Tiffany, Robert, & the Boys

Summer Fun: Kelley Farm

There's a great farm about an hour away called the Oliver Kelley Farm. It is a working farm run by the Historical Society, and they try to keep it a close to a farm from the 1860s as possible. This is the second time Cathy and I have taken the kids there.

There are lots of jobs for kids to do, like pumping well water.

This was very popular, and sparked a few heated debates about whose turn it was.

Of course, you can't let the water go to waste. Trevor hauled many pails of water down the hill to...

...the water trough for the horses and oxen.

Emily loved the horse. I think she would look great riding one. I think she should ask her mom for a horse for her birthday!

The other great thing at the farm is all of the animals roaming around...chickens, sheep, cows.

There is also a beautiful barn...

...complete with adorable kittens!

We spent a lot of time with those kittens.

We heard a lot of pleas to take one home with us.

(Thank goodness we are already equipped in the cat area.)

They even had some chores for us to do in the farm house.

We got fetch water to clean the cellar.

Last time we got to fetch wood for the stove and knead bread dough.

I love this place.

I think we will be back!

Summer Fun: Holland Lake

We discovered Holland Lake this year. It's this beautiful lake with winding paths all around it. And, it's 5 minutes from our house!

One Sunday evening, we ventured on a walk around it.

(There was way too much boy energy going on at my house!)

A sure fire hit with boys: throwing rocks in the water.

This could have gone on for hours.

I love Trevor's wind up in this one.

More rocks! More throwing!

Ethan is always on the lookout for the biggest rock he can find.
We were duly impressed with the splash it made.

I love the reflection of the trees in the lake.
A couple of fishermen were out in a canoe.

We walked through the woods into this lovely open field.

The birds were singing, the wildflowers were blooming...it was beautiful!

Another surefire hit with boys: sticks.

Warning: sticks may cause injury, especially when used as a lightsaber.

We will be back! A fall walk around the lake sounds tempting...

Summer Fun: Pioneer Picnic

We went to the Stake Pioneer Picnic this year. There were only a few families from our ward, but it was a lot of fun!

Ethan and Parker at the sack race.

(Ethan loves a good race.)

The Stake President's handcart...the kids were tearing around the field in this thing. I followed behind, praying that no one got thrown off!

President and Sister Ballard pulled a bunch of the kids around during the parade, singing pioneer songs. Ethan is sitting in the back.

We brought our wagon decorated like a covered wagon.

I think the driver is pretty cute!

San Diego Trip: Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

We spent a couple of days up at Todd & Denise's near Palm Springs. One day we took the Palm Spring Aerial Tramway up to the top of Mount San Jacinto. It was amazingly steep, yet quite breathtaking. The tram car itself turns around as you go up so your view is always changing.

Here's the view going up. At the crest of the mountain on the right, you can see Palm Springs...and a whole lot of desert.

You can see the tram car going down while we are going up. As we got higher, we started to see green things...like trees.

At the top, we went on a little hike through the deserty, rocky forest.

Nora and Denise came along.

(You have to closely watch Nora...she is fearless, and there were a lot of hazards on our hike.)

Trevor and Ethan managed to scramble to the top of every single large rock we encountered.

It was interesting how much cooler it was up there...probably 75 degrees, while it was 110 degrees in Palm Springs.

On the way down, we had our noses pressed to the glass...while the inside floor rotated. You couldn't keep your nose there long.

Ethan chose to sit in the middle of the tram on the way down...not such a fan of dizzying heights while rotating.

Todd, Denise, and Nora at the bottom.

I have to say the desert does have it's own type of beauty. And, I think the desert is the exact environmental opposite of Minnesota!

San Diego Trip: Coronado

One of our favorite spots in San Diego is Coronado Island, a little stretch of land across the bay from downtown San Diego. We decided to spend the day there. We drove over the beautiful Coronado Bridge, took the ferry around the bay, ate lunch, rode 2 surrey bikes around the island, then went to the beach at Hotel Del Coronado. A perfect day!

The Burgoyne clan on the ferry.

Nora looked quite cute with her sunglasses.

Coronado Bridge. You can see the shipbuilding docks on the other side.

Surrey bikes are so much fun, and the views were amazing!

Ethan hauled a least half of the Pacific Ocean in this bucket.
This beach was so beautiful! It had the added bonus of Navy aircraft flying overhead every once in a while...we are airplane fans.

Trevor loves swimming in the waves.

They worked on this sand-channel to the ocean for a long time.

I think Kevin and Nora devised this system for swimming in the ocean to avoid being knocked down everytime a wave came in.

I wanted to get a picture of all of us in front of the Hotel Del, but by the time we left, we were too tired to do anything!

San Diego Trip: Sea World

We spent another fun-filled day at Sea World. I hadn't been to Sea World for a long time, since the boys were much younger. We had a great day...along with about 1.2 million other people!

We loved the dolphin show...

...this dolphin jumped amazingly high!

(I'm sorry to say these dolphins were a little more exciting than our little Minnesota Zoo ones!)

There is a new Sesame Street area for little kids. Kevin loved this Elmo ride!

The Shamu show was amazing!

There's nothing like seeing one of these whales close up.

They even had a baby orca in the show.

After the show, we found this little out-of-the-way area where the whales were swimming. We could have stayed there for hours...way better than any T.V. show! (Kevin couldn't keep his eyes off of the whales, and couldn't be bothered to turn around for the picture.)

You don't realize how big they are until you get very close up.

Everytime the whales would swim by, the kids would scream and laugh!

The whales left quite an impression...Kevin still talks about "Shamu."

Nora is crazy for Shamu, too. She is a frequent visitor at Sea World and carries around a Shamu puppet all of the time (which she has named "dolphin.") Ethan and Kevin decided they needed a Shamu puppet, too. They squeaked their Shamu puppets the rest of the evening!

Kevin really likes flamingos. The minute he saw these, he jumped out of his stroller and stood on one leg.

We had so much fun at Sea World. Thanks for taking us, Grandma!

San Diego Trip: Legoland

I'm trying to catch up on blogging. I thought I would post some fun pictures from our trip to San Diego this year. Of course, we hit Legoland, one of our favorite spots.

Trevor and Kevin rode the train. Kevin loved it!

Our favorite ride this year: the Lego Fire Engine race. We did this at least 6 times! You have to pump up and down on a lever to make the fire engine go. At the other end you have to put out a "fire," then jump back in and pump the lever back. There are 4 fire engines racing...we didn't win this time, much to Ethan's disappointment.

This was a new ride...a sort of robotic arm that twists you and turns you around. It has 5 different levels of intensity. Although Ethan was up for Level 5 (the craziest), he was only allowed to do Level 3 because of his height. Maybe next year!