Getting Noticed

Nathan has finally noticed girls. Kind of. He came home from school and told me he thinks he might want some chlorine.
Hmmm....
Chlorine? I asked him why and he told me he thought it smelled nice.
Really?
Then...
I asked, "Do you mean cologne?"

Yep.

A Series of Unfortunate Events, or It's Hard To Be A Girl

As a caution, if you have a weak stomach, or cannot find humor in bodily functions, please stop now....
"We" decided that we would go for a little ride up the canyon for a really great hike last Saturday afternoon. The weather was beautiful so we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to be outside. There was beauty all around...

Lots of opportunities for throwing rocks into the water...
But as is usually the case when you throw children (and husbands) into the mix, things do not go as planned.
Intitally, we were supposed to go up to a trailhead that would start us on a wonderful hike to the top of the mountain that we see every morning from our house.

We had driven about an hour on a dirt road to get there, getting higher and higher up the side of the mountain, when we encountered snow. Burke was confident in his new truck's ability to get past it, and put it into four wheel drive.
We slid.
Then he got out and locked the hubs and tried again. We slid again, this time accomanied by screaming all around.
Then we had a little discussion about how sliding off a cliff is not in the best interest of his family. Or his truck.
He acquiesced and we did some driving gymnastics to turn around and find another hike that wouldn't be so dangerous.

Little did we know what lay ahead...

We found a little lake with what appeared to be trails around it. We pulled off and decided to make the best of the situation.
We had been hiking for about 10 minutes when the kids all declared they were starving to death. I couldn't believe the dead moose we found didn't kill their appetites.
We stopped to give them a snack and let Burke play with his range finder and binoculars and relive his deer hunt. While we were checking out the lay of the land through the binoculars, Annika wandered off. I looked over my shoulder to see if I could find her, and noticed her standing off in some bushes.
Thinking that was strange, I asked her what she was doing. She told me she was using the bathroom.
Only I noticed that she didn't seem to be squatting. I asked her if she needed help, and she told me she had just finished.
As she got redressed, and rejoined the group, I saw a giant wet spot on the leg of her jeans. When I asked her what it was (hoping against hope I wasn't right), her answer was, "It just isn't fair that the boys can just stand up and go wherever they want."
Yep.
And it wasn't fair that she was the butt of jokes for the next 15 minutes (but it was pretty funny).

We decided to press on, following Burke into more and more snow.
Finally, the trail was gone and we were proceeding down the side of a hill falling and sliding in the cold wet muddy snow as Burke strolled on a quarter-mile ahead.
I rebelled and told Burke what I thought about his wilderness guide abilities.
Then we turned and headed back, while Burke stubbornly led himself on a wonderful-- yet short-- hike.
The kids and I found some great rocks and spent some time throwing them in the water, until Annika told me she needed some help to finish the aforementioned job.
When she had previously felt the warmth seeping down her leg, she decided to cut it off, but still needed to answer the call of nature.
As I explained to her, every woman must learn the best and easiest way to take care of business. I took care to stay out of her way.
At this point, Adrienne decided she needed in on the action. I explained and helped, until she told me she needed to go #2. (Sorry about the graphic nature, but I tell it like it is.)
I don't even like #2 at home, so Burke got to step in at this point. He helped her, cleaned her up, and got his pack back on (the awesome Eagle Scout was even prepared with toilet paper!)
Unfortunately, after the job was done, he didn't watch where she was stepping and neither did she.
Yep.
It was ugly.
Blech.
Burke laughed.
Then I did. What else can you do?

The shoe came off and went in the lake for a good washing.
Then we decided we had had enough fun and headed back to the truck.

That is when Adrienne found her "very useful walking stick". It was helpful until she tripped over it, landed on it with her mouth, and came up with a mouthful of blood and a very loose front tooth that was previously not loose at all.

Needless to say, it was a very somber, very smelly ride home.

Wrapping It Up

So, I would like to post some pictures of the rest of our summer, but between our camera, computer, and the operator, the rest of our summer pictures and the first day of school pictures were deleted!
Grrrrr.
Oh well, life goes on, and I'm sure they will be kept in my mind's eye forever.
Right.

Anyway, I do have some great pictures from when our friends invited us to come on their boat for some end of summer fun.
We had a great time. I attempted to waterski with minimal success, but Nathan and Burke took on wakeboarding. There are no pictures of my skiing, unfortunately. I think Burke and company were too busy laughing at my self inflicted water torture to think of taking pictures.
For his first try to do anything like that, Nathan did fairly well (better than I did). He got up on his first try, but his chatty mom missed the photo op (which lasted about 2 seconds).
Burke did great. Got up (after a few tries) and cruised all over the place. The rest of the kids went swimming around in the lake and played on the beach when we took a break. We all had a great time, despite being unable to move the next morning.
We even got to take in a beautiful sunset. Thanks for a wonderful evening of family fun!
Here is some video of Burke's Sweet Moves:

Funnies

I love kids. They are so funny and say the most hilarious things.
For instance:

We have some stray cats that hang around our backyard. Actually they hang around the field behind our backyard, but seem to have adopted our yard and our garden as their personal hunting and litterbox area.
(Hunting mice is fine, the litterbox I have a problem with...eeew. That is why Burke got a pellet gun for Christmas. He is too soft-hearted to use it, however.)
Anyway, one of the cats is expecting and we were talking about kittens over dinner one evening when Kade announced that he thought he had seen one of them "laying her kittens" in the garden. (Thankfully, it didn't really happen. I think he was just witnessing something else. Eeeeww....)

Adrienne loves swimming lessons. She thinks she is a pro. She thinks she already knows how to swim. How wrong she is. She jumped off the side of the pool with no floatie or teacher around.
Once she was rescued and after I regained my ability to speak, she told me, "See, I told you I can swim."
She has been repeating the desire to not wake up on the wrong side of the bed whenever she says her prayers. I finally asked her what that was all about when I tucked her in one night. She told me she had to move all the way over to the side of the bed against the wall because if she slept close to the edge of the bed, she might fall out and land on the floor. And that-- she said-- is the wrong side of the bed.

We had a ward pool party last month. Burke told me he was going to take Annika and Kade over to the diving pool. I assumed (you know what they say about ass-u-me) that he was going to have them hang out in the shallow area while he dived.
When he came back about half an hour later, he told me, "Hey, did you know that if the lifeguards have to rescue you, you have to fill out paperwork?"
Apparently Annika jumped off the diving board and floated like a rock.
Burke didn't realize that when I told him about the kids jumping off the diving board at swimming lessons, they always had a floatie.

Nathan keeps telling me that he thinks he has hit puberty. I hear it every day when he comes up with something else. The latest was when he left me a message on the answering machine. He listened to it himself later and then proudly told me, "See, I don't sound like a girl anymore."

Catching Up

Since my laptop died and the kids got out of school for the summer, it has been really hard for me to keep up with blogging.
We are keeping busy with summer activities.
Here goes:
Everyone is in swimming lessons,
Nathan is participating in a High Adventure Kids Camp,
He also started piano lessons (better late than never),
Kade's dojo is closing,
But we are looking for a new one (to start in September),
I spoke in the Saturday evening session of our stake conference,
Had a conference related hair emergency,
Which led to being able to visit with my newest twin nieces,
Burke still has a job,
and nobody has even gotten a sunburn yet because I have been on top of the sunscreen this summer!
Yea me!
That's it in a nutshell.
I will try to post photos later, once I figure out how to do it with my new camera on my old computer.

Summer Fun

We are furiously making plans for the summer.
The kids are working on the fun stuff.
I am working on getting more organized and teaching them how to help around the house.
(A nice way of saying they better be getting their jobs done before I end up yelling.)
I have some ideas, but haven't implemented them yet.
I will let you know how it goes.
But probably not for a few days because my beloved laptop is now officially a glorified paperweight.
I have to go alllll the wayyyyy downstairs to get on the internet now, and I am basically lazy, so I am only down here every few days.

But I am getting more accomplished around the house.
Hmmmm.....
Could the two things be related?

Goals

I completed my first (and probably only) 5k Saturday.
It is something I have always wanted to do, and I finally did it.
I wasn't very fast, but I ran (jogged) the whole thing.
I didn't stop to walk even once.
And by doing that, I fulfilled my goal. Which felt great!
I was very proud of myself, especially since I am not much of a runner and I hurt my foot right before we left.
A little tape and I was as good as new.
Kind of.
It was a good thing it was cold, because I think it kept my feet numb and I didn't feel a thing.
Burke did the race with me.He hardly broke a sweat and could have run ahead, but he stayed by my side until the very end when he let me finish first. What a guy.

The best part, aside from finishing, was when I was the winner of two movie tickets at the end of the race.

And then we went to breakfast at Village Inn.

And ate crepes

with whipped cream

and strawberries....

YUM!

Fishin' In The Dark

Burke took Nathan and went fishing the other night.
An old friend from the college days went with them.
They had success, despite Burke taking a very cold bath.
Nathan had a lot of fun and learned how to gut a fish.
He shared the experience the next evening over dinner accompanied by his sisters' squeals of disgust.

Why I Love the Library

We love the library at our house.
We go there a lot.
They have lots of great programs for children.
My kids have aged out of storytime (not grown out-- they still love it)
Now we head to the library for great books, fun toys, interesting magazines, and computer games.
There is a chess club each Wednesday that is just for kids. The kids there teach each other the game, with oversight from the leader. I think it helps take the pressure off. Annika had so much fun, Kade was intent on figuring out the best move, and Nathan was sure he would win every game, but learned a hard lesson about practice... it makes you good if you do it, and beatable if you don't.
Adrienne even played last time we went. (She only lasted about 3/4 of one game, but did fairly well against a 12 year old).

The chess club leader is dynamic, energetic, and involved with the kids. He plays music, provides a treat, and makes sure the kids don't give up.

At our house, a trip to the library is considered a treat and my kids look forward to it every time. (Good incentive for getting chores done quickly).
We love the monthly Monday night activities,
Summer reading programs,
and various parties (Nathan went to the Percy Jackson party a few months ago and "discovered" he belongs in the Hermes cabin),

Plus, it is all free!
Well, minus the $78 they took from my property taxes to pay for it...
And the fines I get when that darn lone book doesn't make it back in the library bag in time for the trip back.
Worth it though, every dime.

Randomness

How do you know spring is on the way? Surely not by checking the weather. Around our house, it is when the trampoline goes back up.
You may wonder why this photo is noteworthy... It is because the plate is Nathan's and he actually ate what was on it. Highly unusual for super picky Nathan to eat any sort of pasta. (He really wanted dessert). We had to record the event for posterity.

What do you do with all that Easter Chocolate?
Build a chocolate palace, of course! Mmmmmmm..... I wanna live there.

Yep, we're on borrowed time.
The other two have 155,000 (and in the shop right now) and 125,000 (currently unregisterable). Just hoping we can squeeze out another year.

A Toothy Grin

So I took the kids in to the dentist for a check-up the other day.
No biggie.
Except when they casually told me that Annika has an extra tooth.

Huh?

Ummm. Okay.

She has an extra tooth located somewhere between her two incisors.
When we got home I looked really hard and figured out which one was the extra.
The dentist said it happens occasionally.

But still...
Weird.

At least the orthodontics bill won't be as bad as I thought. That extra tooth has kept an extra space for the big teeth to come in.

Christmas Cookies

Or a burnt offering?
Yep, I've been baking.
While sleeping.
Didn't work out so well.

A Fair Question

As we were leaving the Priesthood Preview/Great to Be 8 programs at the church last night, Adrienne asked the Bishop why he lives at the church.
Poor guy.

By the way, I am thrilled to have those particular things over with for this year!
I slept very well last night.

A Double Dare

I guess she showed them... Yep, she's a cutie. And a daredevil.

Spelunking

We went outdoors.
With the spirit of adventure.
It was an arduous hike that could have taken millions of years--like our destination.
But didn't.

The kids did better than I thought, especially because Adrienne was in the back carrier.
I didn't happen to be the carrier of the back carrier, or it would have taken a million years and a trip to the emergency room to get there and back.
Burke was a trooper.
It was worth it in the end, though. We all felt a sense of accomplishment and were even more excited to see what treasures awaited us inside the cave.

My old high school biology teacher was the ranger at the top of the trail. He greeted me with a hug.
The kids were wide-eyed after seeing me hug a strange man.
Got lots of questions.
Giggled a bit.
We entered the cave and the darkness surrounded us.
Poor Adrienne.

I told the kids about my brother's song about this same cave when he was little:
"Oh, we're going to the caaaaaave,
Where they turn out the lights,
And I get scaaaaaared!"

The kids really had a great time, but by the time we got to the bottom of the trail, they all said they didn't ever want to go back. They were too tired to ever do it again.
Hmmmmm.
Maybe it will be a little bit like having a baby. All the pregnancy and delivery difficulty recedes from memory and you are left with only the thoughts of cute little baby hands and feet and cute little smiles.

I would like to make this a tradition. Hopefully memories of the trail's difficulty will recede and they will remember only these things:


No family adventure would be complete without Annika making some special friends along the way. On this trip she chatted up the rangers who were on the tour, and told the guide that she wanted to be a ranger like him when she grew up. He melted.
At the end the ranger on the right gave her a special sticker that said she helped protect the cave and the ranger on the left let her wear his hat for this photo. She was pretty excited.

It was a great chance to get out and let the kids experience something that I did when I was little.
Although we were pretty sore the next day, I think they had a lot of fun. Hopefully I can talk them into it next year.

An Af-fair to Remember

Sorry about the pun, I couldn't resist.
We ticked another item off our "summer fun" list a week before school started. We got to one of the county fairs.
The kids and I had a great time, we just wished poor daddy didn't have to work so that he could have come.
There are lots of different activities for the kids to do, in addition to the many booths selling various items and treats.
Each of the kids had a chance to ride a pony as well. Annika and Adrienne were so excited, but Nathan and Kade surprised me with their reluctance. They mounted up, despite their fears.
And liked it, even if they tried not to show it.

There were horse and wagon rides as well. Annika really wanted to go for a ride, so we climbed in despite the dusty trail and the hot day. Annika really enjoyed it and talked the wagonmaster's ear off. He let her climb over the seats to ride in front and help him with the horses.

She was in heaven.
He told me afterward she reminded him of his 6 year old granddaughter.
That's Annika, she could strike up a conversation with a lamppost. I admire her ability to make people feel at ease with her. Maybe it is her generally goofy personality, or maybe because she is just a sweet little person. I hope she doesn't ever become too self-conscious to keep it up.


After the cowgirl took over the reins, they all talked me into getting them some cowboy hats. Everyone got one, except Nathan, who is getting too cool for such childish things.
The girls got pink, Kade got a straw hat with blue trim.
We had enough time left to stop over and play with the bubbles (there's always time for bubbles), and the birds.

Although, I didn't have much to do with the birds aside from taking this picture. I think they are creepy.
It was a really fun afternoon and a great way to close out our summer fun list. Hopefully we will eventually get a chance to do some of the things we never got around to doing this summer.