend, but first I have to start where I left off and that is with Cody's birthday. On Cody's official birthday, Sunday May 17th, we had a small family party. Clay's mother and two sister came to our house for dinner and a very small party. We had already given Cody all his gifts and he had his big friend party the day before but we felt like we still needed to do something on his real birthday. Kym, Clay's sister gave Cody this Dora card that Cody thought was so funny (if you already couldn't tell from the picture). It was the only one she had at home and with a small baby around now, didn't have time to get to the store to by a more masculine one. But it had cash in it, so Cody wasn't too sad to receive the Dora card after all.

This was one of his favorite presents from his Aunt Chelsea, a pair of new Vans!

So on Wednesday of last week, Clay got up as usual and I thought was getting ready to leave for work. It was then that he informed me that he had taken off the rest of the week through next Monday from work. I of course love it when he doesn't have to work, but it also throws off my routine when he sticks around the house all day. He got dressed into his "yard work" clothes and went to work outside in our yard. Now, we haven't done much with our yard since we moved into our home and let me just say, it was in need of a lot of attention. I got the kids off to school and followed his example, got into my "yard working" clothes and went outside to see what needed to be done. Clay had a list of things he wanted to do and buy and we headed out to his favorite store, Home Depot.
We bought everything we needed to get our yard into shape and finished by renting a rotor tiller. The dirt in all of our beds was so hard and we had so many weeds, we had to get one before we could even start planting things. We then spent the whole day rotor tilling the yard, pulling up sod where we didn't want it any more and other off jobs, I can't even remember. All I can say is we were exhausted by the end of the day and basically feel into bed that night and passed out. Our backs and arms and legs were so sore it was all we could do to get up and do it again the next morning we still had more rotor tilling to do, even our hands were swollen from the day before, and it was just too painful to do it for very long. We some how finished up and actually wrapped up all the other jobs we had to get done too. By the end of day two I was so proud of what we had accomplished and we even got more things done than we had on our list.

This is the thing that I'm the most proud of, my garden. I first thought we would plant just a few things, but after I got started, I was having so much fun it turned into this big garden.

We planted watermelons, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, carrots and pumpkins.

After two days of back breaking yard work, Clay and I decided we needed a break and thanks to my sister Libby, we were able to head to St. George for the rest of the weekend. Libby was going out of town herself and offered us her town home while they were gone. It was like having our own "vacation home", and let me tell you, we really enjoyed it!

On the way down to St. George, we had to stop in Beaver to get some Dairy Queen blizzards and to sit in the biggest rocking chair!

On Saturday we headed to Snow Canyon to do some hiking. This is a great place to hike with kids and the views are just incredible!

Lucky us, we stubbed across this tortoise while on our hike.

Yes, Savannah was in seventh heaven on this hike! She is my little animal lover!

Luke informed us, that he now wants a turtle for his birthday. He said "one that is nice, and doesn't bite and that will like me". Any one know where I can find a turtle like that?

Everyone got in on the turtle holding, but Brittany. She enjoyed our slow friend from a distance.

The nice part about this hike was there were places to stop and explore, climb and pose for more pictures.

The scenery here was completely amazing and I don't think any of these pictures has done it justice!

We not only found a turtle, but tons lizards and chipmunk looking creatures.

This was the end of the hike on top of this rock hill. After this we turned around and headed back to our car.

Savannah, Cody and Luke wanted to see how high they could climb the hill. By the time they reach half way I was ready for them to turn around!

Brittany of course stayed at the bottom and took in the scenery from a safe place.

Luke decided he needed sanctuary and decided to channel for inner peace.

The boys thought it would be funny to pretend they had slipped down the hill.

After the hike we went back to Libby's house and went swimming. The hike wore me out and I stayed home and took a long, quiet nap by my self. That night we went and saw Night at the Museum II, it wasn't worth the money, wait for it to come out on DVD.

The next morning we decided to wake up and hit the 11:00 sacrament meeting at the closest church we could find. Well it was just our luck that we found the seniors ward and were the only ones with kids in that sacrament meeting. The men who passed the sacrament were all over 75, some used canes to walk. The bishopric had walkers next to them up on the stand. It was so quiet during the meeting except when some one would whisper to their neighbor. You see elderly people don't whisper because they can't hear it when you whisper, so they would talk so loud, but I think only our family thought they were talking loud, no one else seemed to think twice at it. Luke said to me during sacrament that he didn't want to go to Primary after the meeting was over and I told him not to worry about it, they don't have Primary in this ward!

On Monday Clay and I got up early and wanted to finish the last of our yard work. We hooked up the tailor and set out to go and get some bark to lay down in our beds around the house. Since it was our last day together we decided to go to Kneaders for breakfast. Well, we weren't the only ones with that idea. By the time we arrived they were completely out of pancakes and french toast. It was so disappointing! After breakfast we headed to the nursery, only to be told they were completely out of bark. It just wastn't our day at all!

So with nothing left to do we headed home and had a yummy Memorial Day BBQ!

The kids rode the 4 wheeler, jumped on the tramp, played soccer and we even got Cody's pine wood derby made, good thing too, since the race is tonight!

You can't have a BBQ without some watermelon! I can't wait until I can get my own out of my garden!