Grandma Celeste

Grandma Celeste Visits

March 16, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

In March, Grandma Celeste flew out from Utah to come visit for a week. Grandma Celeste always has the most fascinating stories about growing up in a log cabin in the wilderness of Alaska, and entertained the girls with tales of her adventures as a young girl– making friends with Eskimos, encountering bears, exploring the woods, you name it! She’s written a few fiction and non-fiction books about her life and that of her parents, so she had lots of material to draw from for her story-telling! I don’t know how many times I can downstairs to find the girls sitting at the table listening to a Grandma Celeste story!

We had a very warm week while she was here and made it to the beach a few times.

Floating on logs in the creek… don’t want to know what’s in there.

Cooling off in the pool.

Enjoying a soak in the hot tub after a long day of running around.

The girls thought it would be funny to dogpile on grandma and wake her up. Welcome to our world.

Grandma Celeste accompanied us to the twins’ softball game on Saturday morning. Meredith occupied herself with trying to catch Eleanor and apply sunscreen to her entire body.

Grandma Celeste loves to paint, especially in watercolors, and brought some of her supplies along. She set up her canvas and painted on the beach and spent hours painting with the girls at home. She painted them some still lifes of some pretty lilies we had in our house:

She helped the girls paint some water colors of their own and they had a blast since they LOVE art.

After hearing all of the Alaska stories from Grandma, Amelia and Samantha chose Alaska for their state research project at school.

And since the girls all love flowers so much, we took a day trip to see the millions of ranunculus flowers at the Carlsbad Flower Fields.

After taking a wagon ride through the flowers and playing on the fairy playground, the girls did a scavenger hunt.

Thanks for coming, Grandma Celeste!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alaska, aliso creek beach, carlsbad flower fields, Grandma Celeste, March 2019, painting, watercolors

Lazy Summer Days in Utah

August 16, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

After Jake flew home for the next week, the girls and I explored all the splash pads in Utah County (why weren’t those there when I was a kid?), visited with friends and family and mostly just hung out in the backyard. By Day Two, “Where is Daddy????” was the constant refrain/wail from the girls and compounded by the intense August heat, by Day Five, they were in complete meltdown mode. Still, we enjoyed our lack of a strict schedule and waking up every morning with no plans, but to see where the day took us. It was a “slow summer” (or as close as we usually get) at its finest.

Intuitively feeling a meltdown moment coming on, Grammy saved the day by pulling out a craft kit that lasted through those lazy, hot afternoons all week!

Good morning (hopefully)!

A little spider in her web.

Every day when Grammy got home from work, she’d find us lounging around in the backyard, with the kids begging me to push them on the swings, and me in an adirondack chair, pretending I couldn’t hear them. She took over kid duty for me, while I made dinner in peace (a welcome trade-off).

It was scorching hot by 10 a.m., so we tried to hit the trail early in the morning with a bike or scooter ride.

We visited the Highland, Springville, Orem, and Bluffdale splash pads, with Bluffdale and Springville being our faves.

Not only did Wardle Fields in Bluffdale have an enormous splash pad, waterfall, and a creek running through it, the girls were thrilled with the massive zipline and huge playground.

All the heat and humidity culminated in rain and thunderstorms one morning, so after a few hours of bounce house jumping at Kangaroo Zoo, we stopped at the iconic Taco Amigo on the way home… this one’s for you, Kati!

Uncle Mike provided comic relief during meltdown moments and accompanied the girls on a bike ride in the 90 degree evening heat!

Our other Uncle Mike was also there to be silly with the girls and trade off swing duty.

Meredith loved the revolving door of family coming in and out!

It didn’t get dark early enough for the girls to actually roast marshmallows at night, but they did roast them in the heat of the evening, and didn’t seem to mind.

Lounging with Aunt Sarah.

We met up with two of my high school friends at the splash pad in Springville and had quite the crew between us all. Meredith played with everyone, while the twins ran off and made some other completely random friend.

We also hung out with my friend, Katie, from teaching school, who moved to Utah last year. Her twins, Lizzy and Iris, were good sports playing duck duck goose with my twins (my girls’ rules of the game are iffy).

During our vacation, I was trying to transition Meredith to a one-nap day once and for all, and, as a consequence, she was a nightmare from 9 am-1 pm every day! When we visited Thanksgiving Point and rode the ponies, kind strangers offered to hold a screaming/kicking/banshee wailing Meredith while I helped the girls onto their horses and took pictures. Meredith alternated between shrieking in delight when we walked around to see the rest of the chickens, goats, horses, cows, llamas and other animals, and shrieking in anger whenever I pulled her back from climbing into the animal pens!

Jake arrived back in Utah a week later to three little girls clambering for his attention non-stop. I pretty much clocked out for the next week, being exhausted from the week before! Meredith and I took a long nap the day he came back, while he took the twins to the Gateway Discovery Children’s Museum in SLC with Grandma Celeste.

Checking out the train station.

It was an exhausting week for everyone!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: aunt sarah, bike ride, crafting, crafts, Grammy, Grandma Celeste, pony ride, scooter, smores, splash pad, swinging, Thanksgiving Point, uncle mike, Utah, Utah friends, wardle fields

Last of Utah and Going Home

January 23, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

Surrounding the excitement of Christmas and playing in the snow every day, this Utah trip was chock full of lounging around, visiting family and friends, playing games and taking lots of naps… a true vacation; although, we were definitely wondering why we hadn’t done Utah with the kids first, and then taken off to Hawaii by ourselves to escape the madness. We did things backwards!

Since my sister was in Key West for the holidays, she graciously let us borrow her car so that we wouldn’t have to pay for a rental while we were there, and since it wasn’t a minivan, we had to split up whenever we went somewhere since we didn’t all fit. So, one morning, Meredith stayed with me exploring the house and taking a walk to the playground, while the twins went on a Daddy Daughter date up to Ogden to visit Grandma Celeste and Aunt Valisa.

I’m sure Meredith was wondering why it was so frigid!

Meredith loves to play games and giggled playing peekaboo and reaching her hand out for me to grab in the tunnel.

Meanwhile, the twins took Ogden by storm.

After their stroll through the Christmas Village, the girls were treated to an art lesson from Grandma.

I had no idea who actually went to Scheels, that giant monstrosity of a sporting goods store on the side of the I-15, but now I know. Jake took the girls there on a pit stop and to ride the ferris wheel inside, which afforded views of the plentiful taxidermy.

Those animals are dead, girls.

Later in the week, Uncle Mike and Ali came to visit from Wyoming and Meredith was happy to play with more members of her fan club.

Working on her latest concerto.

The day after Christmas the water of Lindon City was officially declared unconatimnated and the infamous Boil Order of Christmas 2016 was finally lifted (rejoice!) Since we didn’t want to deal with cooking and clean up while the boil order was in effect, we postponed Christmas dinner and decided to have it mid-week when Uncle Mike and Ali could join us. I’ve never been so grateful for tap water in my life! It really made a huge difference not having to boil bottles, dishes and bath water anymore!

Meredith especially enjoyed the garlic mashed potatoes during her first Christmas dinner.

The girls were bribed to behave during dinner with the promise of being able to pop open their party crackers, each of which contained a cute paper crown and mini xylophone. It’s the simple things.

Meredith got a xylophone lesson from Grandpa after dinner.

Meanwhile, the twins learned how to doodle with their new spirograph, and were excited about their cute personalized Santa bags from Mike and Ali.

We played a round or two of Hungry Hungry Hippos every night, and I’ve never seen the twins so focused.

Such a classic.

Down by Utah Lake, they had a drive through Christmas lights extravaganza set to music we checked out one evening.

Mesmerized!

One of our favorite stops is the free Bean Museum at BYU, and the girls ended up going twice; once with me, and once with Grammy. They had a really cute story time which the girls loved, and we spent the rest of the time wandering around, looking at the animals.

Uh… where are the cute, fuzzy creatures you promised?

Amelia and Samantha reenacted what they learned about predators and prey from story time.

Hunter and the hunted.

The girls and I met up with my friend, Sarah, and her four littles to play at the Museum of Natural Curiosity. The girls have been there several times in the past, but this was the first time they were really old enough to be into more of the science and exploration activities. It was crazy at times corralling all our kids to go in the same direction, but Alec, Ava and Beckham were great tour guides!

Whenever they could manage to wrestle the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots away from Mike and Jake (which wasn’t often), the girls had a few epic battles of their own. Things got especially intense when their robots fought to the death atop the table.

When we weren’t outside, the girls occupied themselves decorating windows, playing with Polly Pockets, and lining up all the stuffed animals in the playroom to play “school.” Other people’s toys are always so much more fun!

The girls did really well this trip, considering all the Christmas-induced sugar, excitement, and travel. By mid-week, however, all three were noticeably more cranky, and by the time our week was up, we were all ready to get back to a routine, even though the twins argued otherwise. “WE DON’T WANT TO GO HOME!” they wailed on the car ride to the airport.

We spent a ton of time looking out the windows at the airport to keep the girls occupied. Jake boarded with Meredith first to take advantage of having first dibs on the overhead baggage, while I waited until the last second to board with the girls to minimize the time they would have to sit there waiting.

For both plane rides to and from Utah, I sat with the girls, while Jake took charge of Meredith (I’m still traumatized from the last time I flew alone with her!) She loved playing peekaboo with us through the seats and was so wild, Jake had to pass her to me a few times while he rested his baby-wrangling muscles.

The trip home is usually the hardest leg, and this one was no exception. The twins did pretty well on the plane ride, and only melted down on the twenty minute ride home from the airport, but Meredith was a cranky little one from start to finish! She sat with Jake behind us on the plane ride and was constantly bopping up to say hello and then screeching when he wouldn’t let her on the floor. I’m pretty sure she hit or threw random objects at the passengers next to her several times. Poor thing just wanted OUT.