California Open House!

A week after Ryan and Emma's wedding, they had an open house in Santa Rosa, CA.  Since John's parents really wanted to show off their granddaughters at the open house, the girls and I drove down to California for a week and left John behind in California to work on the house and go to work.

We usually like to drive through the night with the girls because it's not too fun for them to sit in a carseat all day while they are awake, but I couldn't on the way down because I had to see The Piano Guys in concert on Thursday night!  John and I went on our date night to see the Piano Guys in Rexburg!  This is the only picture I have of them.  Unfortunately there's a bald guy who stole the flash.

We left at 7AM because we got home late and I procrastinated and didn't pack until that morning.  The girls did great in the car until Twin Falls where we decided to get out and look at the Twin Falls LDS Temple.  I fed Jocelyn in the car while Olivia ran around the water fountain.  Oh, and my friend Cyndil came with me.  I don't think I could travel that far with two kids in the daytime.

Olivia has a temple book that was given to her by John's old mission president and wife, the Dils.  She loves driving by the temple since it is walking distance from our house.  She usually yells, "Temple!  Moroni!"

We always have to cheer when we leave Idaho!

When I was a kid, it was always a special treat for us on road trips to buy Ice Cream at the gas station.  Since Olivia had to suffer in the car, I decided to get her an Ice cream.  I got her this one because I thought it wouldn't be messy.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Half of it went into her hair.

I don't know why, but every time I enter California, I always take a picture of the ugly sign.  I figured I should post it since I took a picture.

One of the reasons we love California:

We got in on a Friday night and it only took 15 hours!  It usually only takes us 11 hours to drive to Sacramento, but we made 4 stops that lasted each an hour long.

On Saturday we went to the open house in Santa Rosa.  I have no picture evidence of us being there except for the "Olivia can play catch" game.  Olivia loved it as usual.

My mom was sick the entire time that we were there, so we didn't really go out to do too much except for the usual visit my brother, eat, and shop.  My mom made her famous play-dough recipe for Olivia and she played with it for hours!  It's been 2 weeks since our trip, it's still fresh, and Olivia plays with it every day!

Jocelyn just snuggled with grandparents.

Kevin's kids are tons of fun to play with!

Grandpa and Jocelyn!

At Apo's house we decided to make these handprint molds of the girls' hands.  Olivia wanted to make more, but she got really excited when I let her paint it!

On Wednesday we went to Santa Rosa.  This time, the girls and I were sick.  The first night we slept pretty well, the next night Jocelyn woke up every 20 minutes, then the next night, Olivia woke up constantly because she was sick so we decided to watch Cinderella III at 3AM.  We had a lot of fun things planned for Saturday, but with all of us sick, we decided to just go swimming in freezing cold water.

I'm mostly just posting this video for the grandparents and my bro because I don't think anyone else will find this interesting.  I love this video of Olivia and Stu talking to each other.  I'm not quite sure of every word they're saying, but they sure do seem to understand each other.

Museum of Clean

The Museum of Clean is by far the coolest museum that we've ever been too as a family.  We loved it even more than the Bodies Exhibit.  It was all because of Don Aslett.  

The McAdam family (grandparents included) are big fans of the MONK TV series and the books.  I read all of them and read the last few to John out loud.  They're hilarious!  The very last book mentioned someone going to the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, ID.  We thought it was fictional, but then we looked it up and there is a Museum of Clean that actually opened just one month before the last book was published.  Of course we had to go!

We went down to Utah for Ryan (John's brother) and Emma's wedding and on the way home, we saw the billboard: Come Interested, Leave Inspired.  I came interested and surely did leave inspired!

The museum is 6-stories, over 70,000 square feet and it's not even done yet!

Upon entering, there is a huge metal ball that kids can play in that cost $140,000 to build (nearly twice as much as our house).  Olivia loved it and didn't want to leave.  They even have a huge Noah's arc, stuffed animals included, for kids to play in.  If I lived close by, I would bring my kids at least every week to play in it!  Jocelyn and I are in it:

The museum was so neat because THE Don Aslett gave the tour.  He's a huge celebrity in my eyes.  Here he is showing us the first vacuum cleaners as demonstrated by John and my friend Cyndil who came with us.

Everything that was larger than normal in the museum had a sign that said "Texas size" next to it.  Check the upper left hand corner.

The museum is very hands on which made it more exciting for everyone!

There's some story about this clock, but I can't remember.  It's huge and there is one on each of the 4 walls.  Don said that he had some ghost hunters come and ghost hunt and he said that he really wanted to go outside to make ghost noises.  

HILARIOUS!  Don put on a little skit for Olivia.  In our tour group it was just our family, my friend Cyndil, and a middle-aged couple.  He would call Olivia by name in the play and she was very amused.

Don had so many statues with cleaning supplies.  He even made workout gym equipment with just cleaning supplies!  Not only that, but he also had a band that would play musical instruments out of cleaning supplies or that had cleaning supplies built in.  Here is his totem pole out of mop buckets.

Olivia is in a chimney.

And finally a picture of all of us with Don Aslett!  The best tour guide anyone could ask for.

Museum of Clean sign by the street:

This is only half of the building from the outside!

I definitely want to bring all my kids here when they are older.  I definitely recommend it to everyone and make sure you get Don as your tour guide, otherwise it's almost just like another museum.

Ryan and Emma Wedding Weekend

Ryan (John's brother) and Emma got married this past weekend.  I'm pretty sure that was the best reception that I have ever been to!  They were married in the Logan Temple on Friday 3 May.  Following their sealing, we went up to Camp Lomia for the wedding reception.  The best part was we could all wear jeans!  The serve gourmet hamburgers and smores, but the best part was, we could roast our own marshmallows at the table.  I'll definitely do that again even if it's not for a wedding. 

John and I made 200 hundred truffles for the wedding.  It only took about 10 hour this time to make them all!  This time we experimented with raspberry and mint flavors.  Okay, I'm not going to lie, we ate an entire batch (50) raspberry truffles and had to make another one.  Was it worth it?  Yes it was.

 For the weekend we stayed with John's family in a rented house in Brigham City, about 30 minutes away from Logan.  Olivia is never really good and just going to sleep at her bedtime when we are traveling.  She didn't go to bed until almost midnight, then woke up SCREAMING on the wedding day at 5AM.  After 30 minutes of screaming and everyone already away, we decided to just hang out in the living room.  Olivia went back to sleep and so did everyone else.  I had to snap a picture of daddy and little Jocelyn sleeping.

 The famous baby stand:

 Here's Jocelyn with Uncle Jacob and Daddy before the wedding lunch.  The girls love Uncle Jacob!

 During the reception Olivia found a swing and she swung on it for at least and hour and a half.  I was nervous at first because it isn't a toddler swing, but she hung on and ended up swinging just as high as the big kids!  That's my girl!  She's not afraid of anything.

We really did celebrate a wedding this weekend even though I don't have any pictures to prove it.  This coming week, the girls and I will be heading to California for the open house!

Around the House

 When I was pregnant, I felt like I almost ignored Olivia because I was so sick I just let her watch Elmo most of the day.  Now we've been having a lot of fun!  

One of Olivia's favorite things to do is play with her little sister.  Here she is reading one of my books, but she has several of her books memorized so she reads them to Jocelyn. 

She doesn't like it when I take pictures.  She was asking to me to go away.

 We decided to try to make a fort.  Unfortunately I don't have a ton of blankets, but one seemed good enough for Olivia!  I can't wait until we will make an entire house a fort!

 Picking her nose in the tent:

 She brought all her books and her bouncy ball.

 One day we went to visit John at work and there was a duck in our front yard!  We didn't have time to play with it, so we ran our errands, came home, and it was still there!  After Jocelyn's nap, we went outside to feed the duck, but it kept running away from us.  So, we threw goldfish and bread at it, and it still didn't want it.  There are still pieces of bread on our lawn, but something ate all the goldfish.

 Olivia is her favorite place to be is outside!

I haven't found the perfect play doe recipe yet, but here is my first try.  Olivia loves it! 

My friend Cyndil, the artist, is in town.  Olivia loves it when she draws pictures!

 I'm pretty sure I'm the best mom in the world because Olivia loves feeding the ducks so much that I even baked fresh baked bread for the ducks!  Olivia did her makeup (got into mine while I was nursing) and chose her outfit!  Every time we drive by the temple she always says, "Mommy!  Temple! Oh! Moroni!"

We're glad that it's summer now so that we can go out side all the time!  Pretty soon we will be doing all that in Texas.