The Preslars

Just Thinking of Old Stories

2012-02-01T23:22:00.001-07:00

Once again, I seem to find myself blogging in the dead middle of the night with bleary eyes, having posted nothing for many days, staying up only because I'm not in the mood to go to bed. I know, everyone should always be in the mood to be well-rested, but some days going to bed means that tomorrow is just going to come all the quicker and I'm not ready. So here I am. I don't even have anything all that interesting to say - nothing exciting is going on, although I seem to be headed into the busiest and super craziest month of my entire school year. I definitely won't be coming up for air until about March 5th. But I was thinking about an old story I wanted to jot down because it makes me happy -

My dad has been listening to a lot of John Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson, aka "The Piano Guys." They do have a lot of fun making music and videos and I enjoy them myself. But my dad is hooked. I haven't bought any actual CDs yet but he's got all of them. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just haven't gone there myself, is all. But I have been thinking a lot about John Schmidt - he's actually been a part of my life for a long long time.

It all started back in the summer after 8th grade. Oh my gosh - what year was that...'87? I think so. I went on a church trip with a whole bunch of kids and had this terrific adventure as we traveled to Havasupai Falls in Arizona. Can you imagine doing that now? I can't. The trip was crazy - hours of backpacking, complicated food assignments, kids sneaking out and skinny dipping in the pools at night (Me! With my friend/cousin Jessica - that was the best ever) a bus break-down in the middle of the night on the way home, and of course, a little romance along the way. With "Jeremy," last name not to be revealed, since everyone occasionally Googles their own name and that can lead to problems. Anyway, Jeremy and I kind of had this little romance over the trip, though he was uninvolved in and hopefully unaware of any skinny-dipping that occured. We did have many nice moments sitting on the rocks that looked across the lake to the majestic and just incredibly beautiful falls and gazing in total and complete awe at them. When we returned from the trip and before I decided I didn't like him as much as I thought I did which happened just about the time my parents caught us hanging out at my house alone together...sorry, tangent - he shared a tape with me.

This was an old, beat up, recorded-over-several-times little cassette tape. And on it was some poorly recorded music of the most beautiful piano playing I had ever heard, my favorite of course being this piece about a waterfall. (Surely you're familiar with John Schmidt's Waterfall number....) I listened to it over and over, even after I was done listening to it to bring back the magic of the romance. I just loved it so much. But this tape was totally bootlegged - from what I remember about it, Jeremy got it from a friend who had stolen it from another friend by breaking into his house by climbing over the garage door or something like that. (My memory is a little hazy on that detail.) And THAT guy had recorded it from the artist's demo tape. Or something. I think. Anyway, there was no name to go along with the music and so I just listened to this anonymous piano player with no idea as to who he really was.

So a couple of years go by; I'm now a sophomore at East High and spending quite a bit of after-school time there as I participate in many a theatrical production. One day I'm walking along in the hallway on a quiet afternoon; normal people go home when school is done. But there I am when suddenly, very quietly, I hear the strains of a familiar piece of music. I stop. I listen more closely, realize that what I'm hearing is THE guy, THE music I've had in my tape player or at least around it since my first doomed romance at the age of 14! I start walking quickly, looking around for who might be playing this on their ghetto-blaster (which of course was slightly larger and more unwieldy than my ipod nano where I keep my John music these days). (Oh my gosh - another quick tangent - my spell check does not like the word ipod and tried to replace it with IZOD! Get up to date a bit, spell check! Ha!)

Okay, ANYWAY, nowhere can I find the source of the music until I chase it all the way down to the auditorium where I run in, see this big tall gangly red-headed guy sitting at the piano and playing his heart out. I have no idea what he was doing there; he must have had a concert or something and was practicing. Whatever he was doing, he certainly was not expecting a young, barefooted girl to come crashing in there, eyes shining, at a full run. But that is what I did. When he, in utter shock, stopped playing I blurted out, "IT'S YOU!!!" (Did I mention the drama thing?)

How does one ever respond to that phrase? I don't know, and neither did he. Yes. It's me. And who are you? So I tried to explain my very random and slightly illegal story of how his music came to be a part of my life. If slightly confused and certainly alarmed he also seemed pleased by having such an energetic fan, and I think I even did come back to the theater that night or the next to listen from back stage to him perform.

Obviously he has gone on to have a neat career with his playing, and I am heartily happy for him. I am sure he has no recollection of the incident, but I'll never forget it. In his honor, I'll post a video of The Waterfall.

The Wristband

2012-01-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to think of how this got started. I'm remembering that my friend Krista invited Bitty to her son Luke's 5th birthday party almost a year and a half ago, and that the party had a pirate theme. Krista did a great job putting together these cute little cardstock treasure boxes with booty for each party goer inside. The treasure that was the most contested at our house was a black terry cloth sweat band with a skull and cross bones stitched into it. And when I say "contested," do you really have to ask by whom? Bitty brings it home, Stomper sees it and desires it; she, in a moment of love and kindness hands it over and then later feels sorry and wants it back....sheesh. It was the topic of their bickering for quite some time. I think it only took about six months for Bitty to finally give in and just forget about it. And Stomper has worn the thing nearly every single day since then. Every. Single. Day. He often takes it into the shower with him to get it clean though that is having less and less affect these days; it is now starting to dissintegrate and the pirate skull is certainly white no longer. It's more of a dingy grey color but as long as the jolly roger is still recognizable I think he'll keep it up.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the wristband arrived in our home just days before Stomper started second grade with the revered Mrs. Lloyd, who, on every child's birthday, dresses as a pirate and leaps into the class room so the birthday child can battle her with a saber. She loves pirates. In fact, for about the first three months of the school year she has a pirate theme to every stitch of homework the kids have. It's kind of great; the kids sure love it. So I think I need to let her know that her love of pirates has rubbed off on my child and doesn't seem to be wearing off. She'll be so proud.

I do not know what is going to happen when Stomper's permanent accessory finally decays and crumbles into dust from off his wrist. I've tried getting him replacements - that was one attempt at solving the tug-o-war over the wristband between Stomper and Bitty, but both of them wanted the original, don't ask me why. But at some point, he is going to have to let it go. I am curious to see how long this lasts and what state the wrist band is in before he finally sends it to its final resting place.

I have to mention one other current passion of Stomper's. It's called Hero Factory. It's a series of toys made by Lego, bless their expensive little selves. They don't appear to be anything spectacular at first - basically they're these guys made up of a bunch of pieces that can interchange with legos but more importantly they interchange with each other. This means, as long as your child picks up a few (or a ton) of them through various holidays, birthdays, prizes and earned cash, you can get quite a collection of them and then you know what you get? Hours and hours of little boys playing happily together building, imagining and creating. It is quite amazing. I highly recommend obtaining a few characters and setting your boys free with them. It's awesome.

Hairstyles and Sing-a-Longs

2012-01-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

Bundle. What a gal she is. Troy and I have been watching her every day just getting to be such a big girl. Most of the time we're enjoying her various antics, although I have to say that she is proving to me once again that there is no such thing as the terrible two's - the hard part doesn't come until the threes, that's for sure. Okay, I guess she isn't three quite yet but we're getting closer and her mood swings and power struggles are gaining momentum. She especially loves to cross her arms across her chest, look at the floor and scowl to express her anger and displeasure. How do kids learn that? Is it just instinctual? How they figure out that pose is beyond me but I sure laughed my head off at her today as she was doing that and also telling me that she was "still very very mad about me." But like I said for the most part we just eat her up.

I do have a little bit of a love affair/constant battle with Bundle's hair. Even before she was born she had quite the head of hair - I had an ultrasound late in her pregnancy and it was so funny - there was something blurry waving around her head as she floated lazily in her little pool and when I asked the tech what it was I was surprised to learn that it was her hair. She was born with a head full of this caramel colored curly hair, and I have never been able to bring myself to cut it. Thus, as she is now 2 1/2, it is half-way down her back. Mostly it's a big fuzzy mess all the time, but after she gets out of the tub it falls in the most wonderful ringlets down her back and I just love it. And then she spends the rest of the day with it floating in a haze around her head except for the one little bit in front I've been able to plaster back in a rubber band. Basically if I take the time to do it it is adorable, other than that she looks slightly like one of Orphan Annie's friends.

Best of all, Bundle loves to sing. Troy has managed to capture a little of her singing, which I have not been able to do because when she sees me with a camera of any kind she instantly stops what she's doing and demands to see pictures of herself. Troy, as it turns out, is much more sly.

My New Favorite

2012-01-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

The kids and I can't stop watching this. Check out the making-of video too. Wow.

Delightful

2012-01-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before that one of my favorite things from my childhood is all the books my mother read aloud to us. I am sure I’ve already mentioned my fondness for hearing Danny the Champion of the World, (Roald Dahl), but there was also Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, (E.B. White), The Secret Garden, (Frances Hodgson Burnett), the Ramona books (Beverly Cleary) and the Hobbit (Duh) among so many others. One of the very best was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I remember being completely enthralled by every moment of that book – it seemed to be the greatest adventure ever. Funny, now that I’ve gone back and read it again I’m surprised by how short and simple it is, thought it still remains completely magical.

I think one of my clearest memories from the book is that of Edmund eating the Turkish Delight given to him by the White Queen. I had never heard of the delicacy before and in my mind I imagined a treat so heavenly that I myself would have accepted it from the evil Witch. How else could Edmund have succumbed? It had to be the stuff of heaven, undoubtedly involving chocolate and possibly raspberries or toasted almonds and just got better from there. Then one day my mom brought some actual Turkish Delight home in a little cardboard box. Imagine our surprise when we saw the powdery little cubes and discovered that they were just these little squishy-jelly things with stuff in them, sort of like a cross between jello and fruitcake. Horrors. How could Edmund have been tricked with something as awful as that? We were all disappointed and could only assume that C.S. Lewis had made a mistake.

Well. Time has passed and now my husband and I are the ones reading to our own children. We also constantly listen to story CDs in the car as we putter along on our errands. I find the distraction of great literature a tremendous help in staving off bickering. We are currently in the middle of Harry Potter 2, the Chamber of Secrets (my least favorite of all the books – my anxiety level gets elevated as we listen but we’ll persevere). We just finished The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and my kids, as judged by their rapt attention, were just as drawn in as I had been. I loved it all over again. And then last night we attended a party to celebrate the graduation of our friend Cullen. Guess what was on the table. Turkish Delight! I was so excited to show my kids and see what their reaction would be! Certainly they would be as shocked and horrified as I had been. However, it turned out that the only shocked and horrified person was…me. My children were indeed excited to see what Turkish Delight really was. And they ate every last piece and asked for more...

Oh, my little Edmunds, perhaps I can procure an additional supply of the stuff and see if I can tempt you to do my bidding by offering it to you as a great reward. (Cue menacing chuckle…..)

The Last Night

2012-01-03T14:48:00.001-07:00

All alone, dark, quiet. For a few minutes, anyway - I'm sure Bundle will be waking up and wanting snuggles soon. In the meantime, I am sitting on the couch by the fire, enjoying the last night with our dear Christmas Tree. Probably the last night, that is. I don't think I've ever loved a tree like I've loved this one - it's so beautiful and I'm not sure I'm ready to take it down. Of course, our living room has been full of Christmas stuff for more than a month now and I can't deny that even when I'm sad about saying goodbye to the holidays it is nice to clear out a few of the decorations and bring a little peace and space to the room. Maybe we'll give the tree one more day, though.

It happens every year that I do my best to keep up with my blog posts all month long, and I do pretty well until the last week and then I'm done for. There's no way I can celebrate Christmas and write about it too, and that's how it should be. But I always find myself trying to remember it all a week later. I'm so exhausted - mostly in a good way - I do love Christmas and we had a lot of wonderful times. But it's hard too to have the kids home and over excited for so many days in a row. No one should talk to me about summer vacation right now.

So let's see - where did I leave off? I think I need to report first on Christmas Eve. We were lucky enough to do something completely new and different this year - we've never celebrated Christmas ON Christmas with a member of Troy's family before - we always have a big family gathering the Saturday after Christmas. But this year we found ourselves with no plans on Christmas Eve, plus we knew my brother-in-law Sam and his wife wouldn't be with her family like they usually are. So we decided to spend the evening together. I'm so glad we did. In some ways we thought that it might have been fun to have a quiet evening at home with just us, but in my mind that would be happening after a long day of sledding and playing in the snow. I don't think we've ever had such a green Christmas before. Not a flake of snow in sight for days and days. So we had already had a long day at home and I was so glad to head out that evening.

Kathleen, my sis-in-law, really worked hard to deck out her house with Christmas cheer - it looked so great. We had a wonderful time - we ate soup and yummy appetizers, we played games and made cookies. Curtis, their oldest kid, spent the evening wearing his pajamas, trying to get us all to be quiet so he could go to sleep. That was funny. The 12 year old insisting he was exhausted so he could sleep. Anyway, it was a fun night and a great way to spend Christmas Eve.

On Christmas morning the girls slept in just great. Until 7:00 or so. This is only considered late because their older brother had already been up twice. Stomper apparently got Troy up at 4:00 but was convinced to go back to sleep. It wasn't until 5:00 that I felt someone grab my finger and start waggling it until I woke up just enough to send him back to bed again. So yes, I'd say getting him to wait until 7:00 was pretty good. Then we had a lovely morning opening gifts, watching Bundle get excited about getting "a baby named Niney," which she has been telling us for a month that Santa would bring her. Stomper was excited about the additions to his lego collection and Bitty was greatly blessed in the Playmobile department. So basically about 1000 new little tiny plastic objects were brought into our house. Yahoo. Actually the kids have been thrilled with their gifts and have played with them constantly, so that's a good sign.

I myself was blessed in the footwear department as I received the most beautiful pair of boots known to man. They've been on my wish list for a very long time and my husband was very nice to insist that we get the real pair I really wanted instead of a cheaper pair that looked a lot like them. They've hardly left my feet since.

I also would like to claim a victory. Troy and I decided long ago that a surprise is not what he wants for Christmas. What he wants is getting something that he really wants, and that always means that he has already carefully decided what that is. I gave up on surprising him long ago. However, this year, I finally did it. He doesn't have anything hanging on the walls of his cube at work and he spends a lot of time at home looking at pictures of his children and family. So I made him these collages of the best pictures of his kids and framed them. He had no idea. I know it's just a simple little gift, but when he opened them he was delighted to the point of tears. I finally did it!

After some awesome breakfast of sausage and eggs we got ourselves together and headed off to church. Some people really don't care for church on Christmas day but I really enjoyed it. Beautiful music and a great speaker. Then we came home and the kids played while I cooked up a storm before we headed off to meet my parents and my sister and Troy's parents for dinner. Roasted pork, perfect mashed potatoes, wild rice stuffing, peppermint ice cream. A real treat.

After that it was time to scoop up our exhausted kiddos and tuck them into bed after a long and wonderful day.

By the way, it ended up taking me three days to finish this post due to the above mentioned "children," "excitement," and "wanting snuggles." And our tree is still up. That's next on the to-do list. Probably.

The Big Day!

2011-12-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

(And I’m not talking about Christmas. Yet.)

I know many families whose children didn’t get out of school until just a few days before Christmas. We ourselves had over a week to relax and get ready, which of course wasn’t relaxing in the slightest. But we definitely had some fun over the past few days. I can’t decide if it would be better to have fewer days off before Christmas or not. I’m pretty tired out, I must admit, from keeping this train rolling over the past few days.

Our biggest day of the week was probably Thursday. Wow. Big day.

We started by being bored, and happily I learned a terrific technique for staving off crazed children. You just need some white glue and borax. And look what you get - gak! It kept the kids quite busy while I tried to make a dent in the dishes. I failed, but that’s beside the point.

After our gak-filled morning, we had the privilege of pulling together a little service project with my sister and her girls. I was thrilled to add this activity to our holiday itinerary. I had been trying to find something for my kids to do with their own hands to help someone in need. We decided to not exchange gifts between the kids as we sometimes do and instead spend that money on something helpful. We ended up going to the dollar store and purchasing large numbers of items with which to make hygiene kits for the YMCA. We frustrated a few people in line behind us, but we had fun sending my kids off with their big-girl cousins on hunts for 20 bars of soap or shampoo and stuff like that. Then we headed to my folks’ home to assemble the kits and enjoy some lunch.

I have to admit I rushed us through the last little bit because we had been invited to join my friend Krista in a Christmas outing and that was exactly I needed to boost my holiday spirit. So we met up at the Gateway Mall (I was only ½ hour late or so…whoops) and then (another whoops) I discovered that the gingerbread house display I had told Krista about had shut down the week before. Darn! So after misleading Krista and her kids for a little while Krista mercifully took charge; we rallied the troops and headed over to The Grand America Hotel for a scavenger hunt of their window displays. That was really fun. Of course, Bundle and her little friend felt it entirely appropriate to find as many places as possible to lie down. Couches, floor, whatever, wherever. Kinda funny.

So that was an adventure that involved lots of parking and driving and directing the kids and breaking up arguments. Worth it, (seriously tasty sugar cookies at the end...) but cost a lot of energy. That was followed up by an evening of delivering neighbor gifts and then going on a drive to see Christmas Lights. I have been wanting and wanting to go see the downtown lights this year but every night mustering the energy, not to mention the snowsuits and other gear necessary to prevent children from being cold and thus crying the whole time, has been beyond me. So...we went for a drive.

By the time evening rolled around...mommy was all done.

A Date With Bitty

2011-12-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Way back last July or something I had a date with Stomper. To Lagoon. It was a really big date. And ever since then I've been meaning to have a date with Bitty but we just haven't pulled it together. Finally this week I managed some good one-on-one time with her, though the magnitude of our date certainly didn't compare with Lagoon. I still owe her. Although really, I don't thing kids care about the magnitude as much as they care about getting to spend time with their parents. For now, that is. I think when they're teenagers they compare price tags a little more than at the age of six. Anyway, Bitty and I got to go out.

My sister Margaret got another gig playing cello up at Pioneer Memorial Theater, this time playing for Annie. My Dad very generously bought us tickets to go see the show. We didn't have time for dinner before, but Bitty and I had a great time sitting together. I wasn't sure the show would hold her attention for the whole three hours but it totally did. That gal loves the theater and any kind of live show. She's sat through them since she was pretty little. Annie has a lot of political stuff in it that goes over the head of young kids, but there was enough spectacle to keep her hooked.

I enjoyed the show too - Annie was a favorite at our house and so I pretty much knew every word and had to maintain control in order to not keep singing along with the cast. Although, during the song Tomorrow, the entire audience couldn't keep themselves from joining in. We all started out rather hesitantly or even unconsciously but then grew stronger and stronger as we all realized we weren't the only ones singing until everyone was just belting it out all together.

After it was over it was quite late but Bitty was happy and excited and I thought it might be nice to go get a treat together. So we headed to Top It's - hello! Closed for the season! Bitty was slightly heartbroken - she's been dying to go there. So then we tried my favorite - Dulcetti Gelato. Also closed. Boo hoo. Third try's the charm - The Bakery. Actually they were closed too but still had doors open and let us choose a few treats from the display. Bitty's eyes were huge. Have you ever been there? There are I think three long display cases, each absolutely packed with decadent treats and various delicacies. She carefully picked out a couple of cookies, some cake balls decorated like ornaments and a mouse-shaped chocolate. We sat at a table and nibbled at everything until we just had to go home and crawl into bed.

Bitty can be so charming. She gets in her happy place and just showers cheer and joy everywhere. Of course, the opposite can be true as well, but on good days there is no one as loving or thoughtful or kind or excited to do good than my little Bitty. I hope I get a date with her again soon.

After 13 Years, A First!

2011-12-24T23:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's Christmas Eve, late at night. Gifts have been set under the tree, Santa's cookies have been nibbled, a fire is crackling in the stove, and beautiful Christmas music is playing softly. I really should be in bed; Troy is slumped over on the couch looking as exhausted as I feel and possibly wondering about my sanity as I sit here typing away, but since that has been in question for many years now it's nothing alarming. I just felt that since I have a moment's peace I should take the chance to catch up on blogging about our busy week. After all, chaos will reign all day tomorrow and by Monday I'll be even more behind on the blogging. So I'm striking while the iron is hot, or while the children sleep in my case. Also, Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the holidays and I'm not ready for it to be over yet.

I wanted to write first about last weekend - could it possibly have been only a week ago? It feels like a month. After 13 years of living in this house we have finally hosted our very first guests. We've never attempted it before due mainly to the fact that our home only has one bathroom and it gets pretty crowded with just the five of us here. We couldn't imagine getting that one bathroom to service an additional family as well. But my brother Peter and his family were coming up from St. George to spend the weekend. They had a friend party to attend plus we had to fit in our annual Waffles and Wassail night so we could see The Muppet's Christmas Carol together - third year in a row! My parents' kitchen was being remodeled and my sister was going nutty due to teaching and playing in the orchestra for a production of Annie. These are two homes where Peter and Sheri normally stay during their trips up north. What to do! Where to go! I mustered up my courage, checked in with my husband, and offered our home to them. I think we were all wondering how it might work out. The Romneys only ended up staying here for one night - it was a trial run, really, to see if this might be more of a possible landing spot for them in the future.

I'm so happy to report that their stay was very successful and I feel like we might be able to host other guests in the future. By combining our air mattress and our foam camping pads (each somewhat uncomfortable on their own) we produced a seriously cozy bed in Chase's room. Of course, if you're going to be a guest at our house you have to be really comfortable with us because the quarters are close and there is still just the one bathroom, but I thought it worked out great.

We had so much fun on our waffles night. My favorite thing was that Stomper actually sat down and watched A Christmas Carol in its entirety. The kids all enjoy the Muppets but they generally sit still for the first 20 minutes or so before getting restless and finally after that heading off to play in the other room. But Stomper was engaged with the story the entire time. That's neat for me; A Christmas Carol is one of my very most beloved parts of the holiday season, and I usually watch at least 2 versions of it every year if not more. I just don't seem to tire of it! (Although this year I watched the Jim Carrey animated version for the first time and though several parts were wonderfully done I take serious issue with other bits and also question some of the really scary parts. Sorry, I'm a movie critic in training. I'll stop now.)

I so love spending time with Peter and Sheri and their darling girls. I do wish they lived closer to us, but now that my other dear brother is in Seattle, St. George just doesn't seem that far away!

The One and Only Miss Kim

2011-12-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Is there such a thing as a mommy crush? Because if there is, I have one on my daughter's dance teacher. Okay, not really a crush, but definitely some love and admiration for a woman who is a wonderful teacher for my girl. Also she has the most amazing back ever and I would like to have one like it some day. Observe:

Bitty took a long break from dance because for a while she refused to participate. So we did a year of soccer. Then when soccer ended I asked her if she'd like to do soccer again or give dancing another try. (Sorry gal, I'm a one-thing-per-kid kind of mom.) I was happy that she chose dance - ballet and tap. I know there are a lot of places to go these days for dance but I'm pretty devoted to our Miss Kim who teaches up at the Steiner Rec Center. She's just terrific. I like how she teaches, I like how she handles problems, and I like that she doesn't do a big performance at the end of each semester. We have a parent observation day where we get to go into class and the girls show off their dances for us and everything they've learned, but it's pretty laid back and that's how I like it.

Bitty was so happy in class, and last Friday during the final class I got to see how much she's really improved. It's pretty neat. And I'm excited to continue on in January. The best part of class had to be when Miss Kim demonstrated her tap dancing skills to show why she was teaching the girls the steps she was. I really should have been taking a video or photos or something but I was too busy letting my chin hit the floor. Wow! I just found out she teaches tap for grown ups....hmmm......I think I might have to spend a little time with Miss Kim myself!

How to Get Really Sticky and Cold

2011-12-14T17:23:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you have to read the fine print when purchasing a Groupon. I was excited when I got my daily email notice and it was for a discounted admission to Hogle Zoo's Zoo Lights - I love going to Zoo Lights! However, I didn't notice that the Groupon expired the first week of December - we really had to rush to fit the outing in our schedule and we were forced to go during a week of extremely freezing cold weather.

I think I did pretty well in preventing a miserable outing for the kids by making them all wear their snow suits despite the lack of a single snowflake on the ground. Plus hats, gloves and a scarf or two. We were well bundled. The girls were fine but Stomper grumbled about this. Of course, he's the kid I have to bribe just to get him to wear a sweatshirt on top of his tee shirt every morning as he's leaving for school. I guess he's more warm blooded than I thought.

All was well with our outing - the lights were lovely, the crowds were thin and the kids were happy. Until they spotted the cotton candy hanging in the window of the snack bar by the big cats. If you frequent Hogle Zoo at all you'll know that the cats are located at the single farthest point from the main gates you can go. And silly me, I indulged them. Of course, this means that the kids all pulled off their gloves in order to pluck at the puff of cotton candy and then suck it off their fingers. So their fingers not only got completely sticky and pink but also wet and thus freezing cold.

I had so hoped we would have a night without tears and truly for the most part we had a great evening. But for the last 15 minutes of our visit the Preslars could be seen running from one end of the zoo to the other while carrying at least one sobbing, sticky and pink child. Bundle was the most miserable of all but she seems to have forgotten that part and now asks me multiple times a day to take her "To the Zoo Lights Tomorrow." Previously she had just asked to go to the zoo, but she's thrown the lights in there ever since our outing. Lucky for me she has not figured out the actual meaning of the word "tomorrow." And since she never asks to go today, I can usually say, "Okay, we'll go tomorrow!"

The Finished Product and also Mommy Needs Therapy

2011-12-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

Thought you might like to see our finished Christmas Tree:

I'm so fond of our tall scraggly trees. My mom calls them our "Charlie Brown Trees." Yes indeed and proud of them! They make me happy.

In other holiday news, we once again attended our annual first-Monday-in-December outing to The Mayfield's home for an evening of dinner, playing and of course building gingerbread houses. I keep thinking, each year, that maybe THIS will be the year that I get to make my very own very perfect little house and it will be all symmetrical and quaint and I'll magically have the perfect place in my house to display my creation. It only took me one or two years to figure out that this would have to begin with me buying a separate house for myself than the children. And once you start down that path...there's no going back. But you know, it just takes more than that. You have to buy a little extra candy, which I didn't have time to do. You have to also not have a young girl who insists on sitting on your lap and getting all handsy with your stuff. Maybe next year Bundle will let me do my house in peace, but I seriously doubt it. And also you have to not scurry through the assembly due to the fact that your kids all need help at the same time though you want them to just be quiet and leave you alone to obsess over your color coordination in peace. So...I wasn't able to fulfill my OCD dreams of gingerbread perfection, but you know, gingerbread houses don't need much to turn out. I mean, stick some red and green candy on white frosting and you've got yourself a cute little house. Pus I made a great discovery this year - Bed Bath and Beyond is selling a little kit that contains five tiny little houses instead of one big one. It was really fun for each kid to get their own house, including wee Bundle who really did seem to thoroughly enjoy putting candy and frosting all over the thing. And when I say all over, I mean ALL OVER. Luckily her daddy stepped in to help her out a bit while I was assembling houses and the like.

So it was that I resolved my feelings towards my less-than-spectacular house. That is, until I took one look at The Misty's little house...shoot. I suddenly had renewed compulsions and may just get myself one more house to do all by myself in the middle of the night so that I can stick it on top of the fridge with the other houses to collect dust until we smash them the day after Christmas.

(The Misty's House pictured below. Like you couldn't have guessed yourself.)

I think I need therapy. But I hope we never discontinue our tradition. Party because I love The Mayfields and partly because some day, oh yes, I will create my dream gingerbread house.

Why Knitting is Awesome

2011-12-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

Although this event happened during our trip to Bear Lake Troy and I decided that it deserved its own entry.

As we were driving to the Burnett cabin on Thursday afternoon I kept Stomper busy by loading up the iphone with some movies and handing it over. He of course played Talking Tom for a few minutes until the rest of us cried for mercy, then he switched to movie watching. He decided to take on his first-ever full screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was so excited to be watching it that despite the fact he had on head phones he kept forgetting the rest of us couldn't hear it and he'd comment on things or moan something loudly like, "Oh poor Indy! He hates snakes!!"

He spent the rest of the weekend trying to pretend to be Indiana Jones but he had one major problem. Can you imagine what it might have been? What prop can no kid do without when portraying Indy? The whip, of course.

Well. As Troy and Steve headed out to get our tree permits, Stomper began his campaign of wheedling. And with in a short time I found myself knitting a whip. I was not sure how long it would take, but thanks to a technique in which you make something called an "i -chord" (no, this is not a product of Apple). I hummed right along and came up with a pretty decent whip in just an hour or so. I was afraid Troy would return and start laughing at me for knitting a whip, but actually he declared that knitting really is awesome. Finally! I kept trying to tell him, and now he finally believes me. If you can make your kid something that makes him as happy as that whip made Stomper, you're doing something right.

Check this out.

Kicking Off Our Fun, Old-Fashioned, Family Christmas

2011-12-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

It must be December because suddenly I am about four blog posts behind and it's only the 7th. Not to mention the entire month of November...perhaps I'll just let that one go. Oh, except this one little thing: Stomper earned his wolf in cub scouts! Yay Stomper! Okay. Consider November covered.

So...I think I'll begin by reporting on our now-traditional trek up to Bear Lake with our dear Burnetts to hunt the ever-elusive and oh-so-wily Christmas Tree. We almost didn't make it this year due to scheduling issues but we finally decided that the trip was more important than our childrens' education and took off on Thursday afternoon instead of Friday and returning by Saturday afternoon to the events we couldn't miss. Turns out it's pretty fun to miss a day or two of school and I foresee that becoming a part of our tradition in the future. The more time with the Burnetts, the merrier!!

All of our kids got along really well - it was kind of sweet to watch their older daughter, who is actually Bitty's age, glom on to Stomper a bit. She was fascinated with him and spent a lot of time trying to get him to interact with her. She also had plenty of time with Bitty, including several rounds of a form of chess that they invented, sometimes along the way. It was cute. Almost as cute as the two two-year-olds romping around together. At one point Mary had them playing a sort of hide-and-seek and watching them attempt to keep their eyes closed was hilarious. Bundle couldn't manage to close her eyes without scrunching up the rest of her face too. Adorable.

You probably don't remember our adventures from last year with the stuck car and the rescue efforts of both snowmobile-drivers and beer-drinkers alike, but I can't deny that it was so nice to have an incident-free tree hunt. We headed up in the afternoon on Friday and found ourselves a real beaut. That morning Troy and Steve took a few hours to go get our permits as well as deliver some thank-you beers to last year's rescuers, which I thought was nice of them. I was so glad that the daddies had some time together - Troy's been needing himself some Steve-time in a big way. So that was good. Then the tree hunt itself went off without a hitch, except a few meltdowns here and there on the part of a kid or two, but that seems to happen no matter where we are on a daily basis.

I will say that it seems like every time we go on this vacation we learn new things to make the next year even better. For example, last year we learned to always keep tire chains in the car, among other things. This year we learned that if the grownups are going to have a movie night we definitely need to bring our own movies because the ones up there are just not that great, sorry to say. Make note: The Wedding Date is possibly the lamest romcom I've ever seen. Sorry to offend any fans out there. Also, you should not bring any lunch meat that might possibly be spoiled. Luckily, I was the only sufferer of the effects of that one, and it wasn't too bad, so I won't complain. Much. Other than those little moments we had a great weekend and ended up with a tree that I just absolutely love. We only had to cut off 3 1/2 feet off the bottom for it to barely fit in our living room.

Hmmm. I just read over last year's post and it's kind of funny how similar some things are in this year's post to last year's. In fact, I was just about to start typing an additional note about the weekend when I read exactly what I wanted to say in last year's post, so I'm just going to copy and paste that paragraph, because I feel the same way now as I did then, apparently:

One of the best parts of the trip for me is going to sound like it should have really been the worst, but it wasn't. That would be the drive to and from the cabin. Even though we have our new mini van which comfortably holds us all, there's no way it could have made it to the cabin in the deep snow, so we took our jeep. Now, the whole reason we bought the van is because three car seats don't fit in the back of the jeep. So we put Stomper in front (don't worry, no airbags) in his booster and me in the back squashed between the two girls. It was so tight back there that my shoulders are still sore from the carseats pushing in on me. See? Not sounding too fun, right? Well, it's not a situation I want to find myself in too often, but having my own little family all captive together all squashed up just makes me happy. You know, those times when no one is asking for stuff, you have nothing you're trying to get done like the dishes or homework, you're just being together and enjoying the drive. Love it. Thanks, Burnetts, for another fabulous Tree Trek weekend.

Lights On!

2011-11-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

We totally hit the jackpot last weekend. What a treat! Stomper has developed a friendship over the past couple of years with a cute boy; they've been classmates ever since 1st grade and then he joined our soccer team during second grade. He is just a sweet boy, and he and Stomper get along really well. You know, both being major Harry Potter fans they always have a lot to talk about! We've even started having him over once a week while his mom works and the boys continue their constant chumminess. So it just so happens that this kid's dad is the director of the Downtown Alliance and over the weekend, the day after Thanksgiving, there was a big celebration at the Gallivan Center to turn on the Downtown Christmas lights. So Stomper's friend got to be the kid, alongside the mayor and his wife, to push down the big plunger turning on the lights. He got to pick one friend and happy for us, he chose Stomper.

I have to say that I have always loved the lights that sparkle all over our beautiful city during the month of December. They are just enchanting. However, I sometimes shy away from the hoards of people flocking down there all month long. I had heard about the Lights On celebration a week ago but didn't think I wanted to haul my kids down there in the cold and deal with the parking and the people. But then my friend called and invited Stomper to be a part of it and I'm so glad she did. It really was cool. I even had a couple of Stomper's cousins and my mom with me - we had a big crowd just on our own! But we headed down to the Gallivan Center anyway, listened to a great children's choir for a bit, nibbled on candy canes, and then Stomper got to go up on stage and help turn on the lights. He even made the evening news - pretty cool!

It was a great kick-off to our holiday season and I'm so glad we got the chance to be a part of it. Now all we need are piles and piles of snow.....

The Doldrums...

2011-11-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Uh, hi. Guess I needed a little break from blogging there - like for an entire MONTH. Talk about the doldrums! So.....where to begin?

Troy and I at this moment are sitting down on our cozy couch this happy Thanksgiving weekend to watch another installment of Lord of the Rings. We started last night - it seems like a fun addition to our holiday to enjoy these wonderful shows again which were a part of our every Christmas for a while there. What great shows. And, since I happen to be sitting here on my can, I might as well also catch up here just a bit.

Life has been hectic as always these past weeks, and has frankly felt a little motonous and overwhelming. Anyone familiar with the feeling? (It leads to very low productivity when it comes to blogging. And also kitchen cleaning.) It was very helpful to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. I celebrated it very deliberately - quickly putting away our jovial Halloween decorations but definitely leaving all things Christmas on hold, and trying to really focus on what this past year gave us to be grateful for, for all its gifts. We even made a Give Thanks spot on our fridge where we created a tree covered in leaves that each stated things we were grateful for. That made for a fun exercize every morning at breakfast. We had lots of light hearted (yet still sincere) things to be grateful for - everything from forks (the utensil, not the town :) to bacon. And many more things that are a little closer to our hearts, like friends, family, our baby Matthew and even our angelic puppy Alex. It lifted my spirits to scan over the leaves each day as I worked in the kitchen. I'm sure that will be a tradition we keep up each year.

So I'm sure this will take a couple of posts to record the highlights of November 2011. Perhaps I'll just begin with where we are and work backwards from there. What a wonderful Thanksgiving Day we enjoyed yesterday! It was a Preslar year and we were lucky enough to meet at the new home of Troy's oldest brother Rick and his wife Tonja. They just finished it this fall - it's up in Cache Valley and it is just beautiful and comfortable. I could cook all day long in that kitchen! Espcecially if I had those gals with me - that was fun. The food, I just have to say, was probably the tastiest I have ever enjoyed on any Thanksgiving ever. So good. I give a great deal of credit to that king of all pork products; bacon. (I seem to be mentioning bacon repeatedly in this post....) Bacon in the salad, bacon in the beans... baby. Also, I got a new recipe from my friend Jordan for these rolls that just knock your socks off they're so good. Huge pillowy crescents that just melt in your mouth. And everything else too. Oh my gosh it was so good! And it was such a nice atmosphere. The kids mostly roughhoused downstairs which was great to not have them underfoot. All the little kids just adore Tonja's two teenagers - they glommed onto them all day long! I bet they were exhausted....

Of course it was totally hopeless getting Bundle down for a nap even though I tried very hard to lie down with her after our dinner. I was zonking out myself (ahhh...turkey.....) but Bundle wouldn't have it. We gave up and just spent a very pleasant afternoon playing games and eating pie and this awesome pumpkin cheesecake I made - I found the recipe from listening to NPR! We departed the valley around 6:30 that evening and Bundle instantly fell asleep. I figured I was pretty much toast, that she'd sleep all the way home then wake up and hang out happy as could be until 2:00 a.m. or so. But oh happy day she stayed asleep when we got home and remained asleep until 7:30 this morning! Hip hip! Hooray! All in all, a wonderful day. I'm so grateful for my Preslar family. I love them all dearly. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. (Ha ha like anyone even reads this blog anymore! Well, Happy Thanksgiving, me!)

One Fantastic Halloween

2011-11-03T12:39:00.000-06:00

We really deserved a great Halloween. For the past few years the weather has been freezing, seeming to go suddenly cold in time for both Stomper's birthday as well as this holiday which actually encourages kids to go outside at night without their coats and ask strangers for candy. In fact, last year it rained so hard we barely celebrated Halloween at all.

Oh, not this year. It was beautiful. Our valley is currently a riot of colors, the weather has stayed mild, and we were able to trick or treat for what seemed like hours. As we do every year, we started out at Troy's parents' house. They live on this great little culdesac in the Milcreek area and we have a running tradition of beginning our Halloween festivities there. They have the sweetest neighbors, and our friendships are developing as we pay them a little visit each year. From there we moved on to a friend's home to enjoy a quick bowl of chili with several families before we took the troup out into the cool dark night to gather candy from the neighborhood. It was such a relief to not have a single child crying due to cold toes or fingers. Having several adults around to herd the mass of children streaming around us was also extremely helpful, especially where Bundle was concerned. She was so adorable, having completely caught on to the traditions of the evening. She didn't want to miss one single house, no matter how much slower she was than the big kids.

We had some great costumes this year. Stomper has been big into ninjas, and happily we have a black karate suit (I think there's an actual name for those things but I don't know what it is) that made him happy. I had some gold fabric and I made him some wraps for his arms and legs, which he quickly discarded or rejected as we were getting him dressed that night. I also attempted a hood which, you can see, looks kinda weird, but hey. Whatever. The night before Halloween I actually pulled out our buckets of decorations and old costume pieces. Most people choose to do this several days or weeks before the actual holiday, but not me, not this year. Anyway, as I was hanging up a decoration or two Stomper found some werewolf accesories in the box and decided at the last minute to be a "werewolf ninja." Okay, son, whatever, just don't make me buy or make you anything the morning of Halloween.

Bitty, for MONTHS, has had her heart set on being a dementor, of Harry Potter fame. I was very reluctant to get or make her a costume until the last minute due to the tendancy of my children, despite their many promises to the contrary, to have sudden changes of heart when it comes to their costumes. But she was determined, so finally I gave in. I got some cheap black satin fabric and fashioned a dementor-esque cloak. I had other plans as well - masks of various types and even a hood, which she did wear for a little while. She never would let me mask her or paint her face despite the fact that I had made two or three masks according to her directions, but it didn't really matter. She looked great. Especially after dark, as she stretched her arms out to the sides and ran down the street, making her shredded gown blow out behind her.

And Bundle. Thankfully she is young enough to be willing to dig through the costume bucket and pick something out when a costume was required. She usually ended up as a kitty cat of some type, though usually a headless one since she refused to wear the hood. No worries. She wasn't denied any treats on that account!

And now the great battle of the candy begins. Just how much candy a day is too much? No idea, but it does make for a powerful tool in the "if you eat your vegetables" department.

Mother of a Nine Year Old? Oh, Nuh-uh, Not Me!

2011-11-02T21:33:00.000-06:00

Or...Happy Birthday, Stomper!

No way that my little son really turned nine, right? I guess this happens to all of us, and I know a lot of my friends are thinking, "Nine? That's nothing! Just wait until you send your baby to highschool! Or on their first date! Or on their mission!!!" I'm still in total denial about all of that. Let's just focus on the first decade.

So yes, my son turned nine. His birthday landed at the end of one of the busiest weeks I've had in a long time - I had a total of FIVE COUNT 'EM FIVE events at school in four days that all needed multiple volunteers - one of them needed more than 50. That would be the Halloween Carnival. And it's over. And it went well. Yay. Stomper's birthday, in fact, was the very same day as the carnival. Nuts.

We had a great celebration, though. The morning began early with Stomper's favorite breakfast: Swedish Pancakes, aka crepes. And a few little presents to open: lego hero guys, paper airplane book and a "How to Draw Dinosaurs" book. Then it was off to school. We decided to start alternating years of having parties - this year was a not party year for Stomper and it turned out great. He picked one special buddy (that was hard! He's got so many good darling buddies!) and we took him to Build-A-Bear with us. Stomper and his sisters and Brandon all picked out a toy, and the birthday boy got to also choose an outfit. That was great. Then we sped home - I got ready for the carnival, my brother Peter and his wife Sheri came into town and totally bailed me out by watching the girls for an evening, including taking them to the carnival, while Stomper wisely chose to skip it and go to dinner and a movie with his Dad. I don't know who was happier - Stomper or Troy. The Halloween Carnival gets pretty nuts. And that's an understatement.

This is what I thought when Bundle was trying to pick out a

purple teddy bear with rainbow and silver hearts all over it. Not that I was going to

let her know that's what I thought about it.

The other time we went to Build a Bear we ended up with a Bear, a Wolf and a Cat and they were named Beary, Wolfy and Kitty, respectively. This time the kids produced slightly more creative names; Stomper chose a Koala named Timmy, Bitty chose a Bear named Vanilla and Bundle chose a dog which looked so much like her daddy's childhood pet that she graciously named the dog Bandit in the dog's honor.

Stomper of course picked sea food for dinner and happily chomped away at crab legs and shrimp before heading to the dollar flicks for another screening of HP7.2. Luckies.

Then on Saturday we had some cake and ice cream with grandparents, a couple of aunts and an uncle, three cousins, two sisters, two parents and one friend. We gave Stomper a large collection of modeling clay. That's been a hit. Stomper's been making creatures with it ever since, and he and his daddy went so far as to make a couple of stop-motion movies, which are completely awesome. And I'm sure there are many more to come.

The kids spent an hour or two in the leaves in the back yard having a complete and total ball. It was the MOST gorgeous fall day you've ever seen.

It was a great celebration for my darling son. I love him dearly.

Warm Witchy Weather

2011-10-31T22:10:00.001-06:00

(Written a few days ago...I'm not sure how many....it's been a busy week....)

I'm sitting huddled at my kitchen table with a cup of hot chocolate - today is only down to 50 degrees, but it feels like it's pure winter after the past few weeks of glorious autumn sunshine. We have reveled in it. Trips to the park, playing on the porch, just sitting in the sun. It's why October is often my favorite month of the year. And we sure have been out and about enjoying the autumn festivities.

One activity we really enjoyed as we've been gearing up for Halloween is a trip to Gardener Village to check out their witch displays and track down everything on the witch scavenger hunt. I've actually been out there once before with my mom when Stomper was a chubby little toddler and wee Bitty was just 2 months old. But that was by accident. We had been trying to find a pumpkin patch and we drove for at least an hour trying to find the place only to realize that there wasn't a pumpkin patch anywhere near. But we enjoyed the witches. This year, since we actually went on purpose and knew what was going on, we had a lot of fun. We went with our good friends and the kids seemed to have a ball finding each witch on the list.

We also spent an evening with my sister and her daughter enjoying Red Butte Garden's "Garden After Dark" celebration. That is a hoot for sure, except that it really does happen in the dark, and it's up on the hillside in late October, so it is seriously cold. Also, it's only a few nights of the month and it's very popular, so it gets extremely crowded. But still fun. Painted faces, painted pumpkins, a glowing enchanted forest complete with luminescent bubbles that left glowing paint on your skin where they pop. Fire pits, owl masks, paper flowers. And I think we really only hit about a third of the activities along the pathway. But...when you have a toddler who insists on going everywhere ALL BY MYSELF, but has trouble making much forward progress at any given moment, you're not going to get far. Worth it, though. It was really fun to have some Aunt Margaret time.

Bundle found pumpkin painting extremely therapeutic. She especially loved stirring her paintbrush around and around the paints until she had one mass of grey paint to use.

Bitty's Gorgeous Face Paint - don't mind the nude pose. It was her idea.

Speaking of Aunt Margaret, she invited us to a pumpkin carving party at her friend's home. Probaby most of you were never subscribers to Martha Stewart's Living magazine, but in most issues there was an article about a meal shared by friends, including the recipes and how-to's on the decoration. Needless to say, the locations of the dinners were so spectacular and so well photographed that I'd take one look and instantly give up on any hope of hosting such a party myself. Well, Margaret's friend Jen's party was magazine worthy. Awesome menu: a trio of fall soups with an array of toppings; everything from toasted pumpkin seeds to homemade salsa and sour cream. Fresh bread and corn muffins, hummus and fancy chips - all was delicious. And her yard was adorable with a super cool tree house, chickens, wooden picnic tables, adirondack chairs pulled up around a cozy fire pit. And kids happily carving pumpkins, chosen from a table piled high with the fat round things. Too bad Martha Stewart missed it. She would have loved it. We had a ball. And our pumpkins are actually carved and ready to go - a miracle, still two days before Halloween. Of course, we haven't pulled out a single decoration yet, but like I said, it's still two days before Halloween. We'll sneak it in there somewhere.

(Of course, I'm finishing this late on Halloween night - just FYI, we did get some Hallween decorations up and I will blog about the day....that post should be ready in about 10 days. :)

Footloose Take 2

2011-10-22T22:31:00.001-06:00

The house is dark and quiet. The kids are sleeping soundly in their beds, and I am happy to say that I am not the one who got them into their jammies this evening. There are onion ring crumbs in the center console of the car along with a lingering scent of hamburgers, left over from a post-movie dinner at Hires. Yes, Date Night is over. Thank you dear Radants; we had a lovely time.

Troy and I decided to spend our evening off at the movies. After finding the world's best parking spot ON THE PLANET at the Gateway Mall (how did we get so lucky I'll never know) we made our way inside to enjoy a movie. I'm so happy my husband was game for watching Footloose. Luckily we both watched the original show enough that it holds a soft spot in both our hearts despite all its cursing and teen sex, alcohol and drug use....hmmmm. This doesn't sound like a very uplifting movie. And yet, we both found it to be completely delightful. I almost couldn't help myself from jumping up and dancing to the music. I did actually sing along to a lyric here and there but hopefully Troy was the only person who heard me.

My thoughts? A great remake. Mostly true to the original with more a sense of homage paid than actual repetition, though a couple of things were exactly the same, which I loved. Except her dress at the end. I hated it then and I hate it now. Ren was just darling, Ariel was much more lovely although still ....just skanky. I have definitely aged since I fell in love with Kevin Bacon's Footloose: my inner parent was cringing through most of what these kids were up to without their parents knowing. Uncle Wes was a hero and I loved that he was on Ren's side this go 'round. Rusty, as in the original version, was so much more likeable than Ariel, and as before, my heart will always belong to Willard. Let's hear it for the boy.

If none of the above paragraph made any sense then you obviously did not have enough Footloose in your life. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. And it's probably too late now. I don't know if you can watch the old Footloose now and love it like we did - that ship may have sailed. Much like "Strange Brew." I'm sure I would have loved it had I watched it as a teen but trying to enjoy for the first time in my 30's didn't go so well. I found it unbearably lame, but my husband feels that more time and effort needs to be applied and has faith that I will someday love it. Perhaps he would be willing to make a trade: I spend some serious time with Strange Brew if he does the same for Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Never going to happen.

Yes, Sensei! (Or, Sweep the Knee, Jonny!)

2011-10-15T10:42:00.000-06:00

We owe much to our dear friends the Irvines. They are a couple we met long ago at church but it's only been in the past year or so that we've really gotten to know them and thus fallen madly in love with their friendship. Cullen, a computer genius, has been to our home on any number of occasions to fix both minor and major troubles with our various machines. These have been rather embarassing but yet strangely bonding. Any time you allow someone to not only look at but thouroughly delve into the space behind your computer your frienship will never be the same. Myca, the feminie half of this amazing duo, has found it in her heart to not only sit by me at church to help keep the kids busy and quiet while Troy sits on the stand, but to offer several evenings of babysitting to us. She is the first (and as far as I know, only) person who has ever put Bundle to bed besides me or her father, and even he has only done it rarely and with much weeping on the part of Bundle. Okay, it's gotten better but Troy's been through some rough times with that girl. The Irvines seem to genuninely love our kids and I find it a great pleasure to attempt to repay their kindness by having them over for dinner from time to time, which is not nearly as often as they deserve. Of course, every time they come over they do stuff like bring activities for the kids and play with them even more, so we continually sink deeper into debt to them. But of all the people on the planet, there's few people better to be in debt to.

Over the weekend I tested out my latest pizza-on-the-grill recipe on them. (Almost perfect - just needed a bit more salt and better sauce. But the caramelized onions and fresh ricotta cheese made up for those deficienices.) After we had stuffed ourselves with pizza we sat in the livingroom chatting. The topic of conversation turned to Cullen's history and the fact that he had earned his black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Seriously. That is awesome. My son turned to him in amazement, his eyes lighting up, and took off to the other room to dig his hand-me-down karate uniform from out of the dregs of the dress-up box. Cullen showed him exactly how to tie the belt and then took the kid in the back yard to give him a real live karate-type lesson. Bitty joined in the fun (after donning all the white clothing she could find) and pretty soon both kids were out in the yard yelling, "Hah! Hah!" and learning some serious moves. The joy on their faces was like unto Christmas morning, and I'm trying to figure out just how much dinner it's going to take to get Cullen over here on a weekly basis to further the education of my children.

He reads this blog. Perhaps he can figure the dinner-to-karate ratio and get back to me.

Does the Tooth Fairy Negotiate? Of Course!

2011-10-07T10:20:00.000-06:00

Bitty is an expert negotiater. She works with me all day long to get the best deal possible on every interaction we have. I'm not going to lie; it wears me down after 8 or 9 hours. She's very crafty. So it's no surprise that when her first tooth finally popped out after months of being ever so slightly wiggly she started working on the tooth fairy. Santa Claus Better watch out, I'm telling you.

As you can see from the Tooth Fairy's fabulous golden script, she gave in to Bitty without too much pressure. How could she resist a note as sweet and cute as that? I never can! (Obviously.)

It's a little sad for me, to see Bitty's transformation to little kid to big kid begin. She has three other loose teeth at the moment so it won't be long before her smile has more negative spaces than teeth, and then the fun begins with the big teeth coming in. Of course, her first tooth really was wiggly for months and months, so maybe it will be a slow transformation. Stomper lost teeth like he was trying to win a watermelon seed spitting contest. Seems to be a different story for Bitty. She sure is excited.

Completely Taken Over

2011-10-05T13:32:00.000-06:00

I was very happy for my sister many weeks ago when she told me that she got the cellist job at Pioneer Theater Company during their production of Next to Normal, a musical that just finished on Broadway. At least I think they finished. I'm not sure, actually. Anyway, this was not a touring troupe; PTC put on the show themselves and it played for three weeks. As my sister started learning the music and going to rehearsals she raved about the show and its music. I got pretty excited. Then she let me know that there was a considerable amount of cursing in the show, and that it was about a woman with bipolar disorder along with a psychotic episode here and there. Oh. What a drag - doesn't sound like much fun to watch at all. But I really wanted to support my sister. Then she gave me a cd of most of the music from the show; surprisingly, the story is told almost entirely through music with a very small number of spoken lines interjected here and there. I put on the disc in the car, and I totally fell in love with the music. And the story. And I pretty much cried my way through the whole thing. It's got some very tough subject matter but so humanly told.

My parents went to see it before I did, and returned with very positive and glowing reviews. I was able to go see the show last week - the night after we got home from Seattle actually. Kind of crazy to go that night but it was the only night I could and I didn't want to miss it. Oh my. I don't even know what to say about the show except that I was absolutely spell bound the whole time. I love the music - it's kind of a rock-musical, and it's very powerful. And everyone I know who got to see it saw some part of their own life story played out on that stage in some way. Including myself. It was very emotional. In fact, my friend Carrie got so upset during one part that she fell apart, so much so that the stranger next to her wrapped her arms around Carrie to comfort her. During the intermission, a time during which I normally like to stretch my legs, go for a walk, people watch or grab a little treat, I didn't have any desire at all to leave the auditorium. There was a powerful feeling in there and I just had to stay and see the show through before I could move on.

After the show I was very lucky because my sister introduced me to the two leads. Judy McLane played Diane, the mother of this family, and Jonathan Rayson played Dan, her husband. We ended up chatting for quite a while and talking a lot about the show. Well, mostly - Judy McLane, who is on hiatus from Broadway in her role as Tanya in Mamma Mia, has some very tired vocal chords so she was miming, signing and writing notes on paper. We had a neat conversation and I asked the actors if it was common to have a therapy session with the public every night after the show. Funny. It was a delightful chance to talk and meet with the stars. I'm always so starstruck and feel very silly, but I don't think I made too big a fool of myself. As far as you know.

So now I'm having a problem. There is something about Next to Normal that I just can't quite get over. The music plays in my head, I sing it even when I'm not listening to it, I have the desire to pop in the CD all the time. And frankly, I kind of need a break. I can't quite tell if there is something about the plot or music that I need to work through and deal with, or if it's just really catchy music that has implanted itself in my head. Has this ever happened to you? You totally love something and let it in your life and then it slowly starts to take over? I'm not sure it's such a good thing. So I'm listening to a lot of other Broadway tunes at the moment and also trying to search my soul a little to figure out what has got me so obsessed. Well, maybe it was just a great show. I do wish I could edit out the language because that is definitely not something I need reverberating about my brain - I've gotten good at quickly turning down the volume as necessary. Anyway, I kind of recommend it a lot, and I kind of don't. I loved it. I'm inviting it to move on now.

As a happy epilogue, my sister was invited to return for PTC's next musical, Annie. I think that will be slightly more light-hearted and perhaps Bitty and I can go on a date to see it around Christmastime.

A Wee Little Weekend Jaunt...to Seattle

2011-10-04T17:24:00.000-06:00

Wow. That is a seriously LONG drive. But we made it! My brother Adam and his fam moved to Seattle over the summer, and since Smith, Stomper's cousin/best buddy, was getting baptized we knew we needed to make the trek. We packed up the car and took off on Thursday evening, slightly later than we meant to, but hey, since we arrived just as my brother and his family were getting up, it was perfect timing. Turns out that Troy and I have aged....missing a night or two of sleep takes a serious toll unlike the old college days. But we survived, and wouldn't have missed it for anything.

There's so much to say about this trip - we were only in town for four days but had many adventures and expereinces. Adam and Whit bought a beautiful new-but-looks-old cedar shingle house on the eastern coast of Bainbridge Island, just a ferry ride away from down town Seattle. (Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet. I'm just going to keep repeating that and hope it sinks in at some point.)

My parents came as well as Whit's parents and sister, and we all had a great time together. We walked down to the seashore a couple of times to dig for clams, hunt for sea stars, throw rocks and poke at all the squishy things on the sand. We rode the ferry into town to have dinner with our beloved Durhams; we had these awesome Cuban sandwiches made in a pink plywood shack by the sea. We toured the island's farmer's market. We ate THE best ice cream I have ever had in my life. (Mora's. I had the dark chocolate mint, followed by many tastes of my daughter's chocolate peanut butter with oreo. Unreal.) We played at parks and walked through the green forests of Bainbridge. We went to Smith's soccer game, we went to his baptism.

Funny Story: at church on Sunday I noticed sitting on a pew a manuel written in Korean, but didn't see its owner. At the baptism I saw who I assume is the owner of the Korean Sunday School manuel and it turned out to be a man who served in the same mission that I did - how random! I've never bumped into a Korean person from my mission ever, then I go to Bainbridge Island and there is good old Kim Shi Oon. It was fun to see him, not that we knew each other well on the mish, but hey - fun! And he didn't even ask me to speak the language, which was a relief. He did comment on the fact that I was slightly more slender way back when, which I appreciated him pointing out. Classic.

So yes, Troy and I are once again daydreaming about job-hunting in the north-west. We so love spending time with my brother and his family. Of course, that would mean moving away from my sister and parents, Troy's whole family, and being even farther away from my other brother Peter. So, it has its downsides too, but man - what a beautiful place! We had perfect weather all weekend, and then on Monday it rained the classic Seattle rain - very steady and misty and we didn't get as wet as I expected to. We spent that day with Kathleen Durham walking Pike's Place Market, which the kids were enamoured with, then eating yummy seafood down by the waterfront. Stomper chose squid. That boy, I love him, I'll tell you!

I don't think I can do much else but post a slew of photos. We had a wonderful time!

Harry Potter Forever

2011-09-21T09:40:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to remember just when it was that I was introduced to the Harry Potter saga. I think it must have been when I was working at Primary Children's Medical Center. I specifically remember one Halloween, seeing multiple kids dressed in a cloak and mended spectacles with a curious lightening-shaped scar penciled in over one eye. I had no idea what on earth they were dressed as. Then I noticed that kids coming into the oncology clinic, where they'd have to sometimes spend the entire day, would bring with them one or another of the books, their parent reading aloud to them to pass the time. Finally I decided to pick one up for myself. My reaction to the very first page was that Ms. Rowling was trying to be another Roald Dahl, whom I adore by the way, giving everyone silly uber-British names. I wasn't impressed for the first bit. But apparently over those pages the hook was firmly set and suddenly I was racing along and gobbling up the books as quickly as I could get my hands on them. The books had been released only up until the fourth, and after devouring them I started again, this time listening to them on tape as I drove to and from Logan twice a week as I had started going to school up there. Consequently I pretty much have the first four books memorized. And with each release of another volume I've waited with great anticipation and delight, my heart breaking slightly as I finished the last chapter of the last book.

I was able to drag my husband along with me in this journey, although he was initially resistant to the idea of reading children's books. It took him a couple of tries at the first book before the bug bit him as well. I begged and begged him to read them, and then once he finally agreed I didn't see him again for a month until he had surfaced from Book 5 which had recently been published. It was very validating. I love having a co-fan in the house.

When my sweet son Stomper was born I knew that one day I would read those books to him. I have such fond memories of my mom reading books to me, in particular a Roald Dahl book by the name of Danny the Champion of the World. I always knew I'd read to my kids and looked forward to the day my eldest would be ready to take on Harry Potter. I think we started book one towards the end of 1st grade, maybe during the summer between first and second. It was every bit as fun as I thought it would be. We listened to much of book 2 in the car on the way to and from St. George. And then Troy started doing the reading at about book 3. It has become a wonderful habit of theirs. Bitty sometimes sticks around too - she definitely has the gist of the stories if not every detail. We have decided not to let the kids watch any of the movies until the coresponding book has been read. That's become a fun tradition as well - sometimes even the same day a book is finished we'll pop in the DVD (and pop some popcorn while we're at it) and watch the show, comparing and constrasting it to the book. (Book always wins, in case you were wondering.) There is so much Harry Potter at our house that he's pretty much become an omnipresence - Troy tells me that due to the fact that he gets at least 30 minutes of HP time several days a week he has a hard time not thinking about life in HP terms these days. I am a little jealous that Troy does the reading, but seeing how much he loves doing it is worth it, not to mention the fact that each night as he reads I get a few minutes to get the last of the day's dishes done or something like that. Not gonna complain.

And guess what. They're about half way through Book 7. I can hardly believe they've come so far. I'm going to be so sad when they're done, even though I know there are fantastic adventures to head to next; I'm thinking The Hobbit. Peter and the Starcatchers is another saga I think he'll just love. But still, it's bitter sweet every time you reach the end of the series. Luckily I forsee a re-reading of the books when Bitty gets a little older. And Bundle too. I hope they'll let me.

Mary the Poppins

2011-09-20T20:05:00.000-06:00

Guess what - I just noticed that my last entry was my 500th post. Five HUNDredth. That's a lot of history there. And typing. Wow.

Okay, so next topic. Last Wednesday I handed my husband our three darling (well, two darling and one sobbing, but she was okay after a while) children and left the house. First of all, I took my friend The Becky for her first experience at the single best pizza joint ...anywhere. Ever. Settebello. I don't think she was prepared for what she was about to experience. I tried to tell her, and I think she knew she was going to enjoy some pizza, but you should have seen the look on her face after she took her first bite. It came after a nice fat helping of the Insalata Grande (a complete MUST), and it was the best pizza they have at Settebello. It's called ...the Settebello. Her eyes widened in shock and then closed in absolute dreamy joy. If you've been there you know what I'm talking about. My dear friend and fellow Settebelloist Krista and her sweet mother-in-law joined us. We sat there trying to fit as much pizza inside ourselves as we could for so long that we were almost a little bit late for our next event, an event I have been waiting for for at least a year.

I owe our school librarian a huge thank you for arranging for discount tickets to the many amazing shows that come to our local playhouse, The Capitol Theater. We went to The Lion King last summer, the kids and I, but this time I went with girl friends and saw Mary Poppins. At first I was feeling bad that I left my kids out this time, but I have to say after a few minutes of the show I was pretty glad that I left them at home. It's not that the show wasn't great; it was. It just moved very quickly and deviated hugely from the movie. We all really loved The Lion King because it was such a grand, sweeping epic show. The artistic strokes it painted were broad and strong and just amazing. Mary Poppins had a very quick pace and was slightly hard to follow. I would have had to explain a lot to my kids and instead I got to just sit back and enjoy it. It really was quite a spectacle, and my favorite part about it were the sets. It was as if everything, including the Banks' home on Cherry Tree Lane, began as a pencil drawing on paper. The big house unfolded like a popup book. And color was added like paint. It was so cool. And the big dance numbers were so much fun. So no, it have quite the grandeur that The Lion King did, but it was a great deal of fun anyhow.

Next year I hear that both Beauty and the Beast and Wicked are coming, but from what I understand, they're both so popular our school might not be able to get the tickets. We'll have to see. I sure love seeing these Broadway productions. I'm so amazed by the creative talents people have that produce works of art like these.

So I do have to say that I feel I need to take on more Mary Poppinseque qualities. She had some great lines in the show. Such as:

Michael, "I really don't like that!"
Mary Poppins, "I really don't care!"

Becky and I decided that we liked her sassy, confident yet kind attitude. She's so sure she's right about everything and won't budge no matter what. But she's nice about it. I call it her "damn straight" attitude. I think this would be a great addition to my parenting style. We'll see how it goes.

LoToJa.

2011-09-19T15:40:00.000-06:00

That name has just never flowed for me. Lo. To. Ja. I think I would like it better if you said it laTOWjah instead of LOWtajah. No idea what I'm talking about? Sorry. Troy has once again taken place in the epic "Logan to Jackson" cycling race, obviously beginning in Logan, Utah and winding up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is a race that takes you a puke-inducing 206 miles (I've been told many times not to discount those last six miles seeing as how they're the hardest to come by, so don't do any rounding-to-the-nearest-number, if you please!) This year in order to actually ENJOY the race, Troy took on two legs of a five-leg relay, which meant he had a much better time, though the race still ended up being puke-inducing for him, poor guy. Those last few miles are just tough, no matter how far you've ridden! Other than that, I hear he had a great ride. The guys took off on Friday afternoon - Troy, Rob, Shawn and Uncle Jimmy.

And I'm going to let Troy have his first ever guest post in order to tell the story:

About 2 or 3 miles outside of Alpine, WY, Rob and I were riding together beginning the ride up the Snake River Valley when another cyclist pulled up behind us and in a very pleasant enthusiastic voice asked if he could tag along with us. I let him know that if he was willing to ride our pace he was welcome to stay with us to the end. He hung on back for just a short time and then happily took over duty pulling us up the canyon. We encountered another cyclist who was riding a slower pace than us and he gave the guy a frienly pat on the back as we passed and encouraged him to hop on back of our group. The man now leading our group was strong and friendly and doing his best to encourage everyone we met to be part of our group. I rode this great guy's wheel for 20 to 30 miles being so grateful for a strong wheel to ride. Eventually our group broke up and he went on his way, and Rob left me when the puke started to fly for me (who can blame him). With about 10 or 15 miles left I was left alone and I was feeling terrible having just spent the last few miles throwing up while still on my bike. My pace had dropped to almost nothing and I was starting to calculate how long it would take for me to finish at my current pace. It was not good. Then from behind came a familiar and friendly voice. "I just had a brat and a dohnut, life is good!" My guy had stopped along the way and partaken of some local hospitality and was now ready to finish his race. He once again asked me to hop on his wheel and we were off at a respectable pace that would get me to Jackson in no time. This time he did apologetically ask me how I was doing and if would mind taking a turn in front, but just as long I could and told me not to wear myself out too much. Eventually, I fell off his wheel again, but by this time the finish line was only about 4 miles away and I was able to ride in without feeling too bad. I really wanted to find this guy at the finish line and thank him for all he did for me during the ride, but the finish is crazy and crowded and there was really no chance of finding him. I have since decided that he was actually one of the 3 Nephites who was sent to help me on this long day of cycling. Ok, that is perhaps a stretch, but I doubt that any one of them could have been a better help to me that day.

Rachel here, back at the helm. So there you have it. I guess someone has to puke every year; last year it was Shawn and this year it was my lucky husband. Rob, you're up. I'm grateful for the mystery cyclist who helped him along, be he 1 of the 3 Nephites or not, he sure did a good turn that day. I wonder who will be the puker next time.

Reflection of a Life

2011-09-13T18:49:00.000-06:00

Saturday, September 10th was the 1 year anniversary of the passing of my friend TerriLyn. I chatted a lot with her family that day and preceding week, and we all agree that some things in life are just not connected to the space-time continuum. It's all jumbled up and simultaneously feels like it only happened moments ago and like years and years have gone by. And yet despite that distance there are minute details, the type that on any other day you'd never remember, but that are absolutely etched in your memory even now.

It's been an interesting year. The last year of TerriLyn's life, from the time she was diagnosed to the time she was gone, was really tough, I'm not going to deny that. And I think it kind of took me about this entire year to get over it, to let go of the really hard ugly things about it, about cancer, about how it changes people. And it is such a relief to just let it go and remember my real friend TL the way she was before cancer came along. It has been quite cleansing, actually, and Saturday I was able to feel peaceful if a bit exhausted.

I met with a few friends including Adam Grundvig and his kids and we went to visit the cemetery, where TL's gravestone has recently been placed. It's very lovely, and so sweet and sad to see her name there. We had a nice visit in the beautiful grounds then hit one of TL's favorite dining spots - Luna Berry crepes and yogurt on 4th South and 7th East. So good. But the best part of the day for me was that night. I was alone for the first time that day. I hadn't shed any tears or really mourned in my own way yet. So I pulled out the DVD of TL's pictures that was played at her funeral and just sat and watched and finally had a good ugly cry. It felt like just what I needed.

Miss you, TL. As I posted on facebook, my life will carry a reflection of you until the day you come to get me. There isn't a day that goes by that you are not thought of and missed. Your kids are doing well and are angels at my house these days. Your husband is sorting through things so admirably and he's dating a wonderful wonderful girl who brings light with her when she comes in a room. She is beyond devoted to your kids. You of course know these things already, but I thought I'd share them anyway, my sister-friend.

Free Time with my Bundle

2011-09-12T13:13:00.000-06:00

It feels like it has been 100 years since I was running around the city with just one little toddler on my hip. Stomper and I spent almost three whole years together partaking of what our city has to offer until Bitty came along. Poor Bitty. I know she got alone time with me as Stomper started preschool, but definitely not as much as Stomper. I owe that girl a date. Any suggestions? And then as the two of them got bigger and started school, life kicked into high gear and Bundle has spent her babyhood being dragged to meetings and to the grocery store. We definitely get our alone time, but my to-do list has blossomed before my eyes and I never seem to get it all checked off. And Bundle pays the price. So last week I decided to chuck the dang list for the day and just go to the zoo. No special occasion, just time together.

She, I feel I have to confess, just has to be the cutest little bug on the planet. Her little voice, so tiny, is adorable especially as her vocabulary rivals mine and her annunciation is perfect. I can't get enough of her mannerisms and funny faces, and I'm sad that every time I pull out the camera to record some of this she goes totally silent and still. I'm trying to be sneaky, but she remains ellusive.

The zoo trip was definitely worth it and it will be a priority from now on to enjoy stuff like that more. As my friend stated, the to-do list will always be here. Your toddler won't!

A Love Letter to The Weepies

2011-08-31T11:18:00.000-06:00

Dear Weepies,

Thank you for coming in concert the other night. It is always very nice when one's favorite band on the entire planet comes to your home town. I was able to see you with my husband this time, which was really fun. There aren't too many bands that my husband and I are both nuts about. Okay, I definitely love you more than he does, but he was pretty happy to be there with me, and calls you delightful.

So I was standing up at your show, right in front of the stage. There was one row of people in front of me, but I was right there, feeling absolutely thrilled that I got to watch you sing some of my favorite songs. (Ever since I heard Slow Pony Home for the first time about four years ago I hoped that one day I'd get to hear you sing it live. Thanks especially for including that in your setlist.) Some of the folks in front of me were very silly, in my opinion. I'm sure you have people yelling ridiculous things at you during any given show, and perhaps it's flattering as well as disrupting. I kind of can't stand it when people do that, and this time when that gal held up her cell phone to show you pictures of her kid I wanted to hipcheck her and take her place in the front row. A little obnoxious.

Here's the thing. I kind of know how they all felt. As much as it was driving me totally crazy that they were trying to have a conversation with you while you were putting on a show, I know how it feels to be a fan. I was standing there, singing along and hoping that your eyes would meet mine for just a moment, just long enough for you to see ME. That it was me standing there and not just a body and nameless face. That your music has been a big part of my life the past few years and it's really not fair that through the music I know you pretty well and you don't know me at all! But somehow, I didn't think that yelling at you or making funny comments was going to bridge the gap.

Well, it was a great show. I'm hoping that you'll have an album coming out soon....and that will lead to another concert....where I will again get tickets and come early to hang out and let you sing to me. I can't wait.

Sincerly,
Rachel

(Sorry, crappy cell phone pictures, but I didn't think they'd be cool with me going in there with a giant camera hanging around my neck. Maybe I should have tried!)

It Happened!

2011-08-30T09:51:00.000-06:00

School actually came! I wasn't sure it was ever going to get here. But it did, and everyone is happy. I think I'm only really happy because the kids are too - I'd feel pretty terrible sending them off in glee if they were miserable going. Luckily they both ended up in great classes - I'm so pleased so far with the teachers and both kids have many good friends in their classes. So far, so good. And Bundle every morning insists on putting on her own backpack along with the big kids and she walks to school with them. Cute little thing. She talks a lot about wanting to go to school - hang in there, honey, you've got plenty of time for school in your life! Let's just enjoy hanging out together. Now go away so I can blog. Just kidding of course - it's fun to be able to give one-on-one attention to your children and Bundle is at such a delightful stage. I think we're going to have a great year!

Bundle even put on one of Bitty's new school dresses - she just loves being like her big sister.

Pretty Good! (But Not Great.)

2011-08-30T09:22:00.000-06:00

That, my friends, is my favorite quote from a very favorite movie: Julie and Julia. The ever-fabulous Meryl Streep, as Julia Childs, assesses herself and her sister in a mirror before going to a party, and that's what she has to say about herself. It made me laugh, and I quote it often. Pretty good! But not great.

This phrase comes to mind pretty much every time I approach my front door. See, I love the quaint little picture of potted flowers sitting on a front porch. Every year I try to create just such a scene. I have some great old pots, my favorite being a vintage ice cream freezer, and I fill them with dirt and pansies or petunias. They look great all during May and sometimes June. Then in about July things get a little rough. The pots sit in the afternoon sun and soak up the heat and pretty much roast the plants until they're just shriveled little stalks sadly poking up from the dirt. It would help things a lot if I didn't forget that whole watering thing.

This year I pledged myself to those pots. Come what may, I will water my flowers this year! And guess what. It's almost September, and I still have greenery out front. Yes, it's somewhat shriveled, yes, I lost a plant or two, but hey! Something lived through the summer! They're just straggly enough to match my porch, which, let's face it, is pretty straggly itself. I'm very proud.

Summer Wrap-Up

2011-08-29T18:23:00.000-06:00

Once again summer has flown by in a flash. Okay, it feels that way now that it's over but of course not so much over most of the past 2 1/2 months. I'm so funny - every June as school lets out and I'm facing the long months ahead of kids wanting me to entertain them all day it feels like I'll never make it through. And I dread it terribly. So we go on hikes, outings, trips, play dates, parties, barbeques, swimming, etc. etc. etc. until I'm about to collapse. Then suddenly it's over and I'm wondering if we did enough stuff to officially dub it a Good Summer. All I have to do, though, is look at our calendar and how crammed every day was and I can rest assured that we did indeed have a great summer.

One thing I didn't ever remember to blog about was a fun hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Mary's Lake. It isn't very far - I think only a mile or so, but since my friend Ruth and I did it together with seven children, three of whom were quite small, it took us the better part of a day. It was pretty funny, actually - we packed a picnic lunch and as soon as we parked and walked about 20 yards up the hill the kids all declared they were starving and ready for lunch. Yeah, right. We hauled them, prodded them, cajoled them and bribed them up the mountain a half mile to the very small and quaint Dog Lake where we perched on some rocks and ate our lunch. Then we finished the journey to Lake Mary, happily meeting up with my friend Heather and her family on the way, and enjoyed the beautiful cool sunshine by the lake. I definitely need to do that more often, despite the grumbles from the kids, the lovely scrape I sustained on my shin, and the multitude of mosquito bites collected by all. It's just a good thing to breathe the air of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

We crammed in a couple more outings over the last week - the aquarium and the aviary, plus many play dates and walks to Maverik for frozen yogurt. We made homemade icecream and rootbeer and enjoyed some rootbeer floats with friends. And suddenly, summer was over and school had begun. Of course, the weather is such that we've still got plans in the works for sleeping in the yard a time or two and perhaps some more lemonade on the back porch. Hopefully next summer I'll let go of the dread and remember that summer will swoosh by as quickly as it always does and not to fret.

We had the loveliest moment the other evening that I just had to record. Not that long ago I posted a talk I gave in church and I mentioned how I always imgained what a good mom I'd be; that I'd constantly be snuggling with my kids on the lawn and gazing at shapes in the clouds but that in reality, kids never seem to want to do stuff like that with me. Well guess what. I was sitting on the lawn watching a gorgeous sunset and all three kids, Bundle included, came out, snuggled with me, and we all looked at shapes in the clouds. It happened! I really AM a good mom!

Bitty Had a Birthday

2011-08-27T00:17:00.000-06:00

It was actually a week ago, but as per usual I can barely think straight these days much less find time to sit down and blog. Then last night Bitty said something completely hilarious to her father, and that's always a good incentive to find some time to sit at the computer.

Shall we begin with the birthday? Bitty turned six on Sunday. All summer long she tried to start conversations with me about her party and what she wanted to do and how soon it was coming. I just had to keep shutting her down. "Honey. Your birthday is not until the END of the summer. It's EIGHT WEEKS away. We will talk about this later." Then suddenly, it was later. Oh my! We have 10 days until your birthday! We pulled it together, though. Bitty thought a lot about her party and decided she just had to have a "Pet Party." (!?!?!) Okay. I actually ended up feeling quite clever about my idea even though its execution was less than flawless.

First off, we sent out invites and had the little girls (mostly from her class last year) bring a stuffed animal to pamper. (Thank you Dollar Store: for three bucks the kids had pipe cleaners and beads with which to make collars, necklaces and other adornments for their toys.) Then I called in a few favors and had friends/family/neighbors bring over their pets to show off. We ended up with one massive dog, a sweet cat, our lizard, two very cute chinchillas and our neighbor's chickens. It wasn't quite the sit-down show-and-tell thing I was hoping for; it was more like a circus of running kids, chatting adults and man-handled animals. But it ended up filling the time and keeping the kids happy, most importantly the birthday girl.

Speaking of the birthday girl, she did quite well, although she did have two completely massive tantrums during the day. I guess that's to be expected - birthdays can be very very hard on kids in some ways, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. But for the most part, it was fine. And the best part was that I made absoluetly zero attempt at any sort of pet-themed cake. I just make a big huge chocolate-with-vanilla-frosting cake. It was great, and much better than the cake I made the next day, Sunday; her actual birthday. That cake was a giant pink disaster. Why oh why can't I learn how to measure the powdered sugar in the icing and trust the recipe? Also, I need to remember that when it comes to expensive food coloring, just a dab'll do. Pinkest frosting I have ever seen, and the fact that it was slowly sliding down the sides of the cake all evening during dinner at my parent's house made it look all the less appetizing. Oh well. Bitty liked it - she told me it was the best cake ever and that I had "beaten my record." (Whatever the record was before, I don't want to know.)

So happy birthday, Bitty girl. You rock my world, in good ways and in, well, not bad, but certainly challenging ways. Heaven help me when you turn 13 but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy all the wonderful times you share with me. No other child on the planet could possibly be as adoring as you are (when you're in the mood). I love you dearly.

Want to hear what she said to her father last night? He took Bitty and Stomper swimming after a blastedly hot day. Bitty was chatting away like usual and this is what she reported to her father:

“Dad, all the boys are scared of me and Sofia and Katherine because of our hotness, and our cuteness. Whenever a boy comes over to us we scare him away by saying, "Would you care for a kiss?’ When we say that they go away because boys don’t like to kiss, not at our age anyway.”

Like I said, Heaven help me.

A Date with Stomper

2011-08-15T15:17:00.000-06:00

After our very successful roller-coaster riding at Disneyland, it became quite clear that Stomper would really dig Lagoon. And that his sisters would not. (At least, not all the big rides.) So Troy and I decided that Stomper needed a date to our local amusement park, and that I would be the one to take him, seeing as how I have a history of being a coaster-nut. We went a week ago today and had a ball. Mostly. I'm just going to say one thing about me and roller coasters. The old grey mare...she ain't what she used to be. It's not like I got sick to my stomach at all. More like...sick to my brain. My brain doesn't like coaster riding any more. But I still do. I was so proud of Stomper! He rode EVERYTHING and loved it all, even though he was pretty nervous at first. In fact, the first attraction to attract us was the really really old rickety roller coaster. So old that the only name it goes by is the....Roller Coaster. Stomper was standing in front of me in line and I had my arms around him. My hand was on his chest and I could feel his heart just absolutely hammering. I wondered how he was going to do, and much to my joy and delight he really enjoyed everything. It was so lovely to spend one-on-one time with my son, to be silly all day long and just let him choose whatever he wanted. This meant we rode the Tidal Wave multiple times and completely skipped the Horroride....fine with me....in fact, his auntie Margaret and I did the exact same thing one legendary summer when we rode "the 'Wave" about 20 times in a row, gaining miniscule amounts of courage with every round until at last we had the guts to sit in the very back row. Ah, memories. Anyway, Stomper and I had a ball. We were alone all day then met up with friends after dinner. That worked great because I left him with the friends so I could get home to Troy and help put the girls to bed while Stomper rode and re-rode Wicked among other monster coasters until 11:00 that night. My brain definitely could not have handled that.

20 Years. Weird. Good.

2011-08-13T22:31:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else out there have their 18 year old self nestled deep down someplace inside? And does that 18 year old self occasionally make an appearance? Mine sure does from time to time. (I use her to explain my attachment to the Twilight series despite its silliness...) Well, she showed up loud and proud last weekend as I attended my 20 year high school reunion. And you know what? I love her. I think I spent a long time feeling like I had been a complete dork. Okay, in some ways I was. And...still am really. Oh, there are things I would change; I know I would have fared better had I grown out my curls before college and perhaps limited the number of hats I wore to school. But I didn't, so that's that, and looking back, I have to say that I have come to love my little inner highschooler. She did her best and went through some tough stuff and had some great experiences and friendships. So for the reunion I just let her show up and patted her head, said good job and then put her back in her closet at the end of the night. She manifested herself by being extremely anxious before the reunion, especially walking out to the lawn where everyone was mingling. Of course once I got there and saw a few familiar faces it was great. And there were several people that I was just overjoyed to see. It was lovely, if not quite as monumental a milestone as I had imagined that it might be. There were a couple of unsettling moments for me; a slideshow with several pictures of me from highschool I've never seen before. (Again, should have grown out the hair...) Also a book, a copy of which was on every table, may no one have looked at my page, that was the collection of surveys written by our class that included such horrifying questions as, "Who would you like to marry," "Who was the love of your senior year," "What will you be wearing in 20 years," and "What was your best date of highschool?" These questions could have been possibly less embarassing to reread had I not been seized with an apparant fit of silliness and wild abandon when I answered them. I must remember to warn my own children to be cautious about any time capusel-type questionaires because somehow or another, time does actually pass, and someday you'll be faced with those answers, possibly in public. Ah, well. Like I said, I just had to pat my little self on the head, send her a love message and put her back to bed.

I've been blessed by many many friends through my life and any chance to celebrate that and reconnect is such a pleasure.

Cousins Cousins

2011-08-13T12:29:00.000-06:00

Pictures. Worth a thousand words. We love our cousins.

Adam and Whitley have made a somewhat bumpy but ultimately successful move to Seattle - I need to call them today to hear how things are going. Along the way they stopped in Salt Lake for a while and anytime we get to spend with them is always a highlight. We're really excited to get up to see them in the near future.

Almost Worth It

2011-08-13T12:06:00.000-06:00

Summer. I love it. It's killing me. It's almost over. We're so lucky to have been able to do so many fun things this year. I was panicked at the beginning of June that I'd be wondering what we'd have to fill our days with, but now that it's almost the middle of august and school starts in about 10 days, there isn't quite enough time to get everything in that we were hoping to do! Luckily September is warm and long too and so we'll keep doing things.

One adventure we made sure to fit in this year was the annual trip up to Strawberry Reservoir for Troy and the big kids to go crawdad huntin'. Much to my chagrin. Just kidding - the kids absolutely go nuts for it and they tried really hard to bring in a good haul so that we could invite some neighbors over to enjoy the massive feasting that crawdads provide. Okay, it's not that much of a feast. So I whipped up some jamabalaya, my first time ever trying it. It was so good! I'm officially a jambalaya fan.

Troy and the kids brought in a massive catch of 47 crawdads, which means that there was about 1/2 oz. of meat for everyone. Actually it was a great deal of fun. I used the website Pandora to find some cajun tunes, we set up a big table covered with a garbage bag and set a bucket on top. We boiled up those little guys and dumped them out on the table and everyone began enjoying their morsels of meat. Most everyone, that is. There were a few of us who just let there be more for everyone else. I myself partook of two, and the meat was good, but somehow I still find them rather off-putting. The jamabalaya was awesome, though, as was the nieghborly company, the beautiful summer evening and the icy rootbeers floating in the cooler. Like I said, Summer. I love it.

I Heart Brighton

2011-08-02T16:39:00.000-06:00

Continuing on in the report of my many gatherings, I must write a separate blog entry for beloved Brighton Camp. I was lucky enough to attend camp as a 12 and 13 year old girl, not really knowing my family histroy with the place. Of course I loved it. In 1990, the camp got a new president - the fantastic Floss Waltman. Well, she had been a counselor there in 1960 and guess what. So had my mom. So Floss called mom to be on the committee with her, and that summer I applied to work in the kitchen as a kd. I chose my first ever camp name. Gecko. That name morphed into "Geek" over the next couple of summers, which was fine with me. I still don't know why I chose that name, but I'm fond of it. I had a wonderful summer in the kitchen and the next summer, after I had graduated from high school I returned to work in the craft shack, which was equally wonderful. A few years later I had returned from a mission and wasn't really sure what to do with my summer. I got a call from Floss, asking me to apply to be the director of the camp. I was so thrilled, even though I had skipped the step of being a counselor, which I've always been sorry about. But I accepted the offer. I found out that my assistant director was named Echo. Not only had I never really known why I picked the name Gecko, I also knew that I did NOT want us to be Gecko and Echo. So I changed my name. I picked Quimby, named after Ramona Quimby, the heroine of my favorite series of children's books by Beverly Cleary. It fit me much better. And I had another wonderful, though very challenging summer as the director.

This summer was the 90th anniversary of Brighton LDS Girls Camp. Some of the staff members from my 1991 year decided to gather together for dinner the week before the reunion. I think only about 10 of us made it, but it was such a high to get together. It's been 20 whole years, which seems unbelievable, but everyone looks so much the same and is doing such neat things with their lives. We've all had troubles and triumphs, and it was an absolute joy to gather together and share our histories. I love that group.

Back Row: Oreo, Spice, Bambi, Jabba, Indy, Mush and Bonsai

Front Row: Willow, Gecko, EweHoo and Cherokee

Then over the weekend was the big shin-dig up at camp. Sadly our Saturday was already totally full, so I couldn't go up on the busy day when I would have seen so many more people from my years. But on Sunday after church my daughters and I picked up my mom (Casey as she is known up at Brighton) and we drove up. I'm telling you, just pulling into the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon and smelling the piney air fills me with a sense of well-being and happiness. And suddenly I have the uncontrollable urge to sing. Cant keep those camp songs out of my head! It was a total thrill to walk all over camp, taking pictures of all the places I painted my name (wherever you live up at camp you get to paint your name), being flooded with memories.

Quimby and the next Gecko

Floss, Casey and Apple

Checking out my signature in Wildernest, home of the directors

Above is my name in Cookie Jar, the home of the kd's, and below is my slightly over-the-top signature in The Outback, home of the craft specialists.

The path to the cabins, affectionately known as Hernia Hill - doesn't look too bad from here

Me with 1997's contribution to camp - the record of our Courageous adventure, a story for another day

Bitty was ecstatic to be there. She was feeling the love and was bubbling over with enthusiasm about hiking and singing and staying in cabins and even insisted that I call her Gecko for the rest of the day. It was something else to have three generations of past and future campers there:

Well, I'm out of explatives. I don't know what else I can say to share the fact that Brighton is the most wonderful place on earth. You'll just have to go there yourself. Also, you should read this article.

A Monumental Gathering

2011-08-01T17:07:00.000-06:00

The stars must have all aligned or something last week - seriously, any astrologer type friends out there - was there some sort of cosmic thing creating much energy in the field of reuniting? I had 2 camp reunions last week (which I'll get to later), my child life reunion, plus my side of the family got together and actually took a photo with all 11 grandchildren in one place. AND next week is my 20 year high school reunion. What is going on?

I think our Romney family may have all been a little stressed out trying to get together but we pulled it off anyhow, meeting several times in several combinations of people, culminating with the 11-grandkids-in-one-photo highlight (even though one of themBITTYwas crying and mad through the whole thing.) One brother was up here from St. George and didn't have his wife with him and had to work some while he was here. The other brother was making a pit stop between his move away from L.A. and his move to Seattle - yeah, THAT'S not stressful. My sister was teaching full time plus had a vacation in Snowbird planned - so we all crashed her party up there and had a great time. Plus I had the week-o'-parties. It was nuts! But we managed to have fun anyway. I think. I'll speak only for myself.

In usual ME style, I tried a little too hard to fit in too many things. First I really pushed for everyone to make it up to Snowbird, though we were missing my mom and Sheri. When you don't get up there until almost 7:00 and still have to eat dinner, it gets rather late before you actually hit the pool. And by the time you get out of the pool, you have a gang of pretty tired people. But I had made birthday cupcakes for Bundle's two younger cousins and so amidst a room bubbling in the chaos of 10 wet kids getting put into jammies by their wet parents I lit some candles, started singing Happy Birthday and pretty much forced everyone to eat a cupcake. It was short, somewhat sweet, and I'm glad there was at least one picture of the birthday girls. I was very proud of Bundle who seemed to know that her birthday had past and joined in the singing. Rosey happily blew out her own candles and Cara's as well - she really knew what she was doing!

And here, two days later, is the grand moment of grandchild-glory:

Reunions

2011-07-31T22:49:00.000-06:00

July is finally coming to a close. What a month it has been! As seen through the mind of a blogger, I'll say that I can tell it's been busy because my July folder of pictures is packed and has more photos than any month in Preslar history, yet the blog has pathetically few entries. It's been a little brutal, actually - my kids are absolutely fried. We have had so many fun things happening and so many gatherings of dearly loved people that they've been up late, getting up either very late or very early, eating at strange times, having multiple playdates every day...I need to make them comatose for 24 straight hours to just get them to chill out. And yet I wouldn't trade a moment. I'll write about a couple of our highlights separately, but for this post I'll mention a few things.

This month seems to be the month of reunions, beginning with a visit from our dear friends the Gores, who moved to Arkansas just before Christmas. Their daughter Juliet is one of Bitty's very best friends, and we continue to refer to her that way despite the separators of time and distance. The Gores were in town for three short days and our community of friends pretty much spent those entire three days together as much as we possibly could. BBQs at our house, Pizza at someone else's, playtimes in the afternoons, lunches, plus an emotional but therapeutic visit to Terri Lyn's grave. We were tired but I still didn't get enough of my friend, nor did Bitty of hers. Sadly, I was horrid at taking pictures of our gatherings, so I only have a couple of Bitty and Juliet, but at least I have those.

Another fabulous reuniting of friends happened last week as I gathered with many present and former members of the Child Life staff at Primary Children's hospital where I worked for three or four years. It has now been a whopping 9 years since I left, which hardly seems possible. What I love is that despite all those years I still feel very close to those people, some of whom are still working there and some who are not. There were several dear faces that I didn't get to see, but so many others that I did, best of all being my former director Laura, whom I haven't laid eyes on since Stomper was about 10 months old. I didn't realize how much I had missed her along with so many other wonderful nurturing women and men, and though my career at the hospital was not especially lengthy nor prestigious, it was profoundly influential in my life and growth.

Skipping ahead to this very day, we were very happy to reunite briefly with one of Troy's best friends from high school and his wife, and most importantly his new baby boy Warren. We're so happy for the Mackays who have just begun their family after overcoming many challenges. I only have one picture from today, but it's a keeper, and we're hoping to see them again soon before they leave for D.C. again.

I'm all bubbling over with endorphins right now. Remind me to reread this post in about January, okay?

For The Record

2011-07-31T22:07:00.000-06:00

I moved to Salt Lake City when I was 11 years old. Some 27 (eek!) years later I can now say that I have attended the annual Pioneer Day Parade. I think I may have gone once in my early tweens but I don't really remember much besides being super hot and smashed in with a lot of people, so I'm not sure it counts as having attended the parade if I don't recall a single float or marching band. This year my sister, who recently bought a home in the Liberty Park area, invited me to come over with the kids, park in her very conveniently located driveway, and stroll over to the nearby parade route. I was surprised that she joined us in our venture - watching a parade doesn't seem like her gig but she and I chatted about what a uniquely Utah thing it is - I mean, that parade can be a little weird sometimes, but it's such an eclectic gathering of people from many different walks of life, both in and out of the parade. I think I enjoyed the crowd as much as I enjoyed the show, if not more so. There were the rambunctious teenagers, the arguing spectators, the gang of people across the street who erupted in cheers every time they were able to encourage the sign-carriers to spin in circles. It was really fun! For about one hour, that is, and then the kids had had enough of the spectacle and we went home for an otter pop. I may consider doing it again in the next three decades.

Not QUITE the Trip I Was Planning On

2011-07-25T14:27:00.001-06:00

You know you've had a really big week when, after an evening spent with friends, you buckle your daughters into their car seats, hop behind the wheel, pull away from the curb and then ask them if they need anything. Surprisingly, there is no answer, so you turn around only to find that both of them have completely zonked out before you have even reached the corner. Yes. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Last week - now almost two weeks ago - Bitty had her one formal event of the summer (Stomper's was cub camp - wish we could have had THAT every day!). She was in a small dance class every day for an hour and her performance was on Friday. Nothing spectacular, but she loved it and came away from the experience with a giant purple tutu and a rose-studded coronet for her hair. Miss Natalie knows how to make little girls very happy.

The morning of her performance was a hectic one because I was busy stuffing our car absolutely chock full of camping equipment, which the girls and I would need for our ONE NIGHT in the mountains. Bitty's dance camp overlapped with the annual Preslar family campout, so the boys took off on Thursday morning and the girls and I followed suit on Friday afternoon. We went to a small campground just outside of Preston, Idaho, which was a nice place minus the heavy traffic. Hope I'm not being offensvie when I say that I don't ever need to camp with ATV-riding folks ever again. Ever. I swear, there was more noisy, roaring traffic in that campground than there is at my house downtown. But the mountains were nice and the family had a really good time together. Until that night. And then I learned what it is like to feel like an extremely crappy mommy.

I was sitting in our camping area after dinner, hanging out and knitting and chatting with my cute 16-year-old nephew and my mother-in-law. We were watching Bundle wander around walking Rascal, my in-law's little dog. Rascal has his hyper moments, but this was not one of them. He was just patienty letting Bundle lead him along, and Bundle was so fascinated that she was watching the dog behind her instead of the ground in front of her. Which is why she didn't notice the fire pit. Now, dinner had been over for hours and all that was left in the pit was a heap of white ash. I wasn't even thinking about it. In fact, when Bundle tripped over the metal ring surrounding the pit and landed on her knees in the ashes, the first thing I thought of was the powdery mess I'd have to clean up. Luckily my nephew's brain was actually functioning and he was out of his chair like a shot and grabbed Bundle before things got a lot worse than they already were.

Those next few moments were some of the worst I've experienced. Bundle's one shin was badly burnt - although how she managed to localize the burn to that one area is beyond me and I sincerely thank our guardian angel for that tender mercy. Her skin looked melted and bubbly and very scraped up. I was rushing around like the proverbial headless chicken looking for water to rinse it with as the family gathered in alarm. It was only 10 minutes later that we had located Troy, turned down many kind offers from Stomper and his cousins for various items from their first aid kids (way to go, cub scouts, but a band-aid just ain't gonna do it right now), secured Stomper and Bitty's care with their aunts and uncles, hopped into the car and were high tailing it for the hospital in Preston.

I was expecting a long awful night waiting our turn in a tiny ER, but it turns out that if a town is small enough, there just aren't that many emergencies going on at any one time. We were lucky enough to be the total center of attention in their one emergency room and I have to say, we all did a very good job. Bundle did, and I did too. The doc on call lived close by and was there within 10 minutes or so, and cleaning up her burn was not nearly the ordeal I was expecting. Bundle was treated quickly and was made as comfortable as possible with a little help from our friend Tylenol with Codine. She was very brave and I did a very good job distracting her and using all my long-dormant Child Life skills. We assured Bundle many times that she was doing great. I assume that is why, the moment after her bandages were secure and I immediately slumped into a near faint and had to be lowered to the floor by our kind doctor, that she approached me, gave my knee a pat and told me, "You're doing great, mom."

After only an hour or so we had little choice but to head back to camp, though I loathed the idea of sleeping in a tent with my poor injured gal. We made it through pretty well. We had one dose of medicine to administer in the middle of the night but really it wasn't so bad. It has now been over a week since the accident and I'll just say that today is probably the first day that Bundle has seemed like her old sweet self, though of course she's still sporting a bandange over her slowly healing wound. We affectionately call it her "special sock." She has also enjoyed a bug bite on her wrist that swelled her hand to twice its size, and a touch of heat stroke that left her feverish for two days. I'll just say that the folks at the pharmacy have stopped asking questions about me showing up there twice a day.

So the rest of the camping trip was really quite enjoyable. It was just that one little itty bitty thing about the emergency room and my daughter getting 2nd degree, borderline 3rd degree burns on her her shin. The rest was fun. After all, when you get Troy's brother Rick and his wife Tonja in front of some dutch ovens with bacon in their hands, there is little that can go wrong. Plus the kids got to go fishing. They lasted about 15 minutes each time and came no where near to catching a fish, but they sure had a great time!

Oh yeah. And every single day since then has been absolutely cram packed with stuff. Which I will blog about later. Maybe.

It's a Great Day In Our Lives!

2011-07-10T20:50:00.000-06:00

Long long ago, my family went on a camping trip along with two other families. Actually, it was way beyond a camping trip - we went backpacking up in the Wind Rivers. And I was about 10. It was pretty epic, and I think I, as a 10-year-old, found plenty of things to complain about. As well as being very tough, it was a beautiful trip, and there's a lot I'll always remember about it. One thing in particular was something that one of the dads used to exclaim in a booming, cheery voice every morning and then multiple times throughout the day: "It's a great day in our lives!" At first it cheered and perked us up, then it became oppressively annoying, but by the end of the trip we were all yelling it all the time, and my family still hollers it at each other every now and then. Hey, It's a great day in our lives!

This phrase has been in my head lately. Summer continues to clip along at a hectic pace and every day there is something to truly enjoy and savor. It's not easy; I'm still performing the Herculean feat of hauling myself and three kids, plus all of our accompanying luggage and necessities, on outings and occasions almost daily. But how lucky are we to have so many things to enjoy?

A week ago today I took the kids to the Aviary. I haven't been there in a couple of years and found it to be an absolute oasis of calm in the swirling activity of places kids go in the summer. Obviously not enough people go to the aviary, because, in complete opposition to places like the zoo, it was peaceful and quiet. Sure, I had to drag the kids by their ankles out of the gift shop, but once we made it through there, we had a lovely time running over the shaded paths and venturing through the many different areas. Our favorite had to be the feeding of the parrots. They have a fancier name than that, but I can't remember what it is at the moment. Sun...something. Anyway, that was the best part for sure:

Monday of course was Independence Day, and quite the busy one it was. Our church hosts a neighborhood pancake breakfast, which is all fine and good except that my husband is one of the facilitators of the event. He was superman that day and got up extra early to put in a ride up Emigration Canyon BEFORE he had to be at the church at 7:00 to set up, help cook and mingle then put it all away. By noon he was dragging slightly. He did take a break in there to let me participate in the 5k fun run, which wasn't that much fun at all! OK, it was a lovely morning and I was kept company as I plodded along by my very patient friend, and it went pretty well considering I go for a jog about once a month. As awards were handed out at the end of the race I was hoping I'd win the "I Actually Made It" prize for coming in last, but I guess they skipped that category this year. Oh well!

After a quiet afternoon, during which I forced my big kids to take a 20 minute "nap," (lie still with your eyes closed and don't talk!) we headed up to a home in Bountiful where my friend hosted a swimming and bbq party. I really wanted to be hanging out with the grownups talking, but since I had one of the only toddlers there I was in the pool much of the time. That's not such a bad way to spend the 4th of July, I know, and certainly in a few years I'll get to be with the grownups all I want. For this year, I just paddled Bundle around while cheering on Bitty and Stomper who continue to develop their swimming skills. Stomper especially has made a breakthrough this summer and is jumping off the diving board, picking up toys off the bottom of the pool and seems to have conquered his fears. Hooray!

Our final big adventure of the week was to use my groupon (I'm loving groupons!) for passes to This Is The Place Heritage Park. There is so much to do there, if you're willing to brave the heat. My friend Krista and her adorable kids showed us around and the kids had a lovely day attending old fashioned prairie school, getting a shave at the barber shop, and hanging with the farm animals. Bundle was especially enamored with the lambs, and walked around the holding pen by their sides, her hand on their backs and letting us all know that those were HER lambs.

The Sunday Funnies

2011-07-07T23:02:00.000-06:00

Ah, Sunday. Always a day of peace, rest, and spirituality. That is, unless there are kids involved.

I bought these cool little books from Costco for the kids to doodle in during church. Each page has at least the beginning of a drawing with plenty of space for the kids to fill in whatever their creative little minds can come up with. Surprisingly, Bitty has been taking each page slowly and methodically, taking care with every detail. Stomper, and I'm pretty sure a few of his buddies who slip into our row from time to time, has gone through his books with a fury and not everything drawn there is appropriate. I picked up one of the books after church the other day and started flipping through it and came upon many a page that had been filled in with the following vein of 8-year-old-boy humor:

Can one laugh and be angry at the same time? I have to confess to some serious chuckling, though not while Stomper was looking, that's for sure. I now understand the furtive looks Stomper was shooting me during church.

Another favorite moment of the week was at the library. The kids have been participating in the City Library's Summer Reading Program and we were there to collect our prizes after the kids had filled in another page of their charts. The prizes this time were fortune cookies, which Stomper was certainly less than thrilled with but Bitty and Bundle dove into with enthusiasm. Bitty popped open one cookie and asked me to read aloud what her fortune said. I snickered as I read it to her:

"Your day will be somewhat dictated by authority."

Bitty was not comfortable with this notion, as she makes abundantly clear on a daily basis. This led to a discussion about the definition of the word authority and how it might (or might not) apply to her. I was humored by my own exasperation with our chat when I caught another mom in the next row laughing out loud at me and my daughter. She looked like she had taken a walk in my shoes before. Ah, kids.

You know, The Becky introduced me to a wonderful new vocabulary word that is extremely validating. She told me the story of a man in ancient Greece who got in trouble with the big shots. I don't remember what he did, but it must not have been good because he was condemned for all eternity to push a big rock up a hill, and every time he is just about to the top, the rock slips from his grasp to roll all the way back down the mountain, where he has to go and begin again. His name: Sisyphus. His experience and all others like unto it can be described as (get ready for this awesome word): Sisyphean. Let me use it in a sentence for you:

Sometimes, parenting can be quite Sisyphean, don't you think? (You can substitute the word "laundry," "grocery shopping," "fixing the house," "mowing the lawn," or any number of things for the word "parenting," as I'm sure you will once you start using Sisyphean in your everyday conversations.)

I love it. We just have to keep rolling that dang rock up the hill and we just never quite make it to the top, do we. Well, as long as we're never going to arrive at our destination, here's to enjoying the journey. The long, arduous, sweaty, journey. Just kidding. Sort of. And by the way, if I'm so Sisyphean, how come my muscles have not developed in such an awesome manner, I ask you?

Magic. Just Magic.

2011-06-30T08:36:00.000-06:00

Has there ever been a band that many of your friends and family love, I mean absolutely adored, and they play them for you and show you videos and... you like them. Yes. Like them very much. But then something happens, something clicks and suddenly you get it. You get in on the magic. I happened for me in the mid 90's with UB40. So many people I knew just loved loved them and I kinda liked 'em, until I joined the gang up at Parkwest to see them in concert. And suddenly I loved them too. I got it.

Last night I got to go to a show to see a duo....did you catch that, by the way? Last night I GOT TO GO OUT to see a concert. Bundle is growing up just slightly. Thank you thank you Myca, for being my gal. My friend Myca put my kids to bed! Including Bundle! This is fabulous. Anyway, back on track. Troy and I went to go see The Civil Wars at our new favorite concert joint, The State Room.

I have liked their music very much. We heard about them from our friend Adam, who took Troy to see them last February or something and Troy's been hooked ever since. But I don't really pick them for my tunes to clean the kitchen or go for walks - they're pretty mellowish, serious sad topics...not especially upbeat. So I wasn't in love. Until I went to see them. We attended the show with our dear friends Angie and Adam and sat up in the seats for the opener, which was fine. Then clever Adam, as soon as the opener was done, popped up out of the seats and we got a front-and-center spot on the floor. The Civil Wars came up on stage. Just one man, one woman, and the instruments they play - often just one guitar. And it was just absolute magic. Even compared to my beloved Weepies. (They're still my favorites...of course.....) Their performance sparkled. How can I possibly describe it? John Paul White is a dead ringer for Johnny Depp gone to the bayou. And Joy Williams....well, I think I have almost as big of a crush on her as my husband does. She is somehow adorable, sweet, sassy, sexy and just joyfull all at the same time. She sings with a twinkle in her eye and and smile tucked in the corner of her mouth at all times. They are almost choreographed in their performace and you just can't tear your eyes off of them. Okay, I can't do them justice. Here's a video.

They have such fabulous chemistry on stage together. They're actually both married to other people and I wonder how their spouses handle it because they just are so awesome together.

Okay, I'm just blathering now. Lovedlovedlovedloved it. Hope they come again soon. I'll never forget it.

The Magical Back Yard

2011-06-28T15:03:00.000-06:00

The dog days of summer continue around here, kinda good, kinda hard work for mom, but the weather has been just lovely. Troy and I have been putting rather a lot of work into our back yard lately - perhaps you think any work we're doing should be going into the interior of our house, but you would be so wrong. Look. Just LOOK at this:

We've de-cluttered the back porch, purchased some comfy chairs in which to hang out, planted herbs in pots and hung flowers from the beams. Troy hung up our hammock. We have planted vegetables. Troy is regularly mowing the lawn, which I appreciate so much because it's fun to hang out there when the lawn is so nice. He is also doing this amazing thing - he's building a tree house! So far it's just a platform but the kids already adore it. And go outside. A lot. And stay there. See? It's heaven. Then today seemed to actually get warm enough to pull out the good old and extremely aged blowup pool. We put about 5 inches of freezing cold hose water in it this afternoon just to keep the kids happy and in their usual style they enjoyed those five little inches to their very fullest. Bouncing, splashing, competetive speed leaping....and Troy and I just stand on the back porch smiling and taking pictures and biding our time until the inevitable tears need mopping up. This evening it was from Bundle, who's feet were little blocks of ice after an hour in the water. She survived after much...bundling. And snuggling.

So I know. If you've stuck with this blog for any length of time, you may not be super excited to see another round of kids-playing-in-the-pool pictures, but Troy and I just can't help ourselves. I think photos like these are what get us through those fabulous months such as....January. So, sorry, for our own future-sanity, we're posting more pictures.

Don't worry, if that had hurt as bad as it looks like it does, I wouldn't have posted it.

Speaking of Bundle, she had an episode with the hose the other day. Excellent photo opp.

Summer Survival

2011-06-23T14:21:00.000-06:00

I took Bundle for the most glorious walk this evening. The weather hasn't turned hot yet so it was cool and lovely, just before sunset. I hoofed it through the avenues for a while then strolled down by the park, where Bundle insisted we stop and I agreed. I pushed her in the swings for a bit while I watched a couple of guys doing some serious frisbee tossing across the grass. It made me think very fondly of my pre-Troy/post-mission years when I hung out with my brother Peter a lot. We'd walk to Laird Park almost every summer night together after dark and throw a frisbee around. The walks to and from the park gave us a lot of time to talk and then running through the cool night air chasing frisbees was just fun. One night as we made our way to the park I even grabbed a peach off of a tree, whose branch was reaching over the sidewalk and dangling the perfectly ripe fruit right over our noses. I took it as a sign that it was there just for us. We shared the juicy thing, licked our fingers and proceeded to our nightly disc-tossing. Great memories.

Also while at the park I watched two young girls, college-age probably, who were there just swinging and talking. I did a lot of that with my friend Anne, at that same park even. We'd bring ginger ale, our favorite, and just swing and talk. The swings back then were much taller and if you really got swinging you shot right up into the cottonwood trees.

So, my walk tonight brought back many happy memories. And it was good for my soul. I so needed to get out. My poor kids today....scratch that. They were just awful today. I don't get it. I'm trying to be Mary Poppins here - I must be kind, I must be witty, very sweet and fairly pretty, take them on outings, give them treats, sing songs, bring sweets... Well, my 'cheery disposition' keeps going straight down the toilet. I'm just going to say that the kids are not handling summer well, even on the days when I plan the things they're most excited to do. Not that staying home helps. All is drama and tears and fighting. Mary Poppins is going away now.

***

That was two days ago. I'm not managing to get to my computer often! But the air is momentarily calm and so I thought I'd post a couple of events from the previous week.

Last Saturday we went to the chalk-art festival down at the Gateway Mall. I've never been to the event before and I'm so glad we went, even though we waited until late in the day and the kids were already quite tired. It was really really neat. First we stopped a did a little chalking of our own, and the strolled along the street looking at all of the art. I bumped into an old friend, and found out that his brother whom I used to date, did one of the drawings. It was pretty amazing. I feel a little sad that my drawing and painting is currently hibernating but I can not summon the desire to get into the mental space I have to in order to paint. Perhaps someday again. In the meantime I'm appreciating the art of others - I don't think I'll ever miss the festival again. We really loved it - the kids were completely fascinated.

This one is my old friend's - amazing, right?

Sunday of course was Father's Day and we celebrated in our own special way - Bundle spent the previous night up and sick all night long. So Troy, bless him, took the day off from his Sunday duties and church and hunkered down with us all day long. It poured rain throughout the day, and most of us stayed in jammies until mid afternoon. The kids showered Troy with gifts - hand sculpted statues for his office plus some homemade keychains and the like. I myself gave him Oreo cookies and a bag full of his favorite gorgeous red apples. It wasn't a really fabulous Father's Day gift, but that man is hard to shop for. So he gets treats and permission to shop for himself. Not that he needs it, but he has it anyway. We are sure blessed to have our Troy. He is talented, takes good care of us, and loves us all the way we are, thank heavens.

We also spent an evening with our St. George cousins - they hung out in Salt Lake while my brother Peter was a complete tough guy and ran the relay from Logan to Park City - he put in about 20 miles! We have been frequenting the library, picking up our summer reading prizes, and also enjoying many play dates with friends. At this very moment we have two kids over and Stomper is watching movies with the big sister while Bitty is playing with the little brother. No one is fighting. Ahhhhhhh. We just may make it through!

Off to an Energetic Start

2011-06-16T14:30:00.001-06:00

I'm having an extremely hard time believing that we've only been out of school for a week. We have hit it hard on the "getting out of the house" end of things. I'm going to confess that it's partly a coping skill seeing as how two of my three children reside on the brink of warfare with each other at all times. We've been gone so much and so busy that our to-do list is already diminishing.

Our first big outing was to the Kennecott Copper Mine, and just getting out there proved as big an adventure as seeing the mine itself. I've never been there in all my years of dwelling it Utah, and though it was a little alarming to take in the scope of the mine, it was certainly educational. We went with a small group from our soccer team and we had a great time, especially having lunch together afterwords at a local park where we discovered that local kids have kept a running list of every bad word they could think of etched into the play equipment. Stomper quickly comforted my fears by letting me know that he only knew the first one and the third one.

The very next day we got up early and drove an hour north to Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville Utah. Troy was sad he wasn't able to join us - he spent much of his childhood driving to Honeyville to visit his Grandpa Preslar, who used to own the little corner store there. We stopped to take pictures of the kids on the rickety wooden porch on the way home, which was fun. The springs themselves were really fun. The water was quite salty and turned all of our suits slightly orange, but its warmth felt wonderful. That is until about 1:00 in the afternoon when we all started to feel like we were stewing ourselves. Then it was time to leave. I was so proud of Stomper - there were two big water slides there that intimidated him, especially the part where you crash land into rushing water at the bottom. He almost had a major meltdown, but rallied and eventually gave the slides a try and of course loved them. I'm really excited to head back there come November or December. It was a fun little destination.

We've been to the aquarium, out to lunch, and had play dates. We've been to the park and eaten popsicles. And the weather has been perfect, which we heartily deserve after the past few months as winter just would not give in to spring. It's not so hot that going outside is miserable yet, and yet warm enough to do some swimming, which we did yesterday:

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep this up all summer. My kids are going to have to get along at home a little bit! Please! But really, we're off to a very fun start to a hopefully great summer. I think I've taken more pictures in the past two weeks than I have in months.

Have to Post This One

2011-06-16T08:51:00.000-06:00

Can't help myself. I totally loved this.

Beloved Teachers

2011-06-13T18:44:00.000-06:00

As Stomper keeps telling me, the past year has gone by just like 'that!' (He demonstrates the extreme speed with the snap of his fingers, of course.) We've all been shedding some tears over the past week saying goodbye to this year's wonderful group of teachers. I mean it. The kids have been bawling since about three days before school let out.,,,,,and so have I. :)

Mrs. Lloyd

About Mrs. Lloyd, Stomper says, "She was really nice. She had fun projects like taking us to the zoo and learning about African animals and bugs. On my birthday we had a sword fight. I will always remember making the African Mask."

That reminds me! His teacher does these amazing 3D African animal masks every year and Stomper chose to do a crocodile. I came in to help him a couple of times and I think the final result was pretty amazing. I think I posted a picture of it a couple of posts ago for their art night. Anyway, a picture of his mask appeared on the cover of this year's final newsletter - I thought that was pretty great!

Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Clark

About Mrs. Scott, the main teacher, Bitty says, "She was one of the kindest teachers that I have ever had. She barely got mad at all and that she always liked to fun stuff and that she just was so kind. One of the fun things was the school carnival and that we got to make pinch pots and little houses. We got to be in kindergarten for such a long time. I hope that Bundle gets my same teachers."

Besides saying goodbye to our regular teachers we have also had the chance to visit our beloved Miss Patti, the preschool teacher that both big kids had for their first year. She retired this year and her daughters threw her a party at sugarhouse park. Patti is amazing - she taught for 20 years and our little family was just a blip on her screen but she acted like not a day had gone by since we had seen her. Both kids were shy at first but quickly warmed up and remembered what great years they had with her.

I am so grateful for the wonderful teachers we have had this year. Hopefully next year we are equally blessed.

The Demise of the Flaming Griffins

2011-06-10T20:23:00.000-06:00

As our school year has drawn to a close, there have been many celebrations and fond farewells. Both of the kids had their final soccer games last weekend. Bitty's was so cute. This year she was on a little co-ed team and ended up being the only girl among a darling group of boys, none of whom go to our same school. I'm a little sad because they were such a great little group and due to the fact that first grade teams are divided into boys and girls we definitely won't see them again. When we got to the game on Saturday, we discovered that a gal from Bitty's class was on the opposing team! She is an absolute doll and I'm so sad they weren't on the same team! I love her family too. Sadly, they were only in Utah for a year, visiting from South Carolina. So, it was fun to be together that one last morning. Her parents and I did a lot of cheering for both sides. Bitty loves soccer and I think we're going to have to sign up for another year even though there are so many other things she wants to do too. I can't deny that she's a rockin' little footballer.

And then there's Stomper's team. I don't think any of the team parents knew what to say last fall as the boys decided that the team name just had to be "The Flaming Griffins." We laughed a lot, actually, in a very fond way, and deliberated on whether or not we should have t-shirts made. "Proud Parent of a Flaming Griffin," or something along those lines. I'm sorry to say that his team does not boast a winning season. Actually, we didn't win a single game this spring, but that doesn't even matter. I adore this group of boys and their families and I'm so delighted to have these people in our lives and building solid friendships with our children. That's an answer to prayer, I'll tell you that.

In the evening his team regathered in the gorgeous back yard of one family to enjoy a little more time together. Plenty of yummy food and tons of romping wrestling tumbling boys all over the place. And some cute girls too. I'm excited for next fall. We'll just have to see if they keep that awesome team name for one more year. Go Flamers!

Happy Birthday.....BUNDLE!

2011-06-09T23:22:00.000-06:00

Don't yell at me. The end of school is a crazy time of year. It could seriously give Christmas a run for its money. It has now been nearly a week since the big day but I am proud to report that I have officially MADE IT through Bundle's first two years. Hooray for Bundle, hooray for me! We did it! Now we get to enjoy her wonderful twos before we hit that very scary year of three.

We had a very mellow celebration, just the grandparents joining us for cake and ice cream and a few presents. There were also balloons, of course. I feel that a party can't be complete without a bright bunch of balloons floating nearby. Bundle was fascinated with them, of course, and I did something very stupid. She was begging to hold a ballon and I did not want her to be sad so I handed it to her, warning her not take it to the yard and let it go because it would fly away forever. "Okay," she sweetly replied, and promptly made a bee-line for the back yard, let the balloon go and waved goodbye forever. Duh. She thought it was absolutely hilarious and that pink balloon did not end up being the only one to be released into the wild despite our best efforts to keep them contained. Bitty was not happy with this turn of events, but she eventually recovered.

Bundle took a long time to figure out what was going on - we prepped her for days about her birthday, we asked her all day long whose birthday it was, and it wasn't until about 8:00 that night that she finally started saying, "Birthday for ME! Happy Birthday, Emma!" (In fact, as I type this, she is sitting on my lap, hanging onto my elbows, looking at the pictures and saying, Happy EMMA Happy BIRTHDAY. Very cute.) Of course, if you ask her how old she is, she will dutifully report that she is seven.

Happy Birthday....ME!

2011-05-31T23:52:00.000-06:00

May 25th. Best day of the year. And I'm finding that as I'm getting older (and older....) that more and more people like to celebrate my birthday by taking me out to eat. I must look like I'm wasting away (ha ha) because they just keep feeding me! And you know what? It's been just grand. I think the best part was Settebello. Twice. Mmmm.

But let's not jump ahead here. Let's begin on the 24th. I decided to do my crying on that day. You may remember that last year our sweet Alex departed this earth on my birthday. Kind of overshadowed the birthday thing, which was fine, and I had to shed a few tears for him this year. The tears came early because I was watching one of the last Oprah episodes ever and it was about a little boy she knew who had died - it showed photo of him wrapped in the paws of his helper doggy and that started the flow of tears. Okay, I'm also slightly sad that Oprah is going off the air. I did not watch her every day by any means, but I will confess to experiencing several, shall we say, 'lightbulb moments' while viewing her show. She's a neat lady and I feel a little like my friend is moving or something like that. THEN that night was the U2 concert. When they first announced that they were coming, it was a very long time ago when my Bundle still was a bundle. I wasn't going to leave my infant for a concert, so we only got a ticket for Troy. Then of course the show was postponed. For a YEAR. And by the time they came I could probably have convinced someone to hang out with my kids for the night, but since Troy already had reserved seats with a friend, I chose to not worry about it. DUMB. I should have worried about it. I didn't go 14 years ago when they were here, and I was sorry then, and I'm sorry now. Luckily I live close enough to the stadium that I could just throw open my living room windows and listen to every note. So close, so far away. Boo hoo, poor me, yada yada.

Waking up on the 25th made everything right once again. I love my children. Their sweet father had taken them shopping, and subtly guided their purchases so I didn't end up with a giant rhinestone necklace which nearly caused Bitty to faint with desire when she saw it. The kids were just little wiggly excited puppies waiting for me to open my cards and gifts. A silver bracelet and a lovely little glass paper weight Stomper was very proud to have chosen. I couldn't love anything more. I ate lunch with friends and then enjoyed an evening out with my husband - our first visit to Settebello that week. Such wonderful pizza, followed by wonderful gelato, followed by a wonderful (and strangely childless) stroll through The Gateway Mall where we browsed shoes and then kitchen supplies. We even bought some stuff for me. Fun. Thank you, Myca and Cullen, for babysitting. My kids adore you, we adore you.

I have been celebrating ever since. That's really true. What I'm celebrating is the fact that I have so many people in my life who love me. They need to stop feeding me, but they love me and I love them. Life is good. And also I'm excited for my new birthday shoes to get here.

In closing and continuing the theme of birthday shoes, I must share a happy birthday memory from the days of yore, when I did not keep a blog. I will never forget the year (I think I was turning 27 or something cute like that) when Troy woke me up on my birthday by handing me a gift, inside of which I found the cutest pair of Chako slip-ons. I happily hugged and kissed him and he was laughing, because he then handed me another wrapped box which contained another pair of shoes I loved. And I jumped up and down and laughed because it was so funny that he gave me two pairs of shoes. That was when he gave me the third gift-wrapped shoe box of the day. Three awesome pairs of shoes. How he loves me. Thanks for the shoes!

Fine Artists

2011-05-31T22:40:00.000-06:00

I do love our elementary school, that's for sure. They do such a great job promoting the arts. Every spring there is a huge art show displaying the art of all the kids, and though it is an absolute mad house to walk through the halls that night, my kids are always completely thrilled for us to come and see everything they've done. It is awesome.

Where to Begin?

2011-05-22T15:35:00.000-06:00

I am so tired. I had a nap today, a good sleep last night, and I still can't get myself together. This is not that surprising considering that I spent the last week trying to take ten years off of my life. There's only one place on earth that can remove that much life expectancy in one go.....the happiest place on earth! Disneyland!

I can't deny it, I love the place. It's busy, crowded and expensive, and yet I just love it there. After our trip 2 1/2 years ago I had to make myself just not think about when we could ever go again. Then when I heard that my brother Adam may be moving away from the LA area this summer I thought to myself, "We must go! Free place to stay is leaving!" So we put together a trip. In the middle of our plans we had to suddenly take Troy out of the picture because he started a new job 3 weeks ago and didn't want to take a bunch of days off in his first month. But as we did more and more planning we got sadder and sadder about him not coming, so we wrangled together a plan in which he could drive down with us, do 1 day of D-land with us, hang out with family on Sunday and then fly home on Sunday night while the kids and I did two more days o' mouse before driving home. I felt so much better about the trip know that Troy could be there for a least part of it.

Also, I have always dreamed of surprising my kids with a trip. We picked them up from school on Friday with the car already packed. We sat them outside the car on the grass and told them. What fun that was. Stomper was slightly stunned and wasn't sure he could trust that we were being serious, but Bitty went nuts.

We then drove to St. George to meet up with my brother Peter and his wife and two daughters. You can not say the word "Disneyland" to Sheri and not look forward to her joining you on the trip. I've always wanted to do a Disney trip with her and I was really happy they could make it. So, we slept at their house that night. Let me rephrase that. We TRIED to sleep. We were kind of jittery and excited. I don't think Bitty fell asleep until 11:00. This wouldn't have been too big of a problem except that we got up at 5:00 a.m. (Note: we forgot that this would be 4:00 a.m.California time....) and were driving by 5:30. Stomper and Bundle fell back asleep for a while, but Bitty was just sitting in the back seat practically levitating with excitement. Luckily she and Bundle both fell back asleep for about the last 1 1/2 hours of the trip, which was our saving grace I think.

We drove straight to the park, getting there around noon and we stayed until 10:30 that night. I think that was the day that took the most years off of my life. We were the walking dead by the end of it. And yet, it was absolutely wonderful. The kids were so good. They were good in the car, they were good in the park. We were all just so happy to be there. Even little Bundle handled all the driving and waiting in lines just beautifully. That's not to say there were never any conflicts or tears, but there were never any major incidents, meltdowns or tantrums. I was so proud.

My sister in law already blogged about the trip and I think she summed it up quite well. I don't even know how to record all the fun that we had. Perhaps I'll do a little summing up myself.

Saturday.
Great because Troy was with us, because we discovered that even on really busy days Disneyland is doable, because when Bitty rode the Matterhorn with me she was so brave but kept yelling, "This can not be happening!" Great because each kid got to do fun things with just their dad: Bitty picked Alice in Wonderland and Stomper got to ride Indiana Jones for the first time. He also took on the Mountains both Thunder and Space - and we discovered that he is a rollercoaster fanantic. Troy and I got to experience California Screamin' for the first time and had a ball. Adam's son Smith joined us for the afternoon. I always love to see the boys together, especially as they lay eyes on each other that first moment. Big hugs and much silliness to follow. We loved the jungle cruise - our boat captain was actually quite hilarious. We just wasted ourselves and then drove to Adam and Whitley's house. They were laughing at us for being totally insane, but with Troy only having one day there we made the most of it!

Sunday.
How grateful we were for a day at Adam's house. Whitley went above and beyond making the house look like the most welcoming B&B ever, cooking fantastic food for us and helping us have a relaxing day. It was just delightful to watch all the kids (eight of them!) scampering around the yard and jumping on the tramp. We needed a down day like you wouldn't believe. That evening I was very courageous and braved the highways of California all by myself to drive Troy to the airport. This was slightly nerve-wracking but I survived. I was so sad to send him home but couldn't have been happier that he got to be a part of our trip at all.

Monday.
Rise and Shine, people! A full Disney day! We loved getting to the park pretty early and heading straight for the princesses. Stomper was very patient and brave as the little girls got to meet three lovely princesses. This was a big day because all three families were there, me being a single parent, and trying to manage our group of 13 people. We did our best to make the kids happy and also send some grownups on some big rides when we could. We weren't able to hit every single attraction that day, but we got most of them in and I think the kids were happy. There's nothing like trying to get six girls to pose for pictures all at once.

Tuesday.
Well, this was our day of having early passes to the park, but the morning was made slightly difficult by the fact that there was a soaking rain going on until after noon. We were so wet and cold - I don't think Bundle's feet dried off and warmed up until she was in bed that night. The kids were tired, but we still ended up having a really nice day. We had a small group, well, smallER..., smallISH..., and it was easier to get around. Stomper decided to try California Screamin' with me and loved it so much he immediately accompanied his uncle then his aunt on the ride. We also LOVED the new Toy Story ride - Midway Mania. That was good fun. Basically, we just packed in as much as we possibly could, including the World of Color show that night in California Adventure. Just as we were walking over there we noticed that the Grizzly River Run ride hadn't closed yet, so Stomper and I had one last adventure together in which I got very wet and he stayed almost completely dry. That was a great ride.

And then miraculously, the ride home, all in one day with only one parent in the car, went amazingly well. Bundle held it together until the very last hour, when she finally cried a bit then fell asleep. It was definitely a long day but it could have been really awful. Instead it was just lengthy with a lot of rain and snow to keep us company along the way. I was afraid the journey home would be hard enough to ruin the trip but it wasn't at all. I'm so glad we did it. And guess what. I can't wait until we can go again!

Back-Blogging

2011-05-20T22:05:00.000-06:00

This is old news, but I just have to say that I had such a great mother's day this year. You know how kids always make these funny little gifts in their classes at school? Well, I absolutely love them! My children were psyched out of their minds for me to open up my gifts, each wrapped in slightly clumsy yet precious wads of tissue paper. From Stomper I got an adorable card and a stained glass window - clear paints brushed onto a clear CD case. He painted a picture of our pooch, Alex, who left us almost a whole year ago. It is so tender! And Bitty gave me a bookmark that's a little flat wooden doll of herself, plus a little pottery cup she made and painted. If you found these items at a garage sale, they'd be looked over like junk. But to me, they are the most precious of treasures, showing off the prints of my childrens' hands and the reflections of their sweet little brains. I couldn't love anything more. And also Troy gave me this great little gadget that you plug into an iphone and it transmits your music to your car speakers via the radio - your ipod has its own radio station! I love it, seeing as how my van, despite her many admirable qualities, lacks an mp3 player jack. Very thoughtful.

Along with the shower of gifts we also enjoyed visits with both grandmas and dinner at my sister's house. The day was pleasant and a real celebration of our family. I'm so grateful to be a mother.

A Celebration

2011-05-06T23:18:00.004-06:00

It's late, dark and quiet. I should be asleep - Bundle seems to think I'm getting altogether too much sleep lately and she's doing what she can to remedy the situation. Her siblings are pitching in. But that's beside the point. I'm up and enjoying the quiet darkness because it gives me a chance to, well, think, frankly. And ponder. And reminisce.

Yesterday, I can hardly believe, was the fourth anniversary of baby Matthew's passing and birth. Time is such a funny thing. It makes things so far away and so close all at the same time, and I can't decide if it feels more like hours or decades since we lost him. It's interesting how peaceful Troy and I feel, how happy we are to celebrate the wonderful part Matthew plays in our lives, and yet May 5th always puts me in a funk. It's like I have a little link I can open any time that takes me back to that day as if it were the present, and not the quickly lenthening past. I can feel just what I felt that day, and it always rocks me a little. It's okay. I am actually happy to still be able to totally emotionally connect with that day, even if it is kind of tough.

I am happy this year because I feel like I was able to celebrate just the way I wanted to. In years past I have felt much more of a desire for quiet contemplation, which the kids seem to make an absolute impossibility. It's hard to remember that despite their youth they feel the impact of the day as well and seem to express it by going somewhat berserk. But this year, after a busy busy day, which I knew we could not avoid, we had family alone time all evening long. We picked up some yummy dinner and took it to the park where the kids had such a wonderful time just running, swinging, romping and basically getting completely filthy. It felt like a celebration of the life that we are living, of the children that we're so blessed to have.

After the park we headed to the party store and each picked out a balloon in order to send our traditional notes to Matthew via helium. This year's collection of colors was quite eccelectic. Dark blue for Troy, shimmery light green for me, I think a turquoise for Bundle which she actually did pick out herself. Bitty picked a blue balloon printed with a baby motif, and Stomper picked an electric green with black tiger stripes. Every year we seem to have trouble getting all our balloons successfully launched. We seem to get at least two stuck in the trees in our back yard. We contemplated perhaps choosing a different location with fewer trees but at this point Troy and I felt that we had to take on the challenge of our back yard, and it was a close call. After writing our notes, always a very tender and therapeutic exercise for me, we took the tactic of securing our papers not at the end of the long strings but close to the balloon and then trimming the strings. I let mine go first. It went straight into the trees, but due to our very wise trimming of the string, did not get tangled permanently and eventually caught the breeze and floated heavenward. Mine was the only near miss, and we cheered as our colorful bouquet made its way into the sky.

I love how it's been long enough now that there has been some progression with the note writing. Stomper was so excited to write his and he did it, all on his own. I don't know what he wrote. I'm so curious, but it's his private message to his brother so I didn't even ask. Even Bitty this year could write her note herself, though she asked for much spelling help. Maybe next year Bundle will want to send a message as well.

Finally, after Troy and I tucked our tired babes into their beds, we had chance to do my other favorite thing we do every year. We sit on the couch together and read over every single card and letter we receieved regarding Matthew, look at the pictures I took of flowers we were sent, and look at our memorabilia from the hospital. It is extremely tender and as much as I feel the difficult things from that day I also feel the extreme love and support that surrounded us. It ended up being such a special day.

Beloved Oma

2011-04-27T15:37:00.000-06:00

After our quick trip to the south of the state, we returned in time to celebrate my momma's birthday. It was a quiet affair - I am the only sibling in town - but we had a nice time. Pizza at their place, followed by a pinata instead of a cake. I guess my mom thought it would be more fun for the kids, so she and dad went to Zurchers (I don't know how to pronounce that either, by the way) and got a nice little pinata and then filled it with about 10 pounds of the best candy they could find. It cost them about 60 bucks or something! Kind of funny. But yes, the kids loved it. We also showered my mom with gifts - the sharpest cheddar cheese we could find, tools for her aquadoodle set, with which she loves playing with the kids, and a lovely little scarf that I am now coveting for myself. My birthday is just around the corner......

Spring Break/A Break from Spring

2011-04-27T14:25:00.000-06:00

Bad Blogger! Bad! Okay, now that I have sufficiently shamed myself for the lack of blogging, I'm going to continue the post I started days ago and pretend like nothing happened. :)

Shhhhh....do you hear that? Guess what. Neither do I. That's because no one is here. Yes, it's Monday (okay...Wednesday....) afternoon and my big kids are back to school and little Bundle is sound asleep. Ahhhhhhh. Spring break has come and gone. And I'm going to go ahead and claim that as the reason for my long blogging lag. (I'm always coming up with excuses these days, aren't I?) Actually, spring is turning out to be not so springy here in Salt Lake City. It's grey, it's cold, it's rainy. Thus a trip to St. George to visit my brother and his family seemed more than warranted. We had a lovely lovely time. The first day down there was overcast, which dampened my sis-in-law's mood, considering the fact that it was her birthday. (She turned 27 - isn't that cute? I remember turning 27 a really really long time ago....) We enjoyed a lot of time outside on their tramp and playing at the local splash park too. We did a little hike through Chuckwalla Canyon (I think?) and Stomper did his very best to catch a lizard, to no avail. Here are some of my favorite pix from the trip:

We loved getting away from the dreariness of Spring...wait, that sounded wrong. I guess I can't complain too much - the sun is shining right now, but it is supposed to snow on Friday. Wah!!!!

Gone Fishing

2011-04-15T18:44:00.000-06:00

I can hardly blame Stomper for his latest obsession: "River Monsters," a t.v. show in which this very tough, leathery old guy by the name of Jeremy Wade goes fishing. Not just regular fishing, mind you. He's after fish you wouldn't believe - absolute monsters which are often surrounded by tales of having eaten people and/or their various body parts. It's a recipe for perfection as far as Stomper is concerned - there's a little blood and carnage (mild reenactment only...wait, I take that back. Jeremy has been chomped a time or two), lots and lots of big teeth, plus the fish are always set free after being wrestled in. Keep in mind, it was Stomper who sobbed at the end of the movie "Godzilla" when the people win the fight against the mighty beast.

As Stomper has been spending time watching Mr. Wade, I've seen an increase in this type of art work:

The first drawing shows a shark eating a fish that's already been caught - apparently bull sharks swim up rivers and wait for fishermen to catch things for them. You can see how confusing this is for the fishermen. And in the second shot you can see the amount of exertion it takes to snag a shark out of a river. Also miraculous was the day I walked into Stomper's room and found him reading. Folks, mine is not the child who has developed an undying love of reading. Yet. But there he was, sitting down with a book and reading it out loud in fascination. Of course, it was the River Monsters book that he picked out from the last book order. Thank you, Jeremy Wade.

I actually found a piece of paper in the living room the other day that was a letter. "Dear Jeremy," it read, "I love River Monsters...." etc. It turns out that Stomper is planning on inviting Mr. Wade to dinner the next time he comes fishing in North America. I'm encouraging him to finish his letter and send it to the angler in the hopes of at least getting a signed photo if not an actual dinner guest. The question is, if I ever did end up with a celebrity fisherman at my table, do I dare to serve anything other than fish?

Don't Ask How I Know This

2011-04-13T19:04:00.000-06:00

I bet you're wondering why I've posted a picture of this tiny, scrambled up bit of rubbery purple stuff. Especially when it's something that I found under the rug the other day. At least, I think it was under the rug. It may have been something I swept up or dug out from a crevice in the floor or something. In any case, it was garbage. The reason I'm posting it is because the moment I saw it I knew exactly what it was and I shouted in amazement because it's something I spent HOURS looking for about two years ago. It just so happens that mangled little thing is Ariel's Bra. You know... her seashells? Bitty got a polly-pocket-sized Ariel doll many moons ago. It, like so many other toys for preschoolers, came with several accessories such as her shoes (each approximately the size of a single grain of rice) which are so tiny that the use of a magnifying glass is required when putting them on the doll. And of course all those little things get lost instantly, causing floods of tears from your 4 year old daughter. The shoes went first, naturally. That wasn't such a big deal because Ariel still had her fin. A little more disconcerting was the loss of her scanty top, thus illustrating the toy manufactuer's lack foresight because poor Ariel was left looking like she was going swimming on a nude beach. I got a lot of questions from Bitty's fellow preschoolers. I looked for that dang little top for weeks. Almost as long as I looked for mini-Cinderella's missing glass slipper - fitting that she only lost one of them, don't you think? Finally we replaced the little streaker with an updated doll who came equiped with a more permanant, painted-on pair of shells. And then, lo and behold, the bra makes a sudden appearance. Where did it go? Did it migrate much? How sad is it that I was able to instantly identify it? Pretty sad. Well, little seashells, I'm going to send you back into the ebb and flow of the garbage because sadly, that's where Ariel already went. (Yikes, now I'm thinking about Toy Story 3; I hope I didn't hurt Ariel's feelings too bad when I threw her away!)

Solution to the Mommy Problem

2011-04-04T14:17:00.000-06:00

Homework, oh homework. You are making life between Stomper and his mother rather challenging these days. I try to be nice - and I am. For a while. And he tries to be nice. Briefly. And then he starts with the contradictions and distractions and bouncing off the wall, almost literally. No, actually it's sometimes literally. I have to ask that kid to do each separate task at least eight times. I just can't quite bring myself to set him afloat on his own personal ocean of homework all along. So a couple of hours later we're both close to tears. On one particular day last week, Stomper and I were kneeling by the bed pounding through another afternoon of homework. As I was dragging Stomper along by his big toe, he valiantly resisting all the way, I broke down and dropped my head into my arms to take a few quiet breaths before braving the next battle. Clever little Stomper - he knew how to soften up his mommy! I felt him climb on my back and begin a surprisingly soothing massage, giggling madly all the while because he knew exactly what he was doing. Sheesh - even that tiny little wedge of my face shows the bags under my eyes....

Baking Attempts

2011-03-27T22:53:00.001-06:00

I have this new analogy for parenting. Count on me to relate it to food. So picture this. You decide to make a cake. Yum. We all love cake, right? Instantly you get a mental image of your cake. Mine? Chocolate, definitely. With fresh raspberries and maybe a layer of ganache in the middle. Swirls of buttercream frosting coating everything. I'd even like to make the top look nice with some chocolate shavings or something. And you get kind of excited - you can picture just how delectable it is going to be! Then you start to make it. And reality hits. Your oven doesn't heat evenly and so the cakes come out lopsided. You can't find your ganache recipe so you kind of make it up and it ends up too runny and drips all over the place. Your raspberries are too ripe and end up on the mushy side. And as you're trying to at least put some pretty frosting holding it all together it all just starts dripping down the sides and no matter how you scoop it and scoop it up it all just sags down the sides until it ends up in a puddle on the platter. The final result? A bit of a mess:

I mean, it's still delicious, still chocolatey, still covered in creamy yumminess. It just doesn't quite look like the cake you pictured in your head. After a brief run through the stages of grief, (Anger at the cake, Bargaining with the cake, Depression about the cake....) you finally come to acceptance. Oh well, you think, whatever. Just get me a plate and a fork and cut me a piece of that funny looking, delicious chocolate cake!

This is how I feel about parenting. I just keep trying for that gorgeous cake and life is just a little messier than that. At least I'm in the kitchen, right? At least I haven't pitched my cake out the window and into the neighbor's yard. I'm still baking. It's delicious.

As a side note, I noticed myself doing something rather odd the other day - and after thinking through my cake analogy I can hardly blame myself. Bitty had accidently brought home a duplicate of a worksheet she had to complete. I had the compulsion to work on the extra one along side her. It was the best homework page I ever did. Just look!

Yes, I can hear you all going, "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" Leave me alone. I can't tell you how satisfying it was to see a simple task with clear instructions placed before me. Something for which I knew exactly what was expected of me and then I carried out the task perfectly, with some creativity and a correct answer at the completion of the task. This is not something I encounter often in parenting. It was very therapeutic.

The First Annual Team Firestorm Bike Fest

2011-03-27T22:29:00.001-06:00

What a gorgeous morning. It was crisp and cold and clear. We had a stormy day on Friday, and expect another again today, but for Saturday morning, it was perfect. Saturday was the birthday of our friend Ben,who passed away in October. His family and friends decided to celebrate the day by holding an event in honor of his favorite past-time - cycling. An absolutely huge group of people met at the mouth of Emigration Canyon this morning and rode the canyon together. (Well, I rode in a truck in order to be the photographer of the day. I really need to get on a bike at some point so I can take part next year! Taking all the pictures was really fun, though.) It was so incredible and quite awe-inspiring to see that number of people all gathering to honor and celebrate Ben and his family. The energy was happy and poignant. And powerful. I'm sure Ben got to spend a few mintues with us there today. He is missed. I'm so thankful to have had the chance to see the smiles on the faces of his friends and wife and adorable kids, and to see a collected group of people united in celebration of his wonderful life. Happy Birthday, Ben.

Allison the Awesome

Allison and her Darling Kids

My Troy as he was pulling into the parking lot before the race

My long-time 'back door' neighbor Kathryn, isn't she lovely?

Kenton, Kathryn, Troy GHD3 (my old next door neighbor), My Troy and Rob H.

My Troy, at the top

GHD3, of good cheer, as always!

Two Very Tough Chicks - Melissa and Lisa - I gotta try harder to emulate these two gorgeous gals...

Take A Picture; It'll Last Longer

2011-03-26T07:07:00.002-06:00

Somehow the light pink seems less offensive than 100% Cougar Blue would. This is the shirt I found Bundle in when I picked her up from the home of our Cougarite Friends on the day of BYU's Sweet 16 game. I could hardly object - the family would actually be coming into our home that night to watch the game with us. We did our best to make it a fun night - we scootched the couches up close to the t.v. We got pizza and made salad and treats. We even cheered our hearts out for BYU. It was such a great game! So close! BYU and Florida were tied at the end of regulation - how exciting. Our friends were so anxious they couldn't even sit - they had to stand up and pace around. And rock back and forth from time to time. I was a little afraid we would have to administer CPR because I thought at least one of them would pass out. Which is why it was so heartbreaking when the Cougars just fell apart in overtime. It was tough to watch and tough to see our friends just wilt. I was heartily sorry for the loss - I even woke in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because I was thinking of Jimmer and also my friends. Sigh. What a great year. I wonder if I'll always harbor a slight fondness for BYU basketball now.....no, probably not. :)

A Bundle By Any Other Name

2011-03-19T14:57:00.000-06:00

When our little Bundle arrived almost two years ago (!!!), her blog name just seemed obvious. She was such a perfect little bundle! As she has gotten older I've really wondered about finding a new name for her, but she has made it clear that Bundle is still perfect. Over the past few months she has become very attached to her pacifier and her blanket. Not one or the other, but both at the same time. All throughout the day she'll suddenly state, "Binki! Bankie!" (It's a good thing the two are always demanded together because it's nearly impossible to differentiate the two words.) She'll go in search of her beloved items - luckily she has multiples of each otherwise I'm sure I'd be scrambling all the time to located them, since she seems to randomly dump them as quickly as she demands them. She'll then bring me, after firmly lodging her binki in her mouth, one of her blankets. After handing it to me, she'll turn around and start reversing - I keep expecting to hear the BEEP BEEP BEEP of a truck as it backs up - knowing that I'll be there with the blanket outstretched so she can just back right into it. I then wrap it around her and tuck it under her arms which she then folds in front of herself so she's all wrapped up. It's adorable. She walks around for a while, all bundled up, just like she's always liked it.

Oh yeah, she also loves this big puffy pink coat - she'll often refuse to take it off all day long. So once wearing the coat and wrapped in the blanket she's so puffy I can barely pick her up. It's like holding a marshmallow. A giant pink marshmallow.

She's been totally healthy this week, for the first time in what seems like months, and it turns out she's quite charming and adorable when she feels good! Sorry to say that I'd almost forgotten how much fun she is. Bundle has been talking up a storm - she repeats everything I say (which is sometimes alarming....) and seems to understand it too. I love how she walks around the house and says, "Mom! "Meere!" (Come here.) And I'm also happy to report that her appetite has returned with a vengeance. We may get her to gain a pound or two for the first time since she turned about 1.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I do have to report on Bundle's love affair. Besides calling for her binki/banki combo all day long, I also regularly get a call for "Buzz! Woody! Jessie!" That girl adores her Toy Story. I try to not play it non stop, but I will confess to having used it from time to time to completely absorb her while I got something done. Thankfully Stomper went through a similar love affair when he was two so we have an actual Buzz and Woody on hand to keep her company. I see a Jessie entering our life in the near future. I just can't decide if it will be on Easter or on her Birthday that it will get delivered. I know Easter should really be less about the gifts, but I can't help getting excited to see her reaction to the arrival of a Jessie doll. I don't know if I can wait until June.

I'm just not entirely sure that Jessie will fit in the stroller!