Fun is where you find it

I hope you don't mind me bragging a little, but I have great kids. About a month ago we went on an outing. We went to the Monte L. Bean museum down at BYU and then we went to the small gardens at Thanksgiving Point. Both of these activities are free. I was struck as we were walking around that a good number of other kids would be hanging on their Mom saying how bored they were. But my kids really enjoyed looking at the animals at the Bean museum, which they had seen many times before. And, despite there not being many flowers to look at at the gardens, they ran around collecting tulip bulbs the grounds crew had missed. They were genuinely having fun.

Viewing bugs at the Bean museum.

I love this butterfly display. The whole thing is made up of butterfly specimens.

The kids at the gardens at Thanksgiving Point.

My attempt at nature photography.
Not many flowers were out, but these tulips were very pretty.

Soccer

I signed my kids up for soccer this year. I was originally just going to sign up Caleb, but Sophie said she wanted to play too. Emily told me such glowing stories about the fun times they had going to games, picnics in the park, playing at the playground. What she neglected to tell me about was the rain, gale force winds and freezing temperatures. Despite the horrible weather, the kids had a fun time.

Sophie's team was the Blue Dolphins. I made an awesome cupcake cake to celebrate their last game as I was in charge of treats that day.

Sophie's the player on the extreme left.

Caleb in action.

This is Caleb's scary goalie face. He was absolutely hilarious.

Sophie's Baptism

Sophie was baptized on June 4th. It was really an exciting day for her. She looked forward to it all month and told me how excited she was for it.

Sophie and Aaron before she got baptized.

She was excited to wear the baptism dress Aaron's Mom made for his sisters.

Post baptism. She picked out the dress herself
in a marathon shopping trip with Mom and Grandma.

After the baptism, we had lunch.
All the adults sat around and talked.

While the kids played on the new swing set.

It was really a terrific and special day.

If you can't say nuthin' nice, say somethin' funny

The weather situation here in Utah has been very wet. The newscasters are continually comparing our rainfall to 1983, the last great flood in the area. Anyway, as I have been contemplating (and often cursing) the rainy/snowy (Yes, snow, they are predicting 4 inches in the valleys tomorrow.) weather we have been having, I have been thinking of a story that I read in a book called Sanpete Tales: Humorous Folklore from Central Utah. If you can get this book, I recommend it, it was funny. Many of the settlers of Sanpete County were of Scandinavian descent. The story preserves their spoken accent.

"One year it had been unbearably hot the entire summer; the canyon streams had dried to a mere trickle. We had done all that we could do to conserve water, but it wasn't enough. Unless it rained, the crops were doomed; so Sunday was selected as a day of fasting and prayer for rain.

Hans P. Peterson was chosen to offer the prayer. He had been away to school and later gone on a mission to the Southern States, adding a Southern drawl to his Danish accent and his polysyllabic vocabulary. This is how he supplicated the Lord for rain: "Oh Faathehr, thou great and all-powerful antecedent of all that lives and grows upon the earth, we do beseech thee to meticulously guide us in our meandering on this mundane sphere and to help us in this present crisis. Thou knowest that hydrogen oxide, sometimes known as oxygen hydride, is essential to plant growth and we beseech thee to let it descend from the heavens onto the earth, and cause that our plant life may assimilate it and grow to maturity and be food for our bodies and strength for our souls. This we pray for in the name of thine only perfect Son, Jesus. Amen."

It didn't rain. Faithful Andrew surmised that God couldn't understand Brother Hans P. and Mormon Preacher Nielson seconded this position. So they decided to try once more. This time Lead Pencil Petersen was chosen to make the prayer, for said Faithful Andrew, "His prayer vill be straight as a ramrod vit not even a kink at de top to pull it back vit."

This is how Lead Pencil Peterson put the case before the Lord: "Our Heavenly Fadder, ve has come togedder, de whole bunch of us, to pray for rain. Tings look very bad down here and de plants looks purty drooped oond veary. Now vat ve arr praying for is rain, but understand, Fadder, ve don't vant von of dese tunder oond lightening showers, for dey neffer do much good oond often dey do a hell of a lot of damage, oond ve don't vant no gully vasher either. Let de rain be a slow and gradual von vit plenty of vet in it. Now, Fadder, ve hope dat you vill gif dis supplication your undivided attention for it mean much to both us oond you. You understand effen ve don't get no crops den you don't get no tithing. In de name of de Son. Amen."

Well, you know, it clouded up that afternoon and by evening there was a steady, gentle downpour which lasted a couple of days. Lead Pencil Peterson gave full credit to God. He said, "I know de Lord vould see dat it vas a good deal as soon as he understood how de business affected Him."

An excellent lesson in praying for what you really need and having the faith that it will be granted. Now, if everyone in Utah would just pray for a little dry. Sunny would be nice too. And don't forget warm.

Caleb's Dream Job

You all know how much Caleb loves animals. I recently told him that he could be a zoo keeper as a job. Apparently this was a revelation for him. Today during church he said, "When I am older and you come to the zoo, you will see me in the cage scooping poop." He demonstrated the poop scooping. Then he said, "I will say 'Hi, Mom!'" and he waved at me. I was laughing so hard. It's too bad that this was during the sacrament and I couldn't tell anyone because all the giggling would have been totally inappropriate. When I finally was able to tell Aaron, he laughed and said, "Well, at least he doesn't have any misconceptions about what the job entails."

We had a very cold January. Weeks went by without the high temperatures creeping above 32. It was also inverted (smog trapped in the valleys), but there was little snow. All of the nasty of winter, without any of the fun. We had to do something to keep our spirits up. So, we put out a lawn display that I had seen in Family Fun magazine a few years ago.

Penguins flocked to our house for Penguin Auditions.

The kids and I made almost 30 penguins out of pop bottles. The kids had a lot of fun making and personalizing the penguins. Then I put out the sign. The kids would put out a few penguins every day.

A small family of penguins.

A whole herd of penguins in our front yard.

We had quite a few neighbors comment and laugh about it. One family from our ward kept driving by our house to count how many penguins were out that day.

The kids love to go on business trips with Aaron. They asked me in early January when we would be able to go again. When I mentioned it to Aaron, he said that he would be going to Cedar City to do a final on a building on the SUU campus. So the last week of January, we went on a quick trip to visit springtime. We drove down to Cedar City early Friday morning. Aaron worked all day. We visited the toy aisle in Walmart and went to a park to play. It was lovely. After Aaron was done, we got to go into the replica of the Globe theater that they have there. We walked all around and talked about how theater was in the time of Shakespeare. There was a stage door open, so we walked out onto the balcony. It was cool to see the stage and theater from that vantage point.

Then we drove to St. George to stay with Aaron's Grandmother Renee. It was lovely to see her again. The temperatures were in the low 60's, lovely weather for playing outside. The kids all jumped on the trampoline and played in the sandbox. We had brought scooters, so they rode scooters up and down Renee's street. In the afternoon we visited the dinosaur museum they have in St. George. The museum is built on a spot where my dad's cousin found dinosaur foot prints. The slab below has the foot prints, tail prints, and hand marks of a dinosaur who squatted near a lake or stream and was probably eating.

Katrina, Caleb, Hannah, and Maggie posing like the dinosaur who made the marks.

Maggie eating something, Lexi, Renee's granddaughter, and Sophie.

This is a drawing of what they think the dinosaur might have looked like.

Here's a diagram of the prints and an interpretation.

The original prints are in the far corner of the museum that you can see in the top picture. Then the dinosaur gets up and walks across the stream bank. The museum has twenty six of his foot prints. It was pretty interesting. The kids played outside in a sand dino-dig for quite some time. It was so lovely to just be outside and not have to be bundled up to our ears. After dinner, we drove home. We didn't get home until midnight, but everyone slept in the next morning.

On a side note, it has been so cold and nasty since then, that I haven't cleaned out the car yet. It still is full of garbage, sleeping bags and scooters. Maybe sometime soon it will warm up enough to make me want to go outside and get that cleaned up. It's not looking likely anytime in the next week.

Happy Birthday Katrina

Having your birthday on Christmas is super exciting. A whole day of presents and people just for you. We got up around 8:30 and opened presents from Santa. Then we went to my mom's house for Christmas brunch and opened more presents. And finally, in the evening, after a delicious ham from my brother-in-law, James, Katrina got the blow out the candles on her cake and open more presents.

Katrina kept telling me, "Take a picture, Mom." Then she would run over to see it, run back and say, "Take a picture, Mom."

A little before Katrina's birthday, we asked her what kind of cake she wanted. She said "Duck." Then we were trying to teach her that she was going to be three years old. So we asked her "How old will you be on your birthday?" And she said, "Duck." She was not going to be side-tracked by this new topic.

Katrina with her ducky cake. She ate some frosting, hence the blue mouth.

Katrina helped me make the cake. She put the ingredients in the bowl and licked the spoon. She was so excited about it that we had to go visit it while it was cooling. Then she helped me decorate it. Mostly this consisted of her talking a lot and sampling the frosting.

Christmas day was really nice. The temperatures were in the 40's, so in the afternoon we went outside and shot off rockets with Grandpa. The kids jumped on the trampoline and Katrina and Lia played in the sand box.

Here's Katrina in her "Santa" coat and barefeet. They were blue by the time she came in.

Katrina got so many fun presents. She played and was happy all day.

Dora and Backpack figurines that came with a Dora Candyland game.

Katrina and Jakey playing Hop goes Froggio.

Now that Katrina's reached the ripe old age of three, she has some big mile stones ahead of her. She's getting a big girl bed this week and her crib and binky are going away. She's also on her last pack of diapers. She's really excited about learning to go pee in her special potty. And she's a Sunbeam this year. She is such a happy and sweet girl.