First day of school and eight year olds

Well, it's that time of year again when swim suits will soon be put away and backpacks will be used in their place. Today Cambria is finishing her last day of her first week. Before school started she'd had nightmares each night and wound up in bed with her mom and dad. The unkown can be a scary thing for kids. Luckily our school has their open house BEFORE school started and Cambria was able to visit her class and her teacher. It took out a lot of unknowns and made her feel so much more confident about the new year. There are only 17 kids in her class. That will be a big difference from 30.

Cambria wanted a picture with her brother and sister. And yes, Malachi does have a pink bottle- that is what happens when you have two older sisters.

It is a brand new start for my little brother Ryan as well. He is 12 years younger than me and twelve years older that Cambria. He headed of to BYU this week. I am so excited for him. I had so much fun in college. I can't wait for him to have all the experiences that come with college life.

Kiera was mad that her piece of cake was not as big as Ryan's piece so she refused to look at the camera for the picture.

I also got to do a photo shoot with this little beauty. She will soon be eight and be baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

For more beautiful pictures of little Millie, click here.

This is the last post on our Utah trip!

Memorable Utah Moments and Phrases:
Moment: A man riding his bike down the street wearing shorts and a t-shirt and packin' a huge ol' gun!

Phrase:
After the wedding reception:
Cambria says: Boston has a crush on me, his own cousin! But I'm too young! He said to me 'you look pretty!' I wanted to say 'you look handsome' or 'thank you' but no words came out of my mouth!

Moment: Kiera completely afraid of dino museum.

Moment: My mom answering her cell phone in the hotel room we were all staying in.
Mom: Hello . . .Hello . . . Hello?
Bubba: (from Kai's cell) hu-low

Me: (to Kiera) I said hug me!
Cambria: Oh, that game never gets old!

Malachi trying to fill his daddy's shoes!

Cute little Daphne! I just love these little hair bows!


Our Trip to Cabella's: the outdoorsman's dream shop! We got to see them feed the fish. It was a little sad to see tiny goldfish in the swim of their life against lake fish.

Kiera: Can Jesus run faster than zebras and cheetahs?

Me: I don't know if Jesus has ever had a race with a zebra or a cheetah. We'll ask Him when we get to heaven.

Kiera: ugh! It takes a hundred years to get to heaven!

Me: Well, I'll write it down so we don't forget to ask

Kiera: Ok, but you know we can't take journals to heaven.

Perhaps one of the most fun things we did on our trip was hunt for golf ball. Yep, you read me right. My Aunt and Uncle live on a golf course and everyday we took two walks. Looking for golf balls was even more fun that an Easter egg hunt. We came home with a hundred of them.

I saw it first!

Kai: Do you know what this is? It's a tee.

Kiera: Like a cup of tea (hahahaaa- laughs heartily at her own joke)

Kai and my uncle John have the same taste, it would seem in clothing and footwear. They often have something that matches. This time they got David in on the game. These shirts were $3.50 each at the Quicksilver outlet. We got so much great stuff at that store!

The only "kids" our age that we got to hang out with on more than one occasion (we wish we got to hang out with everyone a lot more) was my cousin David and his wife Rachel. We just love and adore them. In fact here is another little conversation that went on:

Amy: David, Kai says he loves you.

David: He loves me! Why doesn't he come here and tell me that to my face!

We are so sad that they live all the way in Chicago! They are the parents of cute little Daphne.

I didn't realize that the following is a little tribute to Bubba!

Uncle John and Bubby checking out the view from the back deck.

Bubba yelled Hi to everyone who passed by below.

Snake in the grass. The little neighbor boys brought a snake for the girls to see.

They thought it was awesome!

Cambria: Daisy loves me!

Kiera: Yeah . . . she loves you because when I hugged her she nippled me. (nipped me)

We love you Utah! Or as my girls used to say Metah!

Thank you to my Aunties for letting us stay at your house!

Part Three . . . I know it's alot

One part of our trip was a plan to reunite former missionary companions Kai and Nato. They served their missions in the country of Panama. Nato and his wife, Yolanda, and their two beautiful little kiddos took us to a place near Liberty Park called Rodijio Grill. It is an awesome Brazillian steak house. We had so much fun hanging out with them and I especially liked getting to know his wife.
Cambria thinks that Nato looks like one of the guys on the Young Johnny Lingo. We went on wild game night and tried aligator sausage (nasty) and wild boar (not horrible). Cambria's favorite- chicken hearts ith fresh lime juice.

This is my Grandma. I love her dearly. My Kids call her Gigi for "Great Grandma." She lives in California near my mother but she was visiting Utah at the same time I was for the same reason I was (my cousin's sealing). We got to spend a lot of time with her and I am so glad. She made me take this picture so that she could show her hair dresser how she wants her hair done in the future. She was having a really good hair day:)
This is Gigi holding baby Daphne. Daphne, born to David and Rae, is the second newest addition to the Ostler side of the family. She is such a sweet little baby.

Our next adventure was a picnic down in the canyon. Life was pretty high speed at the time so Kai volunteered to stay back at the house with Bubba so they could both take a little nap.

The day was beautiful and warm - thank goodness for the shade from the trees. Cambria was smart enough to wear her swim suit under her clothes. This made Kiera very upset. She wanted me to make her swim suit appear out of thin air. Luckily I found leggings and a shirt that she felt like she could get wet in.

The face below is right before we found Kiera some clothing to swim in. She was very upset because Cambria splashed her on purpose.

Another really fun thing we did was meet up with some of Kai's cousins. It had been more than a decade since he had seen them and I had only conversed with them via the blog world. We had such a great time at the home of the Nelson's. All of Kai's family made us feel so welcome and comfortable. They fed us lots of yummy food and let my little girls play with their toys. My kids kept asking us if we could go back .

All of the cousin's kids . . . does that make them second cousins? I have never been good at figuring that stuff out.

This was Malachi's first time ever eating an Otterpop! He had five of them I think.

This is a big, BIG spider living over the Nelson's backdoor. They jokingly said they let it stay because it caught the bees or wasps that bothered them. Well low and behold It really does. I got a picture of it making a little bee it's next meal. My girls' were quite amazed and scared all at the same time.

Another high light of the trip for all three of my babies: stairs. We don't encounter much in Mesquite or in California for that matter. It seemed that every house in Utah had stairs. We couldn't get enough of them.

It was so fun to be outdoors again. The summer is too sizzling hot in Mesquite!

Thank you for the good time Nelson's and Haun's.

only one more to go and I'll be all caught up!

Part Two

The next stop on our adventures in Utah Was a trip to the Mauldin family's house. We were good friends with them during our time at BYU Hawaii and have managed to visit each other on several occasions through out the last six years. Our kids are all about the same age- except they have a fourth and of course we do not, but their fourth is too little still to be missing a buddy. They have one son, Peyton, Who is Kiera's age and I think he was feeling a little left out because of all the girl stuff going on. Hopefully they can continue to develop a friendship over the years.

Kyle and Amanda are so amazing! They both still look as great as they did in college, they are super generous and extremely kind. Kyle is quite the handy man and built his kids a fort- Fort Mauldin- as it happens to be called. My kids have began laying plans to have their own built in our back yard ever since they saw it. Unfortunately, Kai is not so handy with a hammer and nails, so we might have to recruit Kyle to build Fort Davis.

Notice the bare feet in this picture. I guess you can take the kids out of Hawaii,

but you can't take Hawaii out of the kids.

We also got to visit with another one of our long time friends Pualei and her new husband and her two really cute step sons. Pualei is another BYUH alum that we have been fortunate enough to see through out the long years since college. Amanda and Kyle invited them over to dinner as well so we could have a mini reunion. Pualei also looks as great as she did in college. She is beautiful and happy and sweet and now has a happy family of four. Her two girls and her two step sons. It was so fun to be together again

Fort Mauldin!
Courtney and Cambria

Malachi and Aubrey on their first date: Notice Aubrey is driving.

Kiera loving the motorized toys.

Bubba in shear heaven. He was on this thing almost all night.

After awhile he didn't so much help anymore.

Remember that wiggly tooth Cambria wanted me to take a picture of at Temple Square? Well, she lost it at the Mauldin's house. The kids were brushing their teeth (sad to say I think they were all swapping toothbrushes as well to see whose they like better) and she brushed the little tooth right out of her mouth! There was surprisingly a lot of blood but that just seemed to add to the excitement! This makes number three for Cmabria and they have all been on the bottom of her mouth. I think I can already tell that she is going to need braces because there is a lot of crowding going on in that little mouth of hers!

You can already see that the permanent tooth was growing up behind the baby tooth.

I always though that was weird.

She's got the tooth in the bag and got one dollar for it that night.

Next Stop: Dinosaur Museum.

We also had to make a stop at the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point. We'd only attended the museum once before, but it quickly became a favorite and occupied many a conversation through out the year. We were very happy to go back and very happy that

Aunt Libbie gets a good discount!
Cambria and Malachi had a blast. Kiera on the other hand has seen Night At The Museum one too many times to feel safe. Too make matters worse, upon entering the museum you immediately see a fossil display of a giant T-Rex and what do I have to say?
"Oh, look it's Rexy!"
Insensitivity to my children's emotional state is usually not my style and those of you who have seen the movie understand what I am talking about. In any case, that brought the museum to life for Kiera in a whole different way. She spent most of her time hiding in the stroller basket with her hands firmly planted over her eyes.

Cambria and Bubba feigning fear

Luckily the museum had a few saving graces in the eyes of my second child, namely the erosion table and the plastic dino action figure toys. She spent a good hour at the erosion table and then a good amount of time with the dino toys.

Malachi and Cambria were brave enough to explore other exhibits.

Saving Grace #1

Saving Grace#2

Bubba giving his new friend a hug.

Bubba trying to become more like his new friend.

Cambria getting her hands dirty at the fossil rubbing station.

Malachi drawing at the fossil rubbing station

Build your own dino!

One of the reasons for Kiera's fear: Big Bruce.

Another reason for Kiera's fear, the Mammoth The mean old human skeletons are

spearing the poor mammoth, Manny.

Archaeological dig site- this was actually another saving grace for Kiera.

We had a great time. And would you believe there is still more to blog about?

Stay tuned for part three!