Dressed in White

Ok, I've made you wait long enough. This is just a little movie I put together of my photo shoot with Soph. I've had this idea for a long time, but finally made it happen. I tried to do it with Chloe's baptism pictures, but the battery in my video camera died about two minutes after starting, so we didn't get far. This time I was charged and ready. Sophie was a little impatient with me after her shoot. She wanted her pictures, and she wanted them now! I wanted to make a movie and do some cute things. She wanted a DVD just like I give my clients, so I made her one. Today she went and hooked up her mini DVD player, and watched it several times. I love it. It makes me happy that she loves it (especially after all of her complaining). And the picture looks much better on her DVD player than on Blogger. Thankfully.

And since I couldn't include ALL the pictures in the movie, I guess I'll let you see them too. We're getting excited for the big day, but still no time set. They should let us know in a week or two.

Worth Repeating

We had a full day today. After all the morning routine, Sophie was getting stir-crazy sitting around waiting for 4:00 to get here, so we went for a walk. Ended up playing in the creek. I so wish I'd had a camera. The girls came home soaking wet. When 4:00 finally got here they ran across the street to the neighbors for a primary activity. As soon as that was over we had to hop in the car -- we had an appointment to get Sophie's hair done. Again, I wish I'd taken my camera to get a shot of the process. That took way longer than I expected. I was getting a little nervous, and Sophie had left her shoes at home so we had to run home quick before heading to Salt Lake. She REALLY wanted the Salt Lake temple. She has been planning her baptism pictures for months! I finally agreed to doing them on Friday (she wanted them way earlier), but then we saw the forecast and I really didn't want to be outside taking pictures in 92 degree weather. Today was the last "nice" day for a while, so we snuck it in. It was perfect, and I'm glad she didn't let me talk her in to changing the location. It all worked out. She was beautiful. And I actually took pictures -- but you'll have to wait. On the way home Sophie asked, "Can we do this everyday?" I think she approved.

Sum, Sum, Summertime

School ended and I disappeared. The girls' last day was June 4th. Two days before Chloe had Colonial Days for the 3rd graders. She got her dad to take the day off and go help out with it -- the whole day. He's a great guy.

Once school was no longer tying us to their schedule, I got to come up with my own. We started our family work camp, although I'll admit it's not quite as rigorous as I'd like. But hey, our house simply isn't big enough to spend 4 hours cleaning every day. We do 2 rooms each day, takes us about an hour total (or less when they're really motivated), and my house is looking super good. But more importantly, my kids are learning valuable skills and they have something to occupy their time for a bit.

Aside from cleaning we do math every day. Chloe got so excited at school when they finished level 3 and got to move on to level 4. They got about 30 lessons into it before school got out. She wanted to try to finish level 4, so I bought the curriculum and we've been working on it. I like to harness that excitement, and take advantage of it when it comes along because it certainly isn't always there. Sophie plays her own math games and does worksheets while Chloe is doing hers.

The only other thing we've been doing is swimming lessons. Just Chloe; Sophie wasn't interested. Chloe loves the water and she's been loving her lessons! She finished level 4 and will start level 5 on Monday. It's a lot of fun to watch her swim. She does a great job. Brandon has told her after she passes all the levels (there's 6 of them) he will hire her to teach him how to swim! I think she's excited about that.

I Love Memorial Day

Growing up my family always celebrated Memorial Day, and I have fond memories of it. We'd go to the Paris and Bloomington cemeteries and put flowers on all our ancestors graves and then have a big picnic at my grandma's. But after leaving home Memorial Day just wasn't the same. I didn't know if it was not having family around to celebrate with, marrying someone who didn't have Memorial Day traditions, or what exactly. Then I moved to Utah and realized that everyone here celebrates like I'm used to. I guess it's a Mormon thing. We honor our ancestors, while the rest of the country seems to treat it as a second Veteran's Day. I never got that.

This year Brandon was trying hard to make the holiday special for me and he offered to take us down to the Bingham cemetery where he has some relatives buried. I was excited at first, but then I decided it probably wasn't worth it. It wouldn't be the same without Grams telling us stories about everyone buried there, and I didn't have enough time to prepare something that we could teach our kids. That's my goal for next year. Instead, we decided to just do some fun things.

We started out by having breakfast out on the patio. Brandon got out his little stove and cooked pancakes for us. You may notice Sophie's plate with a waffle. She made her own, but the rest of us did have pancakes (I'm not confused). And if you really study this picture you'll also see how our house is rotting away. Oh how fun these projects are! It's never as simple as we hope, and I think we'd be much happier just living in our rotting house if we could be ignorant to the fact and just ignore it.


Then for lunch we threw together a picnic and took it to one of my favorite parks. As we were making lunch, Chloe burst into singing "God Bless the USA." I joined her, and then Brandon says, "I wish Lark was here." I'm not sure if he was just really missing her, or if he was hoping to see her sing along with us. So, off to the park we went and on our way we passed the Farmington Cemetery. What a beautiful sight that was! That's the Memorial Day I remember. Love, love, loved it!



We ate, played at the park, hiked around, and just had a great time together. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Beautiful day. We worked on the deck a tiny bit and then had FHE, which required going to another park in town and playing some crazy "tennis ball" game Chloe invented. It was a fun day with a fun little family.

Spring Wonderland

I know this isn't a big deal to most people I know -- mainly anyone who's ever lived in Wyoming, but Utah is a little different. Last year we enjoyed a nice, long, wet spring. It delayed the cotton, kept the weather cooler, and made the whole summer all around more bearable. I thought it was a fluke, but we seem to be getting a repeat this year. Last week, on MAY 24th, we got snow! Enough that it even accumulated (for a little while). This was the view out my back window:


And then Chloe ran out to cover up the holes we had just dug for the deck footers. We didn't exactly want to have to re-dig these 3 feet holes, or wait for the water to drain out of them. She's so on the ball.


She looked so cute out there in her brand new coat. Yes, I bought her a coat in May -- because it was on clearance and she's worn the same coat for two years now that she was definitely going to need a new one. And look at all the use she's getting out of it!

Five Whole Days

About two weeks ago we got to have Eli for 5 whole days. His parents got to go on vacation, and Elsie. Eli got to come to our house, the lucky duck. Ok, maybe he won't think so years down the road when he reads this (I'm sure he will), but he had a great time at our house.

First of all, his father is a liar. I've head all these horror stories about putting Eli to bed. He could not have been a better sleeper. For all 5 days he went to bed and had nap time right on schedule. He did wake up one time in the middle of the night, but went right back to sleep after I went and checked on him. And he did throw one major temper tantrum after I had to wake him up from a nap to go pick up Sophie from school, but I learned my lesson after that. His nap times were so thrilling that even my children were excited to participate.


That is the first time they have had a nap in about 3 years. Chloe and Sophie were such good helpers with Eli. We got him on Saturday, so they were around to help the whole weekend. Knowing how hard it would be without my super helpers, I made them a deal. I let Chloe stay home from school on Monday to help out, and then Sophie got to stay home on Tuesday, so I only had him alone on Wednesday. This has been Chloe's dream for a very long time. She wants to babysit so bad. And it was nice to give her a day all to herself, where she wasn't fighting with Sophie over him. They assure me that if I would just have another baby they would take care of it -- changing diapers and all. And now I'm sure they would. Not that Eli is still in diapers, but they took care of all the dirty deeds.

I think whenever Eli is dropped off at my house his parents expect to see a photo shoot afterward. I guess I'm getting pretty lazy, because it just didn't happen this time. I only got the sleeping picture (because I was so excited to see my kids napping I HAD to get a picture of that!), but Chloe took a couple.

Mother's Day

In honor of the one week anniversary, I'll finally blog about my wonderful Mother's Day. My husband really pulled it off this year. He went to a ton of effort and planned a surprise trip for me. I wasn't feeling very well for a couple days leading up to the big event, so Thursday night I was just exhausted. He told me to go to bed early and said he'd take care of getting the girls up in the morning so I wouldn't have to worry about much. I didn't set my alarm, so they came and woke me up at 8:15 (when we usually leave for school). I was panicked about them being late, but Brandon made me (in my groggy state) sit down for some breakfast -- only to find a binder on my chair. It contained an itinerary for the trip. He had taken the day off of work, notified the girls' teachers they wouldn't be at school (and made sure they got all their work done ahead of time). The binder not only contained our hotel information, but then several pages of different activities I might want to choose from. The kids and Brandon were all packed and ready to go, but I still had to get ready (I guess they didn't want to risk packing for me!)

So, off to Heber we went. I had mentioned to Brandon several weeks ago (during one of his sneaky interrogation periods) that I'd love to go back there. On the way we kind of talked about what we wanted to do, and I decided we should definitely do the train ride. We went to the train station first and got our tickets, but had a couple hours to kill so we went on a hike. It wasn't very pretty this time of year. Everything was still dead, but the weather was gorgeous and a nice day to be outdoors.



Then we rode the Heber Valley Railroad. We did the Soldier Hollow Express. We were happy to get an indoor car, recalling our trip to Durango where we were so excited to get an open car but nearly froze to death. We were able to walk around between cars, so we could go outside when we wanted, but it was also nice to be able to head back in too!



I was pretty happy to find someone who offered to take a family portrait!



We spent the evening relaxing in our hotel room. We ordered a pizza and rented a movie. The stars were not aligned for us the next day. We were going to take the kids swimming in the hotel pool (Brandon made sure they had one!), only to find out it was closed!! It was an outdoor pool so that didn't surprise me, but they had a whirlpool and sauna that was indoors and I'm still not sure why they weren't open.

So, we canned that idea and decided to go hike up to this waterfall. We got 5 miles up the canyon and the road was closed! There was a big parking lot there, so we still stopped and got out for a while. I'm sure the kids had just as much fun hiking around there as they would have on a real trail.

So, then I decided I wanted to go check out this art center in Park City. The girls were excited for it because they thought they were going to get to do some pottery, but it turned out it was just a gallery. The nice part about it was that the current exhibits were all done by K-12 students, so it really made it more relevant for the girls. After that we just hung out in Park City. I've never been down to that part of town, so it was fun to look at all the shops and see how crazy expensive everything is in that world. Chloe wanted to go into a jewelry store to look for earrings. I told her it would be fun to look, but they wouldn't have anything in her price range. I only saw one price tag in the store, on a ring for $2799. But that was nothing compared to a painting I saw that I loved -- for only $45,000.

And then we came home to our humble life -- that we can afford. Where I am reminded what true happiness is.



And it's all because of these two that I even get to celebrate Mother's Day. I love you guys! And thanks for the wonderful trip.