St. George Trip!!

Thursday before Memorial day we decided to take a trip to go see some buddies down south! We left Salt Lake around 4:30 pm and were glad to be leaving the 'rainy city' behind... this is Justin's Ninja Driving Warrior face... LOTs of Traffic... and Rain... but we were still having a good time! Yea, for Vacations!! and this weekend was the PERFECT get away...


Justin with his mission buddy Brandon!! We only got to visit for about a half a day... but it was time well spent... he and his wife and kids are so awesome!! We had a wonderful breakfast and the kids had fun jumping on the tramp and playing at the park...

Beautiful back yard... with a creek. This is right by the trampoline...

Caitlin and Dallin had so much fun together! Instant buddies!

I love this picture... Caitlin's got some air!! whooo-hooo!

Will, having a blast on the Tram. look at those cute curls!

Someone was looking for attention... He kept throwing himself down and bouncing and laughing!

Park fun! Brandon, Megan, Justin and Caitlin!

Panda and Wilbur, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This is us, having fun!

On the road again...

This is a "fake conversation" we had after we took this picture...

"So, can you tell me what you were doing at the time of the collision?"

"Well, officer... documenting our trip... duh!"

Next J and A (Justin and Amanda) went to visit A and J... (Aja and Jonah) in Beautiful St. George, Utah! What a weekend... truly it was one to remember! The weather for St. George was unlike we've ever seen... (upper 60's-low 70's... and just breath taking!) It was a pleasant surprise.

SO, Here we are taking a walk... that ended in climbing a fence and taking a killer awesome hike to some HUGE red rock caves behind the neighborhood! (see pic below!) It was so SO beautiful! It really inspired us to want to take more nature walks/hikes with the kids this summer... they did surprisingly well for ages 2 and 3!!

This is just so beautiful... I guess I never realized that cactus had flowers, maybe because I've always seen them in the dead of summer... there were many others like this along the road with the most beautiful orange colored flowers... So pretty!

This is after we jumped the fence... Will would stop walking every now and then...look at me... and then smile. (That was my cue he was ready for me to strat the count off!)

"One... Two... Three... GO!" and he'd run as fast as he could!! What a cutie!

Caitlin and Cam! (posing as Dora and Diego!) These two were so cute to watch all weekend!

Jonah, and awesome view from the caves!

Looking into the cave... you can see Justin and Jonah there...

Family Photo Time...

Cam and Caitlies

Cam doing his 'spider walk' down the steep parts...

I LOVE this picture of my men!!

Coming down the mountain was the FUN part for Will and Caitlin!! They wanted to slide down EVERYTHING... even when it was totally flat... they'd sit down and say 'wheeeeee'... it doesn't take much to please our 'city folk' kids! RED BUTTE! haha

Hike #2...

This was the best! We headed a little further into Snow Canyon so we could check out the petrified sand dunes, and lava caves! Jonah, Justin, me, Cam, Caitlin, Will and Elsie. (Aja took Ana to her horse riding lessons! We missed them dearly, but know that Ana was pretty much in heaven with her horses!)

So, here's Justin (stretching before the big hike... haha!) I wanted to point out their awesome Car in the back ground!! "Fish n' Chip" is what the plate says... CUTE! You'll get it in a sec... Here's a funny story about our way up the canyon...

We stop at the 'gate' where you show your pass (if you have one) or you pay...so you can visit the canyon. Jo is talking to the Ranger and all of a sudden she says... "Wow, it's smells like a BBQ... have you guys been BBQing already today??" (It was sometime before 10 am!) We all laugh... and then Jo says... "Nah... it's my car... it runs on used Vegetable Oil..." It was funny, i guess you almost had to be there...

Since our visit... Justin has been researching Diesel cars that you can convert into running on grease/ oil... that you can get for FREE at McDonald's, Chinese buffets, fish n' chip places... etc... Talk about SMART car! our buddies haven't payed for gas in almost 2 years... Wouldn't you like to say the same???

OH...knock the breath right out of me... I'm so in love with this... wow! I mean WOW!

petrified sand dunes...

looking for the lava caves...

found them... or one...

After our hike! Cam and Caitlin... Chillen in the back of Fish N'Chip. We headed over the mountain to a cute little town... to a local dinner and had some really yummy pizza! nothing like pizza after a long hike! Yeah!

My two little buddies... Will and Elsie...(Will shared his cheese crackers and juice with cute little Elsie...)

We decided to go swimming when we got home... it was pretty chilly, so we spent most of the time in the hot tub and worked on our tans!!

Justin actually got Caitles to jump into the pool to him!! so cute!

Will just walked around the pool and teased us... he was just busy showing off his beach body! (nice six pack dude!!)

"It's hard lookin' this good!"

mini concert form our two C's (Cam and Caitles!)

Elsie was my little buddy all weekend... she'd come crawl into my lap and just sit and look at me... what a sweetheart!

Will got a sweet lizzard Kite from Nans and Pops for his birthday... SO glad we brought it... we had a good time trying it out...

These two clapped and cheered everytime it went up... or when it would come crazhing down on me... yeah, that really made them laugh! Yeah, halarious!

No day is compleate without fishing!

AND... No day is perfect without a visit to burger heaven it'self... IN-N-OUT BURGER, UTAH!!

This was the cherry on top of our vacation! lines out the doors and into the parking lot... What a Blast! (IN-N-OUT Salt lake? I'm deffinitly feeling it! )

Thanks again A and J... we had such a great time with you guys... and plan on comming down again in July for a little musical theatre goodness, at Tucahn!!

Will pretty much fell a sleep right away, Caitlin watched a movie or two.. and loved having the player all to herself... what a kick...

YEAH! hope you enjoyed... can't wait to report on the next Cracroft Family Fun adventure!!

Favorite Fried Rice

This is one of my favorite dinners to cook! It's a light alternate to greasy fried rice you get at Chinese restaurants... and kids love it! When Will was little, I used to put this into a blender for him... and now he really happy every time i make it! The original recipe calls for 1/2 c. butter... but I've found that it's much healthier if you use chicken broth (plus the flavor is much better, and less greasy.) By adding little tablespoon of butter, there is still that butter taste! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!


1 cup white rice, (not instant)
1 to 2 chicken breasts (or 7-10 chicken tenders,) cut into small pieces
½ white onion, finely chopped
2 carrots finely grated
¾ c frozen peas
½ c chicken broth + 1 T. (or less) butter
2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 scrambled eggs


Preparation:
1.Make one cup rice
2.Marinate chicken in soy sauce (I buy frozen chicken, in the morning I take frozen chicken and place in a Ziploc bag, with the soy sauce, and place in a large bowl of water and set in fridge... by the time dinner rolls around, it's thawed and marinated!). If you don’t have much time you can mix it with chicken before cooking.
3.Cook chicken in small amount of olive oil.
4.Add carrots and onions and sauté until onions are clear.
5.Add frozen peas and cook until soft, (or add any of your favorite vegies, mushrooms, squash, whatever)
6.Add cooked rice to mixture
7.In separate pan, scramble 3 eggs, chop finely and add to mixture.
8. take ½ C. broth + 1 T. butter in small bowl, add crushed garlic and stir and heat for 30 - 45 seconds in microwave. Then add to chicken mixture, cook on med/low heat, 3-5 minutes.
9.Mix well, add soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste.

(I find that this recipe is always much better the next day, because overnight the garlic has time to marinate into the rice... really adding a lot of flavor... so, i make a bigger batch and have left overs for lunches, store in tight containers in fridge!)

Happy boys love this fried ricy goodness!

Mint Chocolate Cookies:

fast, easy and so good! Need a quick 'home made' dessert? This is the perfect recipe... keep cake mix and mint chocolate chips on hand, for last minute treats!!

Devil’s food Cake mix
1/3 C. Water (maybe a T. more!)
1 Egg
¼ C. Butter, softened
1 C. Andie's chopped mints are best (or mint flavored chocolate chips, shown above.)
1/2 C. Chocolate chips

Mix ingredients… drop ‘sticky dough’ on to greased cookies sheet, bake about 10 min. 350 degrees.

"Thick wavy locks... round button nose..." --Shreck 2

We really didn't' want to... but we decide it was time to give our little buddy a hair cut. It's just too hard to take care of and it's getting to be warm outside. Time for a short summer do...
Before: (I trimmed it about 2 weeks ago... so, it used to be a lot longer!)

Apparently, the ear area is the most challenging spot to trim on a 2 year old's head... We thought this could be 'the new look' in Hollywood! (Really, I was laughing so hard, I could barley take the picture!)

After:

These were tears of joy! I promise!

After Will's cut... Caitlin was really excited to get her hair cut too! "ME TURN!! ME TURN!!" Daddy had to explain that little girls have long pretty hair... she still insisted. So, we gave her a little trim, too. (practly nothing, we love her long blond hair!)

Guess all the excitement of 'the barber shop' wore Caitlin out... she wrapped herself in a blanket and fell asleep just like this, watching Thomas the Train... But that didn't stop Will, from using this 'slide' (My step aerobic box), and each time before he zoomed down he'd stop and look at 'Sleeping Beauty' gibber some secret to her... and be on his way. It was really cute to watch!

Oh, PS. We are back from our little trip to St. George!! We had a GREAT time and will post pictures soon! :)

Toot Toot!

Last week I was picking up Caitlin at Nana Great's house, when Will spotted this "Toot Toot" in the neighbors yard. They just couldn't help but run over and play with it...and for once... I had my camera! So, I got a few cute pictures!!

Enjoy!

AWESOME WEEKEND!

FRIDAY!

I had such a great weekend, So I thought I'd tell you all about it! Justin and I went to Hale Center Theatre on Friday night to see "Annie Get Your Gun!" We had a great time, and they did such a wonderful job, But when does Hale not do a FAB job!!

When we got our tickets, (just last Wednesday)... the show was almost sold out, so we actually had 5 paid seats in between us. We got there early, and just stared at each other longingly. ha. Everyone was so nice... they scooted down so we could sit next to each other! and I dare say I got a better seat, because they all moved down!! hehe. :)

If you've never seen this show before some of the familiar show tunes are: "There's no Business Like Show Business", "They Say It's Wonderful"(They say that falling in love is wonderful.. it's wonderful, so they tell me...), "I Got The Sun In The Morning" (and the moon at night!), "Anything You Can Do" (I can do better!!)

SUPER CUTE!! It really made me miss being on the stage... Some day!! some day!!

After we went to Crown Burger for a bite to eat!! BIG Thanks to Justin's parents for watching the babies... :) We enjoyed the evening with each other SO much!!

SATURDAY!

Then of course, Saturday I went to Stephenie Meyer's THE HOST book signing! and that was a wild and crazy experience... It's pretty much the funnest thing I've done in a while! I was so glad I was able to go!! My Friend Yung and her friends Amber, Amee, and Teri and I started walking over to Highland High School at around 10:00 am. The auditorium doors opened at 10:30.

I suddenly felt like a silly high school er again hanging out in the hallways! It was fun to see all the different t-shirts, stuffed animal 'wolfs', Apple earrings, red ribbons in hair and all the different age groups that Stephenie has reached out to!! (well, this picture has non of that... but it was EVERY WHERE!)

As soon as we were inside the auditorium... we had an hour before Stephenie even arrived! Channel 2 news had a camera guy there filming all of us wild and crazy fans. One lady... stood up and started screaming... "MARRY ME EDWARD, YOU'RE HOT! I LOVE YOU! WHOOOA!"

kinda weird and unexpected! We all felt really embarrassed for her.

Me, with my snack! I look like I have 4 arms! HA! Also, I was glad I came prepared with snacks...(apple, banana, trail mix and water) We were there for 5 hours and the vending machines were pretty scary looking!

Finally, the moment came 11:30 am STEPHENIE came out on the stage... YES we jumped out of our seats, YES we clapped and HECK YES, we screamed our little voice boxes out!!

IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

She signed books for one hour, then took a half an hour to look through a box of questions from us! Then at 1:00 started to talk a little bit about her new book and answer questions from the box!! (I video recorded some of her q & a's but the quality is not very good and it's really hard to hear... so, I'll type them up in the next couple days, and post them! :)

From Left to Right: Red Shirt, Owner of Kings English (book shop in SL) they 'hosted' the whole shin-dig! Next, Black shirt, and jeans, first person to have books signed! (LUCKY). Next: red shirt, sitting:THE STEPHENIE MEYER!!! Next, yellow shirt: Stephenie's Publish. Next: Channel 2 News Camera Dude! Next: Stephenie's Sister, Emily... who she dedicated one of her books to.

Seating was General Admission in the auditorium... but to get our books signed... they called us up by groups! Our tickets had our number on them. There were 20 people per group, and we were group 29!! Our group was called to go up at 3:15 pm!! It was pretty exciting. and they made us put 'post-its' in our books where we wanted her to sign... (only two, Twilight books and she only personalized (wrote our names...) on our "host" books! BUT you could have as many host books as you wanted... you just had to buy them from Kings English! (One lady had like 12 host books!! End of the year teacher gifts she told us, CRAZY!)

When it was my turn to have my books signed... I was pretty excited, my heart was racing... and it was really really cool! (they told us not to say too much to her because she needed to keep signing books for other people... so I just said... "I love your writings, you are so talented!!" she looked up and said "Thank You!" and then I grabbed my books and skipped away like a little school girl! Oh yeah, I think I let out a little scream or yelp, and jumped up and down... (Actually, I almost fell down the stairs while walking off the stage.) YEAH, I became one of "those" people, HA. I was so glad I was able to go! Can't wait to read THE HOST! (Justin's reading it now!)

Some other pictures through out the day:

Friends: Amber and Yung (my neighbor!) It's actually Amber's birthday in two weeks... She works for American West airlines... and can fly for almost nothing. Yung told her to fly to SL because she had an early birthday peasant for her. Yung picked Amber up in the morning and handed her a new copy of THE HOST and TWILIGHT... with a ticket to Saturdays signing! SHE WAS TOTALLY SURPRISED AND EXCITED!! What a fun gift! GO YUNG!!

Buddies: Yung, Amber, Amee, and Teri

HAHA! This is Justin's Cousin's Wife... Shera!! We were both surprised to see each other there!! The best part was that... her friend was saving a seat for her right in front of us!! How cool is that! We had a fun time together while we waited to get our books signed! She was in group 16 and we were in group 29.

Sorry, the quality of these pictures are really fuzzy and bad... i had to zoom, and the lighting in that place was really bad!

When I got home, I just had to take a nap! I honestly don't know how Stephenie does it... she did a book signing Friday night at Thanksgiving point... and then ours oun satruday! Crazy Girl!

Then at 5:30 pm, we got the kids ready for our Stake Carnival... by the time we got there all the food was gone, so we had a snow cone and the kids jumped in the bouncing castle for a little bit. Then we went home and invited some friends over to have Papa Murphy's Pizza with us. We got a Taco Pizza which we cooked on the Grill! IT was SO good! :)

SUNDAY!

Sunday was just awesome! I was released from primary, and now I'm able to go to Sunday School and Relief Society!!! It was simply wonderful!! (I loved Primary, and I'm sure I'll miss it. It was just time to move on!)

Then, after church, we went to Justin's parents for dinner. Cute Caitlin dressed up in her Cinderella dress with shoes, purse and all... and fell a sleep on the way over (5 minute car ride!) She's so cute when she's a sleep! Dinner was delicious and visiting was a blast! Sundays are just a wonderful day! LOVE them!

FYI!

Guess who's going to Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" book signing on Saturday???


ME!

I am one happy boy!!!