Jerryisms

We went to the zoo in the beginning of November when we had beautiful weather. I went with one of my friends and her 6 kids and had a lot of fun. Jerry did, however run away and was lost. When we finally found him, he was in the reptile house without a care in the world. I was scared but he couldn't have cared less. Jerry has started to really like going to the zoo and loves to see all the different animals. On this particular trip, he was a big fan of the white tigers and the elephants. Later that day while Jerry was taking a bath he pointed to his privates and said "Elephant!!" Apparently he recognized a similarity between the elephant trunk and his privates.

Jerry has been going poop on the potty for the last 5 months or so. I haven't done much to train him, he has just likes using the toilet. In the beginning, whenever I noticed him grunting I would put him on the toilet but he will now tell us when he needs to go. There are a few problems with this though. Whenever he wants to get out of anything he yells" poo poo on potty" repeatedly. He knows if he says this that we will stop what we are doing and put him on the toilet. He especially likes to yell " poo poo on potty" in stores, before going to bed, and during long car rides. Since he is still pretty small and young he needs our help. He is pretty good about getting his pants and diaper off, but can't get on the toilet. He is also very particular about how you help. He is very insistent that you place both of your hands on his knees. If you move your hands he yells, "knees, knees." until you put your hands back. We often tell Jerry to push otherwise he gets distracted and just sits there.

Utah part II

Although we went to Utah 6 months ago, I thought I would still finish the post. Better late than never I suppose. While we were there we hiked to Timp Cave which was a lot harder than I remember. I haven't hiked to the cave since I was in elementary school. I have to admit the cave was a little disappointing, but fun none-the-less. We went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky before we had Ruby which will make any future cave experience disappointing.

We left Jerry with Jarom's sister, which was a very good idea since he would have whined the whole time. He wouldn't have done very good on the hike. After our hike we had dinner further up the canyon near Tibble Fork Reservoir. Oh how we miss the mountains. A vacation is never complete without a child getting sick. Jerry had a raging fever which luckily only lasted 2 days. (the previous year Jerry was sick with Roseola for one week followed by an ear infection for one week, followed by 2 weeks of chicken pox, all of which were consecutive during our vacation to Utah and California.)We got some good "sick pictures" of Jerry during dinner. Jerry was a miserable little buddy. The upside to him getting sick is that he finally slows down enough to snuggle which is rare for him.

Lizzy trying to comfort Jerry
We spent 4th of July with Jarom's family, and of course I did not take any pictures. We did have a lot of fun at Jarom's sisters house and had some amazing food. I am very envious of her backyard. Jerry loved playing back there and did so well, it was nice not to have to worry while he was outside. Jerry has 2 cousins who were born within 6 months of his birthday so it was fun to see them play together. I look forward to seeing them play this summer.

Utah part IV

My dad came out from NV a couple of weekends so we could visit. We started our visit out by going to Steel Days in AF. We watched the last bit of the parade then headed over to the carnival. Jerry really liked going down the slide and kept asking for more. We took him on a train ride and then the carousel. He is so obsessed with trains now but he didn't care much about it then which is a little sad. Later we went to see my sister Renae and her family. Jerry had a lot of fun riding with Kiley on her scooter and riding with Addison on her power wheels.



My dad came out a few weeks later and we again had a lot of fun with him. We went to the Lehi pool which is a lot of fun. I could actually take Jerry down the big slide and I am not sure if he or I had more fun. I think if it was up to Jerry we would go to the pool everyday, he loves the water so much. The next day we headed to the park to have a picnic with Renae and her family. It was such a nice day, the weather was perfect.

Utah Part III

The rest of our trip was spent with my family and visiting friends. We had a lot of fun playing at my sisters house. They have a huge sandbox, an above ground pool, and a few blow up toys. Jerry played in her backyard for many many hours. My kids loved her house so much it was hard to get them to leave, but while we were there they were both really well behaved. It was so nice to have my nephews around even though they are a bit older. Jerry loved playing with them.




One of the days my sister had a big bbq at her house. I got to see some of my cousins, an aunt, and my brother and his family.

Our little climber

Ruby has become quite the little climber

Utah Part I of ?

While we were out in Utah we got to see most of Jarom's siblings, 9 out of the 11 kids were there and we also got to see his parents which was a bonus. Since we were all going to be out there his sisters made plans for us all to do activities together. One of the first activities was to go to Sweets candy factory. They make salt water taffy, jelly beans, cinnamon bears, orange sticks, among other things. Since our group was so big they split us up into 2 groups. Jarom took Jerry and went in the first group. Jerry did really good and kept his hair net on the whole time. I tried to get him to put his hair net on again so I could get a picture but of course he was angry about that.

I learned that making jelly beans takes years of training. I guess it is an art form of getting the correct ratio of coloring to flavoring to sugar, who knew. We ended the days adventures with lunch at Hires and you can never go wrong with Hires.

Kirtland

Jarom served his mission in Cleveland, OH and has not been back since, so we decided to make the trip(in June) since we live so close. It only took us 3 years to get there, but better late than never. On Monday night we decided to go, so we booked our hotel and left Tuesday morning. We were worried about how the kids would do and sure enough, Jerry started screaming about 20 min into our drive. To try to curb the screaming we tried to bribe him with a movie, Beauty and the Beast. That worked until the scene where Bell's dad goes to the castle and Beast locks him up. Jerry got scared and started freaking out, so we put on The Little Mermaid, which worked for awhile, but then Jerry had had enough of being in the car. Because Jerry likes suckers so much, we bought some dumdums at the gas station assuming that would stop the crying. Little did we know, that it would turn out to be a very sticky mistake. Not only did that not stop the crying, I think it might have actually made it worse. It also put a sticky coating on Jerry and everything within his reach. This is right after consuming a blueberry dumdum.



Right after passing through Columbus, we took a detour through Amish Country where Jarom served for a few months. It was a pretty drive through the hills. We saw a sign for Ohio's longest covered bridge so we turned off to take a look. Not very long, but it was still pretty cool.



We went by one of Jarom's old apartments in Wooster so that he could reminisce about old times, and he said it smelled of stale cigarette smoke just like it used to. Oh, the memories. As soon as we got to the hotel, I took Jerry swimming and Jarom ventured into the ghetto to look for a grocery store. We ended up just eating fast food for dinner and going to bed around 9:00. The kids did surprisingly good the first night. we didn't know how they would do, but Jerry was in his pack-n-play and kept standing up to make sure we hadn't gone anywhere. Once he knew that we were still there, he would wave and lay back down. He must have done it 10 times before finally falling asleep. We woke up and went to Bob Evans for breakfast. For those from Utah, Bob Evans is more than just a news anchor on FOX 13, he's also a glorified and overpriced Denny's restaurant chain in the East, with food that is not very good.



After breakfast we drove to the temple and spent the morning at the sites. We got through all of the sites without any major meltdowns from the kids with one exception...The Temple of course! We went on the 12:30 tour which happens to fall right in the middle of Jerry's nap time, so Jarom spent the majority of the tour restraining an exhausted screaming little man. After the temple we put the kids in the car and before we made it up the hill, (1/4 mile), Jerry was asleep.






We then drove to the Great Lakes Science Center, which is right on Lake Erie and waited in the car for the kids to wake up. Once they woke up, we went inside where they have all these exhibits for kids. Jerry seemed to enjoy himself, especially in the ball pit. After that, we drove back to the hotel to go swimming and then to bed. We left early the next morning and were dreading the drive because of how bad Jerry was on the way up, but both kids actually did pretty good. All in all it was a spiritual, exhausting, and fun filled last minute trip!