The Woodfords!

This last weekend we had a long overdue family campout! My Aunt Elaine has been reserving a private campground by Bryce Canyon every summer for two weeks for the last FIFTY years! They only do their family reunion every other year and she's been offering to let us use it every off year for a while now. She finally contacted me to see if I wanted to plan something, so this has been in the works since last November! I'm so glad we did this and it ended up being bigger than I initially thought. My brother Todd and his family were able to come from Australia and my brother Jon and his two kids were able to come from Texas. (Poor Laura had to work and we really missed her!) Even Melissa and Levi were able to come. The campsite was AWESOME! It was private, so we had our own gate and no one but us was allowed in. There was a huge table and fire pit area for our group gatherings. We were right by a beautiful lake that we took several four wheeler and motorcycle trips around. My cousin Kristin and her family were also up there, so some of us went fishing with them. My brother Jon brought some crafty stuff to do. He had PVC pipe that the kids made into bows and then they made arrows to go with them complete with feathers on the ends! He definitely won Uncle of the Week for most of the kids with his cool crafts. On Thursday afternoon most of us went horseback riding down into Bryce Canyon. (Thanks so much Todd for watching my kids so I could go!) We had several campfires and even had a movie night with the projector on the side of our camper. Lots of games, junk food, and catching up with my family. It was such a great week I think I'll definitely plan something again for next year!

Here's Lila in the Pack n Play, poor girl kept eating rocks if I let her on the ground.

Levi and Beth making their bows and arrows

Melissa doing her boondogle (I'm so glad they were able to come, too! They only found out a few days before that they'd be able to make it!)

Makayla doing her boondogle

Grace and Beth

Isaak on my dirt bike. This is ALL that he wanted to do everyday, ALL day! So many rides down the road!

Jon making fun of Rusty, on their way down to the lake

Beth (Thanks Dad for planning the horseback riding!)

Grace

It was so beautiful down in the canyon, and we only got rained on for a few minutes!

I was impressed with how well the little ones did

This is the last day of our trip. We hiked a tiny bit in the canyon.

Alisa, Jessie, and Ryan. She left right from this trip to Disneyland, lucky stinkers. So nice that she was able to leave the two little ones home and have some time with these two cuties.

I definitely embarassed myself a little by getting after all the kids for standing too close to the edge. I couldn't stop myself! I'm way too nervous!

Jon, Christian, and Grace

Me and my boy!

I just LOVE this gorgeous girl!

AND..... it wouldn't be a Patrea blog if I didn't throw in some pictures of the kids from the last month, so here you go!

We got to babysit Lincoln a couple days at the beginning of this month. It was so fun to have him around! Here are the two boys eating their lunch outside. ( Moments after them getting into the kiddie pool when I ran inside for a sec, clothes, shoes, and all!)

I wish that I'd gotten pictures of the Fourth of July! We went with our friends, Darin and Rachelle to a lake by our home. Then we did a GARGANTUAN pack of fireworks in the circle. My brother, Chris, and his family came with their fireworks and we put on a show! Lots of neighbors showed up to watch, good times!

Events in June

Here are some photos of what we've been doing this month. Here's some of hanging around the house...

One Sunday we went to the cabin and spent the afternoon there. So relaxing!

Our friendly moose that we saw right around the corner as we were driving away. (Makes me feel like such a great Mom for letting Isaak run around outside!)

This last weekend we left the kids with my sister and saw Tarzan at Tuacahn in St George. It was fun to spend some time with Shaun's Mom and Jay and the brothers.

She's crawling!

This just started last Thur, June 3rd. Within 30 minutes of her startin to crawl, she pulled herself up to stand. Clever girl!

7 things I love about Isaak

1. Once when I was changing his diaper, he went limp, closed his eyes and started snoring. Then he opened his eyes and said "sleeping!"
2. He went into the bathroom, pulled off a sheet of toilet paper, brought it to me, and tried to stick it in my pants. At least he's paying attention to what you use it for!
3. He'll go up to Lila, put his head on her shoulder, then say "Oh, I love you!"
4. When he's having a drink and it's only half gone, he'll say "all gone!" then laugh like crazy because he told a joke.
5. Whenever Lila is babbling he'll go "huh?"..... then look away, then look back at her dramatically and go "huh?" over and over.
6. Whenever I'm stressed I'll go " agggghhhhhh". Isaak is so good at picking up on my moods, that now whenever I'm getting stressed, he'll go "agggghhhh" before I even do it!
7. The nursery leaders at church complain that he kisses all the girls in the class. Better kissing that biting, right?

He's so funny now that he's getting his own little personality! I'm so lucky to have my little family, I love you guys!

Cancun

Shaun and I went to Cancun for an entire week without the kids! We had a free week at a resort because we went to a time share presentation about a year and a half ago and this was the absolute last week we could use it before it expired. We chanced flying standby on Delta and got to ride first class on the way there. Things only got better from there! I'd done absolutely no research on the resort we were staying at and it was BEAUTIFUL. It has several swimming pools that flow into eachother. The room was huge, clean, and gorgeous. The resort was so huge that they had shuttles to take you everywhere, but if you did want to walk, the landscaping was so beautiful that you felt like you were in the middle of the jungle. We saw lots of iguanas and even some anteaters at our hotel.

Our beach at the hotel had a lot of rocks and coral in the water, so we didn't do any swimming in the ocean but it was still fun to walk along and sit on the beach.

On our 2nd day there, we went to Chichen itza. It is one of the 7 wonders of the world. We took a two and a half hour bus ride there. They served us a great lunch and then our tour guide showed us all the sites and gave us some history about it.

We also stopped at this beautiful pool as part of the tour.

Chichen itza!!! It was kind of cool to have a Mormon perspective as the guide was telling us all about it. He even pointed out a carving on a temple of a white man with a beard. He told us the Mayans had a legend of a white man who came to them long ago. He promised he would return someday. They waited and waited, and when the Spaniards came, they had long beards. They Mayans thought it was the man from the legend, and were conquered by them! Too bad they didn't keep waiting!

The Mayans were very intelligent and knew a lot about astrology. This temple could tell them when the seasons were starting and all kinds of things. They even had it lined up so that on a certain day, the sun would allign so that it would look like a snake was coming down the steps. Very Indiana Jones!

We took a shuttle one day and went to Playa del Carmen. We walked along the beach and the shops and even stopped at Burger King!

Here's some pictures of our room...

We dressed up one night and went to one of the restauants at the hotel.

On another day we went to Xcaret. It is a theme park with an aquarium, a zoo, an underground river, snorkeling, swimming with dolphins(or even sharks), an evening show..... it was awesome!

Here's some of the crazies that were swimming with the sharks. The "trainers" were showing them the sharks and even put the sharks on their laps so they could pet them. Then they put on their snorkels and swam around. Weirdos!!

These macaws are trained to stay in the park.

I love how this iguana is posing just for me!

I don't even remember WHAT this thing is called!

This is a ferry river ride we did. We also swam though the underground river, which was amazing. We didn't get any photos of it, no waterproof camera!

This church was in Xcaret, I thought it was pretty cool. Down those stairs is actually water with a little island.

Here we are right before the show. They depicted the history of Mexico, complete with the Mayans doing an ancient ball game, then the Spaniards taking over and then lots of singing and dancing.

My Mayan boyfriend. :)

This trip was so much fun. We spent a couple days just hanging out at the hotel and SLEEPING IN. Shaun even went to Cozemel one day for some Scuba diving. I could have gone, but I don't trust their scuba equiptment down there. (and for good reason! Shaun's been twice in Mexico now and has had horrible experiences both times. One time bad air in his tank and this time his secondary mouth piece was leaking air and he barely made it to the top before his tank was empty.) We even made friends with another couple down there that were from Salt Lake and hung out with them a couple nights. Both boys HAD to watch their jazz game! We had such a great time. I was sad to leave, but I'm so happy to be back home with my babies. I missed them!