Dear St. George,

I sort of love you.

I love your red rocks...

and your little cupcake shops...

and let's definitely not forget this place...
That "Hikers Benedict" deserves a love letter all its own...

We love to visit your temple...

and we love to look upon your sun-bathing lizards...

You're just the best,
St. Georgie dear...

Thanks for being you.

xo,
Lola

Dear Dillon 

and Kaylie,

Man you little stinks are cute.
Keep up the good work.

xo,
Lola

Dear Tennyson's Nose,

Stop torturing my kid, mmmkay?
I've had it.
If you weren't attached to my sweet baby's face,
I would kick you in the...
face...
you know,
um,
that is, if you HAD a face,
of course...

So knock it off.
Seriously.
If the rivers of snot don't dry up like the
Nile of biblical-olden-famine-ish times,
and SOON,
I'm taking a hospital issue bulb syringe to your sorry A.
And that's a promise.

Check yo-self before you wreck yo-self.

xo,
Lola

Dear crazy jack-o-lantern 

face in the cliff wall,

Thanks for the sweet photo op.

xo,
Lola


Word to your mother.

St. George Vacation...so far. (Day III)

So, today we decided to go to the DinoTrax Museum thing here in St. George. More on that in a minute. Kort looked so cute in his sunglasses on the car ride over, I just had to take a few snap shots of him. When he saw my camera in his face, this is what he did! Captain Smooth baby! I think this is what he thinks ALL sunglasses pictures should look like.

When we got to "DinoTrax," I'm sorry to say it, but it was Lame with a capital L! Well, no, let me put it this way: It SO wasn't worth the $15 bucks we had to fork over to admit our little family of three. Not even close. It's a big warehouse where you walk around and literally look at replicated dinosaur footprints in large slabs of stone. I'm not saying it isn't fascinating for the elderly crowd (who were coming and going in swarms, btw) I'm just saying that it wasn't all that exciting for mildly ADD-ish 6 year olds...and certainly NOT for $6 per adult and $3 per child. That's all. Luckily, they had 2 activities that were enjoyable for Kort.
1. Pretend excavating in a giant (HOT!!!!) sand box.

2. And making "Dino Rubbings" with crayons. (Can I get a "Woot woot!"?)


Then we stopped by Walmart to grab a slip n' slide for the backyard. I sort of love going to the St. George Walmart...I will give you one guess as to why.

Is NOW an okay time to take a minute to say that I think it's pretty ridiculous that the world at large still thinks that Mormons are Polygamists? Just the other night, Jay Leno made a joke about Utahns and all their wives, and I just thought..."Kay stupid, There are WAY more Polygamists in Colorado, Arizona, and Mexico... BESIDES, Mormons (who admittedly have a huge Utah population) don't even practice polygamy!!! Wrong religion you-big-dummy-Jay! I am officially on Team Conan!" (Okay, I was always on Team Conan, but this just proved to me that Conan was the right choice.) But hey, I guess it gives me a little perspective on how misunderstood Tom Cruise must feel since I think that his assertion that residual,"trapped in the earth's crust" alien spirits possessed Brook Shield's body and made her have postpartum depression is down-right bat-poo-crazy...

So, to each his own.

I think my favorite Mormon Myth (told directly to me by a non-member at a SilverChair concert last year) was that the Mormon Church owned Coca-Cola and it was therefore "against our religion" to drink Pepsi! Too awesome for words... but, moving on.

The slip n' slide was fantastic, in case you were wondering.

Happy St. George Saturday!

St. George Vacation...so far. (Day II)

Today was...well, full of variety!

It started off with a visit to Grammy and Papa's St. George condo where Kort was oh so pleasantly surprised to find not one, but TWO very fun cousins waiting for him there. One was even dressed up like a blue ninja. (Double score!) They then proceeded to hunt down 60 some-odd snails in Grammy's garden. They were in HEAVEN!

Do you see the pile o' snails they are proudly presenting to us?
No?
Well here's a close up: (...and, you're welcome)

After that, we went shopping at Old Navy (new summer shorts and swim trunks for Kort) and then at the outlets where I found a faaaaabulous new diaper bag for me and Baby Bob. It is sooo cute! But, I forgot to take a picture. Oh well, that pile of creamy, yummy, leathery deliciousness deserves a post all its own anyway. {It's cool for me to write entire posts about cute diaper bags and such, right? Right.}

Then, on our way home, Kort asked to borrow my camera so that he could take pictures of "the community." I thought he took some real zingers. (Then again, I'm his mom and I think he is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So...)

When he got done with his photo shoot, Kort said "Mom, do you have Mrs. Luther's address? I want to send these pictures of the community to her. She's going to love them!" (Mrs. Luther is his AWESOME 1st grade teacher, and I don't have her address...hmmm.)

Then, I asked the hubs to swing by Taco Bell on our way back to the house. Have I mentioned that Baby Bob and I are practically LIVING on Double Decker Taco Supremes these days? Well, we are. I eat one almost every day...right around 2:00 p.m. That and cottage cheese with pineapple chunks. Pregnancy is a strange and wild beast, my friends. Kort also captured our Taco Bell stop off. Atta boy.

Then, as if all THAT wasn't random enough, we went swimming, BBQ-ed some deeelicious guacamole burgers, and busted out sparklers. Yep, sparklers.

{The boy, trying to light a piece of bark on fire with his sparkler. Oh...what a little Blackwell I have on my hands.}

The end.

St. George Vacation...so far.

On the way down, we enjoyed some scenic countrysides.

Then we stopped at a gas station in Scipio and ate some delicious SUBWAY sandwiches...and cheetos...all the while Kort BEGGED us to buy him: a hand-carved bald eagle back scratcher, a hand-carved giraffe slingshot, a huge package of powdered doughnuts, and a large jewel paper-weight. (Yeah, I sort of hate eating in gas stations with 6 year olds, but at the same time, I sort of love cheeto-mouthed 6 year olds hangin' in gas stations with dads that they love and such.)


Then, for our first official day of vacation, we went to Pirate Island Pizza for lunch...and ALMOST had to head straight to Vegas because Kort's luck was OUTTA CONTROL! In the arcades, he hit jackpot after jackpot! It was crazy! He would win hundreds of tickets at a time. He was just LIT up and having a blast.

Then, he picked the "million dollar" (aka 200 ticket) case on the "Deal or No Deal" game! It was so fun! He came down to his last 2 cases and he had a 2 ticket case, and the 200 ticket case left, and the banker offered him 101 tickets. His dad told him to "Take the deal!" but his mom said "You are the luckiest boy I know, NO DEAL!" And, of course, being the mama's boy that he is, he listened to me... AND WON 200 TICKETS!! Kort and I were jumping around and yelling like we'd won an actual lottery. Livin' on the edge is just down-right exhilarating! It was fun and funny!

So, with just under 1,000 tickets, he raided the prize counter and left Pirate Island looking like this:

The evening ended with Kort "fighting bad guys" on a treasure hunt, getting carried away, slicing a potato bug (aka roly poly) in half, then, when he realized what he had done (he really likes bugs, and we don't really kill them at our house) he burst into tears (like, four different times) and lamented that he wish, wish, WISHED he hadn't done that. I just hugged him and told him it would be okay, and to let it go.

Later that night, we read a bed time story about Big Bird catching a firefly and it's light started going out because he was sad in a jar, and then Big Bird let him go, and he "twinkled" brighter than ever... (I had NO idea that that was what the book would be about, by the way...I am so not that cruel! oi!) and Kort teared up again and said, "That's what I should have done. I should have just let "Roly" (I guess he named the slaughtered bug) go!" More tears, more remorse...oh bless his tender (and let's be honest, EXHAUSTED) little heart.