Zach's Birthday Shout-out!

So I've basically been an epic blog-slacker! I've got quite a few posts I want to write, so I'm just slowly doing them in chronological order :)  The first post I wanted to write about was for Zach's birthday which was at the beginning of August.  So here we go :)

Zach wanted to go camping and fishing for his birthday, but for some reason (I don't even remember why now :O) we decided not to go camping.  In stead we went up to his grandparents' house and just relaxed with them on Friday.  I love that during the summer his grandma always has kittens to play with. :) This year there were like three different litters of kittens.  Yup...I love cats!  (If you haven't seen this youtube video you need to watch it right now!)

Okay sorry for the little side-tangent but you know it was worth it!  Ha ha so Friday we just hung out at their house.  We also had yummy cake that I made from scratch and opened presents.  This was a pretty big deal for me to make his birthday cake because his grandma is a phenomenal cook and always makes him this kind of cake for his birthday.  I was pretty sure I was gonna mess it up somehow but it actually turned out pretty darn tasty!    If you read my post about my birthday, you will remember that Zach really doesn't care about birthday surprises.  Well the I figure that's just too bad because I personally LOVE birthday surprises! Ha ha...so this year he had no idea what he was getting for his birthday.  It was pretty epic :)  I got him the Coca-Cola version of Monopoly.  I was pretty proud of myself for this one because I got a KILLER deal on it.  I found it online for only $4 plus $8 shipping.  It was used but the only thing that was damaged was the box and the thing that holds the money.  Everything else was still shrink wrapped!  Yeah for bargains ;)  It's a pretty sweet game too.  Instead of houses and hotels, it has six-packs and vending machines.  We've only played it twice and both times I pretty much kicked butt :) I also got him the remote control helicopter he's been salivating over for like a year.  I figured he would be able to guess what that present was pretty easily so I kept it hidden until right before he opened presents so it was a total surprise :)  It was kind of a flop though because it only worked for like 2 hours and then it quit working.  We exchanged it for the same kind of helicopter and the second one didn't even work right out of the box.  So we ended up getting a different brand and that one worked well.  

 

 

Saturday we went fishing with his grandpa and two of his cousins.  It was pretty fun.  Every time I've been fishing with Zach we never catch a thing.  This time, we caught all sort of fish....unfortunately they were all the baby fish.  Ha ha :) I didn't mind because I hate fish any way :)

Saturday evening we went to Zach's mom's house and ate some delicious dutch oven food.  Overall it was a great weekend! :)  

P.S.  This post is also supposed to be a shout-out for Zach's new blog.  He's currently writing a book so he made this blog to promote his book.  He recently released the prologue.  So you can see this awesome blog by clicking on this link --> http://livingwordspress.blogspot.com/     Yeah for his blog! Go check it out or else!  

P.P.S.  I helped him make that cool logo thing :)

A Taste of Parenthood

My sister's babysitter couldn't watch her kids for most of July, so of course my mom was the obvious choice to watch them.  Of course she is now the young women's president, so there was one week where she was going to be at girl's camp and thus couldn't watch them.  Her and my sister schemed about how to con me into watching them, but little did they know I was super stoked to watch them! Turns out, my mom was super stressed with getting things ready for girl's camp (big surprise I know :P) so I ended up watching them for about a week and a half.

Xander was really excited to come to our house because we have both a wii and an X-box 360, but I wanted to leave the kids with memories better than just sitting on the couch for a week and a half.  My mom sent Xander's Tiger Cub book which provided a plethora (yes that's the big word for the day) of activity ideas.  I think we did about half of the requirements in the short amount they were here and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it more than Xander but whatev.   

One of the first activumties was visiting an adult at work.  Since I'm currently a burden on society, we went and visited Zach at Old Main.  I wasn't sure how exciting this would be for the little kids, but it would sign something off! Ha ha.  Actually, though they were really excited and loved seeing all 5 floors of Old Main, looking out the windows on the top floor, checking out the document cams, and running through the empty corridors.  Zach even showed Xander how to clean the windows.  After our little tour, Zach was able to go on a break and we walked around campus with the kids.  They thoroughly enjoyed that too.  We showed them the A and told them about True Aggies and showed them the fountain.  Of course they had to climb all over that A and throw a penny in the fountain.  Unfortunately I only had one penny and with two kids that is not really acceptable.  Zach came to the rescue and stuck his whole arm in the fountain to pull out a penny for them to throw in! :)  

Xander has this weird thing about always wanting to look
like he's falling off things in photos

See what I mean?

Future Aggies :)

The awesomest fountain and 3 creepers

Gotta love these goof balls :)

Cute :)

Love these creepers!

Don't bust the statue! 

We also went to visit Gosner's which is a cheese factory.  I was hoping they did tours, but no such luck.  They did however, have a window that showed the inside of the plant.  We sampled some of the delicious cheese and bought some squeaky cheese, ice cream, and milk boxes.  I was pretty ticked because Xander was whining about wanting ice cream the whole time we walked through the store and then he wouldn't eat his ice cream because 'it didn't taste like chocolate'!?!  What the?  Oh well, between Zach, Paizley, and I we ate his too :)  

Another thing we did was that the kids loved was go up the canyon and have a picnic and go on a hike.  I'm pretty sure their favorite part was being near water.  I bet they would have jumped in if we'd let them. Ha ha.  They love throwing rocks in it.  We were able to see a few fish swimming around.  It was pretty boosh.  We also did leaf rubbings.  This is where you pick out a cool looking leaf, put paper in front of it, and lightly color  on the paper over the leaf.  You are left with a rubbing that looks like a leaf. I had never done it before and was pretty excited to try it.  Mine turned out alright, but not perfect.  The kids' turned out slightly worse than mine.  Then Zach tried it and I guess he's been hiding his leaf rubbing talent from me this whole time because his looked incredible! We were all very impressed!

One of Xander's favorite things was scooting around the back yard of our apartment.  Paizley loved to race him. Ha ha it was really cute.  Here are some random pics :)

We were going to take the kids swimming at the aquatic center, but Zach and I both had to catch the flu :( Not the stomach flu either, but the flu where you feel like a train ran over you and you will never feel better again.  Let's say that was a lot of fun with little kids :/  Oh well.  The tv,wii, and kindle got a mega workout for those couple of days.  We were planning on driving to my parent's house on Friday to go to my sister-in-law's baby shower, but we ended up feeling too sick to do that :(

Well overall I learned several things from this experience....Here's my top 10:

Things I Learned from Xander and Paiz

1. The word "maybe" is your best friend....If you tell a kid sure or yeah later, they WILL remember it!
2. The best way to get a kid to go to go to sleep right after you put them in bed is to let them run around beforehand.  We took them to campus one night and they were sooo tired out by bedtime :)
3. You never know how much food they are gonna eat...sometimes they would only eat a few bites and then "weren't hungry anymore" and other times they would eat two or three helpings of something....
4.  The people who make the current small children tv shows need to be shot...The theme songs and basic plots are pretty much obnoxious.  Do you know the theme song for Wonder Pets? 'Cause I do! :P
5.  I'm pretty sure children's picture books are amazing.  We went to the library and checked out a bunch of kid's books.  I'm pretty sure I enjoyed reading those to the kids at least as much as they enjoyed listening to me if not a bit more.  
6.  Children love making random stranger friends....There were several times when we were in public and I had to tell the kids to stop harassing strangers :P  We rode the bus once while they were with us.  When we were waiting at the bus stop, this guy in a Jazzy rolls up and Paizley starts asking him questions.  I don't think he heard her and she starts saying fairly loudly, "Why doesn't that guy over there talk?!?"  Hmm....
7.  Never expect kids to find anything!  Every time we were going outside I would tell them to find their shoes.  I think I ended up finding them every time....Once I watched Paizley look.  She looked behind the tv, on the table, and pretty much on the ceiling :P
8.  Even when kids are being little brats, it's very hard to stay mad at those cute little faces.  Especially when they give you a big hug :)
9. Small children + the flu + cleaning inspections = disaster!  Bah of course we had cleaning checks the weekend when we were sick and had small children running a muck in our small apartment....
10. I think I'm ready for kids :)

The Lish Family Extravaganza!

So about a month ago I had all my Lish family (minus Nate) come up to my house for the Lish Family Extravaganza! It was super epic :) There was a lot of preparation and anticipation leading up to the event, but all was worth it! Each family prepared an activity and a meal for the weekend.  Now, if any of you know where I live, you might be thinking...where did everybody sleep?  In our portable hotels of course :)

Unfortunately it rained most of Saturday and Sunday, but we still had a great time!  Saturday night the bottom of the tents got a little wet, but it wasn't too bad. Sunday night, it didn't rain one drop, but at about 3 am, the sprinklers went off! It scared me so bad! Ha ha!  But, once I realized it wasn't getting my tent wet, it was only my sisters, I promptly went back to sleep :)  My mom, however, decided she needed to be a hero. She got out and put Xander's army man helmet on top of the sprinkler. :) Nice job mom!  

Last year Heidi bought a Bingo cage.  Now it's our family reunion tradition to play many rounds of bingo :)  Each person brings a couple of dollar store prizes and we play to win the epic prizes.  We had a ton of fun playing and winning one of the beautifully wrapped dollar store treasures.

There was a lot of celebration packed into the weekend.  We waited to until the extravaganza to celebrate Mother's Day.  We all chipped in and got my mom some delicious smelling perfume.  She loved it of course!

The extravaganza was only a couple days after my birthday and a few days before Ryan's birthday so my sisters decided to surprise us both!  Saturday Heidi and Heather had to go on a "personal errand."  They came back with a home-made flamingo (or as Xander used to call it faringo ha ha) pinata, presents, and tasty Cold Stone ice cream cupcakes.  Xander did spill the beans a little bit because about ten minutes after they got to my house he said, "We made you a pinata." Then, about half an hour later he said, "When can we bust open your pinata?"  Ha ha got to love him :)  But, I was still surprised because I didn't know about the cupcakes or how awesome said pinata was going to be!  I'm pretty sure it will go down in epicness history! :)  See for yourself...

We had sooo much fun busting it open!  We let Xander and Paizley take the first cracks at it.  They didn't damage the flamingo one bit.  So, I took a swing at it.  That was pretty much an epic fail.  Ha ha.  I broke the string the flamingo was hanging from.  Oh well, it ended up alright because someone pitched it to Zach and he cracked it wide open.  There was a bunch of tasty candy in that pink bird! I also thoroughly enjoyed the cupcakes.  They were pretty much the most delicious ice cream cupcakes I've ever eaten. Plus, they were pink and brown which is one of my favorite color combos :)  The amazing presents included a flamingo mold, glitter tattoos, a goat sign, a goat cookie cutter and flamingo straws.  (If you couldn't tell, I love flamingos and goats) Super cool birthday Surprise!   

On Sunday, my sisters surprised Ryan with a sock monkey head pinata.  It was pretty awesome, but not as awesome as mine ;)  They also got him a variety of poop themed gifts.  (Yep...that sums up my brother) My mom also made a death by chocolate cake.  Basically it's a chocolate cake with chocolate chips in it and chocolate frosting.  Crazy good but crazy rich too.  When we took Ryan's pinata out, my sisters were like okay now don't hit the string like Hailey did.  Next thing we know, the pinata is on the ground.  Ha ha way to go Ryan :)  But he did a Zach style bust and then preceded to beat the poor little monkey.  The pinatas were a great success! Thanks for super memories Heidi and Heather :)


  

On Sunday we did my mom's activity: geocaching. It's one of our family's favorite activities. We went to four locations and found two of the geocaches.  We had a lot of fun hunting, finding, taking something, and leaving something!  Ha ha.  My favorite part of the geocaching was discovering an epic park in Logan.  It had a pool of water that was full of flowering lily pads.  I had never seen lily pads in real life.  They were beautiful! Of course we all had to have our pictures taken in front of them :)

Monday was the last day of our Extravaganza and despite my amazing luck (ha ha) we actually had beautiful weather.  It was one of those days that was warm; not too hot or too cold.  So, we pretty much packed a finity activities into this one day.  First up was Heidi's activity: Minute to Win it.  I don't watch that show because Guy Fietti makes me want to throw up, but I think it's a super cool concept: tasks involving simple rules and common household objects that contestants have one minute to complete.   Pairs were determined by drawing names out of a hat.  The first event was Penny hose: The contestant must retrieve two pennies dropped into a pair of tights without stretching or bunching the tights or having one hand help the other. The line up was as follows: 

• Heather vs Zach; Victor: Zach
• Hailey vs Ryan; Victor: Hailey
• Emily vs Steven; Victor: Emily
• Mom vs Dad; Victor: Mom

The next event was Face the Cookie: The contestant, using only their face, must move one Oreo cookies individually from their forehead to their to their mouth.  We matched winner against winner:

• Zach vs mom; victor: Zach
• Hailey vs Emily; victor: Hailey

The final event matched husband against wife.  It was called Caddy Stack: The contestant must stack three golf balls on the table.  The stack must remain in place for three seconds in order for the contestant to complete the challenge.  But this challenge was basically impossible, so we decided to do a different one for the grand championship: Don't Blow the Joker: The contestant must blow a standard deck of cards off a bottle, but leave the bottom card, the joker, still standing on the bottle. So this event was pretty hard too, but I was the closest, so the victory was mine :)

We played a couple of other minute to win it games including letting the losers duke it out :P

My activumty was an epic Olympics!  The games were kicked off with the running/scootering of the incredible torch I made by Heidi and Xander.  This was followed by a super fun game of water balloon volleyball.  I think this was the favorite event of the games.  Even Xander and Paizley helped.  They loved loading the balloons.  There was also a water fight that broke out between Heidi and Ryan which was very entertaining to watch.  We also did discuss using paper plates and javelin using straws.  Heather and Zach won but I can't remember for sure who won which event though.  We did a tug-o-war between the two teams, but we only had a thin rope.  We should have realized it was not wise, doomed for sure, but we did it anyways.  About 30 seconds into the tug-o-war, the rope snapped and gave several people, including Xander rope burn. :(  Our final event was Hop scotch....this was basically just a filler so we could figure out the awards.  You can see the pictures in the slideshow for the awards. :) Each person got a little certificate and a home-made medal (compliments of my mom and me).  Overall, the Olympics was a super fun success.     

The last event of the Extravaganza was going to the willow park zoo.  It was a lot of fun, but we were all sooo exhausted by the end of the day! 

I was really glad that everyone could make it to the Extravaganza.  We had a great time with a lot of food and fun :)