I'm alive!!

The kids and I went to Delta without Jeff last week. I don't like being a single parent. It's crummy. But Dad and Mom were WONDERFUL with the kids, so it wasn't nearly as hard as it could have been. Especially Dad. He could get Faith to eat anything, go to sleep anytime, sit quietly at church..... Wish I could do that.

Monday the 18th was a holiday, so Jeff didn't have to work. He planned to spend the day working on our basement, and as anyone with little kiddos knows, you get a lot more done when said kiddos are not around. My parents had planned a trip to Quartzsite, Arizona, to visit my grandparents during that week, so the kids and I took advantage of the timing and went with them. We drove to Delta on Saturday the 16th, and left for Quartzsite on Sunday after Sacrament Meeting.

We spent the night at Railroad Pass, just outside of Boulder City, Nevada. We crossed Hoover Dam on Monday and looked at the new bridge they are building, which will pretty much eliminate cars driving over the dam in the future. It's amazing to see the way the bridge is being built. Last year we made this same drive, and they only had one section of the arch on either side completed. Now the arch is finished, and if we make this trip again next year, we'll likely bypass the dam entirely.Quartzsite was fun. It was nice to see Grandma and Grandpa, even though they were busy working at the QIA and we didn't get to see them too much. Faith started calling them bee-bama and bee-bapa. It was so cute.

On the way back from Quartzsite, we took a detour to Oatman, a tiny little town on Historic Route 66. In Oatman, there are donkeys that wander the streets, and the tourists pay $1 per carrot to feed them. Well, some tourists do. We didn't. We just took photos.
There was a funny man on the boardwalk there who made a balloon hat for Michael and a "short-necked giraffe in camouflage" for Faith. Hers had a little loop on it so she could wear it like a bracelet.
We ended up spending an unplanned night at Railroad Pass again, because when you have to stop for a 4-year-old's bathroom breaks, as well as frequent meals for a nursing baby, you don't get as far as you'd like to as fast as you'd like to. So we made it back to Delta on Thursday evening instead of Wednesday.

On Friday I made a cake for my niece Averie's first birthday. She has a stuffed octopus which she loves, and Callie asked me to re-create it for her cake. Here's the result:
And here's the toy, the cake, and a "smash cake" for Averie:
This was a fun project, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I think Averie liked it, too, although she wasn't feeling well and only ate a little bit.
Jeff drove down on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday we had a Hansen family activity. We had planned to go sledding, but due to a lack of snow in Delta, we played Family Feud instead and had a chili cook-off. It was a lot of fun - but I learned that I'm not nearly as good at Family Feud as I thought I would be. I won't be trying out for that game show.

We came home Sunday evening, and I've spent about six hours today on the computer, catching up on facebook and blogs. Oh, and doing our taxes. I got those filed today. Now we are eagerly anticipating a return that we'll really never see, because it's already been spent on a new furnace. So much for that trip to Italy.