Ethington Family Vacation 2010

This year for the annual Ethington family vacation we went to Matt's Grandma's cabin in Paragonah (a little town near Parowan). We missed Matt's parents (they're on a mission in South Africa) and Matt's brother, Brad, and his wife, Becca (they're living in Missouri going to med school) but get ready for a picture overload, we had a blast!

Day 1: We arrived at the cabin in the evening and Spencer had a great time staying up late playing with his cousins!

Day 2: The menfolk took the kids 4-wheeling.

You can see in this next picture how thrilled Spencer was at first...

That same afternoon, while the younger kids took naps, Matt played with the older kids in the huge yard. Sometimes Matt acts like he's playing with the kids out of the goodness of his heart so he can give the moms a break, but I know that he has just as much fun as they do.

Day 3: We went to the Parowan 4th of July parade. Spencer was a bit of a disappointment at gathering candy but his cousins are pros!

Spencer just wanted to stand around and clap.

Matt playing with the kids again out of the goodness of his heart.

These three boys were born within 3 months of each other. Spencer was having fun until we tried to take a picture of course.

Day 4: On Sunday we woke up to artillery shells at 6 am, apparently it's a 4th of July tradition in Paragonah. After putting the babies back so sleep we woke up a few hours later and went to church. After church Matt, Spencer, and I drove to Cedar City and met my parents at my Grandpa Sandberg's. We decided to get a 4 generation picture.

As always, Spencer was thrilled to see my mom, he loves "Bomma"!

Then we went back to the cabin and finished out the day eating, playing, and talking.

That night Matt slept out in a tent with all the older kids. Aside from a trip inside at 3 am to remove an eyelash from one of the kids' eyes it went pretty smoothly!

The next morning we cleaned up, took a group picture (the one at the beginning of this post), and drove home.

Thanks everyone who came, we had so much fun and we're already looking forward to next year!

Boating

Last week my sister and her husband bought a boat. On Saturday night we went with them and their girls on the maiden voyage. Jaren and Callie also came and we all had a blast!

Here are a few of the highlights...

Jaren wake surfing

Mitch wake boarding

Matt wake boarding

I wasn't cool enough to wake board so I thought I'd try something that takes absolutely no coordination...tubing. An added bonus was that I went with a 4 year old so the driver wasn't likely to try to throw us.

Notice our faces at the beginning...

Getting a little more intense...

And finally...

Don't be fooled by Marin's face though, as soon as her dad stopped the boat she yelled, "I want to go again faster!"

Thanks Mitch and Cara, we'll be kissing up to you all summer long so we can go again!

*As always, all the pictures that turned out good were taken by Jaren or Callie.

So I'm a really great dietitian...

Last night Matt, Spencer and I had a little Oreo fest. Spencer was thrilled!

The only problem was that he doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He'd dunk his Oreo in the milk for too long so it would get soggy and get on his hands. I'd have to clean his hands off and then he'd ask for another "Tookie".

After gorging on Oreos we vegged out on the couch like two little slobs and watched "Cars".

Here's a little video of Spencer asking for an Oreo and then dunking it. As with all my videos, it's probably only interesting to his grandmas (in fact, that's probably the case with this entire post, but oh well).

Mother's Day Weekend

On Saturday morning we ran in the Smithfield Health Days 5K. Matt pushed Spencer in the stroller and I ran alongside them. That five days of training I put in really paid off when I didn't throw up at the finish line.

On Saturday night we went to First Dam and fed the ducks, Spencer thought it was the greatest thing ever, it was fun to watch him get so excited.
The ducks got a little too close for comfort so I picked Spencer up and had him throw them the bread from above.
See how brave they were?!

On Sunday night my sister's family and Jaren and Callie came over for the mango ice cream mentioned in my previous post.
Mitch and Matt wanted to have a little dance party so the kids agreed to dance with them (could have been the other way around).

Here I am with some of my Mother's Day loot.
Hope you all had a great Mother's Day too!

Bountiful Baskets

You Utah, Arizona, or Nevada people should check out this site:

http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/

It's a produce co-op. I won't go into much detail but basically you order a "produce basket" online for 16.50 (that includes handling and there's no tax) on a Tuesday and then pick it up on a Saturday. Some locations do it every week but in Logan it's only every other week. They give you a basket of fruits and a basket of vegetables. You don't know what you're going to get so you kind of have to plan your meals around what you get. They try to get the produce as locally as possible. We tried it for the first time on Saturday and here's what I got:

Large bunch spinach
large bunch romaine lettuce
cauliflower
5 green peppers
5 tomatoes
6 ears of corn
3 lbs. braeburn apples
1 watermelon
7 mangoes
6 bananas
12 tangelos

I wanted to make sure it was worth the hassle (and I'm a nerd) so on Saturday when I was at Wal-Mart I priced it out and it would have cost me $43.26 for all that stuff.

I don't know that I'll save a ton on my grocery bill (I wouldn't normally buy 7 mangoes and 12 tangelos) but I think it's a good way to get a varied diet and support local growers. Also, I was really impressed with the quality!

Yesterday we kicked off our week of fruit and vegetable eating by making mango ice cream, it had mangoes so it was healthy right?