We got together with the family to do some pumpkin carvings.  Kiara always gets so excited about her pumpkins and we get her a little one.  She likes to carry it around with her and this year Dallin added to the mix by throwing it and dropping it.  Fortunately it survived long enough to be carved.

  

Last year after halloween Jessica picked up some wizard of oz costumes for the kids for cheap, so this year we were all Wizard of Oz characters.  Kiara was Dorothy, Dallin the tin man, Jessica the wicked witch, and me the scarecrow.  Kiara didn't know who Dorothy was, so Jessica showed them the movie a few weeks ago and Kiara started getting excited about being Dorothy.  I don't think the kids were very entertained by the movie except for the few parts, but at least they had some idea.  I think they both looked great.

        

Dallin hated wearing the costume as soon as I put it on and he tried to rip it off, but he eventually gave in.  Getting him to keep the hat on was a battle too, but he started to chill out when he saw he could put candy in his bag and run around like a crazy kid.  He even won the award for the cutest costume.  That's my boy!  Except next year we'll have to work for scariest costume or something with a better title.

This was Kiara's first year of dance.  She was in a class that was a combo of ballet and tap.  She's been so excited to show me what she learned every week.  She had her classes in the late afternoon and my office was on the way to/from class, so they would usually stop by and see me on the way home.  She has a lot of fun in dance and it gives her a good outlet.

  

This week she had her dress rehearsal and dance recital.  She and her dance friends are so funny to watch.  They're so concerned about watching their teacher behind the curtain that they're all doing different stuff.  Their giant tutus make it that much more comical to watch.  Kiara had fun and she was so proud of her trophy.

  

Here is the video from her dress rehearsal, which turned out a little better than the actual performance because of the location of our seats.

 

They also did a fun finale at the end with a performance by the dads. I might have gone to the rehearsals except they were on my soccer nights. Maybe next time.

So our first road trip of the year has finally arrived.  I had originally planned to go right around Jessica's triathlon, but the weather in the Sierras has been so crazy this year and there was still so much snow that some of the places I wanted to go were still closed.  I've been watching the road reports and fishing Google for inside knowledge of the progress of the snow plows.  I delayed the road trip to the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  I needed to wrap up our bigger early summer travels in early June so that I could focus on some work projects that are coming at the end of the month.

Just outside of Wickenburg, we saw this sign and I had to pull over and take a picture.  I had first seen this billboard on Reddit back in January.  It was supposedly from somewhere in Minnesota and the whole thing went viral.  These guys in Wickenburg were no doubt copycats, but it was fun to see it firsthand in the wild.

We headed up to Saint George to visit the Baileys and give Kiara some play time with her cousins.  We had a fun time.  We visited a cool little water park in the middle of town.  It was crowded, but free.  It was a great place for little kids to play in the water because it's so shallow.  We had a picnic lunch.  Then we ventured out to the fairgrounds for a Camelot Days festival.  The girls were excited about dressing in princess costumes and going to the "princess place".  I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of the festival, but we still had fun...ate a big smoked turkey leg, watched some exhibitions, ate some cotton candy and snow cones, and played around.  All in all, it was definitely better than watching the Suns get steamrolled by the Lakers!  I did watch the game on my phone on the way back home using Slingplayer.  Very disappointing game.

  

 

Jessica had a great time at the St George triathlon.  She finished with a personal best time and even conquered the biking hill without having to walk it.  Great job Jessica!  The staff wisely moved the race back a couple hours in the morning to avoid the recurring weather problems that have plagued the race in previous years, but this time around, the weather was suprisingly cooperative.  The few extra hours of sleep didn't hurt though.

     

Meanwhile, back on the home front, I was tasked with taking care of the kids for the weekend and my primary mission and reason for staying home was making sure that Kiara made it to her dance pictures.  Four days without mom was interesting, but we had some good fun!  My friend Joe alerted me to a crazy sale Safeway was having on cereal and he told me he was going to stock up.  I decided to do the same.  40 boxes for $50 or so.  So now I have 40 boxes of cereal, but what am I going to do with them?  Well, why not have dad show the kids some fun and build some towers and forts out of cereal boxes???

Then I had to make sure that her dance pictures went well.  Jessica left a bunch of instructions on how to go about doing this, but fortunately 4 sisters and a mother come in handy with the hair portion of it.  I delivered Kiara to the hairdressers and they went to work.  Fortunately, all went well and my primary mission for the weekend was successful, and I will not be receiving 100 lashes.

  

What a cute kid!

We went on a hike up to Fremont Saddle to overlook Weaver's Needle.  We did our best to get Kiara to hike as much of it on her own.  I carried Dallin in our kid backpack.  Kiara did pretty well and we helped her over the big rocks.  She made it about 1.5 miles before she sat down and said "I'm done."  At that point, I loaded her up in the backpack and Jessica rigged Dallin up in her baby wrap.  We had lunch at the top and enjoyed the area.  Stacey wasn't keeping very close track of time and realized a little too late that she was going to be late for work, so we hurried back down the trail and dropped her off at work.  It was a fun hike, and our first with two kids.

     

Weaver's Needle Hike Pictures

Kiara was really excited to go trick or treating this year.  She was a fairly princess and Dallin was a leopard.  We hit our circuit of trunk-or-treat locations and that was just about right before they got too tired.  It was nice this year that we had two collection bags going :)  Kiara got to see her friends in their costumes.

 

     

Halloween 2009 Pictures

Kiara and I went on our first daddy daughter campout this weekend with the ward.  We had a good time.  We went to a familiar spot at Sycamore Creek.  Even though we got a good jump on the road, we still got there as it was getting dark.  I was surprised to see how many people were already there, and most of the good camping spots in the area were taken already.  We settled for a little roadside spot and set up our tent.  We had a little campfire program and then came Kiara's favorite part of the evening: smores!  Kiara's friend Grace arrived during the marshmallow festivities.  Kiara enjoyed running around with her flashlights and it seemed to be a novelty to go to the bathroom in the port-a-potties (a first for Kiara).  We turned in for the night and had a pretty good night except a car alarm randomly going off several times during the night and a few people driving through late in the night.

In the morning, they had a little breakfast and then the big event: blowing stuff up.  I didn't know how much girls would enjoy blowing stuff up, but it seems that they did.  A small contingent ran away and hid 100 yards away or so until the explosions subsided.  They blew up everything from barbie dolls to pumpkins to cabbage...and much more.  It was pretty entertaining, though I did have to move my truck and tent to escape the blast zone and I still got a bit of pumpkin that rained down.  We took a hike down the road with Grace to enjoy the cool weather and have some fun while the bigger girls played bigger girl games.  I had a good time with Kiara and hopefully we can have many more such outings.

Father Daughter 2009 Pictures

Kiara looked great in her spring dress that grandma gave her for her birthday, so we had a to take a picture.  She likes church and going to nursery to see her friends.

Kiara officially turned two.  It's hard to believe that it was a full two years ago that she became a part of our family.  She has brought a lot of joy to our home and teaches us a lot.  She had a lot of fun at her party.  Her favorite parts were blowing out the candles and eating her candy necklace.  We played our new Wii with the rest of the fam.  Even grandma got in on the action.


Kiara's Second Birthday Party

  

Kiara is just a few weeks from her 2nd birthday and she is definitely already there in terms of activity and disposition.  Jessica was washing the dishes and thought that Kiara was enjoying a Dora episode in the living room.  Jessica noticed that it was unusually quiet, and went to investigate.  This is what she found: