Spring Break

Tuesday

This morning was so nice. One of the main reasons was because nothing was rushed. We slept in until 8:30, got up and made breakfast. I even ate breakfast with Oliver at the table instead of getting O to eat quick and just eating something on the run.

I have been trying to collect old movies that I grew up with and this was one that I loved as a kid, so I bought it. O saw it once before with his cousins and liked it so when he saw that we boiught it, it was the first thing he wanted to do. So this morning after our breakfast, we cuddled on the couch in our jammies and watched it.

I still love it. Nostalgia maybe?

After our movie morning we got ready to go meet cousins and friends at the zoo. Finally, I was going to be able to take Oliver after he has been asking me for weeks months.

It was pure chaos. We weren't the only one to think to take all the kids to the zoo today. Needless to say I didn't get my camera out much.

And after naps and dinner, we took a little stroll to the library. We read a few books and brought a couple home. 

Oliver took a nice shower/bath {Explanation soon to come}, and we enjoyed reading together on his bed and singing primary songs. The highlight of the entire day was to hear him sing "I am a Child of God" with me. Such a sweet guy.

I think I could get use to being home with him all day again. 

Spring Break

I love working for a school. Because of it, I get to have holidays and summers off and this week, spring break. My plan was to spend as much time with Oliver as possible doing something fun everyday of the week.

So here we go...

Monday

We were still in Stg and I think that right there is enough for a fun day, right? One of Oliver's favorite things to do while traveling to and from stg is to stop at the gas station for treats. We always let him pick a treat and then I end up sharing most of my Funyuns {a total must for long driving trips and yes, four hours counts as long}. We got home late that night so Oliver went right to bed. Okay so today wasn't totally fun but it beats not being with him at all.

Sand Hallow/Zions/Stg

We have been trying to plan a family camp out since the last time we went which was down in Bear lake 2 years ago. We haven't been very successful until this year when at the last minute, everyone was able to go and things just worked out perfectly. Baker's decided to go with or without us and I guess that was just the extra push we needed for the rest of us to go.

We camped in Sand Hollow which was a really cool place. The camp spots were a little small, but we made it work. The kids enjoyed hot dogs and s'mores and I enjoyed just sitting around the fire. Camping with out a fire just wouldn't be camping.

The second night we all hung out around the campfire with my mom and sister who were able to join us the second night. 

We couldn't think of any scary storied to tell, so we made scary faces instead.

Can you tell who is who?

Pretty scary, right?

But we got a better one of the entire group.

The following day we headed up to Zions.

The weather was pretty perfect and the kids loved hiking and playing in the water. When we sat down at the lodge, the wind started to pick up and didn't stop until we went home 2 days later.

We finished off our trip at Pioneer Park aka: The Rock Park. The kids loved playing on all the rocks and going through the crack. Luke and Kat were even able to squeeze through.

And before going home, I shopped just a little tiny bit with Taleesha which is always a must when in Stg. 

The trip was a huge success and we are already planning our next family camp out. We are thinking either Goblin Valley or Moab, but we'll see. Hopefully it's not another 2 more years until we get around to it...

City Creek

Opening weekend of City Creek, Luke and I decided not to go and to wait for a few weeks before checking it out. I really wanted to see it being that this area was where I spent a lot of time back in the day from not only working at Crossroads Mall but also from going to ZCMI as a child every weekend with my mom. So we decided to go Monday night.

 I loved it. The layout was beautiful and we enjoyed as much as we could. I'll have to go on a shopping trip with some girls though. These boys (mainly Oliver) made it a little difficult to actually go into the stores.

And this is why...

Oliver was playing in the streams and fountains the entire time. We gave him all the change we could find for him to throw in, he loved finding the fish, and he tried to climb on all the rocks along the stream...even though he wasn't suppose to.

To finish off the night, we went to The Cheesecake Factory. After waiting for an hour we finally got it. Again, beautiful and the food was really good.

Over all I was pretty impressed with the transformation of downtown.

We hope to visit again soon.  

saw this...

loved it. 

loved going with these people.

Luke did too even though you couldn't tell by the look on his beautiful face...

Happy Birthday, Dad

Today we celebrated what would have been my dad's 67th Birthday.

 We met up at his grave sight to visit, lay flowers and balloons and the boys even played catch. Before leaving we sung a very reverent "Happy Birthday", which is unusual for us Baker's.

Before leaving, we snapper a picture together of the whole family...minus Luke and Kat.

We finished the night with dinner at Chuck-A-Rama, a family favorite and a place that Dad always loved to visit with everyone. 

We are so blessed to have celebrated the birth of my Dad, for the life he lead and the example he was to each of us.

After all of us sang to Dad, my nephew Spencer said " He's probably blowing out his candles in heaven".

I'm sure that there was some sort of celebration going on for such a great man. 

Lucky Us!

This year for St. Patricks day, we were going to be spending the weekend up at the Jensen's house with all the kids while their parents were away. Oliver was very excited because he was going to get extra help getting ready for St. Patricks Day. After dinner we gathered as many supplies as we could to start making our Leprechaun trap. All the kids were so excited. We all took turns telling each other our ideas on how we could trap this little guy.

The kids did an awesome job putting their trap together. They decorated the box with green and gold paper because that's the colors that the Leprechaun's wear. Then they gathered anything that was gold in the house to use as bait for the Leprechaun. We tied some sparkly gold string to the stick that was propping the box up. The plan was to lure the Leprechaun in with the gold and so when he goes to grab it, the box would fall on top of him. This was going to work!

Before going to bed we got to have a special treat. Play dough ice cream because it had most of the colors of the rainbow. Every single kid loved it!

 We all went to bed that night hoping that when we awoke, there would be a cute green little  Leprechaun trapped under the box and we would have all the gold in the world.

We woke up in the morning to find this...

A rainbow doorway and a trail of gold from every room leading to our treasures.

We got to the end of the trail and on the counter where we left the box was a trail of tiny green footprints. The box was on it's side so we didn't catch the Leprechaun, but he did leave some of his gold behind and a note for all the kids that told them to go find more treasures in Trent and Amy's room.

We also found out that the Leprechaun's name was Lenny

.

We decided to have some Lucky Charms for breakfast to celebrate. When we went to get the milk, It was GREEN! We think Lenny the Leprechaun may have gotten thirsty and had a drink of milk which made all the milk turn green.

Luckily, it still tasted the same, but Morgan didn't want anything to do with it so she had the regular untouched milk.

We also found out that he must have had to go to the bathroom because the water in the toilet was green...we think it was his pee and maybe he forgot to flush. For the rest of the day, the kids were checking the color of their pee to see if the milk may have made them pee green too.  

The rest of the day was spent going to the park, watching Zoo Keeper, Playing find the trail with all the gold coins, having lunch, playing St. Patricks Day bingo and making sure none of us got pinched, but of course looking for others to pinch.

We really are lucky to have spent St. P day with all these kids. We have never had a St. Patricks day quite like this with all these activities. I'm thinking this could be one to look forward too every single year.

Next year, we're going to catch that man with all the gold...