Red Butte Garden & Rio Tinto

Every year Rio Tinto/Kennecott gives Eric's brother, Andy, a bunch of coupons for different activities around the valley (which we reap the benefits for because we get to go along with him a lot) and this year they also had a big party at the Rio Tinto Stadium where they showed a movie on the field and had face painting and anything to eat/drink was free. Pretty darn cool... here's Tommy with a spider on his face:
Syrena had a snake:

I was a mermaid:

A day or two later we all went to Red Butte Garden, there were cute little bunnies running around:

Here's the girls in a giant potted plant:

And the little men on a giant lizard:

This is the part they were all super excited for, the ducks there are way tame and eat right out of your hand. Cassie was prepared and had saved quarters from the whole year just to get food out of the machine to feed the ducks and she shared freely with everyone:

Past two weeks..

We've been up to lots of fun things lately, trying to pack in the summer stuff before summer is over. We went hiking last weekend (the 8th) and we saw this grouse along the trail - the next picture is a close up. See :)

We went to Lake Blanch; it was beautiful but SOOO COLD!!! We only stayed for a few minutes before I was shivering uncontrollably and had to go.

Eric's work had an employee day at the baseball game on Wednesday (12th) so we took the kids. I thought they would hate it, but they both had great time, Tommy was really into it.

I made them make silly faces...

:)

They had fireworks after the game...

This weekend we did so many fun things!!! And I forgot the damn camera on Saturday. Well, I did take some pics with my phone.... If I ever get cool enough technologically, I'll get them posted on here. We went to the Tracy Aviary with Eric's brother Andy and his kids. We saw the bird show and they asked for a volunteer which Tommy promptly responded to. The guy doing the show brought out a blue and gold macaw and told everyone that they were so strong that they could snap a broomstick in half and then jokingly asked Tommy to put his finger in the bird's mouth. My little brave and trusting man then extended his finger, not hesitating at all, towards the bird's beak and said, "Oh man, this is going to hurt." The guy started laughing so hard, as did the rest of us in the audience. It was a pure Tommy moment. Here is a blurry picture of a momma swan with a baby on her back. Then we went to the Red Butte Garden and it was really cool. It had a super fun part for the kids and an area where you could feed the ducks - only these ducks ate right out of your hand. After we ran out of quarters for the food machine, we all scavenged around the boards trying to fine more, which I'm sure looked funny to lookers on.

Sunday started out well, with my precious Foosa being super adorable in the dryer (no, I didn't put him in there, he climbed in)

and made himself quite comfortable:

I took the kids back to school shopping and then we went to the Pete Yorn concert with Andy; we made our way to the front row:

That blur standing by the drummer was Max, the tambourine player. He was so into it! Super fun to watch.

We have a lot of concerts coming up, hopefully I'll be able to bring the camera to them all. Sept. 1st is Modest Mouse, Sept. 5th is Marilyn Manson, Sept. 29th is Clutch and I think we're trying to see Jim Gaffigan on the 25th as well. I love concert season!!