Lagoon again!

We took Elizabeth to Lagoon today to go to Spook-A-Boo and ride some rides. She didn't enjoy it nearly as much this time, she refused to go on Baby Boats and wanted to be held by Daddy instead of ride on one of the horses at Merry-Go-Round. I think she doesn't feel very well, however, she loved Spook-A-Boo, she thought the candy was the best part. She was a little fearful of the Chainsaw Guys, but she liked their dancing and was jamming out. Here are a few pics from the day.

We don't feed Elizabeth, can you tell?

Just give me the candy!!

Long time no blog!

Where do I begin, it has been weeks since I blogged last. Well since September, I have been crazy busy with school - I have a new Spanish textbook and I am teaching U.S. history for the first time since I student taught. As you can imagine, I am a very busy girl. Jim got pneumonia around the middle of September and that took him out, literally I have never seen him so wiped out, he basically was down and out for about two weeks. It has been well over a month, and he still has problems with his breathing.

We had Jim's Grandfather, Aunt Mary and Uncle David come for a quick weekend visit. They were visiting Jeff and the family before Jeff ships out. It was a fun visit. Since it has been so long since I last posted, I am going to post some random pictures from the last few weeks. Hope you enjoy them.


We went horseback riding the day we found out Jim had pneumonia. Actually it was technically the day before, because we spent 4 hours in the Heber Valley Medical Center Saturday night into Sunday morning trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He didn't have a cough or cold, he just had terrible chest pain. We were glad it was just pneumonia, not something more serious.
Here is Elizabeth in her Grandpa's rocking chair. Isn't it cute! She will have her own chair up at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Here she is trying on Great Grandpa's Fedora. She thought she was pretty cute. She loved looking at the pictures after we took them. Suzy has made her a camera hog!

Biking with the Keegan's

So this summer, Jim and I bought a bike trailer for Elizabeth to go riding with us. We bought it in June, but have been very busy all summer long. Needless to say we didn't put it together until a couple of weeks ago. So far we have taken her 3 times, including the pictures I am including. It is a lot of fun, but she slides down while riding so it doesn't look that comfortable for her. I was worried about her not having a helmet, so I went looking for one. It was the only one left at Target. It is good that she is a girl, because the only helmet I found was one with pink butterflies. Too bad it really doesn't work well in the trailer, it kept turning sideways and she kept trying to take the helmet off.
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Fun at Lagoon!

We took Elizabeth to Lagoon with Myndee, Marci and Myndee's nephews. She loved it, I think she will be a roller coaster baby. Here she is on her first ride at Lagoon. She loved riding with daddy.
Here she is with Myndee's nephews. They rode Moonraker, I think she would have cried if it hadn't been for daddy cheering every time she went by. Mommy on the other hand was over on the side freaked out about how high she was in the air. How many years did I work there, and didn't think about it before I put her on it?
Here she is on Red Baron. The two little ones didn't know how to make the plane go up, so they rode pretty low on the water, which was fine by mommy.
Here she is on Boats, her favorite ride. She loved ringing the bell. She even went on it twice.


The video quality isn't very good, but you can see she is having fun.

My summer is over... :(

Well as you can see I have been very busy today adding posts to my blog. That is because today is my last day before I head back to school. Elizabeth goes back full time to daycare and I get back to work. I know all of you are jealous that I had the summer off, but I earned it, I promise, junior high kids are crazy.

I can't tell you how much I am going to miss my little munchkin following me around and not letting me get anything accomplished this summer. If it weren't for nap time, I wouldn't have a blog or a semi-clean house. I will miss the times we spent together this summer. For our last weekday together, I took her to Layton Park and we met Declan and Carol. We watched the ducks and had a picnic lunch. I think she really enjoyed her day, I know I did. Here are some pictures of the kids. They were so cute when we asked Declan to hold her hand.

Family Pictures

While we were out in Boston, we were able to spend some time with Elizabeth's Great Grandpa, and her 3 Great Great Aunts. We had a lovely lunch at their residence in Holyoke, MA. It was a fun afternoon, and Elizabeth enjoyed spending time with her family.

Whale Watching

Wow if hanging out in Boston wasn't enough, we also went whale watching. Now first I need to tell you that I have been whale watching on the Pacific Coast a few times, but I have never seen as many whales as I did on this trip. They figured we saw about 20+ whales the day we went out. Some of them were flipping their tails, blowing their spouts, or just plain hanging out. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Elizabeth loved it, she thought that the whales were waving at her, so she waved back. Here is some bad video of a few tails.

Ducks, Ducks, Ducks

Ever hear of a book called Make Way for Ducklings? Well it is about a duck family in Boston. It is so well loved, there is even a statue of the ducks from the story in Boston Commons. Elizabeth loved this statue. I think she sat on every one of those ducks. So here are a couple of cute pictures of Elizabeth trying out the ducks. I can't wait to read this souvenir book to Elizabeth when she is older and remind her she actually played with these ducks. Thanks Eric and Sarah for a great souvenir of Boston! This is one she won't outgrow for many years to come.

Finally putting some pictures of Boston onto the Blog.

I loved this picture of Elizabeth. She looks so cute. This was just after a wonderful lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Thanks to Aunt Liz for the great lunch!

Here we are about to ride the Duck Boat in the city of Boston. What a fun tour. It was a great way to see the city on land and water. Yes I did say water, we went on water in this old World War II boat. Ours was a Boston Red Sox boat. Our driver was very fun. He even let Elizabeth and I drive the boat for a short time.

We would like to thank Sarah and Eric for letting us stay with them. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed the relaxing week away from home.

Here we are on the wetter side of the tour. We sure had a great time.

This last picture is of us on the tour boat driving through town. If you look close we are in the 2nd seats back from the front of the boat.

Travelling Again - Boston this time...

Well the Keegan family was travelling again during July. We took a week long trip to visit Jim's East Coast Family. We stayed with his cousin Sarah, and her fiance' Eric in their beautiful home in Tewksbury, MA. They just bought their house, and I must say I loved it. They have the most beautiful deck and lovely home. They were gracious enough to let us stay there almost the entire week. We did spend one night with Jim's Aunt Mary in her home in upstate New York. We also visited Jim's Great Aunts who live in Holyoke, MA. We had so much fun. Jim's Aunt Liz and Uncle Ed also live near Sarah and Eric, so we were able to spend some time with them as well. We had so much fun, I enjoyed exploring Boston, seeing whales, and visiting family. I will post some pictures as soon as they are done uploading to kodak gallery.

Swimming across a border, a new first for Jim

So Jim and his family have this thing about being the first to cross a state line. I thought I was going to be first across Wyoming's border on the lake, but no Jim had to do it. So despite the rather cold water, he jumped out of the boat and swam across. He was quite upset when Rob pulled the boat away from him, and made him think we were leaving. Here is the proof, a picture.

Flaming Gorge Camping Trip for the 4th of July

The Keegan Family and the Yarosik Family decided to go to Flaming Gorge for the 4th of July. We borrowed Mom and Dad Keegan's tent trailer, and Rob and Carol loaded up their beautiful boat and we headed to Flaming Gorge on Thursday July 3. We wanted to make sure we had a campsite, so we left early - 7:30 a.m. Jim and I had never been there before, wow was it gorgeous. I think the kids had a blast playing in the dirt, eating rocks and pushing each other around. We had an amazing trip.

I have been eating dirt, can't you tell? Do you like my pink chair?
Here we are enjoying the cooler evening. We set up the camp trailer in the very hot afternoon sun. We quickly headed out to the lake to cool off as soon as that was taken care of.

Isn't this view beautiful?
The kids sure had fun hanging out and riding on the boat. So did the mommies. But boy are my arms tired from holding a squiggly baby who has no fear. I think she wanted to climb out sometimes while we were going.
See the wind in my hair!!! I love boating!!

Watermelon

So we had a Swank Family reunion recently. (My mom's side of the family.) It was just a small barbeque, but it was fun to see all my relatives I haven't seen in a long while. We enjoyed some great food, and had fun watching the kids run around playing together. Elizabeth also enjoyed the event because she shared watermelon with her cousins.

Uncle Mike and Aunt Nicole, we loved our visit to Rapid City

Ready to Party!

So Mike and Nicole have an annual Hog Roast every year, and for the first time we were able to make it out there as a family. Of course the rest of Jim's family had other things going on. (Like Jeff buying a house, and Suzy making the sale, and mom and dad doing the slave labor in Jeff's new house.) So Jim, Elizabeth and I headed to Rapid City to enjoy a nice long weekend away. It was a lot of fun and we did a lot of sight seeing. We went to Mount Rushmore, drove through Custer State Park (beautiful, I might add), drove through the Badlands, ate at Wall Drug, and went to Deadwood. It was quite a fun trip. We also went to an amazing party - The 6th Annual Keegan Hog Roast. Here are some pictures.

Mount Rushmore was pretty cool. We were able to do some exploring, and Elizabeth did some "jeeping" in her cool stroller. We had a fun afternoon.

We also drove through the Badlands. We stopped a few places, like the "Big Pig Dig" and saw some amazing views. It was definitely hot, but we believe it was probably the greenest it has been in some years. We saw a ton of wild life, Pronghorns, sheep, buffalo, etc, but luckily we didn't see any rattlesnakes.

Elizabeth enjoyed chilling out with Uncle Mike at the party. We met a lot of nice people and enjoyed a lot of great food. Mike and Nicole were great hosts, they fed us several great meals while we were at their house. Elizabeth really enjoyed playing with Nicole's parents' dogs. They were much mellower then her Max.

Waterfall Canyon

While Jim's brother and wife were in town, they decided to try a local activity. Something called the "Via Ferrata." It is basically climbing an iron ladder up a mountain. Apparently Ogden has one of the few in the United States, so they called a guide and booked an appointment. Mike and Nicole are avid rock climbers and at one time owned their own climbing guide business. They invited us along, but I knew it was something I wouldn't even attempt. Jim was up for it though, and so we headed up to Waterfall Canyon with most of Jim's family. While Jim, Jeff, Mike and Nicole went climbing, the rest of us decided to hike to the top of Waterfall Canyon.

At the beginning of the trailhead, I wasn't even sure if it would be a good idea to take Elizabeth on the hike, I only had a front carrier for her. After some fiddling, we were able to make it into a backpack. (If I do this again, I need to buy a backpack for her.) And off we went, thankfully Elizabeth's Aunt Suzy had her camera so we have a record of this momentous event. Elizabeth's Grandma told Suzy and I, that we needed to hike this again in 30 years, so we would know how she and Grandpa felt. It definitely isn't an easy hike, and it is a little bit hard with a baby on your back. But Elizabeth was a champion and had a good time, even though her legs probably went numb from riding on my back with her feet dangling.

The most eventful part of the hike was losing Elizabeth's sippy cup as we came back down from the top. We thought we'd never see it again, when low and behold, there in the creek where we stopped to have lunch was her cup. It was across the rushing creek and we didn't trust crossing it, so Jim's dad and Suzy tried to free it by throwing rocks. Mom was going to catch it further down. Despite hitting it four times, Suzy only managed to lodge it even deeper. We thought it was over, to be so close, but yet so far. Then out of the blue, a guy and his dog came up the other side. We asked him to grab it for us, and we had it back. Isn't it crazy how things work out. The following are some pictures from our hike. Needless to say we had a very enjoyable day. Mike, Nicole, Jeff and Jim also had fun, but I have no pictures from them to show. The pictures are from our hike, thanks to Suzy who had her camera.

One very tired little girl.