1st Day of School! 1st Day of School!

To say we've all been waiting for this day for a long time now is an understatement! Other than Tyli waking up at 5:00 a.m. screaming from a nightmare just after I took off for my morning run (yes, you read that right- more to come on my new adventures later!), this morning went very smooth and without a hitch.

"D-Man" 4th grade. He has Miss Arnold- who is WONDERFUL! AMAZING! FANTASTIC!! (seriously, EVERYONE at BFCS Crismon Campus wants and usually requests her. Dallin just lucked out and got her!)

 Oh and, check out his braces smile!!!

"Kado" 1st Grade- Miss Snow. She's a brand new teacher this year having just graduated from ASU. He also was up late last night, wiggling out another tooth before his 1st day of school.

"Ty" or "Ty Ty" Kindergarten- Miss Goff. This is also a new teacher, but not to teaching- she's taught for 7 years but this is her first year at BFCS. She seems really nice!

This is how Tyli spent a good portion of the morning recess- playing in the sand. She isn't cleared to play on any kind of playground equipment or anything yet for another week and a half so she played in the dirt with this cute girl, Claire.

Look familiar? (McKade did the same thing last year!) Same pic, different kid!

Tyli decided to go play by pushing other kids on the swings. She was literally pushing them off, which was funny! I'm happy to see her finding a way to play and make friends. :)

heading over to their 1st ever BFCS Flag Ceremony!

Her class size (height of her class) is SO TINY! Seriously folks- I know Tyli is very tall, but look! Here she is standing next to her good friend, Lissa. Almost the ENTIRE class is Lissa's size! (only like 2 others who are just shorter than Tyli!) The parents all kept laughing saying "I am so glad- I thought my kid would be the smallest, but they aren't!" No joke. My 2 year old is taller than a few of them! Sweet little Lissa is probably the average height of the class.

California Vacation Day 1

 We decided to change things up a bit this year and go on our first Clark Family- family vacation! We have always only gone to AZ or ID and back- to visit family, but felt we needed to get out and PLAY- and see some other places. So, after not much debate from the kids, we booked our hotel and destination- Southern California! My parents met us there, driving from Idaho to Vegas to Cali.

We woke up early Monday morning and drove to Carlsbad, California. Our first stop was getting gas, which just happened to be where the navy seals were gassing up their trucks and boats. Their truck were HUGE and they let us take a picture by one...

Then we met my parents who were on their way into town at Taco Bell for lunch before hitting Lego Land. We were very excited!

Can you find Halli?

 Luckily, Halli was able to ride quite a few rides seeing as she was 34 inches tall. (Not all, but some.) Tyli could ride most, except for the ones with water and roller coasters because of her broken arm. The boys could ride everything!

Like I said- Tyli couldn't ride some of the rides because of her arm so when we went on a roller coaster which she and Halli couldn't ride (Halli was much too short!), Grandpa Ruth took the girls over to get their faces painted.

Thanks Grandpa!

Mom, you are looking a little sunburned- even though it was mostly overcast! Just waiting in line- something we did most of the day. Good thing my kids are patient!

I'm pretty sure this was Halli's favorite ride! She kept saying "I go up, I go dowm. I go up, I go dowm." (down)

The kids all earned their drivers liscences- except Halli- she was too little. 

McKade did have a small issue with road rage after someone cut him off. Pretty funny! He threw his hands up in the air like "what do you think you're doing!?!" We all laughed at him.

The boys favorite display- Harry Potter.

This is only a small fraction of the pictures we took. I'm having a hard time loading the others. Anyways, we headed out and to dinner before going back to the hotel and crashing for the night- everyone was exhausted!

California Vacation Day 2!!!

Day 2 of our adventure had the girls and I up early. Cauley and I got us dressed and after discovering the boys and Mom and dad were still sleeping, headed down for breakfast. After eating, we walked a block from our hotel to the ocean. It was a big bluff with not much sand to walk on, but hey, it was still pretty cool! We found a few shells before heading back to join the others. Once we were all ready we went shopping at the Carlsbad Outlet Mall. After a quick lunch, we all headed back to Lego Land where we started off the day at the Sea Life Aquarium. It was fun, but I don't know if it's worth the $ to go again.

We were excited to be going back!

Halli in front of the Japanese Spider Crabs. They are HUGE!! Their bodies (you can't tell in this picture at all!) are the size of basketballs. McKade took one look at them and RAN!

In the tunnel with sharks, eels, rays, and other fish I can't remember.

 We finished the aquarium and headed back into Lego Land. We hit a few rides we had missed the day before...

and met a few people we hadn't yet seen...

before we headed over to the water park. It was HOT- mostly muggy. The humidity didn't bother me at all compared to what I thought it would! Since Ty couldn't go to the water park, Grandma stayed out with her. McKade took off running once we were ready to go play and biffed it badly- scraping up his knee and legs, his face, and taking a good chunk out of his hand. Good thing I had packed water-proof/seal band aids in the first aid kit I brought with us that day! He still was miserable, but was able to enjoy himself a little. Halli sure had fun, as did Grandpa and Dallin who rode all the slides together. We finished the water park and went and got Grandma and Tyli who had ridden a few more rides and played a while in Duplo Land.

Then we headed down the street to Costco for a pizza and some diapers for Halli. At the end of eating, Halli, who was sitting next to me on the bench, fell off backwards, landing on her head. Luckily, it didn't split it open when she hit the concrete. She also landed funny on her arm/hand which worried us. She was super tired and wanted nothing but to go to sleep- which scared me. In the end, she was fine- just a HUGE goose egg on the back of her head. We decided to hurry back to the hotel where we grabbed jackets and then walked down to the beach. We took a few pics before heading down the bluff to the water.

This one really captured the fog. It was pretty foggy most of the days, especially at night.

This one makes me laugh SO hard. It was really dark and you couldn't see what you were taking a picture of, but my dad still tried. He didn't quite capture the whole family though. You can see Cauley's chin and McKade's shoulder!

 We took off our shoes and walked out just a bit. The boys still had their swimsuits on, but us girls didn't. The waves got us pretty soaked a few times. The water was so cold!!!

trying to walk up the slippery rocks to find a dry spot to put our shoes back on.

 After we got back to the hotel, we gave Halli her warm bath we promised her after conking her head. Then we had her lay on a bag of ice.

California Vacation Day 3!

Day 3 of our vacation had us up early and headed South to San Diego. First stop, Old Town San Diego. Nothing was opened yet and so we sat around and waited for quite a while. We sat, and sat and sat...

Hahaha! Sorry Dad. I HAD to put this one on!

Once thins opened, we made our way around to a few of the buildings. In the print shop I got a job as the type-setter person, as it was one of the only jobs women would be able to have back then. I learned that everything has a place and that I can't read the print they wanted me to set. Haha! Dallin was "hired" as the person to work the printing machine. It was really neat. He got to actually work the oldest butterfly print press in the west! He inked it up and then put it to the paper.

 After we went here we walked around a bit before deciding to head up a block to the Mormon Battalion place. (sorry- can't remember what it's really called.) I cannot tell you how amazing this was! Definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. I won't ruin it for those who haven't been there yet, but it was semi-interactive. They start by telling a small portion about the LDS Church, leading into the exodus west, which leads into the Mormon Battalion and their journey and purpose. It was really neat! Dallin got picked to go up front in our group to put on the issued "clothing" that each man got from the government. (For those who don't know, the government didn't have enough clothing to outfit the battalion, so most received a $41 clothing allowance which was sent back to their pioneer families to help with the costs of crossing the plains.) The gear Dallin is wearing, everyone received, including the riffle, which they got to keep once they were mustered out.

 After the presentation, the kids got to mine for gold and work a water pump.

 When we were done, we headed down the street to a very yummy, very authentic Mexican restraunt! Seriously, so good!!!

After lunch it was time... Time to head over to Coronado Island to go play at the beach!!! This was my first time playing at the beach, and I can't tell you how fun it was! My mom said her favorite memory of the trip was jumping in the waves with me- which was my favorite too! We laughed so hard! The water was cold, but that didn't stop Halli. Good thing Grandpa kept a tight hold on her! (the riptide kept trying to take her out, and she was happy to let it!) Dallin had a blast on the boogie board! Cauley loved body surfing. McKade didn't enjoy it as much as his hand and scraped knee from the day before hurt in the salt water, but if you ask him now, he LOVED the boogie board! Tyli didn't get to play in the ocean as much because of her broken arm, but she played a lot in the sand and made friends with some kids...surprise, surprise! I really loved just standing in the ocean and letting the water hit me. My mom and I got brave (I am a chicken around water!) and went out far enough that the waves were bigger than us, and we jumped them...most of the time. We played and played and wore ourselves out before calling it a day.

Grandpa keeping Halli up with the boys playing nearby. Can you see Cauley's head out to your right?

One of my favorite pics of mom and dad!

Learning to ride the waves

Looking at the giant ship coming out of the mist. (upper left corner)

Poor girl. This is her set-up for the beach. Sand would have been a nightmare in that cast so we bought some sweat bands which I took 1 and stuffed it part way into the top of her cast and then folded over her cast. The other one went over the top of the first one. Then on went the bags which we taped to her skin with athletic tape. (2 thick bags.) She truly did stay completely dry and sand free! (even after getting covered in a few giant waves!)