Category: Topher

When we go on the vacation, something we always check is the pool, as the best place to be is the pool–Especially when you’re five and three. We had so much fun.
Amy and Tuck:

Eric and Tru:

Grams and Tuck:

One of the best things about being at a pool with your dad is this:


And some good reading:

There was also some good laying out going on (love the head gear):

Play, play, play:

And of course, a good game of Chicken:

Then resting up, and off to Coronada Del Mar Beach, to see if we could see the dolphins or sea lions. Unfortunately there were so many people there, we didn’t get to see any dolphins or sea lions. And we didn’t really get dressed to really ‘beach it’,

but we did spend a few minutes playing, drawing in the sand,

running from the waves(the boys had their swim trunks on),

Digging,

and finding these things–

Again, wish we could live near the beach, to be here more often…
Another great day.

No trip to Cali is complete with out a trip to DISNEYLAND!!!! We had so much fun, and let me tell you, going to Disneyland is so much more fun,(especially when you are pregnant), when there are 6 Adults and 2 Children. There was always someone different to wait in line with, and ride the rides with. We had so much fun. Thanks again Mom and Dad and Amy and Eric!
Again, the highlights:
The race to see who can get cash faster, Dad or Toph:

Dad won. He claims it’s because he has more experience! 🙂
Snacking on the way there:


D-I-S-N-E-Y-L-A-N-D
We started in Toontown:

Met Goofy (the only picture that Tucker would get in with any character…he decided that since the grown up’s weren’t doing it, he didn’t need to either. He likes to do whatever dad is doing.)

Like Drive Trolleys:

Or go to Jail (Well maybe his dad hasn’t done that!):

Eric and Truman are so strong 🙂 !


Fun rides at toon town:

Including the rollercoaster:


We spent alot of time in lines:


Met Minnie Mouse:

Went on the ride Truman has been wanting to go on since we decided to go to Disneyland, Pirates of the Carribean:

thumbs up!

Winnie the Pooh:


All of us even went on Splashmountain, I was a little nervous to see if Truman wanted to go, but he was so excited to go on the Big Waterfall. Halfway through the ride I got really nervous– hopin Truman would be okay on the ride. But he was more than okay, he loved it!


We all got wet, here’s Amy and I:

And we were to cheap to buy the picture, but here is a picture of the picture:
Me at the back, then Amy, then Toph, then Tru, then people we don’t know…

Then Dad at the back, Mom, Eric, the a hole where Tucker should be, and more people we don’t know..

We had two strollers for the boys, which was nice as we tramped around D-town. Here is us going to tommorrowland:

Of just hanging out in the strollers:

One of the boys favorite rides–Buzz Lightyear!




We spent half of the day like this, putting Truman’s flip flops back on his feet…why wear flipflops? Keep reading–

The ride stalled, and Toph got some funny pictures–
Like 4 of dad with this look on his face-

Amy and I were having a competition to see who could get the highest score…she won–

More about the flipflops. Truman was just barely too short for some of the rides, so we borrowed these shoes from Ry and Tiff, they made up the difference, so he was just the right height. We called them his lifts.:


A mid afternoon nap:

Going to Disneyland in August, means waiting in lines:




Inside the weird rotating building:

Another classic Disneyride–Autopia:
(I was taking pictures, as Tucker drove, he thought it was funny to swerve from side to side….ha, ha, ha.)
Toph and Truman rode together. Truman drove.

the cars behind us:

Me trying to take a shot of Eric and Amy, but not able to due to the fact that Tucker was driving, and my dad was ramming them from behind.


An after dinner shot, yummy, yummy mexican food:

And watched the parade:




At the end of the night, we finshed up at the Tikki Room. (Notice Truman’s Pirate Sword, Tucker got one too, and they’re hard. And they hurt when you get hit. Just in case you were wondering)

End of the night on the Tram to the Car:



Exhausting, Wonderful Day!

Toph loves Roadtrips, loves to be in the car, this is how he feels about road trips:

Happy, footloose and fancy free! He just loves them, and I think if he had his way, we’d take road trips for all of our family vacations.
Saturday we left Las Vegas (after a good sleep in) and then headed out to go meet the Greene Crew in California (they had flown out earlier that morning). We spent most of the day in the car traveling, back to the car and DVD Player–

We stopped in Barstow to run around and get some of this yummy food. And then before we new it, we were there!!
Hurray to see family, the beach and be on vacation–We spent the rest of the evening exploring the condo, the boys were dying to go swimming, (even though the pool wasn’t heated, it was cloudy outside) but they went anyways, and Truman came back with blue lips! They had dinner, and again, the boys were tired out, and fell asleep…


Hurray to be in California…

Due to the fact I have a hard time traveling while I am pregnant, we decided to stop in Vegas for a day, to divide up the time we spent in the car driving to Cali. There were a few things we thought the boys would really enjoy there, and plus Toph loves how there are so many things happening in Vegas (the lights, the people, the buffets, etc.).
We all slept in, then started off at the Vegas Children’s Museum. The boys had fun there, the exhibits did a good job of keeping the children active (which they needed after an afternoon in the car the day before), Here are a few of the highlights of the museum:
Tucker thoroughly enjoyed being the banker, and handing out money:

Giant Bubbles are always fun:

They also had an exhibit about children who had nothing, and made their toys out of clay, and had nothing else. Here are the boys making toys out of clay:


The boys also loved this machiney thing, lift your own weight/self:

They also had quite a few exhibits where team work was required. I love to see them working together:

Truman enjoyed doing everything, but upstairs in the science area, he wasn’t quite big enough to do anything by himself. Here is Toph helping him do one:

Of course Truman found the basketball one, he loves sports:

But one of his favorite places by far was the water table. I think he could have stayed there all day long!

Ever wonder what your kid would look like in a tornado? Apparently they have wind machines that blow like super fast, (I want to say like over 100 miles an hour fast), Tucker apparently thought it was fun-

So after a great morning, we were excited to head back to our hotel, eat, and enjoy downtown.
I had to include this picture, Toph’s pumped for the ‘Main Street Station Hotel’ Buffet, a horrible picture, but he was like a little kid in a candy store. seriously.:

After that we jumped in our car, drove downtown, and found a place to park, then began to see what they had to offer. We started at the MGM Grand, saw the lioness’ on display there, (after we walked through the smelly, smokey, dirty casino) then out walking we went. We didn’t get to far in the 107 degree weather, we were so thirsty. We stopped for a ICEE and some water.

Then off to M and M World, and the 3-D Movie:


More Walking:

Then a stop at the Bellagio for the fountain show:

And their gardens:

Then through the casinos to Ceasars Palace to walk around look at the stores, including FAO Schwartz. Such a fun place to be when you’re a kid!

The boys were starting to get hungry and tired at this point. Our car was parked forever away, so Toph decided to go get it while I took the boys across the street to the Flamingo hotel, to see their flamingos they had on display. We’d meet up later.
It was only about 7:30ish, but the sun had set and Vegas went from being okay, to being raunchy at this point. I didn’t know this…wish I did, because I would have stayed in the innocent toy store a little bit longer, and not tried to see the flamingos, with my sweet children~
People who’d had to much to drink began surfacing on the streets, and let’s just say, the women in the flamingo ‘dancing’ on top of the stages, with minimal clothing, and losing the slight clothes they had on, made me sick. Not just because I was pregnant, and try to screen my children from viewing it, but also because I felt bad they didn’t know their real worth as women, as Children of God…what a blessing this knowledge is to me as a woman…
Anyways, we did find the flamingos, the boys liked them, but then when we were trying to leave the hotel, we got lost. (those places are like mazes I tell you), Tucker got nervous, and asked if we could say a prayer. We found a secluded spot, he prayed simply to be able to find his daddy. Being lost turned out to be a blessing, as we didn’t have to pass too many of the before mentioned stages. Toph picked us up shortly there after, and after that experience, I think I’ve had my fill of Vegas for the next 10 years. 🙂
We got back to the hotel, and I bathed the kids, while Toph ran for some food. The kids fell asleep before I could even get their jammies on, and didn’t wake up till morning.
So us adults, enjoyed a dinner together from the hotel restaurant, then crashed. We too were tired!

Starting out….

Here is the day the trencher came and trenched some of the sprinkler lines for us. Unfortunately we had alot of buried gas/electrical/water lines in our front yard, so he wasn’t able to do all of them, but he did do a lot.

As you can tell, the boys were in heaven watching the big machinery.

And the boys stayed in heaven the next few days. This is what they looked like. Mud-A-Holics.



Here is what it looked like after we had gotten all the lines trenched and dug out.


We had a few minor set backs, like the trencher hitting the water main causing a huge gush, and not being able to go under the driveway with the main sprinkler line like we had hoped, so we had to do it back through out backyard, and had to hand trench it all the way around our house. Oh, I didn’t actually do any trenching, but it looked massively like constant hard work. After all the trenching was done, we got the lines in, then attached the sprinkler heads.

And somehow the only picture of anyone actually working was of me…

Random, since there were so many other people working hard! And thank goodness we live in such a good neighborhood, where our children were cared for so well, while we worked on finishing up this project.

Thanks to all again who helped! Although it took us longer than we had expected, we couldn’t have done it so fast with out the help of so many!
I am especially grateful for my sweet hard working husband. He spend many hours working on a sprinkling system for me!

When you’re so sick. Impossible you say? Well….

When your sick, your husband gets put in charge of not only being the breadwinner, but also taking care of the children the moment he walks in the door, misc. errands, and a large majority of the house upkeep and laundry. So what happens? The Dishwasher I have been waiting to buy, until after the sprinklers were installed? Well Tuesday this showed up at our house! Do I have the sweetest husband ever? Yep (either he’s the sweetest, or he’s sick of washing dishes by hand and keeping up with everything else around him) 🙂

Or more great things can happen, when you think you’re well enough to begin a project you’ve been wanting to do for months….like put together your kids bunkbeds,

and you get 1/3 the way through and realize you were crazy, you may think you are superwoman, but superwoman didn’t have morning sickness like this. So your husband has to come home and bail you out, help you finish putting them together, and you feel foolish in making him try to get it done in the 45 minutes he has before his meetings start…because then he’s gone for the evening, and if it’s not done your children are going to have to sleep on the floor…Good thing for me, he’s NOT ONLY helpful–he’s very speedy. By the way, the boys have slept well the past few nights in their beds, and they have already stuffed them full of stuffed animals and books.

Even greater things can happen. First, let me state that I have great in-laws. They came down last Friday, when I was starting my new medicine, that was supposed to help me feel better, but instead had the opposite effect, I stayed in bed or on the couch, unable to function or move due to the side effects. They took the children back to Logan, where they had grand adventures of floating in river (again, and again, and again), getting new toys, clothes, being spoiled rotten, went on carnival rides, playing with cousins, making playdough, jumping on the tramp, and not wanting to talk to their mother who was missing them dearly, because they were having so much fun. For further details and pictures look here. They ended up staying until Monday afternoon. I can’t even thank the Phillips Crew enough…I know it was a group effort, and I’m very grateful for everyones help! Sure love you guys, and thanks again!

So, although I am looking forward to holding down meals for 24 hours, and having energy and strength to play with my kids again, I am blessed to have many good things happen in the interim.

And by the way, thank you all for your kind words and well wishes with the announcement of our third child. With every comment, it made my heart lighter and happier!