Christmas 2010

The Christmas of 2010 will be one we remember with fond memories.

 I may or may not be speaking in sarcasm!

It started off on Friday Dec. 17th. We were getting the house cleaned, car packed; preparing to get up at 5:00 the next morning and make an 18 hour drive from Topeka to Salt Lake the following day.  All was going according to plan until at 11:30 that night when Kaydie got sick. Then she got sick again at 1:00am. Blah! why does this always happen?!?  We left a little later than we had planned, but by 6:40am (central time) Dec. 18th we were on our way to Utah. Kaydie felt awful, and I knew it was going to be a long day. I wasn't wrong! It took about 18 hours, too many stops, one car sick episode, and a few weather issues, but by 10:30pm (mountain time) we had made it the 1,000 miles!

Everyone was excited to be at Grandma's house for Christmas; and it was a good thing too, because we didn't leave much once we got there! Whatever it was that Kaydie was sick with, it made the rounds through all the kids, with Nick and Preston coming down with it on Christmas eve.

 Nick liked to steal Grandpa's chair and get his germs all over it.

 See how excited for Christmas Preston is :)



Needless to say, we had a very relaxed holiday. We did have our Christmas eve pizzas and we read the Nativity before writing letters to Santa, but the mood was subdued.

Christmas morning

Kaydie was feeling so much better, and she was very excited to get a Littlest Pet Shop.

Love the Christmas morning hair! 

 Palmer got the camera he had been asking for.

Nick got his Lego castle.

Then he watched his mom and dad build it because he wasn't feeling that good.

This is about the extent of the pictures I took during our holidays. I am not good at being the family photographer! But in my defense there wasn't a lot to take pictures of. We spent most of our time indoors because every day of the trip someone was sick. I'm not complaining too much, we did have some fun times.

We got to see all our family, including our new baby cousins (and we all love babies!) it was so fun to visit with everyone that we've missed so much. We had a fun game of Phase 10 on New Years Eve, it was also the first year all of the kids stayed up to watch the ball drop. I have that on video and it was pretty funny. We saw a couple of movies, and the kids all got hair cuts from their favorite stylist!

We did miss being able to see friends at church, visiting Temple Square, and a few holiday parties, but that's life in the winter! It was a Christmas to remember, maybe not the way you hope for before the holidays start, but any Christmas with family is a good Christmas.

best Santa letter ever!

I saw this hanging on the wall at Nick's school.

Just in case you can't read it...

I guess when you want a jolly old man to bring you a Legos Kingdoms Castle, honesty is the best policy!

Goodbye Jerry......

This is our little buddy Nick.

 Jerry is the name he gave the mole on his cheek.



 As fond as we are of Jerry, it was time to say good bye.



So off to the doctors we went.

While waiting to go into surgery he got to hang out with dad and color. I was getting everyone else to school.

Nick said he was nervous, but Kevin said he was cool like a rock star. When the nurse came in to walk him back to the operating room he got right up. When she asked him to push the "magic" button to open the door to the hallway he told her "I'll push the button, but I am NOT handicapped!"

Mom and Dad had a short wait, when they called our name to go back to the recovery room,

this is who we saw:

 He came out of the anesthesia as goofy as he went in!

He had his nurse and his parents laughing a lot.



 This is how Nick looks now. He calls the bandages Jerry's grave.

I'm not sure where he comes up with this stuff!

 Part of the fun of surgery is getting your very own mug!

The hospital shirt was a hit too! Unfortunately that had to stay.

To top off the experience he got to ride out of the building in his "very own wheelchair"!

He didn't mention anything about being handicapped during his ride.

Everything went well, Nick did great. Now we just get to wait to see what Jerry's scar looks like!

Fall Fun

These are some of the fun things we did in Old Cow Town

Cowboy bowling. The lane was set up in between two buildings. The ball return is a slotted rail on the right, you can see it in the picture of Kevin setting up the pins. If you don't mind playing some serious curves in the wood and setting up your own pins it's a pretty good time. Grandma even got a strike!

A wagon ride. Palmer got to ride shotgun as we mosied around town in a covered wagon pulled by some big horses. It was slow and steady, I'm glad I didn't have to travel across the plains that way!

Sarsaparilla. It's not my favorite, I liked the cold Pepsi. But the atmosphere in the saloon is to fun to pass up.

falling leaves

 Yes, it's December, we should have already done this. But it took until Dec. 2nd for all the leaves to come out of the big trees behind our house.

 When you don't have to rake leaves a lot it's a fun chore, almost worth fighting about.

(My kids can have some pretty strange arguments!)

 Because we're not in charge of mowing, we can rake the leaves out of our little yard and leave them out for maintenance guys to mow. Somehow the leaves got raked into a huge pile.

And it would be a shame not to play in a huge pile of leaves!

 Time to fix the pile and make it bigger.

This pile looks just about right!

Fall is definitely fun!

A Historical Thanksgiving

When we moved to Topeka last year we started a new mini tradition of having my mom and dad come for Thanksgiving. Last year we did a small church history tour. This year we took them on a history tour. First we went to the National World War I Museum and Union Station in Kansas City. Both are excellent places to visit where you can experience the past.

Thanksgiving day was spent playing games, watching movies, and eating finger foods. My kind of relaxing, easy going kind of day.

On Friday we headed to Wichita to see Old Cow Town. Since my dad LOVES Lonesome Dove we thought it would be fun to take him to the old west. We had fun looking around at all the buildings, watching a gun fight and enjoyed more sarsparilla in the saloon. We finished off the afternoon with a little photo session. The boys were all about the weapons, Kaydie was all about the dress. We all posed for a "serious" looking photo, but let's face it, this picture is who we are! Look closely to see where all the guns are pointed :)

Another fabulous Thanksgiving down, now on to Christmas!!

Halloween Time

It's Halloween again!

Time to decide what to be...

A ref.?

A PGA Tour player?

A Death-Eater?

Dorothy?

and the Witch of the.... Mid-West?


It's always fun as we try to decide who we're going to be. Maybe one of these years I'll be able to convince Kev and the kids to all go along with a "theme"! Maybe...I can dream :)I have to post this one twice, only because this was a first for me. This Dorothy costume was the first thing I've ever made, all by myself!!

Kaydie has wanted to be Dorothy ever since we went to the Oz Museum and she got the idea that red shoes would be an excellent thing to have. Making her a costume that would go with the shoes was definitely an experience, but I'm proud it came together as well as it did. At least I learned something new :)

As for the boys, we decided last year that we were going to simplify and cheapen Halloween so they had to be more creative. Preston was a nerd for his school party (I didn't get a picture of that). Then, he wanted to be something different for our Ward Halloween party. Palmer liked the idea of being a golfer which was great for me since that's a super easy costume, and Nick is now the third person to use our Death-Eater costume.

Halloween has been really different this year because it's on Sunday. We can't go trick-or-treating on Sunday, and out here people would think we were crazy if we showed up Saturday night, so Halloween was Friday night at the church. We had an excellent party with yummy food (Kevin won the Chili Cook-Off!), fun games and activities for the kiddos, a trunk-or-treat, and full candy buckets!

Now that all the Halloween festivities are over, we again get to look forward to another Thanksgiving visit from Grandma and Grandpa! Are the holidays really coming that soon ?!

fun stuff

Here is a look at some of the fun stuff we've been doing...

Church History Tour

First off a HUGE THANK YOU to Brent and Roseann for driving our truck back to us! It has been a total life saver. Because grandma and grandpa came for a visit we had to take them to see the sights. One of our favorites are the church history sights. We drove to Adam-Ondi-Ahman, you can see it in the pic with Preston in it. It's a cool place to visit when you know what it is, but to be honest, it's a little anti-climactic after a long drive. The area is beautiful though, the butterflies liked it, and knowing more about it's history and future makes it special. We also went to the Far West Temple sight. It is very pretty and neat to see the preserved cornerstones. On our last stop we went to Liberty Jail. Our tour last year was better than the one we had this time, but it is still an amazing place to visit. The bricks and lumber show how thick the walls were. It is amazing to think of the men who spent a freezing winter in that small jail/prison/cave. It is more amazing to read about Joseph Smith's perseverance in D&C 121. You should read it if you're ever feeling discouraged. I love going on the church tours, they are long, but fun days.

Air Combat Museum
While our grandparents were visiting we also decided to try out some new places. The weather was SO hot (115 degrees) so we had to find inside things. This museum was a lot of fun to walk through, it was only sort of air conditioned so we were still pretty hot.

Of coarse one of the favorites was a little toy plane, my favorite is the yellow plane that was named Jenny (shouldn't it be a boat?!). It was fun to get up close and personal with jets and helicopters, I want to go back again now that it's not as hot outside.



Oz Museum
This was a request of grandma's and Kaydie's. If you're ever in Wamego, Kansas you should give it a look. The kids had fun posing in front of all the displays. The museum is a large collection of everything and anything Wizard of Oz, movie facts, and movie scene displays.

We had so much fun with Grandpa Brent and Grandma Roseann. It was so fun to have them come out and see where we live, and enjoy spending time with them. We are so lucky to have parents that do so much for us!


Exploration Place, Wichita

The weekend before school started we decided to drive down to Wichita and check it out. We headed for Exploration Place which is another science type museum. We had a bunch of fun there. The yellow thing is a tube you can stand in that simulates standing in an F1 tornado. The kids thought they were tough taking on the wind! There was also the traveling exhibit "Grossology" where all the human body pictures come from. It is totally hilarious! You can learn about snot, burps, toots, and lots of other bodily functions. I like the nose at the top. We had a good time laughing at all the displays and interactive things, like making a guy burp, and pressing on tubes to hear why "toots" make the sounds they do. Exploration Place also has a medieval castle play house that kids can run around in and play knights and ladies, a huge exhibit of the history of flight which is really cool, live animals to see, and a killer view of the Arkansas River from the observation deck. It was a blast and we are excited for another trip there.

Old Cow Town Museum

This is a "living" museum, and we totally lucked out by going there on a special "Age of the Gunfighter" Day. It is an old town where you can experience what life was like in the 1870's. There are actors dressed up to make it all the more fun. We got to visit the saloon and try out sasaparilla, visit the bank, school, train station, general store, dentist/doctor's office, watch a real blacksmith at work, and see several gun fights, including a fast-draw contest. It was SO much fun. My kids have always been good at playing pretend, and the boys love being cowboys, so they were in heaven. The worst part was that it was another crazy hot day, but we are planning another trip at Thanksgiving, we're excited to see it all again.



Back to school

It happens every year, summer has to come to an end. This year we were ready for school to start again. Something new for this year is having the kids in different schools. It's a long story, but Preston needed something new; when we moved him, Palmer wanted to go too. So Preston and Palmer go to one elementary and Kaydie and Nick go to the same one as last year. It's hasn't been as crazy as you would think, and better than expected. Everyone is doing really well so far, so we're happy with the changes.

Another fun thing is Preston is going to be in a high school production of The Music Man. He brought home a note from school about auditions for kids to be in the children's band, and since he plays the trombone he thought it would be fun. He is really excited and just started play practice today. I'm excited for him to be able to try something new. It will be a crazy month or so, but I can't wait to see the play.

I feel like I'm always behind on this blogging thing, hopefully I'll catch up soon! I didn't realize how much stuff there was to talk about until I started looking at the pictures :) Life is as busy as it ever was, I can't believe we're getting so close to the holidays!?! But life is good, and we're having fun!

Utah fun

After battling through a lot of technical/picassa difficulties I was FINALLY able to make some collages of our summer fun!

Lake Powell!

Summer is not summer without a trip to Lake Powell. We have so many fun memories of time spent there with family and friends. These are some pictures from this trip and some from a few years ago of the fun we have at Powell.

The highlights from this year were fishing fun (it's the reason Kevin goes :), Palmer learned how to knee board, and he decided to be brave and jump off the back of the houseboat into the water! This was huge for him, he's usually pretty timid with stuff like this. We also saw our first scorpion and Preston learned how to skin a snake. We had a huge wind storm one day and our tent ended up blowing over and up the beach, that was a new one for me.

Lake Powell is one our favorite places. Between playing on the beach and playing in the water it's non-stop fun for the kiddos. Great times with great people!!

Summer time!

We celebrated 2 birthdays. Preston in June and Nick in July.

Preston is now 10 and we've been parents for a decade! It has gone by crazy fast. Preston wanted to celebrate his big day by going to Chile's for the queso, and then we bought him a new bike. I don't have a picture up, but it's a blue mountain bike. He also wanted to have a golf ball cake, and because he is so old now, he HAD to light the candles. I can't believe he's ten. He is getting so grown up and we are having a lot of fun with him.

Nick turned 6 in July. My baby is six and a first grader!!! Nick was able to spread out his birthday fun over a weekend so he decided that he should have extra treats to celebrate. He wanted carrot cake for a bbq on Saturday night, and pumpkin pie for a Kemp family dinner on Sunday. He also got Lego Harry Potter for the Wii and was in heaven. Nick is our little comedian and he always has us laughing. He makes an excellent caboose for our family!

The kids had a fun summer of playing, swimming, riding bikes, and hanging out. Nick finally mastered riding a two-wheeler! He was very excited to dump the training wheels and be able to cruise. Palmer got a little carried away with the bikes and ended up with some pretty gruesome road rash. Kaydie and Preston had their first "camp out" in Grandma's back yard. They were pretty proud that they were the only ones brave enough to sleep out without a tent. We tried out making homemade ice cream in plastic bags one night for FHE. Some of us ate smores made from gigantic marshmallows when we celebrated the 4th of July. We went to the Kearns "bucket" pool and had a blast playing in the different pools, standing under the bucket, and diving off the spring boards and diving platform. We also spent a lot of time at the SJ pool, and spent one afternoon playing at Gateway. Some of our days were spent hanging out, but we tried to make the most of our summer "vacation"!

Temple Square

One of our summer days was spent at Temple Square. We should have made it 2 days! We started out taking the shuttle for a tour of Welfare Square. I thought it would be a fun experience for the kids to see a part of what my calling is, and learn about the food they've helped me deliver. At first they were a little bored with the idea of a tour, but once we watched the video and started seeing everything they had a lot of fun. We got to see the warehouse where all the canned food is stored, loaves of bread being sliced and put into bags, and the favorite was the dairy. We saw 40 lb. bricks of cheese being cut and the dairy equipment being washed. The dairy was the favorite because this is at the end of the tour and you get to sample food, including the world's best chocolate milk! Even at the end of the day, after everything we did, that was the favorite part.





After our tour we checked out the south visitor's center and then it was time for lunch. We went to the cafe at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was fun to eat there and check out the beautiful building. After lunch we headed to the Beehive House and Lion House. The tour of the Beehive House left the kids wanting to build a new house like that to live in.





We went to the Relief Society Building to go to the Resource Center in the basement (for me). The kids had fun playing on the computers and standing by the giant scriptures. We also walked around the grounds to look at the flowers and fountains. I hadn't taken my kids to Temple Square other than to see the Christmas lights. It was so much fun to be there in nice weather and to see the beautiful summer sights.





To round out the day we went to the Church History Museum across the street. It was SO much fun. I was sad we saved it for last because we ran out of time. There is so much fun stuff to see. We took pictures by a huge Angel Moroni and standing behind Pres. Hinckley's podium that was in the Conference Center. There was also a fun kids area and my favorite was displays of memorabilia from all of the prophets.





I was sad that Kevin wasn't able to spend the day with us, but it was still a very good day. It was a lot of fun being with the kids and watching them get excited to see the temple.

Timpanogos Cave

One of our last big adventures was hiking up to Timpanogos Cave. Neither Kevin or I had ever done it before, and we wanted to try it out now that the kids were all old enough to go too. Grandma and Grandpa decided they were up for a work out and came with us. We left early and I was glad we did, because that hike is pretty steep. The kids weren't so sure it was a good idea once we got walking up a steep trail and would not be able to ride piggy-back. It is defiantly not a hike for a hot day! We took our time and slowly but surely we made it up to the cave.





It was a lot of fun touring the caves. There were a lot of cool rock formations to see. We had fun squishing through openings, ducking under low ceilings, and seeing what total darkness looks like.





The hike down was faster than the one going up, but harder on our legs. At the bottom the kids thought they were starving so we got some lunch at the restaurant. Yummy corn dogs and pizza.





When I think of all the fun things there are to do in Utah I realize that there are lots of them I've never done. I'm glad we took the time to see and do some fun new things while we spent our summer back home. I say back home because Utah will always be home, and the kids refuse to call themselves anything but Utahns.

One heck of a hole

Since we are residents of Kansas now, we figured we would do our best to be Utah tourists during our stay this summer. One of our stops was the Bingham Canyon Mine. It was the first time any of us had been to see it. It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours. It is an amazing site to see, and very intereseting to learn about.



The mine is 2 3/4 miles across and 3/4 of a mile deep. It is very hard to get a picture that shows how massive it is. We were all very impressed. We spent some time wandering around the platform that overlooks the pit, and when we were hot we went inside the Visitor's Center to look at displays and watch a short movie. I was worried my kids would get bored because this was a "learning" activity, but they really enjoyed reading the different displays.



What impressed them the most is how everything is SO BIG! This hauler is huge! Notice the stair case along the front. To get an idea of HOW BIG these trucks are......

.....this is how BIG those tires are!

And to give you an idea how big the pit is.....

See all those vehicles on the road way across the way? Yep, those are those BIG trucks!


I can't believe it took me so long to make the drive up to the mine. It was a fun, inexpensive trip to take where we got to see a lot of cool stuff, and learn a little too. It's fun being a tourist!

Catching up...

I'm so crazy behind on being up to date, so let's pretend it's early June instead of July.....then this isn't so late!

First up, the little Kempers finished school back on May 18th. I can't believe how fast the school year went!

This is Nick with his teacher Mrs. Hall. She was so wonderful and Nick loved being in her class.

This is Kaydie and Mrs. Garcia. We love Mrs. Garcia! She made Kaydie's year one we will never forget. It was year full of fun and smiles.

Here is Palmer and Mrs. Oliver. She will always be one of our favorite teachers!

Not pictured is Preston. He rotated between three 4th grade teachers and had a great time with all of them. On the last day his teachers were not out at the back of the school for photo opps. Preston learned a lot this last year and was glad to have teachers who pushed him to do his best.

What a fun, crazy year we had; one down two to go!

The last weekend we spent in Kansas before our crazy summer started we had a fun Friday. We pulled the kids out of school a little early and headed for Science City and a Royals Game.

The Royals game was great. We went with families from the JRC and took up about 3 rows. The Royals won! Preston was rooting for the White Sox thus the whiner look on his face. It was hilarious to watch some of the dads tease him whenever the Royals scored.

It was also a fireworks night. We had a blast during out last spring weekend in Kansas.

The next week in Kansas saw the last day of school, and then the insane preparations to be gone for 2 months! Our townhome was going to be renovated while we were away, so not only did we have to pack up what we were taking with us, but we had to pack up pretty much everything else! We moved furniture around and covered it in plastic, packed up our kitchen and put it in the basement, and loaded a ton of stuff in the car! It was another uneventful drive to Utah, and that's just the way we like it! We were all excited to get to Utah and see our friends and family here. I think Mother Nature wasn't as excited to see us, because after only being here a few days she greeted us with snow!

These were taken on May 24 if I remember right. Of course the next day was sunny and beautiful, but it was definitely a wacky Monday. Especially because some friends in Kansas texted me to say they were playing in the sprinklers that same day!

Welcome to Utah!