St. George in the Springtime - Part I

Last spring, we loaded the car and took a roadtrip down south. And the really great thing about this particular roadtrip is that we stole my niece Hillary and took her with us!
Location: uncomfortable minivan bench, somewhere on I-15


We jumped at the chance to go to Zion's on Thursday. We're not going to play tourist and go to the park on the weekend. No sir. You can keep all those tour buses full of gawking Europeans. We don't care if its going to be nice weather all weekend. A frosty Thursday is better than a crowded Saturday. Thats how we roll.


Even though it was cloudy and chilly... the scenery was still breathtaking.

Out came the cameras.

We hiked just long enough to find a spot where we could take a picture of Hillary in the clouds.




Soon it was time for the mandatory grossing out of the children.

Going in for the kiss. Listen to 'em squeal! Its a simple pleasure.

The spring rain  adds to the splendor.  We don't usually see this in July.

My handsome husband and our lovely girls.

Such a beautiful place to be.

More Southern Utah pics coming.

Red

Emily's favorite team color is red. For sure.


Last Saturday she went to her first college football game with Grandpa Darrell.
Very wet and very fun.
It rained and rained yet her enthusiasm wasn't dampened.
This closeup gives a great view of her stylin new frames. Em's motto is 'go bold or go home'.



This girl could potentially be a future Crimson Club member.

My only regrets about this event are that I wasn't actually at the game where I could observe Em's instruction in the finer points of football and that I didn't get a shot of her date picking her up. I was off delivering Sarah to an activity with friends.

Emily reports she had a great time in spite of the rain. It helps that her sweet Grandpa stood in a very long line to get her a hot chocolate and then took her out to the Training Table for dinner afterwards. (This is how to be treated on a date Em!)

Thanks Dad for loving my girls. oxox

Happiness

Last week our family participated in a truly happy event.

We welcomed my wonderful nephew Chase home from his mission in Chile. (There are 8 names on the banner because 8 missionaries from Chile were on the plane and we're proud of all of them)


These are just a few of the welcoming committee. There were grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, siblings... it was a big group.


Chase hugging Sarah. Two years is a long time!

There were a lot of happy tears last Wednesday at the Salt Lake International airport. So much love and joy concentrated in one small space- I wish everyone could have even a little sample of that every now and then. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

What a blessing my family is to me.

I am rich and life is very good.

What I've been doing lately.

So, I've received some heat lately for neglecting my little blog:

"Um... you know you haven't blogged in 3 months don't you?"
"How about a post Mom?"
"I can't keep up with your family if you don't update your blog!"
"Are you guys okay? Helloooo?"

Apparently I have some 'splaining to do.

It started with me being completely wrapped up in Stake Girls Camp this summer. I have to say that this was a mighty big church calling for me. Very time consuming and stressful and in the end, absolutely wonderful. I loved it. It just took a huge amount of time. Blogging had to take a back seat for a spell. Well, the blogging sabbatical went on a little longer than planned and then I was just embarrassed at being such a slacker. Now I can barely remember how to do this and I'm relearning. Goody.

Many happy times have been had in recent months (And not so recent. I have trips from spring that need posting) so I'll be catching up. But before I do, I'll tell you what I did last weekend.

In honor of Halloween, I made a little purchase.

My sweet Emily is a Halloween enthusiast. She talks about Halloween for months beforehand. We have detailed discussions about costume possibilities and new decorating ideas for the front porch, yard, back porch, various rooms in the house, etc. She'd paint bats on the car if I let her. Sadly, she has a mother who has never been all that jazzed about decorating for Halloween. Oh... she also thinks it would be swell if I wore a costume to hand out candy. Dang.

Because I'm trying to support her interests and not be such a lame mom, I made some new decorating purchases and got her daddy to help her make some tombstones to go out in the yard. I also thought it would be fun to buy a spooky movie to watch at Halloween. Why not Poltergeist? I remembered it (vaguely... it was made in 1982) as a good scary movie with a lovely/haunting theme song. Since I have a very underdeveloped sense of delayed gratification, I offered the movie to the girls last Saturday rather than waiting till Halloween proper.

We were all enjoying the show, about 2/3 through the movie when I had to run over to my parents' house. I left the girls watching the movie, in broad daylight mind you, and hopped in the car. Fifteen minutes later they were calling my folks' house wanting to know when I was coming home. "We're not watching any more till you get home!"

5 or 10 minutes later I walked into the house to find this:

Really. Squealing and screaming. I thought it was a show for me.

Nope. They really were a little freaked out.

I laughed, they laughed and then we started up the movie again. Right after they've recovered Carol Ann and are getting ready for bed. The kids are tucked in. Remember the scarey clown? Emily completely and totally freaked out.

Not a little. All. The. Way.

Sarah was scared but wanted to watch the rest of it. Emily wanted us to break the DVD and throw it out of the house. She went outside and waited for the movie to end. I went outside after the movie ended and found my Emily- my baby- sitting under a tree with tears streaming down her face. Very upset. Thats me... the good mother. I thought she was just being dramatic. Not so much. Just scared senseless and scarred for life. Thats what she told me.

Em has been sleeping with the lights on since Saturday.

That being said... please leave your contact info in the comments section if you would like me to discuss some of my tried and true parenting techniques with your church or PTA groups. I'm available on short notice.

Shopping

I decided to take the girls to a movie after all the chores got done today. There was a huge line at the theater, so we chose to kill some time shopping instead. We found ourselves at TJ Maxx, and because we weren't in a rush, we ended up looking at, touching, smelling and trying on whatever struck our fancy- purses, perfume, sunglasses and my favorite... shoes.

I found a cute pair of wedge sandals. Something along these lines...

I kicked off one of my sensible flat sandals and tried one on just for fun. (I never wear heels this high. Possibly some leftover issues relating to Junior Prom and the very short German foreign exchange student who was my date)

Sarah thought they were the most darling shoes and that I should absolutely buy them. (She may have been hoping there might be an opportunity to borrow them at some point. Strange, because I don't think she'll ever hit a size 11)

Emily watched quietly as I walked in front of a mirror to see how it looked. She watched some more and then broke her silence.

"Trip. Fall. Break her leg. Look, she's limping already!"

I really wasn't limping- just walking with the unusual gait of a woman wearing one flat and one outrageously high heel. But then I got the giggles and almost did fall over.

So much fun to hear fashion advice from my two girls. Thanks for giving it to me straight Em.

Heaven Scent

Summer is finally here. For real. In all her glory.

I can step out onto my patio and water the flowers and just inhale some olfactory loveliness.

I like how geraniums smell- all earthy. I even enjoy the smell of the tomato plants. But what really gets me weak in the knees is our Mock Orange. Dear me.

I came inside after getting a good whiff of it the other day and commented on how much I love that smell. Emily asked, "We have an orange tree? Which one is it?"

After explaining that we wouldn't have a citrus crop this year, she ran to check it out for herself.



She came inside a minute later and said, "I think I just smelled Heaven".

I think she did too.

Monitor down!

Twirling a camera by the wrist strap on your finger + sitting in front of the computer = a teensy little accident.


Two thirds of my lovely desktop background.

It wasn't completely unusable until Rich mashed on it a little. It's the engineer in him. ...must....see....how....it....works.....


We're working on cause and effect in several age groups here.

Damage done on Monday. New monitor purchased on Tuesday. It's a bigun. 23 inch screen. Everyone's happy again. Yay for Costco!