Christa's Graduation

Yay! My sister Christa graduated in August from college, earning a BA in English. She immediately began the masters program at BYU the very next month and I've been doing my best to relive my own graduate school experience through her. She's been a good sport about it, although I can't convince her that it really would be worth it to go around dropping my name to her professors. She says she tried it once and the professor obviously only pretended to remember me.

My plan was to show up for the last half of graduation so that I wouldn't spend quite so much time trying to keep my kids quiet but we could still be there to take photos with Christa. The ceremony ended up being much shorter than we expected and then I got stuck in traffic, so we were too late to see any of it and my family had to wait for me to catch up to them. It seemed like such a good idea. Oh well.

Christa decided to ring the Victory Bell at the Marriott Center. Anna who has always been sensitive to noise wasn't a fan.

Two hot, tired kids!

Celebrating with waffles south of campus.

Nutella and strawberries = yum!

Motion Exhibit

In August, Bill and Sandy came to look at houses in Utah, with the thought of possibly moving here. While they were in town, we took Sandy over to the Notion of Motion exhibit at the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum.

The exhibit had a spinning table with lots of different objects for kids to place on the table and then observe what happened. Most objects quickly moved to the outside and flew off the spinning table. It's amazing how long kids (and adults) can be fascinated by objects flying off a spinning table.

The above exhibit released smoke out of this hole. By pushing down on the top, you could create smoke rings. Most kids pushed with their hands, but Evie preferred jumping on it (with adult supervision of course).

More smoke rings

August Snapshots

We spent our summer doing as much swimming as possible. A friend of ours introduced us to the reservoir in a nearby neighborhood. I think it is stocked with fish, but my kids just liked playing in the sandy mud and splashing in the water. I liked the zero-depth entry. We always left super dirty, but I started using the sprayers at the fish cleaning station to hose my kids off--a little gross, but better than mud and sand in my car.

One afternoon during Evie's nap, Anna found my stash of maxi pads and wrapped several around her arms. She was very proud of herself and I thought it was funny.

Anna had lots of nightmares this summer and so, ended up sleeping on the floor by our bed often. One morning, when we got up, I noticed that Anna burrowed under our bed, leaving only the bottom half visible.

Anna's friend Avery has an inflatable pool in her backyard, so we spent lots of time swimming over there too. Evie wanted so wanted to be with the big kids, but the water was almost as deep as she is tall. The first time, she fell several times and couldn't pull herself up out of the water without some help. I spent a lot of time running over and pulling her out. Eventually she figured out how to keep her head above water.

Climbing on Grandma

We made several trips to farmers' markets in our area, but only managed to make it to the downtown market once this year. It was a little early for apples, but we found some golden delicious and bought some lunch.

Yummy ice cream cake!

In July, my sister Jamie and her husband, Chris, adopted their first baby boy, who is also Anna and Evie's first cousin. They love their cousin and at first Anna called him her brother.

Tyler looks a little worried about having Anna hold him.

Upside down or right side up, we love sunglasses at our house.

Return of the Jedi

Dec. 1, 2011

Dec. 7, 2011

A few months ago, I took my girls with me to book group and they ended up watching Return of the Jedi in the basement with Anna's friend Will and his dad. Ever since then Anna has talked non-stop about the movie. I got several questions about why the dad was hurt and two nights ago, Anna turned off all the lights in the house during dinner because we were having Dark Vader time. Last night we finally turned on Star Wars for her and it's funny to hear her talk about the characters. When Darth Vader was boarding Princess Leia's ship, Dan said, "guess who's coming" and Anna replied, "is it the dad of the son?" She usually calls Luke "the son." He has no other name, whereas Darth Vader sometimes gets called by his name and sometimes gets called "the dad."

I've been trying to get Anna to tell me about her art for some time. When I asked her about the drawing above she said, " yuouiyuoiyuouioiuiyoyuiytiytiyiy." Okay, that's not actually what she said, but when I left the computer for a moment, that is what she typed and she doesn't want me to delete it. She said the picture is a drawing of "Darth Vader's guys fighting."

It's fun to hear Anna talk about Return of the Jedi according to the way she understands it. On an unrelated note, I also love how she calls McDonalds "Mickle Donalds" and rice krispy treats "rice trippy trips." 

July Snapshots

 July 23, 2011

These kids figured out pretty quickly that Grandma keeps Fat Boys in her freezer. Every time we went to Grandma's house, they asked for ice cream--but not just any ice cream--the ice cream in the freezer in the garage.

Anna with her watermelon "bowl."