Utah 2011 Trip part two!

July 4th we went down to Mona to hang out with my sister Amy and her kids. We went to Buraston Ponds and had a day camp. The kids could not wait to roast marshmellows! That's one of their favorite things to do. We had fun doing all the stuff you do while camping. Eating, talking, playing in the dirt, hiking around, enjoying the beautiful scenery. It really was a nice day, not too hot. One of Amy's friends came to join us with her kids as well. All the kids got along and played well. Jaxen even tried to be Madison's hero. One of the little boys was throwing dirt, well they all were, but some kept getting Madison and Jaxen would run up to me and tell me " that boy keeps throwing dirt at my cousin! I keep telling him to stop and he won't stop!" It was so cute to see how concerned he was over it. I don't know if it was bothering Madi at all because, like I said they were all digging in the dirt, but Jaxen really wanted to defend his cousin. I'm so happy that my kids are able to play with and love their cousins. It makes me smile! I do wish they could do that more often. After a while, Amy brought out the raft. We had the raft but no pump! So what did Amy do? She sat there and blew into the raft until it was full of air and ready to go. It was a great sight! And the kids had fun taking turns in the raft. We haven't been kayaking in a while so they really enjoyed this. Ron tookthe boys out and Kaeryn went with Erika's friend. Kaeryn and Erika found some tangled up fishing line that had a gummy worm stuck to it. So what did they do? They found a stick of course, and put the fishing line on the stick and tried to go fishing with it. There were actually some small fish along the shoreline and they actually nibbled at the gummy worm. Guess fish have a sweet tooth also. Well, after a fun day of marshmellow roasting, hiking, rafting, tree climbing, dirt digging, gummy worm fishing, we decided to pack up and head back to Amy's house. Erika saddled up her horse Toby and took Kaeryn and Tristan on a horseback ride. They always look forward to that when we go to Utah. I was really proud of Tristan, when he came in after his ride he asked for some carrots for the horse and he fed the horse himself. It was great to see him be so brave. We also had a shake off while we were there. I say Granny's has the best shakes and Ron say's Stan's has the best shakes. So we took the kids to both and let them be the judges. This year Granny's won! Wahoo! We'll have to see who wins next time. We also took the kids to the nickel arcade. We sure wish they had one of those here in Sacramento. They had fun. The boys learned why I love skee ball so much. I took them to play and they wanted to play that game the most. Jaxen would say " I love skee ball!" I think it was a good game for him because he would still get a ticket even without a high score. We left on July 8th to come back home. We left in the morning so we would be back home at night and we could sleep in our own beds. We drove back the same way we came. It was fun to see the places we normally only see at night on the train. The kids would say " wow this place is bigger than we thought" as we drove though Nevada. We also made an unplanned stop to Circus Circus when we got to Reno. We needed to take a break somewhere, Jaden needed to eat, we needed to eat, and so Ron decided to stop at Circus Circus. He had been there but the rest of us hadn't. It was great. I was surprised at how cheap the games are to play. We let the kids each play a couple games and we even played one as a family. Ron won and gave me his stuffed dog. We did get to see an act before we had to head back home. We had so much fun that we decided that sometime this fall we will go back and spend more time there. We really did have a great trip! It was wonderful to see everyone that we did! Hopefully next time we'll get to see some of those that we missed. This definitely was a wonderful adventure and we can't wait for the next one!