Idaho Morgan Family Reunion

I am still trying to play catch up with our summer outings. We went to Idaho for the Morgan family reunion this year. My sister-in-law’s grandma owns a big house pretty much on Lake Cascade. We drove out and stopped in Denver for a few days to spend time with Brent’s sister and her family. Own loved his cousin Seth’s collection of cars. I think I may have already posted that picture already. Anyway, we went to the Denver Zoo, which Owen didn’t really love because of course you actually have to stop running to see the animals. He would have been much happier to have just run around all day than have to stop and bother to look at the animals. He did like the penguins and the tigers though and he did pretty well with the wildlife show we went to because they had a lot of birds flying around all the time.

The trip from Denver to Cascade was a VERY long day. It took us 15.5 hours. I was bored out of my mind. I think Owen did better than I did! We finally made it and got to enjoy a couple of days with the family and playing on the boat and on the beach. We had beautiful weather and it was beautiful scenery. We ate good food, played a lot of games, did a bingo game in honor of my Dad and with all the stuff he had collected over the years , learned to wake board, had a few devotionals , did some relay games and Brent went shooting. I was sad when the week was over and we had to drive home! We actually decided to take three days to get home since I knew I couldn't do another 15.5 day! Here are a TON of pictures from the trip.

Zoo with the cousins

Owen being Owen
Shooting the rifle

Climbing the trees like one of the kids

Bingo Game

Some of the kids jumping off the fireplace

Owen loved to play ball with the boys

Was not happy on our first trip on the boat

Okay, so the pictures are supposed to be in the opposite order so it showed a sequence.

Brent picked it up really fast

Three legged race

Water balloon fight

Water balloon relay

Piggy back race

Owen decided the sprinkler was more fun than the beach

Playing on the beach

Relaxing

Paddle boat

Riding on the inner tube. I love how Owen is sticking his tongue out to catch the water

Working him hard! He insisted on carrying all four buckets, each with at least some water in them

Reds Game and Children's Museum

Brent got tickets to go to the Reds game for Father's day and since he got them from Owen I thought it would be fun to take the whole family. Well, it turns out, that was a bad idea. I actually thought(silly me) that Owen would enjoy himself for the first little part of the game and then because they game started at 7, he would get tired and I could rock him to sleep, thus enjoying the rest of the game with Brent. Boy was I wrong. All Owen wanted to do was run around underneath the stadium and eat food. He never once came that close to falling asleep and was such a handful for the entire game. It made it worse that the Reds got out to a big lead, but then they blew it and it ended up going into extra innings. At around 11 we decided we had better head to the hotel. Owen did sleep for about 10 minutes on our way to the hotel, but then got woken up when we took him inside and was really hyper for the next hour. However, one of the best parts about our hotel rooms it stayed really dark for longer in the morning thanks to the heavy duty curtains. Owen slept until 9:30. Thank goodness!

We decided to take him to the children's museum while we were in St. Louis and he LOVED it. Too bad it took us so long to find the young kid area. He did love to play in the water, go on the slide, and of course play with the balls. It was a such a fun trip, we will have to go back sometime soon!

Kind of a cool idea for a picture, however, this is the best I could get. Brent has his eyes half closed and Owen is not happy about taking this picture.

Our weak attempt at taking a photo of the three of us

One of the only things that would make Owen happy was to look out over the railing. We didn't really want him to do it much, because we were worried he might throw something down on the people below us.

Near the end of our game experience, when I had given up on getting him to go to sleep.

Rolling the ball down and hearing all of the sounds

More balls

He insisted on practically sitting in the drum

And more ball stuff

Working hard lifting laying the tile

Walking the tightrope between the tunnels

Yes... he does have his mouth on this

Working on the car

The Fourth

I know it is the end of September, but I feel like I need to quickly blog about all the pictures I have had sitting on my camera, hence the post about what we did for the Fourth of July.

We went to the Parley P. Pratt run that is put on by a guy in our stake and a committee. Brent did the 4 mile run and I did the 1 mile with Owen, Jenna, and Brooke. The girls did pretty well, in fact they wanted to run at the beginning, but I didn't know if they were going to make it back by the end. Owen spent most of the remaining time playing on the playground. Sorry, I forgot my camera, so no pictures of the run.

After the run we went swimming, which I now realize I posted pictures of in the last post. Owen loved to go down the slide and put his face in all the spraying fountains. He is one of those weird people who actually likes to get his face hammered by water. He thinks it is so much fun. After swimming we headed over to Matt and Kelie's for a BBQ. Once again there was water to play in and lots of fun playing with the cousins. After relaxing and hanging out for a while at the house, we decided to go get a spot for the fireworks. After the show, we stayed and lit a few of our own. It was a pretty relaxing and run day. One of the best I can remember!

The Slide. Owen is obsessed with slides.

The head first train
I made Owen take this picture because I wasn't sure I would get him in his shirt before we changed into the swim suit. He wasn't that happy about it.

"Nat" and Owen

Watching the show

Owen could care less about the fireworks. He was more concerned interested in all the cars he could see in the parking lot. He did, however, LOVE sitting on this ledge and was quite upset when we took him off.

Sparklers! Owen was really, really tired!

Alphabet Video

Here is the video I was talking about in my previous post. Owen refuses to let me record him because then he wouldn't be able to look at the screen at the same time, so this is the only way I could figure out to record it. Just ignore me getting angry/irritated at Brent for taking the video camera. :) I would have just cut it off but I don't know how and I didn't want to take the time to figure it out.

Untitled from Melissa Clark on Vimeo.

Owen update

I haven't blogged about Owen recently so I thought I would do a quick update on some things he liked to currently say and do.

• Owen is officially obsessed with Mickey Mouse. He goes crazy when sees any book, movie, or toy that has to do with Mickey. We check out the Mickey Mouse clubhouse DVDs and he loves them. He loves to go around the house trying to say Misca Mousa ,Nee(for Mickey), Oh Toodles (sounds more like, Oh Too!) and Don for Donald Duck. He also tried very hard to sing the hot dog song. He just ends up saying hot a lot!


• Some of his recent words include: Ull ight (Well alright), slide, side(outside), all done, again(although it sounds pretty much like all done), wet, turtle, and bug. He now tries really hard to say anything you ask him to say.


• He does really well at folding his arms and bowing his head during the meal time prayers, not so well for family prayers.


• He has decided that he is a very picky eater. All he consistently eats is grapes, raisins, yogurt, and strawberries. He went through a stage where he wouldn't even look at bread and then one day he started eating it again. Him not eating anything is about to drive me to the loony bin. This week I started not allowing any snacks between meals and he has done a little bit better, but still not great.


• He loves to go to the library and pretty much run around all the isles. Luckily, it is such a kid friendly library and I can usually get him to at least go over to the children's part and play with the toys.


• He loves slides and putting things down slides.


• He loves cars and likes to line them up on the window seal.


• Owen throws everything and it drives us all crazy. We are working on this.


• He knows all of his letters now except about five of them. I did a video last night and I will post it soon.


• He likes to count, even though all the numbers except for the number 2 sound the same.


• Owen has discovered how to climb out of the pack n play and has done it once in his crib, but it must have really hurt him because he hasn't done it again.

I don't have hardly any pictures of him except during our family trips that I will post later, but here are a few of us swimming this summer and playing in the yard.

Lining up the cars at Brent's sisters house
Playing on our "new" swing set. The neighbor came over one night and asked if we wanted it since they are moving soon. We of course were thrilled.

Being funny with the pails

San Diego

I totally forgot to post this before I did the Father's Day post, so technically this is out of order, but oh well. Brent had a paper accepted at a conference in San Diego and I decided to go with him. We talked my brother Jon and his wife Vanessa and also Matt and Kelie into watching Owen for us. We left on Thursday at noon and got to San Diego at 1:30! Pretty nice, huh?Actually, the time gain wasn't the best part of the flight, the best part was not having to worry about having Owen on the airplane! It was nice to be able to just relax and hang out with Brent. The conference was at Loews Hotel on Coronado Bay. The hotel had a free shuttle into downtown Coronado so we went there a couple of times mostly to eat, since Brent's meals were covered by the school, but mine were not and there was really no place to eat except the hotel.

The first night we went to a Mexican restaurant, which I liked a lot and Brent just thought it was okay. Then we walked around for while. We were hoping to catch the shuttle back earlier, but there were no available seats and so we had to spent an extra hour walking up and down the town trying to stay warm! I was seriously freezing. I was wearing pants and had a jacket on.

The second day I sat outside and read my book and pretty much did nothing while Brent did conference stuff for a lot of the day. We went back into town to try a well reviewed burger place for an early dinner. It was called the Burger Lounge. It was good. Brent LOVED it. He said it was the one of the best burgers he has ever had. We went swimming that night after Brent was done with his conference stuff for the day.

The third day Brent presented his paper and attended the conference with the exception of a few minutes he came to make sure I was doing okay. I once again read my book, went and sat in the hot tub, and watch TV. It was awesome! I didn't do anything, which is what made it so great. We left after the conference wrapped up on Sunday and headed home. We didn't get home until 1 in the morning.

I was pretty worried about Owen while I was gone, but I after talking to my brothers a little bit I realized he was having a grand time being spoiled and playing with the cousins. It such a fun trip and such a nice break for me.

We had someone offer to take our picture, but it is funny because we are sitting outside a bank and there really is no scenery of Coronado anywhere.
Burger Lounge. I really liked their motif.

Downtown Coronado
The Pools

Me Reading. I am smiling because I told Brent to take a picture of me reading, since that is what I did pretty much the entire time. It just looks ridiculous though.

View from our hotel

View from our room