Sunday, May 22, 2011

Epic Vacation: Utah Part 4

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA HANKS!

April 28th was Grandma Hanks' Birthday! We started the day with the lucky coincidence that she had ALL of her grandchildren in town at the same time. Naturally, we took the opportunity to take the kids out to have some fun with their grandma at the Children's Museum.


The kids were all so excited to see each other and got straight to work wearing themselves out with fun!


Brooklyn even surprised me by charging to the top of a rock wall just like her dad. I was too short to spot her so Aunty Natalie stepped in and gave her a helping hand.

At some point in the day we attempted to take a picture of all the kids in this car. Boy is it hard to get 5 kids under 4 to stay still and smile!


Luckily, when we got to the music section we were able to take this great picture!


After the fun at the museum was over we headed home for naps and then a photo shoot in matching cousins outfits. Well, turns out we'd worn the kids out pretty bad that day and the shoot was kind of a disaster. But I did get this great video of us making the attempt.



When picture taking was over Grandpa Hanks worked his magic to calm all the kiddies down again.


After smiles returned to the party Grandma helped the kids play on the trampoline and supervised some fun backyard playtime!


Eventually we were able to coax the kids back into the house for a nice dinner put on by Natalie, as well as gift opening and cake eating!


Here's a shot of all the kids preparing to help Grandma with her birthday candles.


Brooklyn beat everyone to the punch and blew out the candles before Grandma could even think of a good wish!


When all the delicious cake was devoured (complements of Janna) Grandma got to open gifts. She started out with some homemade jewelry from us.

Natalie put on an excellent dinner and bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers to brighten the room.

The whole day was fun, exciting, chaotic, exhausting, and wonderful! We are so glad that Grandma was born and that we all got to celebrate her life together!

When the partying was over, repacking began. Then we dropped the girls off with Grandma and Grandpa Uda, and headed to Chicago via airplane to pick up Kevin and head toward San Juan for the start of our cruise!

To be continued...

4 comments:

Colleen H. said...

It sure was a fun day! Thanks for all of your work.

Tau said...

Happy B day Sister Hanks! What a great day of fun and family.

Sarah said...

Yay happy birthday to Sis. Hanks! Looks like she had a wonderful bday. The children's museum is a pretty fun place too. Wish it was closer to Springville. Cant wait to hear about the cruise :)

Beccarigg said...

Haha! Brooklyn is SO Kevin's daughter! I love that pic of her scaling the wall. The Hanks force runs strong in that one ; ) What a great b-day for Colleen! How lucky to have all her little grand babies together. Bet that was a great present all in itself. The kids matching outfits are super cute, couldn't get your video to work though, just kept turning into a pic when I clicked on it. Weird. Great post though, glad you're back in the blogosphere and can't wait to drool over your cruise pics! yay!