Two Weddings and a Picnic (Warning this is a very long post)

I guess I need to catch up a little again.  I always feel like I am behind on blogging.

So the Disney Channel had a Royal Wedding week right before the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate.

 My kids started asking what the Royal Wedding was and when they heard that a prince was marrying a girl that would then be a princess, they decided they wanted to see it.  Because, as Sterling put it "I've never seen a real Princess."  We decided to have a tea party and watch the Royal Wedding (taped of course). Avalon loved having a tea party.  Sterling got bored with the wedding as soon as he saw Will and Kate.  Here are some pictures of our tea party.

Aaron's work usually has a family picnic during the summer. It is a great party.  They buy everybody day passes to this little amusement park that has rides that are the perfect size for my kids.  They also get a bouncy house and inflatable slides.  This year they had carnival games and a face painter too.  The food is also pretty good and at the end they have huge door prizes that usually include a travel voucher for something like $3500.  We really look forward to the picnic every year.  

My kids are always busy and so I have been trying to keep projects around the house to keep them out of trouble.  I found these little kits for making clay sheep on clearance.

So in Arizona, fireworks have been pretty much completely illegal.  You could have poppers, but that is it. As of last December, you can actually buy fireworks that you have to light.  There were a bunch of fireworks stands for Cinco De Mayo, so we bought fireworks just because we wanted to have some real fireworks.  Here are pictures of the kids' Cinco De Mayo fireworks.

The weekend of May 6th was the Fathers' and Sons' camp out.   Aaron took Sterling and they had a really good time.  Aaron said that Sterling spent the whole day collecting firewood.  When Aaron tried to get Sterling to cook his hot dog over someone else's fire that night, Sterling refused to make eye contact and said "No, I have other plans."  I guess he was planning on having his own fire and making his own fire pit.  Sterling often has plans.

While the boys were gone, Avalon and I got pedicures.  She loves pedicures and calls them "Peditures".  As soon as her nail polish starts to wear off, she starts telling me that we need to go and get "peditures" again.

My little brother was married on May 14th in the Rexburg Idaho Temple.  All of us gathered in Idaho this last week.  My mom had 8 kids under the age of 5 in her house and it was chaos, but a lot of fun.  We had a bonfire.

 We took the kids to the Idaho Falls zoo.  I love the Idaho Falls zoo.  They have penguins which they don't have in Phoenix.  Also, the environmentalists haven't gotten to the zoo yet and so the monkeys are in pretty small cages and they actually interact with the people looking in through the glass.  It may not be good for the monkeys, but it makes the zoo great for the people visiting.

We took the kids exploring on my parents' farm.  I love to do this with my kids because they don't get the chance to be out in nature much in Mesa.

Then on Saturday, my little brother got married.  He married Talia Wible and yes, that is very confusing for everyone now that she is Talia Anderson.  Aunt Millie asked for pictures from the video, so I am including their wedding slide show for her.

The wedding day was pretty long, but perfect.  In the morning, we all went to the Temple for the wedding.  Then in the afternoon there was a luncheon and in the evening the reception.  Here are just a few pictures that we took.  I will try to post more once I get some of the official wedding pictures.

 The photographer thought it was a good idea to have Klint hold the babies for a picture.  It didn't go so well.

 Avalon had Giraffe all decked out in her wedding dress that we had made.  The funny thing is that they had a videographer and Giraffe had a cameo in the wedding video but my brother Jeff and his wife didn't.

The next day after the wedding, we took the kids to visit one of my parents' friends who raises goats and chickens.  The kids love to go there.  Sterling was really into collecting bones, chicken feet and goat horns.  My family thought I was crazy to let him collect them, but we did that kind of thing as kids and I think it was good for us.