Photography Keepsakes

After our enlightening time at South Fork up Provo canyon, I was a little hesitant to go and mingle with more of the unwashed masses at Lagoon. You never know what you’re going to get “up in the city” there. Aaron’s mother had gotten us all discount tickets from Deseret Book somehow. I guess she’s wild about the Lion House rolls or something so she goes there all the time. Actually, I have no idea, but I appreciated saving $40 at the gate. It turns out that $40 could buy us a Coke and a churro on the inside, so we were very happy about that.

Julie’s the first one to admit that Lagoon always brings out the worst in her. She seems to forget that she has children and just wants to go ride all the rides like a crazy woman. Somehow I forget this tendency of hers as well and end up being ornery about her ditching me to go stand in line at the Wild Mouse for an hour. But it all worked out in the end.

I think we were both surprised at how much Lucy and Abby loved the rides. There were these two rides called Dinosaur Drop and Ladybug Bop that Lucy just loved. Even today she told me that she wants to go on the “Ladybop” ride. She couldn’t get enough of it. Julie started out the day with Abby by taking her on the swings. Then she took Abby *and* Lucy on the Tidal Wave. It was pretty funny to watch.

We ended up taking her on it a second time. This time I sat on one side of the boat with Lucy while Julie was on the other side with Abigail. Apparently Lucy’s terrified reaction was pretty funny, because Julie couldn’t stop laughing. Poor Lucy was hanging on for dear life and her mother was busting a gut. Once we got off the ride, of course, Lucy was acting like it was the greatest time ever. Go figure. Grace, on the other hand, was much more conservative in her choice of rides. Her favorite was the bumper cars, the sky ride, and the train ride. She’s not so much a thrill seeker like her mother. More reserved like her father :).

Apart from all the rides, Lagoon has this thing called Lagoon-a-beach or something like that that is basically a waterpark inside the amusement park. So you go ride some rides, get all sweaty, then go bathe with the unwashed masses in the various pools they have, then you go get stinky again out with the rides. It’s great. Actually the water park was pretty fun.

Abigail went on Wild Mouse with Julie and absolutely loved it. She wouldn’t stop talking about it. I ended up taking her again 2 or 3 more times. Each time she would tell me which car was her favorite, which part of the track was the best, etc. I was just holding on for dear life, convinced that my weight would force us plunging over the edge. Fortunately that never happened.

Aaron and Julie ended up waiting in line for Wicked, which was pretty good apparently. Aaron and Krisanne were treated to the slingshot, boomerang, throw you up in the air thing, by Aaron’s dad. I don’t think that Krisanne has recovered yet.

All in all, it was a great day, if a little hot. I got to pay $12 for a keg of Dr Pepper that I could refill as many times as I wanted. Gwenyth enjoyed the root beer refill a little too much. And all the kids did really well the whole day. Even Gwenyth and Sofie lasted well into the night. And maybe the masses aren’t so unwashed after all.

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It’s been a busy, fun week. There are lots of things to update you on. I’ll try to do it in small doses. I just wanted to start off and thank everyone who was able to come and see us, especially for Abigail’s special day. She was so excited to have her grandparents, great-grandma, cousins, aunts, uncles, and everyone else here to share her day. The whole week was a race from start to finish, so we thank you all for putting up with us. Some of you who had to travel a great distance are home already. We hope that the rest of you make it there safely. It seems that the entire state is on fire.

Grandma and Grandpa Elcock and Great-Grandma Eslin arrived on Friday evening and presented what can only be described as Christmas in June to the girls. Many of you know that Abigail and Grace share a birthday, so there were those obligatory gifts. And we couldn’t leave out poor Lucy and Gwenyth, so there were plenty of treats and toys to go around. Everything was a hit, as always.

Saturday was Abigail’s big day. Somehow everyone made it in time to see her baptism. It was a crazy morning that gave way to a crazy day. But we were so glad at how it turned out. Abby looked beautiful in her new dress and she was really excited to have everyone. We found out later that one of Abby’s good friends from Arizona, Nate Mariner, was baptized on the same day. After the service, we headed over to Grandpa and Grandma Jenkins’ house for some lunch. Julie and her sisters put on a wonderful spread of stuff for the rest of us. The chicken marinade from Lisa was a hit as well. I got to take credit for it somewhat, as I was at the grill cooking it. Lisa made me look good, which is quite the feat, and which I always appreciate.

Sunday was another fun nursery day for Julie and me. Afterward we had some great salmon, salad, dessert, etc. I found this marinade for the salmon online and decided to try it. It turned out pretty good. Julie’s strawberry salads are always good as well. After dinner we decided to head up the canyon to South Fork. As the name implies, it’s the south fork of the Provo River. We were amazed at how crowded it was up there, and even more amazed at the demographic. The make-up of Utah is certainly changing. Despite the shock, we had a great time. The girls always love getting their feet wet and very cold. Even Gwenyth wouldn’t stay out of the river.

More later. And lots of pictures to come as well. I think we have a few thousand or so.

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Update: I uploaded a video of pictures that Julie took of Abigail. The videos are QuickTime, so you’ll need that plugin. Hopefully it works for you. Scroll down and push play on it. Not the greatest quality. I played around with different compression. This one’s really small in size. I’ll probably update it to better quality soon.

Update 2: The video takes a lot of bandwidth, so I put one of those “more” things in. So click on the “more” link below and you’ll see it. This way the video doesn’t load unless you really want to look at it!

June is always a fun month for our family, and this year has proven to be no exception. There’s always the end of the school year, which means the beginning of summer. We have our anniversary (11 years of bliss — a shout-out to Jij!), followed closely by the girls’ birthdays. Then there’s always whatever happens around the 4th of July (notice my jazzy red white and blue theme?).

Continue reading “Abigail: 8, Grace: 6”

It’s been quite a week for us. Or quite a few weeks, I guess. I’ll probably be saying that for the next 20 years or so.

First I guess an explanation is in order for the title of the post. Lucy has discovered her mother’s makeup. She loves it. She is, of course, beautiful, and she thinks that putting makeup on (anywhere, apparently) makes her that much more lovely. Here’s the inspiration for the post’s title:

Apparently Lucy came prancing down the stairs a few days ago, looking like a lady of the night. She was puckering up for everyone, just in case we all happened to miss the stuff on her face. She was very proud of herself.

I haven’t written about the Moab trip. We had a really, really good time. Julie and I took a ton of pictures, which we’ll be posting soon. We’re also probably going to make a DVD, so you can once again gag at our cheesiness. I can’t really do the river trip story any justice, so I’ll suggest that you read Aaron’s account. By the way, Aaron, I still think that theadds.com would be a much better blog URL.

The summer already looks to be busy. We’re finishing up the move and getting settled here. The girls are loving the basement, especially Abigail and Grace. They stay up way too late. I wonder where they learned that from? The girls have summer movies, swimming, a cooking class at the city, gymnastics, and all kinds of fun stuff. Lucy just finished her music class a few days ago. She has absolutely loved it, and I think it’s been really good for her. Her teacher, Miss Leslie, is moving to St. George. It seems that her husband, Morgan, got quite the gig down there, so they’re heading down. Abby and Grace will turn 8 and 6 next weekend. And Julie and I will have been married 11 years. Pure bliss.

Abby will be getting baptized on June 30. She’s pretty excited. It’s hard to believe that it’s happening. We’ll have quite the crew here for it. Grandma and Grandpa Elcock are coming with Great Grandma Eslin. Aaron and Krisanne are coming. I think that Zac and Catherine are coming as well. Susi, UM, are you coming up? We’ll have some great 7-weed salad in your honor. And then we have the Jenkins clan and maybe some of the Steele family. All in all, we’ll probably have around 40 people. Should be fun. We hear that maybe even some of the Surprise folk may be around? Wardle?

That’s it for this update. I’ll provide more lively reading soon, I hope.

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