Last minute trip home

 After working many late nights and a Saturday, Daniel's boss gave him Monday off so we last minute packed up and headed to Moab.  We are so grateful to Grandma and Grandpa for watching the boys so we could go through the Monticello temple.  We don't get to go together as often as I would like and I especially love going to Monticello and being in and seeing the same rooms that we were in on our wedding day.

On Monday Grandma had to work and Grandpa took us on a hike looking for Dinosaur tracks.    I was proud of Chase, he whined a little bit but hiked almost the whole way (3 miles-ish) by himself.

 It helped that Grandpa had lots of snack and treats on the way.  He would keep Chase walking down the trail with "energy sticks" (licorice) and "energy pills" (star bursts).

 The hike had lots of pretty views.

 We didn't find the dinosaur tracks on the hike, but found some on another shorter hike.  The boys were too tired to walk 500 feet up a hill so I ran up and took some pictures.  These are believed to be the tracks of a dinosaur simi9lar to the allosaurus.

 They were pretty big.

These ones were a little hard to make out unless you looked at the standing back.  They were just big holes in the rock, but from a distance they made a pattern of a 4 legged dinosaurs walk.

 This was one of the other kind of dinosaur footprints.  Way bigger than my foot!

Happy Valentines Day!

How to catch a Chaser

Daniel taught Chase how to set traps the other day.  See the little raisin inside the tube?  That's the bait.  It started off as an M&M and Chase totally fell for it.  

Now he knows what to expect and is playing the game.  He is a hungry bear!

He reached into the trap to get the bait and....

bam!  Get's caught and kissed to death.

Pretty soon it was Chase's turn to set a trap for daddy.  Wait for him to reach into the trap and...

PULL!

And that's how you catch a daddy.

My personal restaurant

To my delight, I woke up this morning to the cutest little waiter wearing my apron and presenting me with this:

My very own menu for breakfast, which he then cooked up (with his daddy's help) and called me to the table when it was ready.

What a fun way to start the morning off.

Playing at the park

I was a little late picking Chase up from preschool one day because I couldn't find the keys to the car.  After running the whole way the teacher said he had been feeling a little nervous when all the other moms had come and left.  We walked home and I decided to see if he wanted to talk about being nervous.

"Chase were you feeling nervous because I was late to get you?"
Chase: "What does nervous mean?
Me: "It's like being worried.  Were you worried that I wasn't going to come and get you?"
Chase: "No mom, I wasn't chewing on my pencil."

Sledding down the driveway

 Although I plan on never buying a North facing house again (think piles of snow in our driveway while the people across the street have NONE!) one benefit is a sledding hill right at our house.  After shoveling the drive way after this last snow storm the neighbor kids came over and found it plenty slick so they ran home to get their sleds.

 Chase had so much fun with them I didn't dare tell them they probably shouldn't be sledding out into the road so I went and stood at the bottom of the hill and stopped them before they went out into the road.

This is Liam.  One of Chase's favorite people.  Liam is 6 and in Kindergarten so he doesn't get to spend a lot of time with him, but he just loves it when Liam does come to play.

Another bonus is that when Liam comes to play so do his two older sisters that treat Chase just like a little brother (probably even better!)  They push him in the sled, pull him in the wagon and just make sure that he is taken care of.  Chase always has a blast when they come around.