More like my kids

Of course, as their mother, I think my kids are pretty great. Sometimes, I wish I could pull pieces of their personalities and add them to my own.

If I were more like Matt, I would be more kind and loving and obedient.

Matt always makes his bed in the morning without being reminded. Often, when I peek in there later in the day, I'll see he's tucked his bunny into bed too. I think it's sweet. When I drop Matt and Kate off at school in the mornings, Matt will put his arm around her and make sure she finds her way to her line before skipping off to his. It's such a funny dynamic to watch. Here we have one child who loves to be taken care of and the other who loves to be the one taking care. It's pretty cute.

If I were more like Kate, I would be more happy-go-lucky, find more joy in the simple things of life and be way less stressed out about silly things! I would also be a much better mother. Kate is going to be a great mother someday. It comes very naturally to her. She is very helpful when we are watching friend's kids or something.

She was very excited to get her own library card after she turned 5. It's nice to feel official!

If I were more like Sara, I would have a greater desire to be more like the good examples around me. She can't wait to be a big kid like Matt and Kate in so many ways. She doesn't miss much of what they are doing and is often copying them, much to their dismay.

Here she is holding what will most likely be her last pack of diapers. She is very excited to wear big girl panties to bed, just like Kate. I hope this is not the last pack of diapers I buy, but just in case it is, I thought I'd better document it. 7 years of diapers is a big milestone!

As you can see, I have some pretty great kids. But even I can't deny their humanity. Kate's most proud moment at school today was when she skipped AND whispered in the hall at school. But she kept it a secret from her teacher so she didn't get in trouble. And Sara, who frequently cracks us up at the wrong time, said our family prayer in a ladybug voice tonight. I'm glad they're not perfect, but I sure wish I could be more like them!

Embracing

After some long thougt, I've decided to embrace my age for the next year. This is a big step for me so be patient as I explain my reasoning. 33 just seems like a great year. A lot of great things have happened when people are 33. I've decided I'm going to have one of those years. But there is even more. 33 is a perfectly odd number. I have this thing with the number 3. I blame it all on running actually. Somewhere along the way in my schooling years I learned a whole bunch of tricks to determine if a large number is divisible by a smaller. Stay with me even though you might be thinking who cares, or why is she rambling about this, or who doesn't have a calculator? Some examples are, if a number is even, it is obviously divisible by 2. Or if it ends in 5 or 0, it's divisible by 5. I think if a number is divisible by 2 and 3 it is also divisible by 6, but I can't remember that one for sure. I definitely don't remember the trick with 4 or 7 and I won't address 9 because I think it is similar to 3 and 3 is why we're really talking about this right now. Did you know that if you add up all the numbers in a large number and then if that sum is divisble by 3, the whole number is divisible by 3? For example, take the number 12,345. 1+2+3+4+5=15. 15 is divisible by 3 so 12,345 is divisible by 3. Cool huh, but why are we talking about this and how does this make me embrace being 33? Well, in high school I got in this habit of adding numbers on my long runs. So every license plate, house number, road sign that we passed I would add the numbers to see if it was divisible by 3. Psychotic, right? I know, I never claimed to be normal. But it turned into this habit that has stuck. I still do it. I add the numbers in phone numbers, the numbers on receipts... And I can do it really fast. If there were a guiness record for knowing if a number was divisible by three, I would hold it. And if you haven't put this all together yet, 3+3=6, which is divisible by three. So, as you can see, I'm surrounded by threes this year. It's going to be a great year! (I have other compulsions that revolve around the number 3, but we'll save those for another day when I'm feeling especially crazy!)

P.S. Yesterday, as we were driving to pick up pizza for my birthday dinner, we saw a perfect rainbow, the whole entire arch. I think it's a good sign. There was a partial double one. If only there were three...

Tour of Utah

This past weekend the Tour of Utah bike race was happening. We were excited to watch a couple of the stages. On Saturday, the race was in Park City so we headed up there for the afternoon. The weather was gorgeous and it was a fun day to be out. The kids loved the free little things at the booths. They had a lot of fun putting stick sunscreen all over their entire bodies. They ate probably a hundred orange mint candies. And they had stickers all over their shirts. But keeping them happy meant we could stay a little longer. We all had a really fun day watching the bikers.

After we walked through the vendor booths we found a spot in the shade to make our game plan for watching the race. After we found our spot, we had to keep ourselves entertained by making silly faces!

The race finally started and we were so excited to be so close. The race was a 1 mile loop around the Park City main street. They rode the loop 40 times so we got to see them a bunch. They did the first lap in 2 minutes and it is quite hilly. When they rode past, it made us dizzy.

After we watched them go around a few times, we moved closer to the finish at the end of the uphill and finished watching the race there. It was so awesome! Sara found her own way to enjoy the race!

Levi Leipheimer was the biggest name that came this year. He is wearing the yellow jersey and ended up winning. It didn't matter who was there though, it was such a cool thing to watch. It makes me want to go to France and watch the Tour there!

Victory!

Twin Lakes take two:

We made it!

And we brought some friends along.

We enjoyed ourselves and at one point or another, everyone wished for a minute of cloud cover and a splash of rain to cool us off!

Ooops!

Tonight we were supposed to have this for dinner:

Instead we had this:

I was attempting to grill the dish as seen in the first picture, and this is what happened:

Ooops! I'm not really sure what happened. All I know is I stepped out after only a few minutes to check the chicken and there was smoke pouring from the grill and the temp on it was 700 degrees and when I opened the lid there were flames galore! I'm not sure if something in the marinade dripped down and caused some massive flare ups or what, but whew, what a mess! After the smoke cleared and Jerry and I were looking at it for a few minutes we decided it was the perfect time to check out this new local burger place that we'd been wanting to try.

It definitely hit the spot. And with all the grand opening specials, it only cost 13 dollars! For all 5 of us! So we decided to continue the celebration (of my worst grilling mishap ever) by getting some ice cream.

And then since Matt had already stated a few times that this was his favorite night ever, we decided to go for a walk/bike ride. I just stepped in the house to grab my sunglass. Sara grabbed hers too.

How many times do you think I can char the chicken before Jerry starts to suspect something?

Fresh from the garden

About a month ago Kate picked the first tomato from our garden. She was very excited that her plant was the first to produce something we could pick. I have been very proud of Matt and Kate because they have watered their plants all summer and are really excited about eating tomatoes off of them. I have never grown cherry tomatoes before, but they are quickly becoming my favorite. Every few nights we have enough to add to everyone's salad. The kids check them often. I kind of like them to forget because if they see a red one, they eat it and then I can't sneak them! It has been fun for the summer.

A week or so ago we had a crazy hail storm come through. It hit so fast that it startled Kate and I and woke Sara up from her nap.

I had never seen hail this big, although I know it happens. I was so glad to be watching it from inside our warm, dry house. After it calmed down, I braved going out to the garden. Overall the damage was pretty minimal, but I did pick up a couple of handfuls of green tomatoes that had been knocked off. Bummer, but it could have been worse.

True Beauty

The other night Jerry and I were sitting outside watching the kids play. I got up out of my chair to help Sara and Kate stole my spot. This is the conversation that followed.

J: You know a cute girl is sitting there.
K: Yeah, but I'm cuter.
J: Oh yeah? What makes you cuter?
K: Well, I'm missing two teeth.
A pause...
K: And my clothes are cuter.

She's so funny.

Rain Delay

Despite being in school, we are still desperately trying to hold onto summer. So, yesterday we headed out for another new hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon. We had coordinates for several new geocaches, snacks and water for breaks, and a yummy picnic lunch. Sara, staying true to her independent ways, wanted to hike instead of ride in the back pack. She did great. She is a tough little girl even though this was the steepest hike we'd been on so far this summer. In fact, she hiked the whole way up to this log where we are posing for a cute little family picture. We had paused at this log because it had started to rain. And despite the smiles, we had some unhappy hikers. Very unhappy. In fact, as it started to rain harder and thunder, we had some borderline panicked kids. We asked a couple of hikers coming down what the clouds looked like from the top. Not a good forecast plus the added wind as you get out of the trees. So, even though we were only about 400 yards from the lake, we made the decision to head down before we really got soaked. As we left the shelter of the trees and comfort of a place to sit, it started to sleet on us. Not good for kids who are already feeling a little freaked out. So we quickly ducked under more trees and talked about what to do. Even though it wasn't really raining hard, just in spurts, the kids were desperate to head down. So after a quick prayer to hopefully calm everyone down, we waited for the next break and started down again. Even though we got a little more wet, the rain eased and then stopped and we had a nice hike down. And everyone ended the day happy.

Even though we didn't make it the lake, I was glad that the kids got to experience this. A couple of weeks ago our scout master spoke in church and the general point of his talk was that he tries to encourage his children to feel the pains of life and not protect them from everything. So it got me thinking of what I can do help my kids be a little tougher. It might sound mean, but you probably all know what I mean. If all you do is protect, they don't become strong on their own. So, in the end, I was very glad to have this rain experience. All in all, it was a weak mountain storm, but it was very upsetting to my kids. But I'm glad that they got to see that they can do hard things and be ok. We've already made plans to head back up next weekend and conquer the lake!

A Golden Birthday

Not only was today Kate's birthday, it was her Golden birthday. She turned 5 on the 5th. She has been so very excited for this day, which was odd because what 5 year old is excited for their birthday... She has been making comments about not being officially in kindergarten until she was 5. So she's excited to be official! I felt bad that we had to send her off to school and she had to leave her new toys behind, but such was the case. When I picked her up we headed out for a lunch date, just me and her.

Here we are eating french fries with her snaggle tooth still in.

And here she is after it finally popped out! What a relief! She was eating french fries and all of a sudden looked at me with a really weird face and then reached in her mouth and pulled it out! She said she had bitten something hard and then realized what it was. She was so excited.

When we got home it was finally toy time. I found it interesting that her first choice was her own box of legos. It was fun to sit down with her and help her build this house. There is nothing like the same toy to show you the difference between children! And I was reminded of my love for legos in teaching kids dexterity skills and patience and following instructions and satisfaction for finishing something! She was proud of herself for building this.

After legos, we decorated cupcakes. This was my favorite part of the day. She helped me frost them all. Then, while I made the crowns out of laffy taffys, she took the pieces I cut off and spent the whole time making laffy taffy water. It was fun to have her right next to me so we could talk and she could concoct a drink which I was forced to drink. Mmmm. Water with dissolved laffy taffys and graham cracker crumbs mixed in. This time was my favorite of the day. The crowns are so easy. I soaked the LTs in warm water so they softened. If they soften too much they stick to their wrapper so take them out and let them harden. I just stretched them and then used a spoon to cut away the arches for the crowns. So easy but I was glad I put wax paper down. They're sticky if they get too soft.

Finally, we headed to the rec center for a new swimming pool to swim in with a couple of Kate's friends. It was a very fun day. I'm so happy to have Kate in our family. She has had a crazy and emotional week. We are looking forward to finding a new schedule! Happy Golden Birthday, Kate!

Off to class

Tuesday morning we escorted Kate off to her first day of Kindergarten. It has been a much anticipated day. When we bought her a new backpack she wore it around, filled it with books and wanted to play school. It was very cute. I know she was nervous that morning, but she handled it just like a champ. She has another loose tooth that is hanging by a thread but she won't let anyone pull it out. All morning Jerry and I were begging her to please let us pull it, but huh uh. She kept her mouth shut tight. I was worried about it coming out at school, but no, it's still there. It's totally crooked and laying in the middle of the gap on the bottom so she looks like someone who hasn't been to the dentist in many years! Anyway, I don't know if the tooth was good to distract her of if it made the morning a little more rough. Either way, she was ready to march off with her class.

Feeling the butterflies and not opening her mouth for any reason!

She was so cute waiting in line for a few straggler kids. She just looked around. I would pay a lot of money to know what was going through her head.

The teacher told the class to blow their mothers a kiss so that's why I got the pose. When it was time to go in she marched right up to the front of the line. And then she realized she'd lost her place. So she turned around, got that look of concentration on her face (can't explain it but it's my favorite), and looked for the girl she was standing behind. She got behind her again, but the line was just going to slow for her. She ended up at the front again and we had a repeat of finding her space in line. I was cracking up. I have no idea how long that continued. Hopefully the line started moving a little faster! I was so proud of her for just marching off and not looking back at us at all. It has been a little harder for me to send Kate off then Matt. I'm not sure if it's because she's a girl, or because I've worried about her being young for her class or if I just know I'm going to miss her. I'm glad I get to share one thing with her, starting kindergarten at the age of four. Both of us were only four for a couple of days, but it's been fun to tell stories with her! When I picked her up the first thing out of her mouth was, "I didn't have to pull a card!" (discipline method) Funny the things they worry about!