Dad Day

A couple of weeks ago, Jaaromy decided he needed to take a Stress Day.  Occasionally, he will wake in the middle of the night with a panic attack and have trouble sleeping.  When that happens, he will usually stay home from work that day to recover.  Thankfully, they don't happen as much and when they do they are less intense.  We even wondered if he could have gone to work that day.

I'm so glad he didn't though.  We decided that this was the perfect opportunity to go downtown to the top of the Church Office Building.  I mentioned that we had tried to go a couple of posts ago, and now was our chance.  So, after lunch we went.

The boys were so excited.  Nathaniel was a little nervous about the elevator.  He was worried that it would be too fast and make him dizzy.  We were on our way and had just passed 3100 S on Bangerter when I realized I had forgotten my camera.  There's no way we could have a trip to the top of the Church Office Building with no pictures.  Plus, it's my new camera and I wanted some cool things to take pictures of.  So, we turned around to go home and get it.  It ended up working out for Nathaniel though because I grabbed his while I was getting mine.  He had a lot of fun taking pictures with his own camera.  He even posted about it on his blog.

We walked through Temple Square on our way.  Brigham saw the fountain and wanted to take a look.  So we took a short break for some pictures.

 Flowers are always a fun subject.

Jaaromy wanted to try out my camera and took this picture.  I know the flowers are all wilted, it was pretty hot that day, but I love how the purple just pops out.

I love how these two pictures turned out.

Finally, we made it to the Church Office Building.  We went inside and right away there was a hostess who took us to a tour guide who took us up the elevators to the top.  She waited for an elevator that wouldn't stop on it's way to the top.  I thought that was nice.  The boys, and even Nathaniel, liked the elevator ride too.  It was fast but not dizzying.

And the view was super cool.

The boys all loved looking down on the city.

Temple Square looked amazing from up high.  If you look closely, you can see workers walking around on the roof.

 The Conference Center also looked cool.  There are camera holes in the glass so you can take clear pictures and I'm a little short for even the lowest ones.  Plus, the grass on the roof made it hard to see how best to frame the picture.  Plus, the sun was shining in my face.  So, I apologize that this picture isn't better framed.

This is what it looks like when you take a picture through the glass.  There's no way I could have taken this one through the camera holes.

Even though it was super hot, I'm so glad we came.  The boys loved it.

But our Dad Day wasn't over yet.  On our way home, we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some fire logs and some skewers.

A couple of weeks before this I was at Shopko and I noticed that they had their last fire pit on sale so I decided to take it home with me.  We had been debating whether or not to get one for a while now.  I decided that at the very least, it could be used in an emergency type situation.  Then when it was on sale, that sealed the deal for me.

We finally tried it out to top off our Dad Day.

Sometime in the future we'll have to try hot dogs and hobo dinners, but for now we decided on S'mores.  They were a huge hit.

Brigham didn't eat anything, but he did enjoy watching the fire.

Nathaniel and I both had fun trying out our cameras.  You can also read about that on his blog.

 It had been such a hot day that it seems funny to say: "I know, let's go start a fire!"  But it was really nice and tasty.  We stayed outside watching the fire until bedtime.

It really was a great day.  We wouldn't have done it if Jaaromy hadn't had his panic attack.  So, thanks, I guess.

Independence Day

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

-John Adams

I like this quote from John Adams because we sometimes make fun of the tradition of fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July, but as you can see, it was specifically mentioned by one of our Founding Fathers that we should celebrate with fireworks, or "illuminations", among other things.  Of course, it wasn't the 2nd of July we celebrated, the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted on the 4th.

While we didn't do everything on John Adams' list of things to do to celebrate, we did do a few.  We went to a park for lunch with Jaaromy's family.  Coincidentally, it's the park that the boys and I have been going to while Nathaniel is at Music Camp.

  After lunch, we celebrated with sports, as recommended by John Adams.

The boys weren't interested in giving it a try, but Jaaromy did.

Even Grandpa Zierse gave it a try.

I mentioned that this pine tree looked like a good climbing tree, so the boys decided that they should climb it.  With a little help from Dad, they got up there.

So did some of the cousins.  Jonathan actually got pretty high.  Nathaniel decided he was done pretty quick.

Jaaromy helped Brigham climb a little.  He seemed a little nervous.

He did like being up high though.

It was a fun picnic.  After that we went to Best Buy so we could pick up my birthday present.  Jaaromy got me a new camera.  It's a pretty nice one too.  My birthday wasn't for another month but we wanted to give Nathaniel my old camera and his birthday was coming up.  We had fun trying it out all afternoon.  I won't bore you with all those pictures though.

After a dinner from Little Caesars, we decorated sugar cookies.  I know, it wasn't specifically mentioned by John Adams, but the last cookie decorating holiday was Easter and there isn't another one until Halloween.  We definitely needed another cookie holiday to tide us over.  So, I went online and found some holiday appropriate cookie cutters.  As usual, they were very tasty.

These two pictures were taken by Nathaniel with his "new" camera.

Don't they look super patriotically tasty?

We, of course, did take up John Adams on his "illuminations" suggestion.  We got lots of fireworks to enjoy.  So did many of our neighbors and there were several aerial fireworks going off around us.  We tried some different kinds this year.  We got some little tanks and also some parachute guys.  Unfortunately, we were either terrible at finding them or only two or three of them actually had parachute guys in them.  I honestly think it was the latter.

It was fun taking pictures of the fireworks with my new camera.  I'm still getting used to it, and I'm not used to taking pictures of fireworks at all, so I'll have to practice again on the 24th.  We're also going to have to go somewhere else to buy our fireworks too.  We bough this huge box thinking that it was an aerial firework.  Turns out we were wrong.  On top of that, the fuse was weird and broke off, or something, and when it started it went for like ten seconds and stopped.  No way was that it, the box was huge!  We just waited and about 10-15 seconds later it started up again.  It went for a while but nothing ever shot in the air.  We were so disappointed.

When it finished, we noticed the bottom of the box was glowing.  We didn't dare approach it because it had stopped before and started again.  We wanted to make sure all the fireworks were spent.  Before long it was completely engulfed in flames.  It really made Nathaniel nervous and he ran inside.  It was in the middle of the road, so I wasn't worried.  Jaaromy went and got a bowl of water to put it out with.  Very exciting!  The thought had crossed my mind to bring our hose out front and hook it up.  I didn't listen though.  It worked out, but had I listened, it might have been easier.  On the plus side, we got our bonfire as recommended by John Adams.

Later that night, I tried out my new camera on the moon.  It was kind of golden from all the wildfires going on.  With the telephoto lens it zooms in exactly as far as my old camera, but it's still a lot more pixels.  Plus, the atmosphere was a little smoky.  But I think it still looks cool.

I love all the things we do to celebrate Independence Day.  Maybe next year we'll have to add a few more.  Maybe some guns...

Fortunately: The Movie

My boys and I had been playing with the idea of making a movie of one of our favorite books: Fortunately, by Remy Charlip.  We tossed around a couple of ideas and then, a couple of Fridays ago, we decided to actually do it.

It took most of the day.  I had to resign myself to not getting anything else done that day, but honestly, it wasn't that hard because we had so much fun.  We worked hard getting all the props ready, the stage and the lighting.  We had most of the logistics worked out but some things had to be improvised once filming began.

This is was our stage.  Nathaniel's science project board from two years ago worked nicely.

This was our family room when it was all over.  We made quite a mess.  Although, some of the mess is unrelated to the project.

The boys had so much fun.  Even though this was mostly Jonathan's project, Nathaniel couldn't help being involved.

When it came time to put the video together I was amazed at how well it all came together.   We just used Windows Live Movie Maker and it practically edited itself.  Pretty sweet.

Anyway, so here is the final product.  I hope you enjoy it because it was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.