Utah Trip: Provo

We spent one night of our trip in Provo, visiting my Tueller grandparents, going to the Bean Museum, and checking out my sister's little newlywed house at BYU. My Tueller grandparents are amazing and I'm glad we could spend a little time with them. Bryn LOVES going to their house and playing with all the puzzles, dolls, and toy sets that my mom grew up with.

We told Bryn to give Grandpa Tueller a little kiss on the cheek, but she decided to go straight for the eye ball.

The Bean Museum is always a hit. Josh is usually even more excited to go than Brynlee :)

Have you ever been to the basement of the museum? This was my first time. Yikes.

Logan was our basement tour guide, eagerly showing us all the creepy jars of animals.

In the midst of all the jars of fermenting lizards and pickled pigeons there was a skunk doing a hand-stand(??).

There's nothing like the Bean Museum :)

Utah Trip: Day in Salt Lake City

On Tuesday my Dad took work off and we went downtown SLC to check out a couple fun places and have lunch at the Nauvoo Cafe.

We started out at the new City Creek shopping center.

Bryn loved playing around the fountains with my mom and Logan

At one of the fountains you can look north and see a straight shot of one of the fountains at the Conference Center. And you can also see the SLC Temple and Tabernacle from that spot.

(Yes, my pregnant belly is definitely popping out now, and the big meals and treats I had in Utah definitely contributed! Ha!)

We also checked out the Church History Museum. We hadn't been there in a few years, so it was fun to check out the different exhibits. (Bryn is climbing out of a replica of a ship bunk that the early pioneers slept in as they came to America).

Bryn's favorite part was the Book of Mormon exhibit for children. I think this exhibit has been up for a year or two, but we'd never seen it yet. It was so fun!

Dressing and arranging different Book of Mormon characters

Planting a garden

There were big TV screens that demonstrated how to do different kinds of Latin?/Mexican? dances. Bryn's skirt was a little large, so she just kind of stood there while the older girls twirled around her. I don't know why this was so funny to me. She stood in one place for probably ten minutes, just trying to figure out what in the world was going on.

She loved Nephi's boat, where you could go fishing.

If you're in SLC you should check out the Book of Mormon children's exhibit for some free fun! Bryn was in heaven.

Utah Trip: At the Farm

We just got back from such a great week in Utah. This was our last Utah "vacation" before we have the baby and move to New Hampshire, so we spent every last second with our families and it was wonderful! We started our trip with a couple days at Josh's parent's house....

Bryn wasted no time slipping into this big tiger costume. She danced around all night and got so sweaty in that costume that we finally had to hide it from her.

Awww....cousin bonding time. (Hug or choke-hold? Could have been either).

We had a couple snowy days while in Utah, but luckily it was beautiful weather while we were down at the farm. Becky and Hema slept over one night and Bryn had so much fun playing with their kids in the yard.

We watched the Saturday sessions of General Conference with the Hawkins crew. Josh's Utah siblings (Becky, Jason, and Joe) and their families were all there for breakfast and the morning session. We've been in California the last few years of General Conferences, so it was so fun to be with family!

Becky painted all the niece's nails...

...and mine :)

Thanks Beck!

After conference we had an early Easter Egg Hunt with the cousins.

And they fed the horses

I married into the best family, and it's always so fun to get together with them. It's also so much fun to see Bryn having such a blast with her cousins!

More Utah pictures to come....

Cinderella

I love my little Cinderella cleaner! She was about as excited to mop the floors as she was about our Disneyland trip earlier that day. She always gets carried away, though, and ends up scrubbing the cupboards, baseboards, walls, doors, whatever she can find. "Mopping the floor" always turns into "Mop the entire house". I had to draw the line when I saw her take a damp rag to the TV screen. Oops.

Easter Treats

We've been so busy lately that we hadn't done any Easter activities or anything besides reading Easter books, so today we finally made some Easter treats. (As if I needed an excuse to make a treat. Ha). Easter isn't for two weeks so we're a little early, but we're leaving out of town and I wanted to do something Easter-ish before we left.

Bryn helped me make the cookies and while they baked she colored some Easter cards for Uncle Mark and our friend Dede.

She put on her bunny ears and made the deliveries as the Easter Bunny Ballerina!

There's nothing better than eating warm cookies and watching your 3-year-old perform an Easter Bunny ballet.

Fun day!

Easter Books

One of my favorite parts of holidays are reading the holiday books with Bryn. We pulled out our Easter books from the garage and have been reading them all week. Here are probably our three favorites:

I loved reading "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes" growing up and now Bryn loves it, too! It has a lot of words, so last year Bryn didn't like it as much. This year she sits through the whole thing and then asks to read it again. I love the classic illustrations (it was published in the 1930's) and the story is wonderful.

I first saw "Rechenka's Eggs" on Reading Rainbow when I was a kid. It's a really great story and I love the beautiful illustrations. Bryn loves Rechenka the goose and her colorful eggs that she lays.

"The Easter Egg" is a new one for us this year. It has beautiful illustrations and a really great story about Hoppi the bunny trying to make the best Easter Egg. This is probably Bryn's favorite Easter book and we read it multiple times a day!

Do you have any favorite Easter books we should check out?

Hair Flowers

(I don't know why this picture is showing up side-ways(?), but I guess it doesn't matter)

I've never made flower clips before, but last night I finally attempted them while Josh and I watched the BYU game. I have friends and sister-in-laws who make the cutest hair flowers ever, so I know mine are just simple, beginner clips. Some of Bryn's flower clips have gotten a little thrashed, so I wanted to try making a few for this new baby girl.

My next attempt is making some of those cute hair clips with felt. (Jen Scott- where are you when I need you!?)

We'll see how it goes!

Green Treat

Green smoothies were a regular treat around here until I got pregnant and just the thought of them made me nauseous! I finally dared to try them again this week and now we've been making them every day. Just in time for St. Patrick's Day :)

There's lots of variations, but our go-to version this week has been:

A cup or so of unsweetened, vanilla almond milk

A blender full of spinach

Two frozen bananas

A a few spoonfuls of flax seed meal

"Green smoothies, Mom!....Ha ha ha.....It's like St. Patrick's Day!.....Ha ha ha....."

Yum!

Disneyland Day

Bryn and I had a fun Disneyland day today! It had been a few weeks since we'd been, so Bryn was so thrilled to be back. I told her about it last night and, sure enough, she climbed into my bed at 6:30 this morning ready to go! She had dressed herself (jeans, t-shirt, jacket, shoes), filled her "purse" full of random things around the house (puzzle pieces, lotion, vitamins(?), etc), and the only thing left to do was drag her mother out of bed!

We spent the whole time in California Adventure this time, and did all her favorite rides plus a couple new ones:

For the first time I took Bryn on "Soarin' Over California", which she LOVED, and then we also tried out the "Wilderness Explorer Camp", which was also really fun. She went crazy with all those big slides, tunnels, bridges, etc. I was the crazy pregnant lady running around, trying to keep up with my speedy child!

She loved this dog character. I think he's from "Up", but I'm the worst with recognizing the Disney characters.

I love having these fun outings with Bryn! I'm trying to soak up all this one-on-one time because we've only got a few more months until she'll have to share my attention with another sibling!