Utah Trip

Mostly this will be a photo essay with short captions because the plot of any trip to Utah is, "We ate Mexican Food, we had a lot of fun with family, and Beckett did cute things."

I went to the Thanksgiving Point zoo/farm with my girlfriends and all our kids. Here's Beckett making friends with Gabriel who's a few months younger.

And here are all of us with our kids. Michelle, Dawnell, Sara and Sheryl. And yes, I know all the children's names, but I'm not going to try and tell you who's who.
Notice anything unusual about the composition of this photo? Out of 11 children 10 are boys, and Sara (blue shirt in the middle) is currently pregnant with another boy. What are the odds?

Beckett, again showing his city nature, wasn't too sure what to do with the wildlife. Even this fake cow freaked him out. You think he's hugging me because I'm his mom and he loves me. WRONG! He is terrified and attempting to leap off the cow.

He did manage to look at the goats without too much fear.

Even though the fake cow was a bust I somehow thought...perhaps he'd like a ride on a real, live, moving pony. Not so much.

Patting the horse to get to know it was alright.

But the actual riding was not a success.

I even tried to bribe him with my phone to get him to stay.

In the end he made a leap for freedom and I let him get off. We never even started moving.

He did like the carriage ride. (Photo taken by Sheryl's son Jayden, nice job.)

This is how he spent most of the afternoon. Safely ensconced in the stroller, away from grass and animals and hanging with his buddy, Gabriel.

A momentous event happened for Beckett while in Utah. He turned front facing in his car seat. We probably could have done it sooner, but I didn't read the instructions on his car seat until now.

The 24th of July was exciting as always. Chris and I are too old (or Beckett is too young) to sleep out for the parade so we had to content ourselves with a delicious BBQ and a fireworks extravaganza. My sisters and I pooled our fireworks so it was a pretty good show. Lots of the neighbors came out to watch it. Chris was the official lighter guy and my brother in law Steve provided the musical accompaniment. He's in a band, Like Spinning Plates.

The roar from our multitude of fireworks was deafening.

Here's our grand finale fireworks. It was much better in person.

The smoky aftermath.

And finally, just because it cracked me up, here's Beckett attempting to drink from a mustard bottle.