Christmas 2012

Bradley is holding the boy puppy. Olivia is holding the girl puppy.

Lynlee, Bradley, Kelsey and Olivia

All the Haroldsen grandkids

School Pictures 2012-2013

Halloween 2012

This year Bradley decided he wanted to be something dead. Such a boy! Olivia is a girly girl, she wanted to be Tangled (Disney's Rapunzel).  For Bradley we decided on a generic Zombie, not very bloody though because school wouldn't allow it (Thank you school). For Olivia we got a bit creative, Rapunzel has loooong blond hair. We did the wig thing last year, and I didn't really want to do it again, so I convinced Olivia that it she should be Rapunzel from the end of the movie, after her hair is cut and magically changes brown. Problem solved, Olivia has short brown hair.



Scary!



Olivia and Pascal

This year the kids trick or treated at my work (they have done this every year for awhile because my mom works in the same building). They got so much candy it was ridiculous!

Bradley - Zombie; Kelsey - Elmo; Olivia - Tangled; Brooklyn - Michael Jackson;
Jacob - Football player; Heather (in the back right corner) - Parrot

Heather's parrot costume. My mom made this, how creative.

Jeff, Ivy and Kelsey

Ivy made her and Kelsey's costume.

First Day of School 2012

This year Bradley is in 4th grade. WOW! He is also on the student council this year, which consist of weekly meetings collecting the recycling for the school every week, helping with the morning announcements and assemblies coordinating a service projects and I am sure there will be other things through out the year. I am so proud of my not so little guy, he is so responsible and growing up way too fast.  

Bradley in his school clothes

 Bradley needed to wear his student council shirt for the beginning part of the day because the student council did a flag raising ceremony.

Bradley in his student council shirt.

If Bradley is growing up way too fast than Olivia is growing up ten times faster. She is in 1st grade, this year was her first full day of school. All summer she was telling how scared and nervous she was. I made sure I was able to take part of the day off so I was able to take her to school and pick her up. You know to make sure she was comfortable and not too nervous or scared. When we were walking to line up for school, she pulled her hand out of mine and said "I can walk ALL by myself!" Really.... Then we were waiting where she lines up and she is with her friends creeping further and further away from me. Then she tells me "You don't need to stay mom!" Wow... in 1st grade she doesn't need me or is it want me, (I really can't wait until she is a teenager). So yeah I left, I didn't want to upset or embarrass her on her first day.

Oh and to top the day off both Bradley and Olivia were upset that I picked them up after school instead of letting them walk home from school.

But those are my first day of school memories, not theirs. If you ask them they say school was awesome (that's about it). When prodded further, Olivia says school was not too long. What was the best part of Olivia's day??? Pizza.... Yep the lunch ladies know how to start the year off right.

Next year I think I will just go to work and let the kids have the school memories. 

Rockhounding in the desert

This year for a kickoff to summer, we we went down to Delta Utah and set up a base camp for a couple days of staying out in the desert among the rocks and searching for treasure.  We weren't looking for gold or silver, but fossilized anthropods (AKA: Trilobites). Along with a stop at Topaz Mountain, Obsideon Hill, and Sunstone knooll. 

Day 1:  The day started off with a very long trip on a dirt road to a place called U-Digg Fossils.  This place was a private Quarry that you had to pay to use, but was well worth it.  We found plenty of trilobites, and it was very easy to split the shale rock and expose the layers where the Trilobites were.  In addition to finding lots of trilobites, we brought back a lot of large pieces of rock that can still be split open and searched.

One example of a trilobite about the size of a penny.

Some trilobites were extremely small, this one actually came out
of the  rock in one piece and as you can see it is real tiny.

This one has about 10 trilobites in it.

After digging up trilobites, we went back to the Hotel and settled in for the night.  Of course there was a pool and the kids wanted to spend as much time as possible in the water.  It was nice to cool down in a pool after spending the afternoon in the hot sun breaking rocks apart.

Day 2:  We had a lot in store for the second day, and planned on visiting 3 different sites.  The first was Topaz Mountain.  It was about a 45 minute drive along a paved road (with a lot of small birds trying to play chicken with our car), and then we turned on to a dirt road for the remaining 5 miles to the dig site.  It started out real easy, but before long we needed to start driving very careful and turn on the 4 wheel drive.  We passed a few campers and kept going up the mountain to try and find a good spot.  We found a turnoff that led up to a small flat area that looked just large enough to park the car.  It was a little bumpy, and we bottomed out a couple times, but we made it.

We took all the tools and set out on finding our treasure.  At first, the only thing we could see were several rocks that had very small topaz in them.  They were glittering in the sunlight and the kids were very excited, but we couldn't really get much out of them.  We decided to try and break off some larger portions of rock and see if we could find some area that wasn't already picked over.  I started chipping away at a crack in a large rock, not sure if it would do much, but maybe I could find something in the crack. 

After working on the crack for a little bit, I got the entire rock to shift and the crack widened.  It then became my sole mission to get this rock out of place and see what we could find under it.

After about 30 minutes of prying with a large prybar and having Amanda cheer me on, I finally got the rock to break free so that I could get up on top and slide it out of it's resting place.

A couple large heaves and the 1000 pound rock slid out of place and landed upside down, exposing the bottom side of the rock and leaving the ledge that it was on also exposed.

As soon as this was done, we all went to work.  Amanda found some amber colored topaz on the rock  and started chipping away at it.  Olivia was without a doubt the best at spotting what we might have looked over.  She kept pointing out little clusters of topaz, and even a few large ones that were sticking out of the newly exposed surface.  We ended up with quite a bit of good amber colored topaz, and lots of rocks that sparkle.
 

These are some of the cleaned up topaz.  The large one on the right is the biggest one that Olivia found.

After leaving Topaz mountain, we drove about 7 miles to an area that was rich in Apache Tears. 

Most of the rocks were laying on the ground.

Some of them were embedded in the mountain.

We ended up with about 200 of these Apache Tears (Obsidian) about the size of large grapes.

After this, we went back to town and had lunch.  We went to one last place after lunch called Sunstone Knoll, but didn't have much luck here.  There were supposed to be a lot of shiny crystals littered around the ground but we only found small ones that were stuck in rocks.  We brought some of them back so we can break them apart and see what they have to hide.

We left the next morning and headed home, tired, a little sunburned, but every one of us had a lot of fun.

A Day At Thanksgiving Point

My Sisters and I spent the day at Thanksgiving Point with our kids, taking pictures and seeing the farm animals. It was a very good relaxing day. My kids just love Kelsey and baby Lynlee, they just can't get enough of either one. 

Kelsey was not really into taking pictures at first. 

Olivia, Kelsey and Bradley taking a walk.

Smelling the flowers

The Cousins

The girls (poor Bradley out numbered by girls)

Olivia and Lynlee 

Taking a break while baby Lynlee eats

The kids and Ivy were so in love with the baby goats

This baby goat couldn't have been more than one day old. 

Toni and Lynlee looking at the animals....well sort of.

I've only seen a peacock with it's tail fully extended a few times. This day we saw this white one and a blue on fully extended.....Must be Spring! 

Horse Ride! Baby Lynlee was too small and Heather was to old. 

Wagon Ride

Then we had lunch! What a wonderful day. We are going to have to do this more!!!

Olivia's New Hair Cut



Before

We decided to try a shorter style for Olivia this summer. She hates her hair being brushed and pulled up into braids and pigtails all the time. I didn't like leaving it down where by the end of the day she has a rats nest tangled in it.


After



The Mets 2012

This year Bradley has hit the Minor League, playing for the Mets. Right now his team is in second place. Bradley is a very animated player and talks a lot of smack, (too much for a 9 year old if you ask me).



He is so stoked!

Bradley is usally not one to swing when he gets up to bat. All last year he either walked or struck out. Tghis year we bribed him. $1 a swing whether he hit the ball or not. His very first swing he hit the ball (straight to short stop). He was shocked and amazed (he turned to see if Honey, Grandma and I saw this and then he ran). Unfortunaetly short stop caught the ball and he was out. But that didn't stop the celebration.



Bradley's first hit in a game.

Excitement!!

Bradley hit the ball one more time and got an RBI. He swong a total of 6 times... $6 was his. Now he is not getting paid to swing, (we will go broke). He does however have the confidence and is at least trying now.