This is the Place Park

The weekend after the zoo, my mom and I took the kids to This is The Place Park.  It was a free day, which is why we went.  It was crowded so it was hard to do everything, but I think the kids had fun for the most part.  I didn't get many pictures at all, but there was a little park they played in with miniature houses, a train we rode around in, a petting zoo, pony rides, tents they could look into to, a big boat they climbed into, and they could look for gold in the creek.  Kari, my sister, was the main one who looked for "gold" though. 

I only got pictures of the pony rides:

Rylan's Birthday...two months late

So, I wrote about the fun we had a the zoo for Rylan's birthday, but I haven't shown the party and presents!  So the morning of, Daddy couldn't wait to give Rylan some of his presents, so out the basketball hoop came....

He was ready to get into right away

Kiera was also ready and willing to help

So Daddy got it out and put it together



And Rylan helped the whole time



Sunday we had his birthday party at my parents house. I made him a football birthday cake that I thought turned out quite good.  And yes, I guess you can say we start young in brainwashing our kids....

He got a good number of presents from Grandma and Grandpa as well. He even got some from the Payne side of the family.  I don't have any pictures from that party though since they did it while Jason and I was in Portland at my brothers wedding and Grandma and Grandpa Payne were taking care of the kids. I hear that had a great time and enjoyed the presents though. :o)

So here are the rest of the pictures from the party at my parents place:

He also got a blow up swimming pool with a slide, shoes, and a trike.  You can see in the above picture that he and Kiera were right there in the action yet again when it came to putting it together.  Rylan wasn't quite big enough for it yet, hopefully he grows into it soon....Kiera enjoyed it though.  Which of course caused for a lot of crying.  That ended soon though when Rylan found out that his Nerf gun (grandma finally got him his own since every time he came over he stole Kari's) had a laser on it too.  The uncles played with him and would pretend to die whenever he "shot" them.  They would go all out and shake and make weird noises as they fell over. It was great and Rylan giggling like crazy for probably at least 30 min.  It was a good night and I think everyone had a great time.

Zoo Fun

So for Rylan's birthday we went to the Hogle Zoo here in Salt Lake City. We even invited Uncle Dustin and Aunt Rena to come a long with Lyhia. The zoo was doing something special and all over the place there were dinosaurs. Some of them were really cool too, like one spit water....that was probably my favorite one since it is the one I remember the most. The kids all just enjoyed being pushed around in the stroller and seeing all the animals. Here are some pics:





Skunk monkeys! I can't remember what they are really called, but they were fun to watch.



Finally we got a good view, the other elephant was only showing his butt.





I think she was trying to do her tongue like the Giraffe.





Finally, they're giving me a chance to run!



 We had a blast!  After we went out for pizza to finish the birthday festivities....or so we thought. We stopped at Walmart on our way home and they had a bounce house for kids to jump in for free.  So the kids got to that, get cotton candy, Kiera got her face painted and Rylan got a balloon...all for free!  Not a bad end to an awesome birthday!