Park City Trip

As a gift, my parents let us stay in a resort that was affiliated with their time share.  We decided to go to Park City over Memorial Day weekend.  We left Friday afternoon and came home on Tuesday.

Here's Cosette "helping" me pack for the trip.  She was really excited to go.

We stayed at a place called The Lift Lodge.  Something kind of funny happened when I went to check in.  The person working at the front desk started getting flustered and making phone calls.  I wondered if our reservation got messed up, or if it didn't exist at all.  But it turns out that the worker had taken one look at me and worried that a pregnant woman couldn't climb the stairs to the unit that was reserved for us.  Once I discovered that this was the problem I reassured him that I was only 7 months pregnant and perfectly capable of climbing stairs.  It was considerate of him to worry about it, but I also thought it was kind of funny.
Cosette had a room to herself, which was nice.  She declared that we were staying at Bear's house, and she would get upset and correct us if we slipped and said that we were staying in Park City.

On Saturday it was rainy in the morning, so we did a little shopping, ate our bagged lunch in the car, and went to the Olympic Village.  We found a pretty cute toy store and let Cosette pick out one toy, and she chose a small red squishy bear that has a light-up ball inside of it.  If you look closely, you can see it in several of the pictures.

Cosette in an Olympic bobsled

On Saturday afternoon the weather cleared up, so we went to the Park City Mountain Resort (which turned out to be within walking distance of The Lift Lodge, which was very convenient) and rode a few rides.  Cosette rode the merry-go-round, a small train, and an airplane ride.  Jeff and I also played a round of miniature golf, and they were kind enough to give Cosette her own club and ball and not charge us for it.  She had fun walking around on the course and dropping her ball into the holes.  She even managed to hit her ball in from a foot or two away.

Sunday was pretty low key, which was nice.  In the morning we went to a local Sacrament Meeting.  To get there we took a nice drive through the mountains.  Then in the afternoon we went for a walk on The Farm Trail, which turned out to be a paved path that ran alongside a main road.  It also ran past an old historic farmhouse, which you can see in the background of my picture with Cosette.  We brought the stroller with us to push Cosette around, but most of the time she used it to push Bear around, which was pretty cute.

Look, Mommy - a stick!

On Memorial Day we spent the morning on historic Main Street.  We did a lot of window shopping.  My favorite stores were the artwork and photography stores.  Cosette's favorite part was riding the free "trolley" (which was basically a converted bus) around Main Street, which we did twice.  I think she was excited about that because of watching the show Daniel Tiger, which has a trolley in it.

Jeff and Cosette on a bridge over Main Street

Monday afternoon we went back to the Mountain Resort and let Cosette ride her favorite rides a few more times.  I was extremely tempted to ride the Alpine Slide, which I LOVE, but decided that wasn't the smartest thing for a pregnant woman to do.

After checking out on Tuesday morning we went back to that historic farm for a picnic lunch before heading on the road.  On the way home we spent a few hours at the zoo.  We got to watch the elephants take a shower with a hose and do a few tricks.  Cosette enjoyed climbing on animal statues and playing in the splash park.  I was really sad that we discovered the water feature right before we left, because Cosette didn't get to play there for very long, and her clothes were still a little wet on the ride home.

We made it back home from our trip just in time for me to tutor Nathan Bailey one last time.  And when I walked in the door, I discovered that one of our toilets had been running the entire time we were gone.  Oops!  Oh, well - as far as water issues go, it could have been a lot worse.
All in all it was a fun trip.  It was just right for our family - pretty low key, slow paced, and lots of down time. I think some of my favorite things were just being together, reading books, dancing, talking, laughing.  Thanks for making the trip possible, Mom and Dad!

Family

I realized that I had a bunch of pictures of Cosette with family members, and I thought it would be fun to post them.

With Great-Grandpa Bond on New Years Day

Having fun with Aunt Katie

Decorating Valentine's cookies with Grandma

Reading a story with cousin Adriana

Posing with Uncle Ken when he visited in April

And then this last photo was taken on Friday when my sister-in-law Rachel and nephew Kenny stayed with us.  Rachel came out for her friend's wedding, and here they are all dressed up for the reception that night.

Cute Cosette Moments

Our little girl is tons of fun.  I thought I'd post some pictures and cute stories from the past few months.

When you ask Cosette the name of the baby in Mommy's tummy, she insists that her sister's name is "Buh-buh-buh."  Don't know where that came from.  And if I commit the terrible sin of referring to the baby by another name, she gets very offended and corrects me.

Here is an example of her silliness and acrobatic skills:

We bought a membership to our local aquarium, and Cosette really loves it.  The first time we went, her favorite place was a tiny unfinished crawl space.  If you look closely at the top of the picture, you can see there's a circle for the kids to stand up and be inside of an exhibit, but it's not finished yet.  Cosette just loved crawling in and out and having a special place to hide with Bear.

Love how this picture turned out

One day I came home from tutoring to find that the living room had been transformed by Cosette and her babysitter Bridget.  I let Cosette keep it up for a day or two before making her take it down.  It was a pretty cool box house.

Cosette is always playing new make-believe games with Bear.  On the day I took this picture, Bear had been baby Jesus for a while, and Cosette and I took turns being Mary by wearing her hooded sweatshirt on our heads.  In this picture Bear is having a birthday party.  It's very common for him to be surrounded by a little shrine of toys, sticks, food, and other offerings.  He always gets the best of everything.  For example, on Mother's Day the picture that she drew in Nursery that was supposed to be for me went to Bear instead.  And I love it when she sets up a picnic for her animals, but the only one who has any food is Bear.

A side note about Mother's Day.  That morning I woke up when Cosette came into our bedroom.  She climbed into bed and snuggled with me, then we lay there talking, laughing and playing for 30 minutes or so before we got up to start the day.  I loved it.

Yesterday we finished planting the garden.  For a while Cosette took possession of the hoe, and it was so cute I just had to snap some pictures.

She was making vacuum noises while pushing the hoe.

And to end, here are some funny things Cosette has said:

Cosette: I'm wearing Daddy's shoes so I'm a boy. (She's wearing a dress and Jeff's church shoes.)

             (directed at Jeff) I'm a Daddy right now, so don't be Daddy - you're gonna be Mommy.

             (directed at me) And you're gonna be the little kid!

Me: I am?!?

Cosette: I'm gonna be a little Daddy who gets the porridge and eat it all around. (She's holding a bowl of play food Cheerios that she's been pretending is a bowl of porridge like in the Goldilocks story.)

Cosette: Daddy, why do you get hungry?

Me: Do you get hungry sometimes?

Cosette: Umm, no.

Me: Then why are you eating applesauce?

Cosette: Because I'm hungry.

Me: Oh, ok.

Easter

It was fun being able to have an Easter egg hunt in our own backyard.  We decided to do the egg hunt on Saturday.  It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for a visit from the Easter bunny.

Here are a few pictures we took:

And here are some pictures of spring from around our yard.  It was fun discovering where the spring flowers were planted, because I didn't know they were there until they bloomed.

Transcript of Bedtime Conversation

Cosette often talks and sings to herself in bed at night before she falls asleep.  She was being especially chatty tonight, so I crept close to her door and recorded what she was saying.  Here's a transcript:

It was green grass.  Green was Daddy's favorite color in a minute when he turned into orange color.  He be orange favorite color.  [Gasp]  That would not ... that would be sad!  Mmm hmm.  He would not be sad.  I wouldn't be sad.  Ok.  I'm not sad right now.  I'm talking ... loud.  Yeah, yeah.
[Pause]
Now I'm sleepy.  Aaah, mmm [kind of a yawning sound].  I'm sleepy.  I'm sleeping on the car bed.  The bed would turn into brown.  Hmm, it's underwear.  That would be sad.  It would turn brown, and that would be sad.  Ok.  I'm done talking about brown.
(We started potty training today, and we had a conversation about how her underwear would turn brown if she pooped in it, and that would be a sad thing to happen - trying to reinforce how the potty was a better place for poop to go.)
Ring ring ring.  Hello!  Goodbye.  See, it's a phone call.  When Mommy gets a phone call, she talks on the phone to people.  Yeah.  Is that what Mommy do'd?  Yeah!
[Pause]
Umm.  Now I'm sleepy now.
[She then proceeds to hum Twinkle Twinkle Little Star]

So entertaining.

Cosette turns 3

Our little girl is now 3 years old!  I can't believe how big she's getting.

Here she is opening a present from Mom and Dad, some new furniture for her doll house.

Grandma made a felt playhouse that goes over a cardboard table.  I only took a picture of two sides, but it is really cool.  One side has a flap door and a mailbox that opens and shuts with velcro.  Cosette loves playing a game we call "special delivery," where she's sitting inside the playhouse and I open the mailbox and hand her a toy, saying "special delivery" while I do it.  Two of the sides have windows with a mesh material in them so you can see through it.  Then Cosette can put flowers in the flower box on the windowsill, pick spinach, corn and carrots from the garden, and pick peaches from the peach tree and put them in a little basket.

Her birthday was on a Saturday this year, so we decided to have a birthday party with her two friends Elsie Crawford and Emily Anderson.  The party had a rainbow theme (thanks for the idea, Suzanne).
Grandma made this fun birthday cake with M'n'ms.  It was strawberry flavored and tasted REALLY good.

We did a few simple games, and the girls got to pick different colored prizes to go in their gift bags.  I bought some taffy, flavored tootsie rolls, bouncy balls, and necklaces at the dollar store.

As we waited for people to arrive the girls decorated gift bags and colored their own rainbow (half a paper plate).

Emily and Elsie did a lot of "helping" when it came to opening presents.  These three girls are really cute together.

Wearing a rainbow outfit she got from Grandma and Grandpa.  I tried to get her to wear it to the party, but she decided not to.