4th of July

Oh Independence day, how we love you!  This year was a blast because we (Rachel) decided that we needed to be in Utah for the celebration because Mesa just didn't cut it last year.  It was so fun to get together with a bunch of our cousins and celebrate!  

To start off, we went swimming and then Aubrey did all these girls' hair in matching fashion.  

As we were setting up the dinner, these two cousins decided that the flags were good swords and were fighting each other. 

 I think I counted at least 7 snow cones for this kiddo, not including the ones he stole from unsuspecting people.  But, it was the 4th of July, and you can have as many as you want!  

 I think I have this picture of every year we have been there with these two girls.  We might have to make it a tradition.

 After dinner, we have the flag ceremony and these kids took their jobs seriously.  I also have to note how much Allie has taken to patriotism, wanting to know more and show her pride.  Makes my heart jump for joy.

There were lots of parachutes which almost always followed with this scene.

Hadley wasn't so sure about the loud noise, but got used to it by the end.

 We of course had to do the traditional sparkler shots....

Until you fail as a mom and your son touches a hot sparker.  Sorry bud!  He was fine and didn't even have a blister, but Mike just happened to be taking a picture at that exact moment... awesome.

Kaylee is a girl after my own heart- not wanting to spill your snow cone but still wanting to cover her ears.  Genius.

How I love this day!

Ice, Ice, Baby # 4

The Meldrum Family is proud to present.... 

Meldrum # 4! 

Coming to a home near hear December 16, 2015!

Look how excited everyone is, it's like they want another little friend to play with or something (Miles not pictured does not mean he is not excited, but his enthusiasm wore him out and he had to take a nap).

Braids for Days!

Allie learned how to braid hair, and this is her first real braid she did on herself.  Now she is braiding any hair she can find.  Hadley has mastered the twist and between the two girls, we could run a salon!

Miles with his constant head bonk.  It is rare if he does not have something on his head.

Butterfly in the sky...

We have been hatching a science project for the past few weeks, and today the time had arrived for our dreams to take flight. We have been growing lovely butterflies. They came as tiny caterpillars in the mail, and we carefully watched them grow into a chrysalis  (the hardest part was to not shake the jar they came in, which proved to be a very tempting challenge for some of our little scientists). Eventually we moved them into a bigger cage for hatching from the cacoon. After they came out we got to watch them for a few days as they learned how to fly in our cage, but sometimes when you really love something you have to let it go.

There were many tiny hands ready to help jail break the family. 

We had to do it carefully so it could last at least ten minutes.

The butterflies were a little slow going at first, and they got to hold them for a second.

But then just like that, they fluttered away. All that was left was a smile on three little faces.

Hadley wanted to make sure they got close to the flowers.

It was a great science lesson for the whole family and lots of fun each day to see them growing.

We will, we will ROCK you

Since it was a holiday from work, we decided to have an extra special adventure today. Ever since we found a piece of a geode int he rocks int he front yard, Hadley has been searching for crystals. She manages to find quite a few in the yards of our neighborhood, but in an effort to help reduce the local rock hounding we went to Payson for some real top notch stuff.

There are three separate areas to search for rocks and we visited each one in the same day (unfortunately we only took pictures at the first stop).

We started looking for fossils at the paleo site off the side of the freeway.

We found a lot of cool fossils, and here we even found some cute kids.

Hadley loved the entire day. Rocks are kind of her thing right now.

The happy hunting group. 

We looked for fossils for about an hour then headed to the diamond fields! They have crystals that are found loose in the dirt and we searched for some of those too. We found a few really small ones in the search area, but had greater luck along the side of the road (apparently some people on take the really big ones). Finally we went to find geodes. There is a hillside just covered in them. We picked up as many as we could carry and brought al our treasures home to look at latter. We found some cool things throughout the adventure and everyone had something they really liked. The girls enjoyed the fossils, Hadley loved all the specimens we found, and Miles liked just hitting rocks with a hammer all day!