At The Heart Of It

My birthday was good. It started off like any regular day, with a little extra cleaning than normal. I did 2 loads of laundry, dishes, sweeping. vacuuming, getting the children fed and dressed and then of course was late to aerobics at the church. I brought the weights that I had bought on Monday at target and they didn't use them, maybe tomorrow they will.
We went home, I hurried and changed out of my clothes and changed into my jeans and a relaxing t-shirt and hurried off to play group a few miles down the road. They had asked us to bring a snack that our children enjoy to share with the other children. I was thinking what in the heck am I supposed to do, I don't have any snacks. I started thinking what is in my cupboard, I have maybe a handful of pretzels in the cupboard. That certainly will not feed ten children. I opened the fridge, Oh wait, I have oranges. I peeled one the other day and my children just left it on the table and didn't eat a single bite. I can bring these! And I did, and the adults loved them! Some of the other snacks were, kix cereal which was best loved by the 14 month old little girl, rice krispie treats, capri suns and fruit snacks. My visiting teacher asked me, "Have you gotten any good presents yet?" I told her no, well its a good thing that its not your birthday yet. I just let her keep talking for a minute before I told her that it was my birthday. "I thought that your birthday was on the 15th." Nope, my birthday is on the 14th!
We stayed at the park for a long time, I was avoiding my birthday. We came home had lunch, and Paul woke up and shortly after his mom came. We were able to stop and get a quick bite at the Olive Garden. It is not worth it anymore, a lunch at Olive Garden is between 7.00 and 15.00, ridiculous. I was thinking that I wanted to try their never ending soup, salad and bread sticks. So I get there and look at their menu and their soups just sound really gross to me. So I told Paul to order for me, he ordered chicken penini for me, it was pretty good. Though I have a small stomach, so I think that it is just ridiculous that they won't let you do a half order on a meal that you order.
We then went to where we (I) had planned all along, onward and upward to Timpanogos cave. So, it costs $17.00 for the whole thing, WOW! It costs $3.00 for a vehicle to enter the canyon and then $7 a person to go up in to the cave. Though I guess that a person could hike all the way up there and then turn around and go back down without going in to the caves to save money, the thought crossed my mind. Though it was so amazing and beautiful and I am glad that I didn't miss it. It is a mile and a half hike one way, and on the way up my legs were burning horribly, my heart was beating soo fast and I was having a real hard time catching my breath. It took us 40 minutes to hike up the trail to the cave, and on the way down it only took us twenty minutes, going down hill my legs wanted to just keep going, it was kind of fun. I am one to freak out about heights and boy was I freaked out looking over the edge of the side of the mountain at times.
On the way up the trail, we walked by a few of these huge piles of snow. We got a picture of Paul up against one of them. Paul is what like six foot tall, so just imagine, this wall of snow is about nine to ten feet tall. The Park Guide when we had got to the entrance of the cave said that just last week there was eight feet of snow at the entrance of the cave in front of the door. They weren't sure if they would be able to open on time. There are actual three caves, the first was Hansen cave which was the first one that was discovered, Martin Hansen was the man that discovered it and his grandsons discovered the second cave when Martin was in his 70's. We walked through a couple of rock walls. In the caves, it was amazing different rock formations were hanging from the walls and from the ceilings, there were pools of water in places and coloration throughout, green, red, white, brown. Red from Iron, brown from mud and sometimes other minerals, one of the formations was named caramel falls because of how it looked like caramel had been poured over the top.
The heart of Timpanogos is the most amazing thing. There is a story or two behind it and it is also lit by a red light, lit up like a real heart, the park guide even started flickering the light on off so that the heart of Timpanogos was beating. It is the biggest stalactite, the "heart" measures approximately 5.5 feet in length and is about 1 cubic yard in volume. There are beaded helictites and quill anthodite found on a wall quite close to the heart. In the first cave and throughout some of the others there are some stones called "flow stones", where the limestone has been covered by calcium deposits and it can be pitch black and you turn on a light, well the Park guide turned on his flashlight and put it next to the flow stone and it lit up you could see the light shine through it.
The tour in the cave is half a mile long, and really didn't seem like it, because it took almost an hour long and you were stopping every few seconds and were talking about what we were seeing. In the mile and a half hike up to the caves we gained 1,065 feet, thats pretty awesome.
We tried to hurry home to our children, had to stop to get them dinner that took longer than I would I would have liked. I got up to the deli and told the lady that I would like the tater babies with my chicken meal. That will be another five minutes at least as she sticks them in the cooker. Okay so I wait my five minutes and then I stand there seeing that it is about to beep and am waiting for her to hand me my food, she packages the tater babies, puts them in a bag and hands them to the people standing to the left of me. Ooh I was upset, those people had come after me and yet they get their food before me. We had called Marta after we were done hiking and now it was an hour later and we weren't home yet.
Our kids were so excited when we got home. Kacen was doing a little dance, he was so hungry. He wanted us to open the bags and just let him dig in. He used his hands on the jello parfait and loved the tater babies and catsup. Abbi was about the tater babies, chicken and cantaloupe; Alona of course loved the fruit has nothing to do with anything that involves catsup and loves chicken. I also got this raspberry cheesecake pudding looking thing that tasted okay, Alona really loved it. We had a picnic outside the back door, it was nice.
The girls and their daddy cleaned up and made mommy a cake, we had baths while I made the frosting and they put the candles in for me. They sang to me, we ate and then we went to put them to bed. Alona was so ridiculously tired, she ran out of the room crying while I was trying to read scriptures and then when she came back she wanted me to read, I told her that I had already finished reading. So she was wailing for me to read to her, so in the dark I read a church book to her and then Abbi was all teary eyed and asked her mommy to lie down with her. I lay next to Abbi, put my arm over her and about two seconds later I look over and she is Sound asleep! I am able to get out of her bed with not so much of a flinch from her. It was 9:55 by the time that I walked out of their room and passed the kitchen, my children normally go to bed around 8:00!
Today's words:
"Go home", "home", "walk", "toys"