After that there was no way to get him to sit down in his stroller. What a little stinker! After that very long two hours I was so glad to get my car back with working locks and the best part is we didn't have to pay for the repair since it was still covered under the previous lock repair warranty--Wahoo again!!Right after getting the Suburban fixed it was time to pick up the boys from Kids in the Park. I was picking them up when I got a call from Aaron saying the truck had died. He has been driving the truck because the Elantra's registration has expired and we haven't had time to renew it. Besides it needs a new brake job on the back wheels so that just adds to the time investment so Aaron has been driving the truck until he can get to fixing the car. Anyway, he was just coming back from a really important meeting on the other side of the base when the truck just quit in the middle of the road. Luckily some good Samaritan helped Aaron push it off the road into a parking lot. That's when Aaron called me saying he needed help. For some reason since last spring the gas gauge in the truck stopped registering so you just have to guess at how much gas you have in the tank. Aaron was playing Russian Roulette and Aaron guessed WRONG. Luckily the only thing wrong with the truck was it was out of gas. I brought him a few gallons of gas to put in it and the truck started right back up after the gas lines got primed. We really need to get the gas gauge fixed. I thought it was a low priority item, but if I have to keep rescuing Aaron it might get moved up on the priority list. So out of our three vehicles only one was driveable today. Geez--cars are a necessary evil! You can't live with them and you can't live without them either!
After getting Aaron back on the road, I took the kids home to have a quick lunch. While I was fixing lunch the kids were out in the backyard playing. After a few minutes I heard a lot of screaming. I went outside to find Daniel laying on the ground screaming and crying. I asked what happened and finally got the whole story in between the sobbing. Josh and Daniel were playing dirt clod baseball. It was Josh's turn to bat with a huge stick, but Daniel got to close to the stick bat and got hit in the side of the head with it. It left a pretty nice goose egg. Of course the picture doesn't do it justice.
However, dramatic Daniel is playing the part of a poor, pathetic, victim pretty well. Boys will be boys I guess.After lunch we headed over to play some bowling. We were in the middle of the second game and Sarah had started losing interest. To keep herself entertained she went over to the ball ramp and used it like a slide. She didn't care if she banged her head into the chairs at the bottom of the ramp/slide. Good thing the employees at the bowling alley know us well enough to not put anyone in the lanes next to us while we are bowling there!! Anyway, she was over there long enough to take care of business in her diaper. Seriously, I can't go anywhere without her doing that in her diaper!!! It is ridiculous!!!
Noah passed the time bowling by having some toe jam dessert. MMMMMMMM, yummy!
For some reason at the beginning of every dinner Daniel has to go potty. It is EVERY dinner without fail within the first two minutes of sitting down Daniel insists he HAS to go potty. Today I thought I would plan ahead. A few minutes before we sat down to dinner I made Daniel go potty. He refused and said he really didn't need to go at all. Aaron told him if he didn't go then, then he wouldn't be able to go during dinner. Daniel said fine and then everyone sat down to eat dinner. Sure enough two minutes into dinner Daniel started getting squirmy and said he REALLY needed to go potty. Aaron told him no, but after a few minutes of watching him squirm Aaron said Daniel could go potty if he refilled his cup of water. After Daniel filled up his cup of water he sent him over to fill up my cup of water. It was so funny to watch him squirm even more while watching the water pour from the fridge into the cup. What is it about running water that makes you need to go even more?! I recorded him filling up my cup.He really did need to go potty. Geez--crazy kid!!
Ahhh flip flop lines--at least that is what they look like for now. Who knows what they will look like after all the dirt has been scrubbed off.
Sarah didn't quite know what to think about it all.
Sarah only had one very small cavity so they didn't even need to numb her up. The dentist just drilled while the two dental assistants held her arms down so she didn't pull at anything. She got done before Daniel got done so she watched Daniel's procedure through the doors.
Daniel, poor kid, had three cavities to start with, but once they got in between his teeth they discovered another cavity and that would make four. I cried just a little because we have used up our entire $1850.00 of Flex Spending Account for the year and it's only June. That means that fourth filling is more money that will come out of our pockets**sniff sniff**. Geez kids are expensive!!!! Anyway, they had to really numb up his upper jaw. They put the numbing gel on and got him to take a few good whiffs of the nitrous, but it wasn't enough to take the sting out of the shots. Once they put the needle in his gums he jumped and started screaming. The other staff members had to come and close the doors so the poor kids out in the waiting room didn't hear him and refuse to let the dentist see them.
Afterward Daniel's cheeks and lips were so numb and puffy he could hardly smile. 
He got done early enough to make it to the last 90 minutes of Kids in the Park. He was glad because today was super hero day and they got to make their own masks and capes. He calls himself the Green Goblin, but I called him Captain Super Numb or Captain Novocain--both have a good ring to them. I got a picture of the three boys showing their super hero costumes and, of course, Sarah had to be a part of things, too even if she didn't have a super cape.
After lunch the boys wanted to go and fly their kites. Since it was quite windy today I agreed. First we had to head over to the store to pick up more kite string, but after that we headed over to the park. I had three different kites and to try to get them all up in the sky at the same time was an almost impossible task. Once I got one kite into the sky and headed over to help the next kid, the first kid's kite nose dove into the ground. While I was helping Matthew, Josh got impatient and wadded up all his string so it became a HUGE knot. That took me forever to untangle and Daniel wasn't patient enough to wait for me to untangle Josh's line. He wadded up his whole kite tearing it into pieces and ran over with Sarah to play on the playground. I finally got Josh's kite into the air to find Matthew's had crashed. I wandered over to help Matthew and that's when Josh let go of his line and let it get all tangled up in a huge chain link baseball backstop. I didn't notice until I saw Josh hanging off the edge of the very top of it trying to untangle his line. I got upset and went over to get him down before he fell and broke something--again thinking about our empty Flex Spending Account. He got down unhurt and I told him to go help Matthew wind up his kite string. I guess he thought I said go wad up the entire length of kite string to see how big of a knot you can make. At this time I gave up on the kite flying as it was turning out to be more of a frustration for me than an enjoyable time. I never got that last knot untangled. I think it would be easier to cut my strings and get some new line if I ever feel the need to fly a kite again in the near future. Here is proof we did get the kites into the air: Matthew's kite is the smallest speck of yellow in the middle of the picture.
You can see both kites got tangled in the air in this picture. I kept telling the boys to stay far apart, but that must have translated into follow mom and keep as close to everyone as possible especially anyone else flying a kite at the same time.
Here's what Noah thought of all the kite flying:
While I was hopelessly trying to untangle that last huge messy knot, everyone took a break and watched for trains to go by since we were right next to the train tracks. Matthew got so excited every time one would pass by he would yell and let everyone in the park and in the near by neighborhoods know a train was going by--as if they couldn't already hear the noisy train. What a crazy kid!
Even if it was a little frustrating for me today, I think the kids did have fun when we did have their kites up in the sky.
For Father's Day we gave Aaron the breakfast in bed. He had omelets since we already had all the ingredients from the previous morning--sweet!! For dinner we had Aaron's favorite--lasagna with salad and garlic bread. As I was cleaning up I got to notice Sarah's after dinner water cup. 
YUCK!! And the kids wonder why they don't get sips of our drinks...
After lunch we headed over to the splash pad. This time I let Noah try it out. He didn't particularly care for it. I have a video of him screaming, but for some reason blogger won't let me add the video.
Today I was glad because Aaron got to come home a day early from his trip, but not until this afternoon. This morning it was field trip day for Kids in the Park. They got to go on a walking field trip to a local pizza parlor, take a tour and then make their own pizzas for lunch. Poor Daniel wanted to go along, but there was no way he was going to be able to eat anything there. I made him a lunch, but I still felt bad. I made sure he had a bunch of fruit snacks so he could eat some good stuff, too. I also premedicated him with some Zyrtec just in case he came in to contact with any dairy, eggs or nut products. Unfortunately, what I thought was Zyrtec ended up being Benadryl. Oops. Benadryl makes Daniel very tired and ornery--basically "Chuckles". I felt bad dropping him off in his "Chuckles" condition, but I didn't want to keep him home and deal with Chuckles either. When I picked them up from Kids in the Park, I think it took Daniel a millisecond of riding in the car before he fell asleep. He did sleep off the Benadryl so when he woke up he was a little more happy. We picked up Aaron at the airport and then since we were down in Salt Lake we headed over to the Tracy Aviary to check things out. Sarah loved chasing the peacocks around. Daniel stayed far away from them. He is afraid of any sort of unhuman creature.
Here's Daniel at T-ball. 
Lastly it is very nice to have Aaron home. He got thrown right back into the swing of things because I "took the night off". He did great and I really enjoyed my much needed break. Whew!! Until next business trip...
After about 30 minutes of much sadness and frustration from me and the kids, I decided I needed to call in the reinforcements. I sheepishly had to ask Aaron when he got home from work to help me in taking the pictures. I felt bad since that ruined his Father's Day surprise, but he didn't mind. I was thankful for the extra help!! After Sarah and Noah got their naps in we headed over to a park by our house to try out the pictures there.
Again--I guess holding the letters, not hitting your sibling with the letters, smiling and looking at the camera at the same time seemed to be mission impossible!! 
We tried a different spot. Noah just wanted to scream and Sarah was looking at him like, "What's your problem?"
Noah is still screaming and trying to get down and Sarah wanted to watch the people walking their dog behind us.
I am trying to console Noah while the boys are supposed to be looking at the camera and smiling. Sarah just wanted to play with her heart.
We tried a different location that was in the shade to see if things would go better. It didn't go much better as you can see:
Daniel was tired so he got up to go for a walk.
I guess when you say "Cheese" it really means scratch your nose and look away from the camera.
Noah was still not a happy boy.
Even in the shade we had problems with the kids keeping their eyes open.
After all that we did eventually get two good pictures of everyone. I hope Aaron liked his pseudo surprise Father's Day present!!
Hollywood Connection is kind of small indoor amusement park. The kids saw this fun ride at the first and wanted to ride it. I have never really had a great tolerance for spinning rides and as I get older my tolerance for them is really decreasing. The kids pleaded with me to go on this ride and I reluctantly did, but I really regretted it. Aaron rode with Sarah and Matthew. 
I got paired up with Josh and Noah. Now this ride really spins. Not only does the ride itself spin, but the individual carts spin as well. You can even make them spin faster if you want to and Josh really wanted to make them spin. 
Of course he had Aaron egging him on telling him to spin it faster and faster. I think he just wanted to see how green I could get. I couldn't wait for the stupid ride to end. I refused to go on this ride again. I don't think I missed out on too much either. Later on Daniel rode this ride again and got paired up with a little boy who really made the cart spin. During the ride you can hear him scream, "I AM SO DIZZY!!" After the ride stopped he stumbled off and over to where we were standing. It took him a bit to regain his balance after that round.
I took Sarah around the rink. She was just dead weight. She didn't even try to stand on her skates. She just wanted me to carry her and let her skate wheels turn. My arms lasted about one time around the rink carrying her dead weight until they gave out. In the corner of the picture you can see Josh's feet sprawled out from his most recent fall. 
Aaron refused to put skates on so I was out on the rink having all the kids grab me and trying not to fall myself. Matthew and Josh actually did well seeing as this is the first time they have been on skates. Daniel got out on the rink, fell and crab walked back to the benches to sit down. Aaron tried to help him back out on the rink to grab hold of me. Aaron gave him a little nudge and boy did he fall. After that he refused to even stand up on the skates again. Needless to say we didn't spend much time at the skating rink since the only ones who enjoyed it were Josh and me.
They just ran from hole to hole to see how fast they could get the ball in the hole. It didn't matter if they used their clubs, feet, or hands just as long as they could get their golf ball in the hole. Aaron and I actually wanted to play, but playing an actual game took a lot longer than running from hole to hole. Finally when they caught up to the people in front of us and tried to golf around them we stopped them. We made them sit on the bench and wait for us to catch up. They weren't very happy about that. 
Sarah just liked to put her ball where she wanted. She would hit it then move it if she didn't like where it ended up. She even helped another guy out when his ball didn't get very close to the hole. She picked up his ball and gave it back to him. He wasn't too happy. Oh well.
She didn't really care for the ride because she couldn't figure out how to make the car move. She would just get out in the car and sit in the same spot the whole ride. She only moved when someone bumped into her. The other kids LOVED it. We went on this ride multiple times and it was so not busy we never had to wait in line. It was great. This picture shows Daniel, Matthew, Sarah and Aaron bumping in to each other.
Another ride was a mini roller coaster. Again Sarah was about a foot short of the height requirement, but the attendant said she didn't care if we brought her on. Sweet!! Everyone loved this one, too.
They also had a carousel. The whole family could go on this ride at the same time which was nice. You can see Sarah, Daniel, Noah and me having a fun ride.
Daniel was so excited to ride on the dragon. That's the one he chose to ride almost every time--crazy kid!!
Daniel made a delightful traveling companion--even if he tripped and scraped his knee and screamed hysterically for a few minutes afterward. Everyone turned to see what had happened, but were relieved to find it was only and overly dramatic Daniel screaming about his small scrape. We got started on the hike late so we didn't make it all the way to the top before we had to turn around. We did get very close to the top though. We did make it close enough so I could snap this picture of the falls: 
On the way down I was too slow for Josh and Daniel, but just right for Matthew's pace. Matthew went slower because the waterfall sounds seemed to be too loud for his liking so he kept his ears plugged with his fingers. I wasn't complaining about the slower pace, though.
On the way down it was a beautiful view. In real life you could see the Ogden temple from this point on the trail, but it doesn't show up in the picture, though. Just take my word for it!!
