Our week with my neice...installment #1

The past two weeks have been fun ones for us! On the 7th my mom and my 16-year-old niece flew out from GA for a little visit. My niece went up to Logan to spend the weekend with her best friend who lives up there, and my mom got to stay with us. We went to the LDS stores she wanted to visit, took a trip to the Logan Temple, and got to spend some fun "Granny Time' with her. On Sunday, we met up with my niece and brought her down to Provo to stay with us since her friend had to start school the next day. All too soon, Tuesday morning came and it was time to take my mom back to the airport so she could head back home and back to work... but Naomi was able to stay with us through the rest of the week...and we filled her time with lots of great Utah activities since this was her first trip here. The first trip we made was a BYU day. We took her to campus and showed her around and then over to the duck pond to feed the ducks.There weren't too many ducks there, but the kids loved chasing them around trying to feed them. They learned that the ducks like white bread better than they do pumpernickel bread...who knew? Then we went for a walk down the new Provo River trail along campus. It was beautiful. The weather was great, the kids loved the water and the ducks. There were waterfalls along the path and also a neat wall climbing spot that the kids enjoyed romping on along the trail. Naomi was so good with Emmy. She looked out for him wherever he went, and he loved having her around. She thought it was neat that he called her Aomi.

I used the nice weather and backdrops to take updated pictures of the kids...all except Emms, who wouldn't stay still long enough to get a good shot of him.

The boys loved playing their own version of Pooh Sticks along the stream. Emmy just loved looking at and touching the water! Oh, and throwing rocks in the stream, but I tried to discourage that one.

After that we took her to the Bean Museum. My kids love that museum...tons of stuffed animals from around the world...weird tiny with fangs, huge elephants and bears, a liger, a two headed snake... what's not to love?

When we had visited all three floors of the museum and seen all the taxidermied animals we could stand, we stopped at a park to have lunch and the kids had a fun time playing around. Naomi even showed Owen how to climb on top of the monkey bars for an even better view of the playground! (Thanks there, Naomi! Like he needed even greater heights to challenge gravity from! Just kidding!)They rounded the night off with staring contests at home. Owen was a pretty good competitor, lasting almost one minute; Garrett was a giggle box who had the least amount of staring power and only lasted just over 30 seconds before his giggles overcame him; (here he is trying to prove that he can keep a straight face and stare) Teagan was a worthy opponent and lasted the longest at over 2 and a half minutes depiste her smiles and giggles; but in the end, Naomi was the ultimate staring champion! The girl is rock solid in a staring contest!!! She has this poker face/evil eye thing going on while she is competing that makes her opponents shrink.

She was such a joy to have in our home! I could have kept her forever if her mom would have let me!