Doing a little catch-up

I haven't done a real update in a while, so here, without further ado, are a few highlights from the last 2 weeks or so.....
We went to a BYU Computer Science Alumni family dinner and then took the kids around BYU to see where we lived and went to school. Took the kids into the library where I worked when I was a student:

And Callie found a little light reading:

We wandered around the Eyring Science Center and played with the science exhibits there:

And found the most exciting thing! THIS was a cupboard under the stairs - it could only be the one and only HARRY Potter!

We saw a planetarium show:

Darrin & I thought the planetarium show was way too technical and over our heads, but Callie & Kyra loved it and claimed to understand it. I always KNEW my kids were smarter than I am!

In other news, Brynn had been saving for a LOOOOONG time but didn't know what she wanted to buy. About a month ago, she saw an ad for a brand new Dora movie coming out, and so when it came out, we went right out with her fire hydrant bank & bought it! Kyra & Callie helped her look through the newspaper ads and find the best price for it, too, and it saved her FOUR DOLLARS! (Which you know is a fortune when you're 5!)


And in the "should have sold it on eBay" category, Brynn was quite proud of this "princess toast" she discovered during breakfast this week:


And finally, Darrin needed carrots for the curry he was making for dinner today, and so he went out to harvest the first of this years crop. In previous years, we've only ever gotten short, fat carrots. We once had one 8 inches around, but only 4 inches long. Darrin was shocked to find these, they were just a hair under a FOOT long!

I looked out my window....

and what did I see?



It's SNOWING! In September!
grumble, grumble, grumble.....

Freezing, canning, drying

Today I am doing it all! It's definitely harvest time. So far today I have frozen 2 batches of green beans, started some apples drying (dipped in cinnamon sugar. smells SOOOO good!) and I'm just about ready to can some applesauce!
It feels so "Little House on the Prairie"!

It's positively alarming!

So Darrin's faithful alarm clock has beeped its final beep. It's time to get a new one. He much prefers a small travel alarm that is quieter than a "regular" clock, and the old one had lasted a good dozen years. (I must say I like the softer alarm, too. I sleep right through it!)
So off he goes to Wal-Mart to get another one. The first one he brought home had faded numbers on the display when he took it out of the package and took off the little sticker with fake numbers. Thinking the display battery must be dying, he replaced it, but it didn't help. He took it back and got another of the same model.
The next one had a similar problem, only Darrin couldn't even get the battery compartment open. It goes back as well, and this time he picks a different model.
Darrin's next choice had the annoying feature of making a loud beep every time you pressed a button to set the alarm or clock. OK, we can deal with it. But then it was a three step process to shut off the beeping on that one, and who has the mental ability to get that first off in the morning? The final straw was when the stupid thing somehow messed up something with the time zone and woke us up an hour early on Sunday morning. Back it went.
The fourth clock seemed to be much better as Darrin was playing with it. Easy to read screen, nice beep sound to wake you up, one touch shut-off, quiet buttons. Until the first morning it went off, when the annoying feature of this alarm clock was revealed. It lights up. Brightly. Like a flash going off in your face, only BLUE - as blue as a KMart special. It wasn't so obvious when he was playing with it when it was light, but it sure is OBNOXIOUS in the dark.
Tonight were' going to try making it face the wall and see if that helps. If not, off to try model #5.......

Happy Birthday!

Jo-jo is 35 this year!

Happy Birthday!

A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to Mike!

and a Happy Birth Day to a brand new, beautiful little girl who arrived early, early this morning after a short, intense labor. It was an incredible birth, and I'm glad I could be there, but I am tired.
PS in 2001 another little girl was born after a similar labor on Nov 18!

Raising Arizona

So last weekend I went to the Lamaze International conference just outside Phoenix Arizona. It was a good conference, lots of great info and I enjoyed getting to know lots of other childbirth educators. It was a little odd to be one of the youngest in the room, since locally I am one of the "old-timers". This year marks TEN years I have been teaching! I only know of three women locally who have been teaching longer than I have. But at the conference I was surrounded by women who have been teaching 25 years + !! Including one woman I sat next to at dinner one night who started teaching in 1962!
As you can see, the conference was at a beautiful resort hotel in the middle of the desert. I was mostly inside air conditioned conference rooms the whole time, but it sure felt good to step out in the heat between sessions! I went swimming late one night in the pools and it was very relaxing.
I was able to see and have dinner with a good friend of mine, Cassi, who convinced me I would be a good doula and helped me get started. She moved to Arizona a few years ago and no longer does birth work, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see her again! We went out to dinner at the Melting Pot and had a great time!


This week has been frantically busy trying to catch up after being gone. But you don't need to hear about the mounds of dirty laundry and all the canning & freezing of garden produce. So I'll just stop here.

Piece of Cake!

So today was the big day, the day we've all be waiting for. Brynn started KINDERGARTEN! She had no hesitation at all. Went around introducing herself to all the other kids (guess her shyness is just with adults!). Today they sat at tables and read books, learned about school rules, danced to music, learned the "secret signal" that means they need to go potty (the word "toilet" in sign language), had snack, recess, and then their teacher read them a story about kindergarten "The First Day is a Piece of Cake!"
And then she sent all the kids home with a cupcake for being so good on the first day!

Toadally Awesome Day!

So Monday was Labor Day, but no one was in labor, so we had a fun day together. We went to the U of U's Natural History Museum. They had a fun exhibit of frogs and toads. (And yes, Tim, there was a copy of a Frog and Toad book on display, too!) I learned that all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. And Callie can be kind of froggy, too!


Could this be the mysterious L.K. that Kyra is trying to make into her Prince Charming? And WHY does Callie have two heads?

And lest anyone think my children are perfectly well behaved, let me assure you, they can be quite witchy at times:

We looked all around the other parts of the museum, too. The rocks were a big hit (go figure!) and in fact the girls each picked out a rock to buy at the gift shop. (What a racket that is - roping parents into buying their children ROCKS!) Brynn got some pink quartz, Callie got a rosette rock that does kind of look like a rosebud, and Kyra liked the Tiger's Eye. Here they are with a huge geode:

We saw the dinosaurs, too. Here's my handsome husband with them (to keep the girls from stealing the entire spotlight:

We got to see a cool demonstration by the U of U physics department where they did lots of things to demonstrate Newton's Laws. Callie was in heaven. She wanted to help with everything, and she impressed the presenters, who called her a "science geek." She was proud. Here's one of the presenters, just before the balloon blew up in his face:

Kyra & Callie both got to try out a demonstration where they spun on a platform and moved their arms in and out like an ice skater to change the speed of their rotation. I was so amazed Brynn would get up in front of a group and do it! She can be pretty shy.
After the museum, we went out to Training Table for dinner. We let Callie do the ordering on the little phone, she thought that was pretty cool.
So that was our fun day, and so ends this frog blog.

Not much new!

The first week of school went well - Kyra is just plain worn out from the change in schedule and the demands of a new school year. I think she slept most of the weekend and even turned down a babysitting job because she was too tired! (I told her she should just be grateful that she doesn't have EARLY MORNING seminary instead of release time!)
Brynn & I had our "mother/daughter" date to go shopping for a first day of school outfit and get a treat. We shopped at the mall, and found a "Wall hydrant" at the mall - which Brynn thought was hillarious and so she walked around saying "Mallwallhydrant" over and over under her breath!

After we'd found the outfit Brynn wanted, we went to the mall's play area and I let Brynn run abound for about 45 minutes:

And we ended with lunch at IHOP. Brynn got her favorite chocolate-chip smiley face pancake, of course!

Saturday night Darrin & I went to a Bees game. It was a lot of fun!