Back to School

As a good momma, I am required (probably by law now...) to update everyone on the latest back to school incident. It just so happens that this is Marshmallow's first year in public school where she gets to attend kindergarten! But to top it all off, I get to student teach this semester which is fun, but it complicates life quite a bit. (But, just for fun, I'm including a picture we made in inservice just before school started.)

Shortly before the beginning of school we got to go to meet the teacher night where we met the kids teachers. Here is Turtle with his teacher

and Marshmallow with hers.

The morning school started, I stayed home long enough to take them to their class and drop them off in person. They were excited to go and here they are just before we left.

Unfortunately, that night we had to have a double funeral for the brownies' pet gerbils. Marshmallow's died the night before school started and Turtles died that night after they got home from school. Here is their little grave in our backyard, complete with popsicle stick tombstones.

Here are the kids after the funeral. Marshmallow was distraught...

Turtle was trying (only slightly successfully) to be strong and not cry.

Here are Fluffy and Cinnamon snuggling together (they were sisters) for a nap. They were wonderful pets and the brownies will miss them a lot. (So will I!)

Nutty Brownies?

At the beginning of the summer we learned that Sugar Daddy's brother would be getting married in August in Utah. After our fun trip to Mexico, the thought of flying to Utah brought dollar signs to mind, especially since the price of tickets seemed to be on a steady rise. So, after much thought and a bit of my McNutt side coming out, we decided that I would drive with my little brownies to Utah and back for the wedding. If that wasn't nutty enough, we decided to do the entire trip in just over 1 week!

Happily we were able to talk another person (who may also be crazy)  to join us for the drive - with her 3 girls. That equals 4 girls, 1 boy and 2 moms. I'm not sure who was more outnumbered - the boy or the moms...

Here we are on our first day of the trip. We drove quickly out of Texas and fairly quickly through Oklahoma. When we got to Kansas, we had to bribe the kids with candy to stay out of the car long enough to get a picture. They just loved riding together so much they didn't want to do anything else.

Once in Kansas it took ETERNITY to Colorado, while the most exciting thing we saw along the road was this:

In fact, here's a picture of most of us as we're driving through Kansas... (You can see how much they enjoy riding together!)

 

      

       

After coasting in on the last fumes in our gas tank, we overnighted in Colorado at my Grandparent's house. Marshmallow called it the twirly mountain grandma's house because the road going up is very "twirly". I remember it as the place where we always drove over the edge of the cliff in the dark.

Day 2 we made it to Utah and eventually saw some pretty cool things. It's amazing how creative Mother Nature can be in a barren waste land. Here she got bored and decided that it would be fun to have a rock sculpture of a toilet seat.

While there we got to visit my Grandma for a little bit.

The brownies got to jump on a trampoline. I think that was one of the highlights of the trip!

We also checked their hight. Some families like to mark the height progress of their children on the wall or a doorway. We just go to Utah, find a tractor and have them stand in the wheel. It doesn't happen as often, but it's still a pretty effective way to check their progress. Marshmallow is now taller than Turtle was the first time we measured him here...

We went to visit my cousins grave. That required a short, beautiful hike to the cemetery from my Aunt's home.

Turtle got tired and needed a ride. A grown man saw it and figured if a boy that big could get a ride, surely he could as well... Marshmallow fell in love with the sunflowers.

     

      

The purpose of the trip, of course, was for a wedding, which we attended. Some of us were a little more excited than others.

 




The bride and groom looked great and Marshmallow was more than excited to see her new aunt all decked out like a fairytale princess.

    

      

And of course, she was excited to have her own fancy dress (she called it her wedding dress) and match her cute cousins.

      

     




Turtle was happy to get away from it, relax his attire and explore a nearby park.

When the wedding festivities were over (actually, after the weekend was over) we got to play with my sister and her kids. One of their other cousins came to visit as well (he was Turtle's age, so Turtle was happy to have another boy, and one his age to play adventure with.)  They got to torture play with their cousins' grandma's little dog, Toby.

We went up to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo where my brownies decided to climb the falls barefoot. I didn't have any appropriate foot gear packed for the expedition, so their uncle had to galavant after them to keep them safe.

While they climbed, my sister, her three kids, grandma and I all stayed in the shallows at the bottom where we didn't have to worry about cutting our feet on rocks that could send us sliding down a long ways. someone needed to keep the babies safe and watch Ducky waddle around in the cold water!

The climb was successful in that everyone made it back without incident, although one little girl decided that princesses should get some special treatment.

 And after such an adventure, you'd think they'd be worn out, but the brownies were still quite full of energy (must be from the LONG car rides they had been on in the previous 7 days...), but we managed to pin them down for a picture with their cousins.

By the end of the trip, as we were going BACK into Colorado from Utah, we once again took the obligatory, candy-bribed picture. By this time, the older kids were more excited about the pictures as they kept them out of the car longer. The younger were less enthusiastic about it, probably since they really just wanted to be done with the whole thing. There are 4 words every parent learns to dread on a long car trip. I refuse to put them on paper for fear it will bring nightmares tonight of hearing them over and over again. The trip is still too fresh in my memory!

Chichen Itza

For those of you unfamiliar with the name Chichen Itza, this post has nothing to do with Chicken or Pizza, although my children have called Chichen Itza, "Chicken Pizza" before jokingly.

Our Saturday in Cancun was spent at a place called Chichen Itza - a Mayan Temple ground. It was an experience both educational and sweaty. Below you can see how enthralled the kids were by what our guide was teaching us as well as the best way to keep out of the sun.

Here you can see the main temple on the Chichen Itza grounds. You can stand at the bottom and clap and hear it echo back to you. Another fun fact is if you want to tell someone a secret and you do it at the top of the temple, everyone down below will hear.

There are lots of cool engravings and faces around Chichen Itza if you know where to look (like - anywhere). There are faces of people (and many different expressions) and snake heads... Here is the face of the rain god that is on the top of the main temple. It kind of looks like he's smiling and you and saying, "Haha! Not today sucker! You should have picked a different day to come if you wanted some nice cooling rain! And those umbrellas will only keep so much sun off..."

There's also a place where they have games on Chichen Itza grounds. Only the best athletes are chosen and if you are the lucky winner, you get to be sacrificed! But from what the guide said about the game, it would have been pretty tough to be a winner whether you wanted to be sacrificed or not.

Here's a panoramic view of the grounds. (Don't look too close or you might discover some alien life forms among the group we are with!)

And here's another one of the structures. If I remember correctly there are a thousand or so stone soldiers around and on the building.

The final thing we did at Chichen Itza was listen to 3 little Mayan girls sing in their native language (probably a native song).

Following our time at the Chichen Itza grounds we had lunch, complete with entertainment in the form of native Mayan dancers.

We also went to go and see (and in some cases swim) in the Cenote. Here's the actual cenote from above.

Here's Turtle clinging for his life to Daddy's back, even though he can swim okay and usually enjoys it.

And here is our Marshmallow, who can't swim without her life vest, scaring the wits out of Daddy because he's afraid she's going to fall off because she's not holding on very tight.

And here are our triumphant swimmers, fresh from the cenote, all wet and ready for the exciting ride back to the resort.

Okay, maybe it wasn't such an exciting bus ride back.

And thus ended our adventures in Chichen Itza.