This is the Place Heritage Park

This summer was busy. But we did make some time to attend This Is The Place and we all fell in love with this park.

The kids played in a garden learning about how these plants and herbs helped families with healing.

 Made a cloth doll just like the pioneers did.

All our kids enjoyed themselves.

 Here's Cati's Dollie

 Listened to a Native American dance and song

 My kids wanted to be honorary Native Americans.

 Enjoyed a nice train ride to get to the next activity lot faster

 My boy, All grown up :)

 Helped print a sheet of a newspaper. This was more work than they thought

 Where we also enjoyed some crafts (non-pioneerish) in the room across from the printing press.

 But they couldn't resist making a foam animal

 After a little break our family went to the Native American tee-pees and learned all about arrowheads, huts, spirits, importance of eagles, brother bears, etc

 And this sweet lady shared her chair with us so we can try out Native furniture.

 And the best part was the pony rides. Our kids aren't natural cowgirls but they got to steer their fear.

We visited a blacksmith in his shop where Mason tried to lift up everything. He says, " Mason means strong hands so I can lift up anything".... he cracks me up.

 So this side story.... Mike's pocket knife was dull so I asked the blacksmith if he did side work like.... sharpen people's knives. And he does for a small fee. So Mike got his knife sharpened old fashion style.

 But even with the heat of a Utah summer Cati went to every one of these barrel water fountains since they look "so cute in the bucket".

 This was one of the many things we did this summer. And even though we were here from open to close we still didn't get to see everything. This is our new family favorite place.

Christmas Service Projects

During the Christmas season Mike and I try our best to teach our kids the true Christmas spirit. So we do end up doing so many acts of service so 1) our kids can feel the spirit and 2) they aren't distracted with all the material things.

So besides our cookie making for neighbors, secret santa gifts, homeless shelter donations we wanted to try something new. 

So this year I contacted Salvation Army about bell ringing. So as a family we went bell ringing for 4 hours. To pass the time we sang Christmas carols and had a contest on who could say, "Merry Christmas", to people waking by first.

 I do have to say that taking along 4 cute kids does help with people's donations. I guess the cuteness warms their hearts even more so instead of $1 bills they are dropping in $20 bills.

 Our second big service project we did was collect food for the Bountiful Food Pantry.

 We wanted to show our kids how blessed we are to have our own pantry filled with foods. So I posted a note on my facebook page to all our neighbors that we were going to be coming around in a few days so to be ready for us. So on the big day we walked around our neighborhood for 4 hours and collected over 240lbs of food. That's amazing!!!

Our kids were smiling ear to ear when we went to the food pantry to drop this off. They were so proud of themselves and honestly Mike and I are even more proud of them.

And... if you haven't noticed Lily is such a photo bomber :) ♥

BYU Museum of Art

My dream as a mom is to instill the love of the arts into my children so yes I am one of those parents that take their kids to gallery openings. So when I heard that the BYU Museum of Art  opened their new exhibit, Sacred Gifts, I booked tickets ASAP! 

 But of course we needed to see the new Provo City Center Temple. Even though it's under construction it was still breathtaking to see.

 When we pulled up to the museum the parking lot was completely packed. (Side note: our kids were the only kids there.) Good thing we arrived 45 minutes early. We checked our coats in, did potty breaks, rented our iPad's for all those fun facts that the little art plaques can't hold and had ourselves an amazing time.

We were actually told by a random person that our kids were very well behaved. They have seen at museum and act "like children" (duh! they are kids) but she was happy to share this experience with our kids. Thanks! I'll take that compliment.

 Anyways when people exit the art showing there is a table with cards for the patrons to write a thank you note to the person or museum that loaned the BYU museum the art work. So each kiddo picked their favorite (which was harder than they thought. How can you just pick one?) and wrote their thank you notes.

  I was only able to take these few pictures since there was security everywhere and signs saying,"No photography". So I had to be extra sneaky to even get these pics. But the art work was amazing. Some pieces actually brought the spirit to our hearts. Our kids loved it that we talked about it for the next hour on our way home.

I love it when I can share my passions with my kids.

Happy Moments :)

To catch up faster I'm just going to combine this post. These are some of our happy moments that we had last year. They are out of order but still very important. :)

 I finally got my hair to be curly without being like an Afro. This didn't last long so every minute was lovely.

 Mike got transferred to a different position. He's lead of projects carpet cleaning. He's now charge of cleaning various church building. He absolutely loves it!

 Caught Lily and Ducati being nice to each other.

 This is the way Mike gets around. :)

 Lily learned to read. Very important day for her ♥

 Important and special moment... Lily smiled at me. Melt my heart♥

 Ducati enjoying some fall leaves.

 While singing, " I want Fabulous!" (high school musical)

 Date night! We've actually been on several dates but this one was really special. Our friends invited a bunch of people to their movie screening of Resistance Movement. At this screening a friend and survivor of the Holocaust spoke along with Gov. Herbert. It was just an amazing night.

 I woke up to Lily and Ducati enjoying the rain.

 Lily's tithing slip. " Give 10 to the prophet" is what it says.

 Enjoying Uncle Peter's backyard slide.

 And his amazing garden. It's a slice of paradise.

 A hike/ field trip to President Kimball's grave. This was a special moment for all of us.

 Going to homeschool group events

 where our kids made lots of friends.

Falling in love with how hilarious and goofy my kids are.

Jungle Jim's

 For the thousands of reasons why I love homeschooling there are a few con's for us.
1) I want to have more field trips than lesson time so I get side tracked really easy.
2) it can be hard to figure out a new approach on something when one of our kids are stumped. But this seldom happens since there's so many resources out in the world to help me.
3) Burned out! Just like anything that you might put 100% of your time into. So when times like this happens we just blow off the lessons for a few hours and have some fun!

 Today was one of those days. No one wanted to focus. We were getting on each other's nervous.

 So I found a super great deal on KSL for Jungle Jim's Playground. So after breakfast we headed out....without doing the dishes!

 Our kids had so much fun letting off some steam.

and screams...of joy!

 

  Mike and I were able to have a few moments of quiet time which was very nice.

 and after a long afternoon of laughing, joking, smiling, and having fun our entire family was happy and recharged again.