A week for water

After a few weeks of sweltering Utah heat, we finally managed to get out in some water this week. Our apartment complex does not have water spigots on the outside of the buildings, so there's no place to set up your own private pool party. And I'm not excited about paying more money than I would like to go an overcrowded public pool. Thankfully, our cool neighbor and her kids invited us to go wading up Provo Canyon, at a perfect little kid park. We'll definitely have go back. The cold water was a good way to offset the heat, and it wasn't as hot up there. A good little afternoon trip.


Evelyn enjoyed jumping off the bank into the water the most. I couldn't get her to actually stay in it and play. She wanted to be jumping, or walking upstream. Jill liked being on the bank and digging in the mud of course, and eating available rocks.

For the 4th, the girls and I headed up to Soda Springs, ID to see Tyler and Nicole and the cousins. We headed over to Montpelier to have a tour of the Oregon/California Pioneer Trail Museum first. It was fun, the museum guides played the parts of the era, and I learned a few things. At one part, we were able to go on a "wagon ride," where we all sat in a wagon, and a machine moved the wagon up and down like we were going over big bumps, and there were creaking noises and all that jazz. Evelyn started crying within 45 seconds, rather loudly, while Jill was watching the light and shadows play off the canopy of the wagon and talking about it. "Tree!" "Leaf!" "Light!" I was finally able to convince Evelyn with some help that we were not going to any place scary, and that we would get out of the wagon soon. After that, the kids seemed to mostly run around in the museum. I was able to keep them under some control, until we got outside and they could play. Then Uncle Tyler got ice cream. The girls thought that was great. We headed to Bear Lake, and "the beach" which I had been telling the girls about. They were going to put on their "supersuits" and "go swimmin' wif Taden and Daren."

This was the girls first beach experience. I've never been to Bear Lake before so I really didn't think it would be much of a beach. Most western lakes I've been too and cold and rocky on the shore. So I was quite surprised to find it quite like the beach, except for no salty water. After being there for an hour, Evelyn was referring to the lake as "the ocean."
There were a lot of people there, but we were able to stake out a spot and drive right down to the shore. Very cool, I thought. Except that the bathrooms were 1/3 to 1/2 of a mile away, and Ev had to go to the bathroom at one point. We walked all the way up there, and when we got into the bathroom, she refused to go. I couldn't quite believe it. So she held it, until we got back to Soda Springs, about 2 1/2 hours later. She's acquiring a fear of public bathrooms, unfortunately. It makes for great traveling and shopping experiences. Anyway, the lake is lots of fun and I definitely want to try and go up there again.

We got back to Soda, and got all changed to see the fireworks. Kaden and Evelyn fell asleep on the way, and we left them in the car while the rest of us changed. The mosquitoes are pretty bad this year there, and six feet from the car there are already 6 trying to eat Nicole and Jaren. We all slathered ourselves in bug spray, but thought the two sleeping in the car would be fine. Well, yesterday afternoon I counted 25 bites on Evelyn. She isn't itching them too bad. Yet. Getting back in the car to drive to the park I kept smashing mosquitoes that were parked on the ceiling of the car. You could tell they had been gorging themselves. Eeewww.

The girls enjoyed the fireworks much more than last year and even today, Jilly is telling everyone, "sireworks! loud!" and she says it really loud too. It's quite funny. We were 2/3 the way through the fireworks show and we hear a spraying noise, which many of us thought were fireworks going off in the surrounding neighborhood, until the people next to us are screaming and then I feel a big jet of water hitting me square in the back of the camping chair I was in. We were sitting in ball fields and the sprinklers were on. I got out of there as fast as I could, and we ended up sitting in the car for the rest of the time. A memorable fireworks show! I actually didn't get wet, thanks to the nylon back of the chair.

Here are the elk in Tyler's family's basement. Ev and Jill thought they were pretty cool, and know what elk are now.
Evelyn even got the plastic tongue out to show it to me. She wanted to lick me with it. Umm, no thanks. Both girls have developed this new thing for licking the last few weeks. They've been watching too many dogs or something.

Thanks to family and friends for a fun week!

A New Hair-do, a Mustache, a Monkey, a Cat, Some Chickens and a Couple of Delinquents

Here are some pictures of what we've been up to.

Here is the new 'do'.

This guy is suspect. If I saw him on the street I would cross to the other side yell, "Get a haircut you hippie!" as he passes.


Evelyn decided she would like to reside in the trees someday.


My cat Yoda. Once my Italian foreign exchange student friend Valeria said, "Yoda is beautiful" in her beautiful Italian accent. I have to agree. Unfortunately since he's moved to the country from the suburbs of L.A. he's let his coat go downhill a bit, it used to be less bushy and more shiny. Even worse, since moving away from home I learned that I am allergic to cats. (Pouring one out for Yoda and the times we had)


Center is Dad's wood shop. Center left is the 'friggen' huuuge' chicken coop after a windstorm (Still under construction). And now for the chickens and the little girls feeding the chickens.







Jillian thought she was a chicken.


Evelyn has been playing Mommy lately and Jilly has fun playing along. She is, after all, about the size of a large doll.

Evelyn still likes to pretend she is a baby sometimes.


But I think she likes the Mommy gig better.

Ambidextrous pitcher vs. Switch Hitter

Hello sports fans! There was a fascinating and ridiculous happening in a minor league ballgame between the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones on June 19th. I'll not try to narrate the incident, the video speaks for itself. Sports fans and non-sports fans alike will enjoy this one I think. I hope Pat Venditte makes it to the bigs as he would be fun to watch no matter how well he pitches. Here's a link...


http://slidingintohome.blogspot.com/2008/06/swtich-hitter-vs-switch-pitcher.html

Back to Utah

The girls are enjoying being back in their own space. Besides being tired, I think they are suffering from not having as many big people around to cater to their every want and need. They've (especially Evelyn) been really demanding since we got back. We left Emmett, ID at 7:30 pm Thursday night after spending a few days there with Grandma and Grandpa Cluff. I didn't really think we needed to do the night driving thing, but after the drive from WA to ID, it being one of the whiniest drives yet for us, we thought it wouldn't be a bad idea. And the two of them did fall asleep after only about 30 min on the road, and slept clear until Bountiful. That was nice, no whining, no having to reach into the backseat 8700 times, no having to go through the movie selection for the DVD player again. But, this limited bliss came with a price. We're driving down the brightly lit Wasatch front and the girls think this is great because they don't drive much in the dark these days. Like the last 4 1/2 hours they were asleep was a great nap. Anyway, we get home finally and they're all excited about thier stuff they've been missing, they want to watch a movie, blah, blah, blah. Ben and I say it's time for bed, because it's 2:30 am and you guys need to go to sleep, so we can sleep. I go through Jilly's bedtime routine, and all seems well until I tried to put her in her crib. A definite no-go. So I sing more songs, talk some more, and try to put her in again. She's screaming. I leave her screaming in her crib for the next 35 minutes, during which she tries to climb out of her crib who knows how many times, getting her knee wedged between the wall of crib slats and the top rail (3 times, ouch), and eventually falling headfirst out of her crib. After all this drama, she fell asleep with me on the couch finally at 4:15 am. Meanwhile, Evelyn didn't want to stay in her bed, so she ends up whining a bunch and sleeping as close to Ben as humanly possible in our bed. We made it through yesterday's whining spree with most of our hair, and today was better. Jilly's crib was converted to toddler bed yesterday, because she has gotten quite a bit taller and stronger since we left and could climb out no matter how low the mattress was set. She seems to like it, she's all about being a big girl like Evelyn. So hopefully with a few more days of good sleep, we should have our happy, well-adjusted kids back.
One more story. While in Emmett, Mom Cluff took me to get my hair done, which I love by the way. I got it high-lighted, and that has only happened one other time in my life. It looks great! I took Jilly along with me, and it had been a few hours since we had been out and about when we walked into the salon. (And she didn't get a very good nap either). Can you see where this is headed? She was fine while we waited for the stylist to finish with her previous appt., which ended up being about 30 minutes I think. The stylist came over and started talking to me, and Jilly immediately got grouchy. Then they put the cape on me and she started screaming. I am sort of panicking because I don't have screaming children in public very often, and all the other stylists are still being so nice saying she's so cute and all. I thought otherwise. Jill wouldn't stop, the crying just kept escalating. Mom Cluff gets her foils all put in and with a cape on and shower cap over her hair takes Jilly kicking and screaming outside. I am at somewhat of a loss to explaing this bizarre behavior in my child. I just feel bad for all the other people who have to hear it, and hope they understand. Mom brings her back in, and as soon as Jill sees me, she takes off again with the screaming. Back outside she goes. I wonder if she thought they were going to maim me or something. This happens one more time, until Mom finds an "I Spy" book in the magazine rack and this does the trick of calming her down. After that episode, she is docile, and I just avoided anything that might set her off again. She falls asleep while I'm getting my hair washed out, and is in my lap the whole time I'm getting my hair cut, but the awesomely nice stylist didn't get any hair on her. So there is Jilly's first, and probably last for a long time salon visit.
Oh my gosh, this is really long. Good thing I only do this once every few weeks. It'll be great in a family journal at some point, and when Jilly has her own 18 month old who does semi-crazy stuff, I can show her why.

Dresses and More

Here is some visual aid to help you all visualize our exciting country life.
These dresses for the girls were my project this weekend. I made my skirt a few weeks back (this is the "fire truck" outfit, as Kaden puts it), and bought too much fabric. I bought more so I could make these dresses. The girls love them. So much that within 20 minutes of these pictures, they both had food on them and had to take them off. Yay for stain remover! My grand plan was to wear all these outfits to church today, but Jilly decided to stage a sleep rebellion, and wouldn't go to bed until midnight last night and was up from 3:30 am to 6:30 am. She wasn't grumpy, she just thought it was time to get up, eat "bekast" and watch a "moooovie." She finally fell back asleep and slept in until 11:30 this morning. She's been fighting a cold/croup illness, so that's thrown her off I think. So neither her or I went to church this morning.

Besides sewing, I've been catching up on scrapbooking I've been putting off for the last 7 months or so. I'm trying to get caught up to only being 18 months behind. Haha. Good luck to me.
Us levitating on the trampoline. Ben's all about the cool picture. It was really windy and cold here the last week. It's been really weird June weather.

A favorite past-time of the girls - watching me bake. Evelyn really gets more excited than she looks in this picture. The best part for them is eating the dough when it's all done.
Evelyn's ears from nursery last week. She loves going to nursery with Grandma. It's been really nice not having to go into nursery. (I've been going to nursery nearly every Sunday for over a year now, calling/separation anxiety for Ev). I really don't mind being there, but getting more out of church has been fun. Last week Ev has what Jilly's got now, and was really sad she couldn't go. That's the first time that's ever happened. I just hope it goes home with us to Utah.
Here is the last standing of the full beard. It was fun (not shaving) while it lasted. Ben's skin wasn't liking it so well, so that's why he shaved it already. I didn't think he would until we got back to Utah.
This is during the shaving process. Nice lamb chops, huh? Personally, I'm glad they went away. Not a big fan of chops. Now he has a nice goatee he plans on keeping until someone comes down on him at BYU for having facial hair. Then it will become a wicked 'stache'.
Jilly being silly.
We caught Evelyn playing 'mommy' a few mornings back. She told Jilly she needed a bum change, and Jill laid right down and Evelyn took care of it, except for putting the diaper on. Then she stripped off Jill's jammies because "you need cothes on." Jill just ended up running around naked for a little while, which she loves. I was laughing that Jill ended up holding still for the entire process. She is very patient with big sister, most of the time. About 3 hours later, they started fighting over some treasured marbles, and Evelyn reached in front of Jilly to get some. Jill defended her stash by using her teeth on Evelyn's cheek. And she gave her a really good bite. We could even see the big gap in Jill's teeth imprinted on Ev's cheek. She's still got a nice purple bruise. It was Jill's first big biting incident. Need to nip that in the bud.

What are we up to?

Well, not a whole lot. I've been pretty lame on the blogging front lately. Especially in the picture category. Part of that is due to my parent's super-awesome camera. You can take great pictures with it, but they're huge. One picture is at least 3 MB. Try uploading one picture that size onto blogger. It takes FOREVER. Actually, it doesn't happen at all. A web-page comes up saying "the server has timed out." Well, isn't that great? So I have to get them off the camera and compress them before I can upload them. And, well, I'm lazy and that's more work than I feel like doing right now. Or for the last few weeks actually. One of these days I will feel super motivated and accomplish the compressing feat. Despite the picture size disadvantage, I really like the camera!

We'll only be here in Washington a few more weeks, time has gone by fast, as it always does here. Today it rained for a lot of the day, and we felt like we lived on the coast. It really has not been as warm here as it usually is, which makes it great for cook-outs, working in the yard, and playing outside. But not great for the farm, which is way behind on the growing season. The yummy cherries I was expecting to get just before we left are going to be hard and tart instead of sweet and juicy.

My birthday was this last Wednesday, and although I got a not-so-fun cold about a day before (and still getting rid of), I managed to make Brownie Trifle, go out to eat, and get some fun stuff for my birthday. I got a new set of dishes from Mom Cluff, and a toolbox for all my beading paraphernalia from my mom. It sure beats storing all my bead stuff in ziploc baggies. Ben gave me the complete works of C.S. Lewis, who I've been reading lately. It made me laugh because he loves books so much, and it's something I never would have thought of for myself.

Jilly is trying to potty-train again, and like last time, it's right before we make another big change of routine, so it probably won't stick. That's okay with me, she's only almost 19 months old. She talks tons, with lots of phrases. She loves Uncle 'A-Wyan' as she calls Ryan. We can't quite figure out why she loves him so much, but she wants to know where he is and when he gets off the bus from school. She also loves being outside and digging in Grandma's plants, whether they be outdoors or indoors. She's about 19 pounds now, and when she hits 20, I think we'll throw her a party. She's also started throwing big temper tantrums, and showing attitude. I don't know if it's the age, or teething, or the fact that she's been sick with one thing or another the last few weeks. Hopefully the sick fairy leaves our house soon.

Evelyn's funny thing these days are the thing she says. There's a tire-swing out back and she asks me to give her an "underwear dog." I know she means underdog, but I'm not sure where the 'wear' came in. She also walked up to me the other day and said, "Where's my Super-suit?" with some exasperation. (That's from The Incredibles, by the way). She walks around singing Disney songs a lot, lost in her own little world. She has really started liking crayons and coloring books recently, but doesn't like sharing with Jilly. I bought a box of 24 twistable crayons for the two of them, but I might need to go buy another box, especially in church. This last Sunday I was sitting on a bench with Jilly and my mom and Evelyn were sitting right behind me. I handed back a scribble pad and crayons, and Evelyn started arguing about which colors she wanted, and Jilly started whining about keeping all the colors to herself. And this is all right before the sacrament, and my goal was just to keep them quiet. They did stop fighting after a little bit, and then it was Jilly singing during the sacrament, "dis is yellow, dis is pink" over and over for every crayon she pulled out of the box. She always sings in church. It's so cute.

Now that this post is an essay on my life recently, I think I'll end it. Hope you were able to get to the bottom of it. :)

Update

This is a little update on the family I told you about a few weeks ago. Taylor, the daughter who landed in the hospital, came off the ventilator and all her tubes came out this last weekend. She's starting to eat popsicles and walk a little on her own. The worst injury she had coming out of the accident was the damage to her lungs. She's doing tons better though, and should be home within a few weeks.