What does Brisbane do all day?

Help with the laundry.

 Wear shoes.  Only one.

 That goes on the arm of the sofa?  Nah!  It's a hat!

 Sit in the window.  (Yes, we did tack that string up after this picture was taken.)

 Squeeze into bins to play boat.

 Find small and confined places to hide.

And help with the dishes.
All in a days work.  Brisbane has a full schedule.

Read All About It

What do we do when we get back from a week at Grandma's and a long drive?

 Read the newspaper, of course!

Hey! We need to know what is going on in the world. Our children are very cultured.

Next week we are going to start reading the Encyclopedia.  You know, just as a bit of light reading before bedtime.

Park--Take 2

There are two parks in Carlsbad.  I know that all of these wildly exciting attractions are causing all of my readers to get Carlsbad-mania.  There is going to be an onslaught of people moving to the fair town, now that I have shown off its best and brightest features on this blog.  We woke up even earlier than the last time we went to the park.

 And that is the only picture I got from our little adventure.  My kiddos were much too terrified to go down the slides (except for Brisbane) and I spent most of my time trying to create fun at the park.
Then we walked across the floating bridge.  That's right, Carlsbad has a floating bridge too.  I thought the kids might be terrified, but they ran right across.

And there is the only proof that I was actually on this vacation. 
We had an awesome time at Grandma and Grandpa's and Mack enjoyed his guilt free studying the week before Board exams.  The kids have already been asking when we can go back.  Since it is a twelve hour drive (with kids) I am thinking that it is going to be a while.
I guess this means no more snarky posts about Carlsbad, what a shame.

Movie Star

At dinner tonight Reese asked, "What movie are we watching for Family Night tonight?"  First of all sonny-boy, Family Night is Monday night.  Second of all, we don't watch movies at Family Night.  We watch movies at Movie Night, and that is Friday Night.
We do occasionally watch Veggie Tales or church movies on Sundays but usually we are at my sister in laws house for dinner and don't have time.  However, Reese has pink eye and so we are home today.    Reese's question got me thinking about church movies, which automatically brought my mind to Johnny Lingo, "Mohana, you ugly!"
Then follow my train of thought from there.  When I was a child we owned the church videos in these awesome brownish-red VHS boxes.  It was fairly common to pop in a little Johnny Lingo at our house.  On the same VHS though was a gem of a video called "Go Ye Into All the World".  It is based on a talk by President Kimball, and it is O.L.D.  Well this video is significant because it stars my mother.  And by "stars" I mean she is in it for five seconds.  If you ever visit my parent's house (and their children are home), you will be subjected to watching my mother's motion picture debut.  But since you can't all go visit my parents, I am bringing the video to you.

She is the beauty just after the 3:00 mark, looking slightly like me, and has on a yellow shirt and a brownish jacket.  Look at the center of the screen as the people are walking down the street towards the camera, then she walks off screen stage left.  Enjoy!
My father saw this video at a Priesthood Meeting when it was first released.  He came home and told my mom.  She had no idea that she was being filmed that day.  Apparently, it was filmed before she and my dad were even married.  And the rest is family history!

Play-Doh Extraordinaire

I hope if my children ever have children that I am half as cool of a Grandma as my kids have.  My kids have two seriously awesome Grandmas.  You can start being jealous, right about....now.
In Award Winning Grandmother fashion, my mother whipped up some homemade play-doh for the kids.  Mom asked me what color play-doh she should make and I suggested purple.  The play-doh was awesome but my choice of color turned out more gray.  Ooops.

 We took the kids outside on the patio to contain some of the mess. 

 Grandma has way cooler play-doh toys than we do, so the kids had a blast.

 Brisbane played (aka ate) some playdoh for two minutes but he was mostly interested in destroying his sibling's creations (I think everyone is looking forward to him growing out of that phase....in 15 years). 

But most of the time Brisbane just wanted Grandma to hold him.  And by 'most of the time', I don't mean "Most of Play-Doh Time".  I mean "Most of Every Second That We Were There Time".

Three Little Animals (and three large animals)

In the spirit of trying to entertain toddlers so that they wouldn't break anything at my parent's house, we went to the only other 'attraction' in Carlsbad, New Mexico, after Carlsbad Caverns, the Living Desert.  What is the Living Desert, you ask?  It's a zoo.  But not really.  It's a desert.  With some animals in cages.  But only native animals to the area.  What lives in Carlsbad, New Mexico you ask?  Wolves, snakes, elk, and birds.

 The most interesting animal was definately the prarie dogs.  Did I mention those earlier?  They were eating breakfast and so the kiddos had something interesting to look at while they ate their own snack. 
We didn't stay long because it was so warm and some genius decided that the trail back to the Visitor's Center should be all uphill.  I am convinced the man who designed the Living Desert was fired after that hideous blunder.  I was pushing Jessenia in the stroller up the hill and she was complaining about how tired she was.  Hmmmm..... can we say "DIVA"?

What was the cutest animal at the Living Desert?  My kids of course!

Where's Your Noodle?

Raise your hand if you have ever heard of Carlsband, New Mexico.  Those with their hands in the air, all I can say is, I am deeply sorry.Carlsbad is the armpit of the United States.  It is as close to the end of the earth as you can get without falling off.  But alas, my parents live there so we go.  I can't wait for them to move to a place much closer to an airport and with more exciting things to do (aka not as hot so we can go outside after 8am).
After perusing the numerous entertainment options in the greater Carlsbad area, we landed at the park.  We had to get up really super early to beat the heat and I only lasted an hour before melting, but it was a good distraction for the kids.

 The kids were really brave and were excellent climbers.

 I believe that this was before Grandma taught them the expression, "Don't fall and crack your noodle".  Reese didn't know what a noodle was, so Grandma explained that it was his head.  To this day, Reese talks about "cracking noodles" all the time.  Just this morning when Brisbane was standing on a chair, Reese told me, "He might fall and crack his noodle".  He also now feels the pressure to educate the masses on the meaning of the word "noodle".  I have heard him explain to no less than 3 people that 'noodle' can mean head.

 We took a break from playing to take a look at the Mighty Pecos River. 

 There was a man trying to water board and the kids desperately wanted to see him succeed.  No such luck there, but aren't they cute?

 Then back to more playing.  Thanks for carrying our snacks on your bulldozer, Brisbane.

 Nice ride, Motorcycle Reeser!

And then Brisbane learned that he could climb the slide and go down all by himself.  This has caused me even more ulcers at the playground because he can now scoot himself forward until he goes down the slide on his own.  Unfortunately the rest of his body is not always ready when gravity takes over.  A couple of times he almost cracked his noodle (or so Reese would say).