Catch up posts

Rob and I went to Hawaii at the beginning of June, it was a lot of fun, here are a few pictures

Johnathan Ashton Bennion

It was Johnathan's birthday on Saturday, so we had a little party for him at his favorite place; the Zoo. My parents and little sister were in town as well so they came to the party and my super talented sister took pictures...which I didn't get from her yet, but as soon as I do get them I promise to post them because they are awesome.
Anyway, Rob made an awesome elephant candy dispenser instead of a pinata that would have been destroyed. I made little train engineer backpacks for goodies. We also made elephant shaped cakes and put the train tracks around them. I did a teeny bit of face painting and we walked around the zoo and looked at the animals. I think Johnathan really loved it all.

Texas, Costa Rica

Rob will have to write about his week with out us, as for us (Nicolle, Colette and Johnathan) we flew to Texas, the babies stayed with Bob and Lita while I flew to Costa Rica for just a few days, then I flew back to Texas, went to baby Diego's blessing then flew home on Tuesday at the crack of dawn.
MMMmm mangoes fresh off a tree next door in CR. As Colette says, "deelish".
I know it is cheesy and dumb but I couldn't resist snapping a few shots off the coast of Cuba (so I am told) from my cushy seat in first class home from CR. There are unfortunately a lot of reasons why traveling without the babes is more fun...from the possibility of first class seats (kids under 12 or something can't ride first class, so even if there is room they have to sit in coach and us with them obviously), to having to provide constant entertainment for them individually or they throw fits and are generally unmanageable, to them falling asleep 10 minutes before landing so I have to try to carry them both+luggage=impossible.
Then we have a picture of the babies with their cousins and their cousins cousins. In-san-ity.
My kids are liberal with their kisses...
and their punches...

Camping at Antelope Island

We volunteered for the U of U's Bennion center to build fences surrounding the stream on Antelope Island to help protect it from the biffalo so that it can run down to their troughs below rather than getting trampled into swamp before making it down. It was fun and Nicolle has a mighty hammer swing when it come to driving the long nails to keep the posts in place.
The kids got to ride horses, fly a kite, and their favorite play outside for hours and hours. Johnathan learned that you hold a flashlight to the ground at night when walking, not up to your face like he thought. Colette learned that the bathrooms are farther away when you go camping. Neither one of them wanted to go to sleep at night, they were too excited about the tent, the flashlights, and their new friends (or the possibility of going and playing with more new friends they hadn't met yet).

Natural History Museum

We decided to ride the bus to the museum, bt I missed it because I forgot to bring the camera and when I went back to the house to get it the bus came. So I rode my bike instead while Nicolle and the kids took the bus.
The kids especially loved doing puppet shows, but since we only took video of that you'll have to watch it another time.

Hogle Zoo

Johnathan loves elephants, so we spend a lot of time when we go to the zoo at the elephant area.

The Great Outdoors

We went to California again . . . it was only about 60 degrees but the kids wanted to play at the beach anyway . . . they love the ocean!

Johnathan tried his hand at tree climbing at the park the other day . . .

Seaworld animals in SLC

We took the kids to see some visiting Seaworld animals here in Salt Lake . . . can't wait to go back to San Diego!

Grandma Gene's Birthday

Colette absolutely loves playing Wii sports games. She's pretty good at Tennis . . .