Our Trip to the Zoo

I know that everyone else has been going to the zoo and posting pictures of it, so we are now adding ours. We went with my kindergarten class to the zoo Thursday, May 28, and had a great time. I was very lucky and had 11 parents volunteer to come with us on the trip, so most of the students were with their own parent. There were maybe two or three groups that had two to three students in them. I didn't assign myself any students because there are always parents that need or want to leave early and they leave their extra students with me. Well, Zach decided to come with us on the field trip and bring along Elora and Taylan. It was a lot of fun. Elora really enjoyed seeing all of the animals. Our favorite exhibit was the monkey exhibit. They had several kinds of monkeys in this little building. There were two in particular that were very active and were swinging all over. There are two pictures of this little black monkey that was really cute as well. We were one day too early to see the sloth that they were bringing in the next day. The first grade classes got to see it the next day, but we missed out. My students also got to go on two rides in Funland along with a treat. After lunch, we all went and played on this big, awesome playground. It would have been a lot more fun, but they had these cotton trees lining the side of the playground and the parking lot before the playground that were blowing off tons of cotton. It literally looked like it was snowing. The worst part about the cotton is that you would end up breathing it in and eating it. The kids had fun anyways. By the time we got back to school, I had four students left because all of the rest of them went home with their parents. They got to color and watch a movie until the end of the school day. Elora and Taylan were pretty well behaved and Elora seemed to have a fun time.

Taylan's Blessing

I have been wanting to post the pictures from Taylan's blessing all week, but I didn't really have much time to do it. I should be able to update our website a lot more frequently now that school is ending this week. YEA!!!!!!!! If you can't tell, I'm extremely excited about it. Taylan's blessing went very well. It was so nice to be able to have so many family and friends around. Thanks to all who came. We hope everyone had a good time and hope you enjoy the pictures as well. We took some pictures of Taylan in his complete blessing outfit including the bonnet that came with it. The pictures clearly tell what he thought of it.

Trip to Yellowstone

I couldn't figure out how to get the slideshow to play on the same posting as the description, so I posted them separately.
We went to Yellowstone National Park with Zach's family the Saturday before we blessed Taylan. It was a lot of fun as you can probably tell. We first stopped to eat lunch in at good ol' Buckaroo Bill's, but we forgot to get pics on our camera. By the way, for those of you who know Gail, she says hi. She even asked about Cari and Darren and how things are going for them in the mission field. Bill was off to Bozeman, or I would have said hi to him, too. We then drove to Old Faithful since many of the people in our group hadn't seen it since they were very young. Elora was all about wandering around along the walk-way. She didn't want to be in her stroller and definitely didn't want to hold hands. Adrianna was wonderful and spent most of the time up until Old Faithful actually went off watching her. We then went to the Yellowstone Lodge to look around and spent some time in the various gift shops and the General Store there around Old Faithful. Afterward, we headed back into West Yellowstone to do some shopping in the stores there as well as go and see the bears and wolves at the Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center. We ended our evening with a stop at Big Judds in Ashton on our way back to Rexburg. It was a quick little trip, but we had a good time and enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with Zach's parents and siblings.

Taylan in his Sunday Best

Here is a picture of Taylan in his Sunday best. I think the blue sweater matches his eyes very well.

Our Munchkins

Here are a couple of pics of our cute little munchkins. In these first few, Elora and I were playing in a fort that we made out of the bowl chair. She has been really into "tents" lately and likes to hide.

I forgot to rotate the pictures before I put them on, and I don't want to download them again, so enjoy!

Standing up inside the "fort".

Smile! Oops! I forgot to open my eyes!

My new sunglasses. Don't I look so cool?!!!!

Daddy fell asleep with Taylan. Being a dad can be such hard work! Taylan is now one and a half months old. We can't believe how fast the time has gone by.

This is Taylan's "monkey" face. He often likes to lay there with his fists next to his head. He will also sometimes put his tongue out. This time he was puckering up a little.

Our baby seems to be a little sideways. Whenever we put him in the swing, he tends to go to sleep with his head to the side like this. We try to straignten him out, but it just goes right back to the same position. I thought it was a little funny, so I took a picture.

Elora's Birthday

This post is inspired by Cari's letter when she asked to see pics of the cakes I made and I figured she would like to see pics of the rest of the party, too. (I'm sure that Brian, Robyn, Brett, and Melissa wouldn't mind seeing them as well.)

Elora in her new birthday shirt.

This is when we finally got Elora to open another gift. After she opened her sunglasses, the first present, she had no interest in opening any more.

This is a present from Grandma and Grandpa and was one of Elora's favorites. It's this cool monkey in a car that you have to shake up to get it to go. She loves to play with it at home. The biggest problem we have is when it goes under the couch and we have to get the broom to fetch it out.

Hilary is helping Elora open her present of some wonderful sidewalk chalk. Elora loves to draw, even though her "drawings" are just lines in different colors made on the cement. As you can see she didn't want to put down the monkey car. She was hooked.

This is a pillow case that Vanessa, Jana's best friend, gave to Elora. Elora has her new favorite toy, for the moment, in her arms, a Webkinz frog that was given to her by her nursery singing leaders, Lynsey and Elih Mattison.

These are the two birthday cakes that I made for Elora. I made two because we had invited so many people to the party, that I was worried there wouldn't be enough. By the time we got around to eating them, there weren't that many people left, so I was begging people to help us eat them so we wouldn't have so much left over. They did taste pretty good, I thought.

Eating her birthday cake. Yummy!

Everything didn't turn out quite as we planned, like there not being any water at the park, but we still had a good time and we just want to thank everyone for coming. We'll try not to plan it for Mother's Day weekend next year. :)

We have joined the bloggers!

I have been feeling a little out of the loop with everyone else having a blog, so I will admit that I am a lemming and I followed everyone else. Now that we have internet in our own apartment, I figured I didn't have an excuse to not provide more updated info on our family for everyone else to read. I will warn you that I have no idea what I'm doing or how to make this all look good, but I'll do my best and will gladly accept any hints, tips, etc from any of you experienced bloggers. Now, on to the fun stuff!