Randy and Debby

invitation

2012-02-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

randy's masters recital is two weeks from today:

friday, february 17th, 2012 at 5:30pm in the madsen recital hall, HFAC, byu campus.

we would love to see any family and friends there that can make it. please, no children under eight years old.

it is sure to be a good performance. randy has been preparing long and hard for this.

two

2012-02-01T17:06:00.001-07:00

diane turned two on monday. i can't believe it.

we started the celebrations a little bit early on sunday. my mom and rachel share a birthday on the 25th and diane's is on the 30th, so we did cake for everyone sunday night and diane opened her present from my parents.

then, on monday, it was her actual birthday. she didn't get much fanfare. we blew up a bunch of balloons in the morning and put up a few other decorations and then after randy got home from school, we did presents again.

a new doll from grandma and grandpa peck. she quickly incorporated it into her baby entourage.

a dump truck from grammy and grandpa bob.

playing with some new puzzles from mom and dad.

diane is a delight and the past two years have flown by. i can't imagine our lives without her.

limber

2012-02-01T06:59:00.002-07:00

fact: i can touch my toes when i'm pregnant. a feat that is only possible during non-pregnancy after a very long run in hot weather. but right now, i can touch my toes at any time, even with a large belly in the way.

the strange things pregnancy does to my body.

and ligaments.

obligatory baby bump photo

2012-01-31T09:06:00.002-07:00

pregnant with jonathan, 30 weeks along

every pregnancy, i tell myself that i am going to take a picture each week of my pregnancy so that i can look back and see how my belly grew over the months. and every pregnancy, i get one or two photos of myself showcasing my stomach.

because, when it comes down to it, i don't want to be in front of the camera when i am pregnant. or really, in general. but certainly not right now.

but for posterity's sake, and for my mother-in-law, who hasn't seen me since thanksgiving, when i was much smaller, here is one of the two pictures i will take this pregnancy.

snow day

2012-01-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

we got a flurry of snow the other night and the girls woke up in the morning, ready to go out in it. by the time we got out there, it was pretty crunchy and not much fun to play in, but they still had fun.

i taught madeleine how to make snow angels, but it didn't make much of a dent in the hard snow.

diane making her own snow angels.

randy even joined us outside for a while. diane kept trying to get him to eat the snow off of her gloves.

madeleine started hopping around in the snow to make deep footprints and diane wanted to hop around too, but couldn't do it on her own. randy helped her and then started chasing madeleine with a hopping diane. both kids thought it was pretty much the best thing in the world.

crying

2012-01-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

fact one: madeleine was overtired yesterday and consequently, cried a lot throughout the day.
fact two: madeleine loves to give us a constant and very detailed commentary on her life. she is very honest in her depictions. for instance, i will pick her up from my sister's house and ask her what she did. she will say something like this: "we played with toys and i had three time outs because i was being mean to rachel." it's actually kind of nice and i hope that her honesty will continue through her teenage years.

yesterday, we had the following conversations with madeleine:

over dinner, while madeleine was giving randy the rundown on her day
madeleine: and then, bruce came and picked rachel up and i was crying a lot.
me: why were you crying?
madeleine: because i have lots of problems.

while madeleine and i were reading the scriptures, we came across a part where jesus was weeping out of joy.
madeleine: why is jesus crying?
me: because he was so happy. sometimes, when we are really happy, it makes us cry.
madeleine: yeah, but i wasn't happy today, i was MAD.

losing my mind

2012-01-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

i always complain that i can't remember a thing while i am pregnant and that i become a complete airhead. i hate being an airhead. randy openly acknowledges that my IQ probably dips a few points when i am pregnant. sadly, i am pretty sure that i never fully recover from this decline.

concrete example:

we arrived at church yesterday and we were actually ten minutes early, but randy was playing the organ, so we were kind of running late. randy ran inside and i started to unload the girls when i looked down and realized that i had never changed out of my slippers and into my sunday shoes. in my defense, my slippers look like (really beat up) leather moccassins and have a full sole, so it's not like i walked out of the house with fuzzy bunnies on my feet.

i debated whether or not to go home and get my shoes, but i had already unloaded the girls and i hate getting them in and out of their car seats, especially when i am pregnant. plus, i probably would have been late by the time i went and changed them and came back. and, i spend half of church with a bunch of non-judgmental one and two year olds, so i decided to just go inside with my slippers on.

when i decided this, i didn't calculate in that we sit on the second row and i have a child that just learned to go to the bathroom. i had to dash in and out of the chapel several times and for some reason (once again, i blame it on pregnancy) decided that it would be better to kick off my slippers and run out barefoot each time rather than leave my slippers on.

such is the irrationality of my pregnant mind.

out of diapers

2012-01-08T11:47:00.002-07:00

it's official. both of my children are potty-trained. three months off before i've got to start buying diapers again.

potty training diane was leaps and bounds better than potty training madeleine. i think it was less them than me though. i was much better prepared this time, both physically and emotionally. diane had tons of accidents for two days and then almost exactly forty-eight hours after i started, it clicked and she's been dry except for wetting the bed once last night. it's nice to have it done a few months before the baby arrives this time, rather than two weeks before, which is what i did with madeleine.

i was actually a little worried about how madeleine would do during the whole process but she has been great. extremely supportive and helpful and i think that helped a lot. it helps that she's been getting treats too.

here's to no major relapses.

cold and hot

2012-01-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

we spent last week up at my mom's house. my sister's family was in town and we got to spend some time playing with them.

on wednesday, the zoo had a free day, so we loaded up the kids and headed out into the freezing cold. my brother-in-law is a superb biologist and educator, so i learned all sorts of new things. my nephews kept saying, "yeah, dad, i know that." and i kept telling them to be quiet because i didn't know it yet.

we lasted a couple hours before madeleine said she wanted to go home. i didn't blame her, i was pretty cold myself. this is why i don't have more pictures. i was way too cold to think about taking out my camera to snap pictures. luckily, my brother-in-law belongs in the arctic and took these. he and his children stayed for a couple hours after we left.

funny story: this morning, madeleine said, "where does santa live?" i said, "at the north pole, at the top of the earth, where it is very cold." she said, "at the zoo?" apparently she equates the zoo with cold.

my girls also got some time in the hot tub with randy this week and loved it. i forgot what little fish they are.

more (happier) christmas and birthday pictures

2012-01-02T07:54:00.001-07:00

i'm not going to change my mind that this was the worst christmas ever, but after we all recovered from being sick, we did some more birthday celebrations. here are the rest of the pictures from the festivities that i didn't post last week.

the picture above is of madeleine checking out her birthday balloons from santa.

about five minutes before eruption at my parents house on christmas day.

diane in her new christmas pajamas from my parents.

rachel and elizabeth in theirs.

trying to get a picture with all of the grandkids. madeleine refused to put her pajamas on. looking back, i realize that some of it may be because she wasn't feeling well. but some of it may have been that she was feeling stubborn.

bruce (who diane is very comfortable with) tried to move diane into the line and she wasn't having it. thus yet another year with a parent-less christmas picture evades us.

there may have been a slightly better shot from someone else's camera, but this was the best that i had.

new flashlights from pa'a. the kids loved these. i think that they're pretty sweet too. they have a charger that also serves as a nightlight.

opening birthday presents on monday.

art supplies from grammy.

a new doll from the swenson pecks.

new ballet shoes from mommy and daddy. madeleine has been pretending that a pair of her mary jane shoes are her dance shoes for months, so we decided to get her some actual ballet slippers. she loves them. she immediately put them on and asked me to turn on a song so that she could dance.

in the background of this picture, you can see diane with her slippers on. she didn't want to be left out.

even more birthday on tuesday up at my mom's (still holding her new doll and wearing her ballet shoes).

ready to help.

madeline for madeleine.

this is the cake that my sister made for madeleine on sunday and that she didn't even get to eat or see madeleine blow out the candles on. madeleine wanted a pink and purple cake with a butterfly on it. it was perfect.

eating the cake with her cousins and sister. happy late birthday, madeleine!

post update

2011-12-26T12:41:00.001-07:00

i just published the last post early. i've updated it with text since.

not my favorite christmas

2011-12-26T12:19:00.003-07:00

it wasn't all bad

that's an understatement. worst christmas ever would probably be a better post title.

december 23rd:
9:00pm - randy and i are about to go to sleep and hear the unmistakeable sound of one of our children vomiting. it was diane.
9:00pm-1:00am - intense vomitting from diane, which quickly became dry heaving for the most part because she refused to drink anything.

december 24th:
4:30am - 5:30am - diane throws up a couple more times.
10:30am - diane's final vomit.

we spent the rest of christmas eve taking it very easy. lots of media and lying around. i sanitized the whole house after the girls went down for bed.

december 25th:

6:30am - madeleine wakes up crying, which woke up diane. as soon as madeleine remembered that it was christmas and her birthday, she was fine and chomping at the bit to go do stockings and presents. diane was totally out of it. it was that fun position as a parent where you get to balance the excitement of one child with potentially ruining the experience for the other child. awesome.

diane during stockings and presents

we decided to just go ahead and slowly do stockings and presents, hoping that diane would warm up quickly. she didn't. about half way through her presents, she crawled into our bed and fell back asleep.

9:00am - went to church, had a great christmas program/sacrament meeting.

10:30am - came home and opened the rest of diane's christmas presents and the got ready and headed up to my parents. we figured that diane hadn't thrown up in 24 hours and none of the rest of us were showing symptoms, so it was worth being with family on christmas.

3:30pm - after all of my siblings and their families had finally arrived at my parents, we decided to do our christmas gift exchange. chaos ensued. about ten minutes into this chaos, madeleine looks at me and says, "mommy, some of my food just got in my mouth." five minutes later, she threw up.

3:30pm-8:30pm - madeleine threw up a lot. my girls spent the rest of christmas day quarantined in my parents' bedroom, watching a lot of dora. they were probably in heaven, except for the whole being sick thing.

i spent christmas dinner jumping up and down from the table to tend to my sick birthday girl. i may have had a couple of breakdowns during the evening. probably mostly a result of being absolutely exhausted from hardly getting any sleep the past two days.

we didn't end up doing any birthday celebrations for madeleine. we always save that for christmas night, but that didn't end up happening. as per madeleine's own request, "let's wait until this poor little sick girlie is feeling better."

8:30pm - the girls looked like they were finally ready to fall asleep, so we packed up our stuff and headed home (my poor family was probably relieved). we were supposed to spend the week up in sandy, but decided that it would be best to be on our own turf.

good thing.

8:30pm-2:30am - i puked my guts out.

merry christmas.

two little monkeys jumping on the bed.

2011-12-21T11:42:00.002-07:00

but they're cousins...

2011-12-14T14:23:00.001-07:00

madeleine has absolutely adored having a new baby cousin. the petersens swap kids with us a couple times a week (date nights and playdates) and whenever baby andrew arrives at our house, the first thing that madeleine wants to do is hold him. i am amazed at how long she will sit there just holding him and how long he'll put up with it.

after he leaves (and while he's there, as well), madeleine talks about how cute andrew is and how cute baby jonathan is going to be. i'm glad that she is getting so excited for her little brother. i'm more concerned about how diane will react...

rachel wanted to have her picture taken too.

anatomy lessons

2011-12-06T15:19:00.001-07:00

i was baking something this afternoon and the girls were "helping" me in the kitchen. while they were helping, they were also looking at a book with the little mermaid in it. this is the conversation that i was only partly paying attention to:

madeleine: where are her eyes?
diane points to ariel's eyes.
madeleine: where is her nose?
diane points to ariel's nose.
...
madeleine: where are her booby traps?
diane looks at madeleine with a perplexed look.

at this point i perked up and said, "i think you mean 'boobs,' and the correct term is breasts."

madeleine moved on without missing a beat.

madeleine (to diane): where are her breasts?

diane was still perplexed.

another christmas outing

2011-12-06T07:58:00.001-07:00

i rarely do anything in the evenings, but last week i not only went to white christmas with my mom, i also headed to the byu choirs christmas concert with my friend, robynn. randy isn't a big fan of choral or christmas music (i know...), so he opted to stay home with the girls while i enjoyed the concert with someone who might appreciate it a little more.

i had a great evening with robynn and loved the concert. i went most years when i was in college and it's always a fun way for me to celebrate the season. i think that my favorite part of the concert this year was when byu singers (byu's top tier choir) sang "angels we have heard on high." they stood up in the balcony and all of a sudden their voices softly poured down from above. it really did sound like angels singing down from heaven.

of course, i didn't take any pictures. it seems that if my children aren't involved in the activity, i'm not great about getting out the camera. but you can imagine a picture of two pregnant ladies in the ugly de jong concert hall, maybe looking a little tired because we rarely stay out past 8:00, but smiling because we were enjoying ourselves.

baby, it's cold outside

2011-12-06T07:52:00.001-07:00

it has been freezing here the last few days. cold enough that i'm not even willing to bundle up and go outside. so these pictures are actually from a couple weeks ago, but i forgot to post them. it had snowed about an inch and madeleine was so excited to get out and play in the snow. diane is not as thrilled about the cold and lasted about five minutes.

a phone message

2011-12-04T10:10:00.001-07:00

randy plays the organ in our ward every few weeks and i received this message for him on my phone yesterday:

"hi, this is sister _____. i am calling randy to let him know that i need to make some changes in the hymns for tomorrow because i didn't realize that it was the christmas season when i chose them."

at this point, i am thinking, "oh good, she is changing them to christmas hymns." but then i listened to the rest of the message:

"the opening hymn was supposed to be 'i believe in christ,'* but that is going to be used elsewhere later in the month, so we are changing it to 'because i have been given much.'* the other two hymns are the same."

the other two were not christmas songs.

all i ask is four straight weeks of christmas hymns in church. we only get to sing them in the month of december and i need my fill.

*neither of these are christmas hymns.

a charlie brown christmas tree

2011-12-04T09:38:00.001-07:00

this was not my year for the christmas tree. our living room is cramped as it is, so i decided to put a smaller tree in our kitchen bay window. i figured that it would be pretty sitting up there, out of the way, and maybe even a little cheaper.

not exactly.

we went to pick out a tree and it was freezing, so the girls were pretty done about thirty seconds after we got out of the car. the only small trees that they had left were pretty charlie brown looking and i was discouraged. i probably would have gone somewhere else if it hadn't meant packing up the girls and hauling everyone to a different location. plus, i just wanted a tree at this point.

this is our tree. despite my attempts to get a small one, it still ended up being too big for the window seat. plus, because it was small, it didn't really work in the stand and we had to do some serious jerry-rigging to get it to even stand up. i may have wanted to cry a little by the end of the whole process. it's probably just the pregnancy hormones though. it cost almost the same as a large tree, it wouldn't even work in our stand, and it looks pretty pathetic.

but, the girls love it. they don't know any better. and as randy reminded me, it wouldn't fit in the corner of our kitchen that we have it in if it were a big, bushy tree. or really anywhere in our house, for that matter.

so, i'm going to suck it up and enjoy the smell and try not to think about the negative aspects of it. maybe it will grow on me.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

2011-12-01T20:22:00.001-07:00

december 1st is finally here. true, i've been listening to christmas music since mid-october and i may have gotten out the decorations on monday, but december 1st is when the christmas season really feels official.

even though i was also itching to get out the decorations on monday, madeleine was really the catalyst for it actually happening. she begged to "decorate," grammy's house all thanksgiving weekend and as soon as she woke up on monday morning she asked when we were going to decorate. i was happy to oblige.

even though i love christmas, i actually don't have a ton of decorations. we have the stockings that my grandma has knitted for all of us and the advent calendar my sister and mom made a few years ago. other than that, i have a few other random little things that may or may not get put up, depending on the year. but as long as i have the stockings, my advent calendar, and christmas lights somewhere in the house, i am happy.

oh, and a tree. we still don't have it yet but will by saturday night. madeleine keeps asking about that, too.

madeleine helped me hang the lights around our living room on monday morning and they've been on since (except while we are sleeping). the lights aren't anything fancy, just a few strings along the ceiling line, but the glow is all i need. it pleased me to no end when madeleine went and turned the overhead lights off on monday evening and said, "we don't need that light on. it's so pretty with just the christmas lights." a girl after my own heart. i'm sitting here blogging by their glow right now. please tell me that i am not the only one that gets serious endorphins from simple christmas lights.

as if all of this weren't enough for me to get in the christmas spirit, my mom and i really kicked off the christmas season last night by going to see BYU's production of white christmas. we bought the tickets back in october and i have been anxiously waiting for it since.

i have to admit, i was a little worried about whether i would be able to enjoy the production because i love the movie so much and i knew i would be comparing them the whole time. fortunately, the stage production was different enough that they escaped too much scrutiny. the actors were all good and had good voices, which i always worry about. one bad apple can spoil a whole musical. the dance numbers were great and i was impressed overall.

the only thing that really bugged me the whole time was the wig situation. several of the female actresses had wigs and it killed me. they weren't even all that bad (although there were two that my mom and i couldn't stand), but they were obvious enough that it detracted from the experience from me. i know that they serve a purpose in musical theater, but it kept reminding me that i was watching a production and made the transportation into the story less possible for me.

even though i really enjoyed the play, it made me want to watch the movie right away. so i did.

i watched it today with the girls, a little apprehensive about how they would do given our experience with hello dolly. they loved it. madeleine kept saying, "this is my favorite movie!" (be still my heart). and she even got up and started dancing along during the "choreography," number and then asked me to play it again so she could do it more. maybe her experience with musicals will be alright after all.

thanksgiving in boise

2011-11-29T09:16:00.001-07:00

we just got back from a trip to boise to celebrate thanksgiving with randy's family. i took very few pictures, and the ones i do have aren't great. oh well. the one above is lainey and madeleine eating thanksgiving dinner. as i predicted, my girls took a few bites and then ran off to go play. something about lots of people, cousins, and grammy's toys around made it hard to focus on food.

the whole group. there were twenty-one people and it was great to see so much of randy's family.

even though i didn't get lots of pictures, i did get pictures of the centerpieces that randy's mom made.

and the place cards that i made. they're little mayflower boats. get it?

before we left, the girls got to open christmas presents from bob and jeanie, since we won't be with them on christmas. it meant that they were well entertained in the car. diane wasn't sure about what was going on at first, but saw madeleine tearing into hers and caught on pretty quickly. good practice for christmas day.

we had such a great time and loved being with family for the holiday. thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays - family, food, and a chance to reflect on the things that we are grateful for.

first pictures

2011-11-17T19:42:00.001-07:00

i had my twenty week ultrasound today and found out that we're having a baby boy!* a change-up to the routine will be exciting and different for us. randy and i would have been thrilled with either, but madeleine has been telling us for a few weeks now that the baby is going to be a boy because she already has a little sister. i guess this made it easier, rather than having to explain her faulty logic, as well as laws of genetics.

everything else looked healthy and i am on track with my due date, so this boy should be debuting some time around april 8th next year.

i love finding out the gender of my baby. i know that some people like to be surprised, but i am not one of them. this is when i bond with my baby. it enables me to stop thinking of my baby as a little parasite inside of me that makes me sick and uncomfortable (twenty weeks is also when i start to feel much better, so that probably contributes to this feeling) and start thinking of it as a real, live, baby that is growing inside of me and that is eventually going to join our family. if the ultrasound technician could not pinpoint the gender, i would fully be willing to pay out of pocket for an elective ultrasound. how did they do it back in the day? the suspense, not childbirth, would have been what killed me.

i love being able to put not just a pronoun with the baby, but a name. once again, i know that there are people who like to wait and meet their baby before they pin a name on them and i understand that, but again, i am not one of them. with all of our babies, we have given them a name within a day or two of the ultrasound and stuck with it. being able to call the baby by name when referring to it helps me bond with it and think of it as a real person.

i can't wait to meet this one in person.

as i side, i just have to mention that ultrasounds baffle me. this is my fourth one (i had two with madeleine because they couldn't get some measurements the first time) and i was only slightly less lost this time. the ultrasound technician cruises around my stomach, announcing grey fuzzy spots as kidneys, amniotic fluid (although that is actually black), and other body parts, but it all looks sketchy to me. she could be shooting from the hip most of the time and i would have no idea. i also do not understand how she can be showing me the brain one second, move the wand (i'm sure this is the technical term) a fraction of an inch, and suddenly we're looking at the feet. it's a topsy-turvy, magical thing to me. but as long as she can clearly decipher which gray fuzzy spots belong to which gender, i'm happy.

*surprise! to those of you that did not know i was pregnant.

phone photo dump

2011-11-14T08:28:00.001-07:00

some of these pictures are from quite a while ago. i may or may not sync my phone approximately twice a year.

just picking out a morning outfit.

testing out "joker," as a halloween costume. we went with candy corn instead. a little more age appropriate.

my ragamuffin. she has gotten better, but she used to end up with most of her dinner in her hair by the time the meal was over.

along the same vein... can you see that red object in her hair? yes, that is a fruit snack. and yes, we did take her out in public like that. i could explain the circumstances and why it wasn't removed before we went out in public, but the details are more complicated than i care to go into and i don't have to explain myself all of the time on my blog. suffice it to say it wasn't my proudest moment as a mother.

one of our summer picnics in the park. i love my mountain backdrop.

another picnic day.

diane has been transitioning to one nap lately. it doesn't always go so smoothly though. sometimes she falls asleep when i would rather she doesn't.

art mornings in our living room.

the girls helping me smash the leaves down in the dumpster. one of their favorite jobs.

a most wonderful surprise

2011-11-14T08:02:00.001-07:00

last week, i received a package in the mail, which is always exciting, but this was a package of the best kind. an unexpected package. not a birthday in sight, christmas still a ways off, and no prior warning of the package's arrival. to top it all off, it was from one of my dearest friends.

and then i opened it.

it was a book by emily gravett. i have blogged about emily gravett before. i love her children's books. really great illustrations and simple, sweet, and clever stories. this dear friend had asked for recommendations on children's books a while ago and emily gravett is one of the authors that i recommended.

but i had never heard of this book before.

cover

the rabbit problem.

i will try to describe the book, but words don't do it justice. it is a book that you have to handle and examine to really appreciate it.

it is a book about fibonacci's rabbit problem from the perspective of the rabbits. but as the back of the book says, this is not a book about math (although i think that it is so much more enjoyable for us math nerds).

inside cover

the book is in calendar form, due to the monthly nature of the fibonacci problem. each page spread is a calendar page (which means that you get to turn the book sideways while you read it), filled with illustrations, notes scribbled on the calendar, and three dimensional pamphlets, booklets, etc. that relate to the month. reading the book was a delightful textural experience and i spent an hour pouring over the pages last night. i imagine that i will notice new things each time that i pick up the book.

february's spread

the details are stunning and it is one of the best tactile experiences i have ever had with a book. i highly recommend it. if you're really nice, you can come over and look through mine.

thank you, liz, this was such a thoughtful and delightful surprise.

in the wee small hours of the morning

2011-11-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

every afternoon, madeleine and i get about an hour of time to ourselves. just the two of us.

after an hour of quiet time (i use the term loosely), i sneak into her room and tell her that she can come out. diane, blessed child that still takes a nap, stays asleep about an hour longer than madeleine's quiet time. as we creep out of the room, madeleine whispers to me, "i want to do something fun." those exact words pretty much every day.

and pretty much every day, she picks painting as her something fun. that girl could watercolor for hours. and since diane could eat paint for hours, it's the perfect activity to do during our one-on-one time. and as soon as we hear diane wake up, madeleine's job is to go distract her in her crib while i put away the paint supplies. we have it down to a system.

lately, i've been praying to know how i can spend more one on one time with diane. i feel like she gets neglected sometimes because she is younger and more easy going than madeleine. plus, there just hasn't been time where she is awake and madeleine isn't.

except occasionally in the morning when she wakes up before madeleine and i can sneak her out of her room without waking up madeleine. and the last few days, she has consistently woken up much earlier than madeleine. given my extreme morning fatigue recently, i have answered that opportunity by putting diane in front of an episode of sesame street and going back to bed myself.

but this morning, when i was a little bit more with it than usual in the morning, i had the strong thought that this was my answer. this is my one-on-one time with diane. really? 5:30 in the morning?

but i went with it. as we slowly turned on the dimmest lights in the house to adjust our eyes to daylight (or the lack thereof at such an hour), i crept back into madeleine's room to retrieve some puzzles. i couldn't find diane's favorite one that she carries around with her all day, so we went on a dimly lit treasure hunt and finally found it safely stowed under the kitchen table.

we spent the next hour doing three puzzles over and over. lots of quiet clapping after each one was completed and then promptly dumped over to be done again. after puzzle fest 2011, we went into the kitchen and ate cereal at the table together. one of us ate her cereal in a very dramatic manner and drank the milk afterward. it wasn't me. i never drink my milk.

and then madeleine woke up. and i put away the proverbial paint while madeleine quickly began to dominate the scene with her made up songs and long, dramatic stories. the lights came on and the curtain closed on our intimate time together.

maybe i'll get to bed at a decent hour and be up for it again tomorrow morning. it was a surprisingly pleasant way to spend the five o'clock hour.

autumn leaves

2011-11-10T17:13:00.001-07:00

we have a large tree in our backyard that has been depositing its leaves in our yard for the last month. this leads to lots of raking, which the girls love. madeleine has me make her a "nest," and then she spends the rest of the time trying to convince diane, her "baby bird," to come and join her in the nest. baby bird would rather flit about the yard though, wielding a rake, or seeking our decaying vegetables from our garden that i mostly have torn out but still has some vegetables lying in the ruins.

here are more pictures of my children than most people care to look at:

goodbye, dolly

2011-11-07T21:22:00.003-07:00

i love musicals. i grew up watching them over and over. memorizing lyrics and singing along. dancing along to the choreography in our family room downstairs as i pretended that i was dorcas from seven brides from seven brothers (she didn't have to dance too much). my siblings and i have some really fond memories surrounding the culture of watching musicals that we grew up in. you can sing the first couple words of a song and we will all join in together and maybe even start dancing for you. we can't help ourselves. kind of like the people in musicals.

i still love musicals, but rarely watch them any more. i don't have a whole lots of spare time and when randy and i do get a moment to settle down and watch something, the sound of music is not on the top of randy's list (but it is on the top of mine!).

i can't remember what triggered it, but for the last couple weeks i've been thinking a lot about musicals and wondering if my girls are ready for/would enjoy some of the musicals that i loved so much as a kid. maybe maria von trapp could somehow kill that inane, constant desire to watch dora that i am constantly trying to stamp out, yet burns brightly in madeleine's bosom.

yesterday, on a rare, quiet sunday afternoon, and with all of this musical nostalgia brewing inside of me, i decided to sit down and watch hello, dolly. definitely one of my favorites. madeleine came out of her nap about fifteen minutes into the movie, so decided to see if she was ready to enjoy a good musical and i let her join me.

no more than ten seconds had passed when she said, "why are they all singing and dancing?" i explained that it was a musical and the actors do that a lot during the movie. it's a fun way to showcase their talents while still progressing the plot (i think that part was over her head). apparently this was not a satisfactory answer because she asked me this question repeatedly throughout the rest of the movie. not just at the beginning of each song, but several times throughout each song. each time i tried a different response, but she was not appeased.

and so, what i thought would be a bonding, enjoyable experience for my daughter and me, turned into a disappointing deconstruction of one of my favorite musicals. it really takes the magic out of the movie when you constantly have to explain dolly levi's motives in a three year old's vernacular. try as i might, she just couldn't understand how the parade was a metaphor for life and its experiences.

maybe i'll have to watch them on my own for a while.

and let me just say that she has never asked why the little mermaid bursts into song randomly or why she is so infatuated with eric and being a human.

it's a good thing these two are so cute

2011-11-07T07:27:00.002-07:00

is it seriously only 7:15 in the morning? it's going to be a long day.

adjusting to the end of daylight savings time is rough.

soaking up the sun

2011-11-05T15:35:00.001-06:00

the cold weather looks like it's finally here to stay for the winter, but last thursday was gorgeous and we enjoyed what may be one of our last trips to the park for a long time. lots of pictures of it for the grandmas.

i love this look. i'm pretty sure she wanted me to be pushing the swing instead of taking a picture.

the girls were sporting some pretty sweet static hair at this point.

halloween 2011

2011-11-02T08:30:00.003-06:00

for halloween this year, my sisters and i decided to have our girls be candy corns. i mass produced four little dresses for all of them and even finished a few days before halloween. they are very simple dresses. no pattern, just flying by the seat of my pants. that may be why my girls' dresses will fit them until they're eight years old ("who wants to be a candy corn again this year?").

diane's favorite part of the costume is the silky ribbon by her face that she gets to snuggle with. when i tried it on her for fitting purposes, she wouldn't let me take it off. thus, the thumb in the mouth for all of the pictures.

unfortunately, i didn't finish them early enough to get a picture with all four of the girls together in them, but here are my nieces in theirs, pictures courtesy of my siblings:

elizabeth

rachel

despite my halloween grinchedness, i have bought pumpkins for my children every year. i think we've carved them once before, but this year madeleine was really excited about her pumpkin. when we first got them, she insisted that we paint it. i'm not sure where she got this idea because we never talked about painting pumpkins and i don't remember seeing a painted pumpkin with her. it probably stems from her general obsession with painting right now.

i actually wasn't there for the painting portion. randy says it was fairly chaotic. you see, diane also loves painting right now, but hers is more of a love of putting paint brushes in her mouth. so randy was trying to help madeleine, while simultaneously keeping diane from eating an entire tube of paint. is it bad to say that i'm glad i wasn't there?

anyway, after painting the pumpkin, madeleine decided that she also wanted to carve the pumpkin. so, she designed the face all by herself and randy helped her execute it.

as i predicted, madeleine did not enjoy pulling the seeds out of the pumpkin. she is our neat and tidy child and the gooey innards of a pumpkin did not appeal to her. so randy pretty much ended up doing everything with the pumpkin.

diane got bored with the process pretty early on and decided to set up a bed on the floor of the kitchen and fake sleep.

throughout the carving process, madeleine kept asking why we were doing what we were doing (never mind that she was the one that had begged to carve it). we tried to explain, but she was not satisfied. it was not until we put the candle in at the end and turned the lights off that she got it. she loved it.

homemade costumes and two pumpkin activities. not bad for a grinch's halloween.

new nephew

2011-10-28T20:34:00.000-06:00

my sister, beth, had a beautiful baby boy this week. we got to go visit him at the hospital. the girls didn't really know what to do with him, so after this picture, madeleine and diane entertained themselves with bruce's ipad.

i got to hold him for a long time, soaking up his infant-ness and sending favorite aunt vibes. welcome to the family!

cornbelly's

2011-10-24T14:43:00.000-06:00

on saturday morning, we headed up to cornbelly's at thanksgiving point with the girls for some fall festivities. randy has been itching to go to a corn maze for the last few years and we decided to finally bite the bullet and do it this year.

the girls were fairly reticent when we first arrived and diane wouldn't even let me put her down. we decided to start out easy by sitting on a big rocking chair. they weren't that amused.

once they saw the big wooden play structures with slides though, they were sold.

after randy showed the girls his lasso skills, they decided to give it a try.

we headed over to the corn maze, although it took some serious convincing to get the girls to leave the slides. it wasn't exactly what randy had hoped for and not the most fun activity for small children. after about ten minutes of wandering around, we took a few shortcuts through the corn and made our way back to the entrance. so much for that.

even though she was having fun, diane had her thumb in her mouth pretty much the entire time we were there. it was her morning nap time (which she has given up taking, but is still tired through), so if she wasn't on the move, she was in sleepy mode.

next, we hit the cow train ride. madeleine did not want to go, so she sat out with randy and i took diane. i am not sure how i crammed myself into the cow barrel and i am not sure that my tailbone will ever be the same.

we took a quick break and spent a small fortune for a mediocre lunch. diane spent the whole time dipping things in mustard, making this face, and then immediately going back for more.

the girls loved these jump pillows. so much better than a trampoline. plus, they had one for little kids and one for big kids, so the girls weren't terrorized by older aggressive children.

diane fell down a couple times and had a hard time getting back up. she would sit there with her head bouncing against the pillow over and over until she could finally regain her balance. i would have intervened, but she was laughing wildly the whole time.

she also had a long period of time where she just sat on her bottom, thumb in mouth, while she was gently bumped up and down. i wish i had a picture of it, but i didn't take one.

at this point we cooled it on the pictures, but we went on a lot more slides, did a bouncy house, and finished up with a hayride. on our way up, i had told madeleine about the hayride and explained that we would sit on a wagon with hay and horses would pull the wagon. she said that she did not want to ride behind horses (apparently she has a great fear of horses). i didn't push it, but wanted to she if she would change her mind when we got there. fortunately, the wagon was pulled by a tractor and we didn't have to deal with the horse issue. she said that the hayride was her favorite part of the day, but that may have been because it was the last thing that we did. diane tried to fall asleep on my lap during the hayride, so we decided to call it a day and head home.

all in all, it was a success and i'm glad we went. it was a fun way to spend a fall morning.

all is safely gathered in

2011-10-17T09:32:00.003-06:00

it's over. my larder is full and canning season is over.

my big canning pot is back in storage and will not be coming out again until next may at the earliest. canning season has been a long one this year, but it has been fruitful and we went out with a bang this year.

randy's parents came to town this weekend and even though we took some time to do fun things, we took most of the day saturday to can applesauce. randy's parents are going to stop coming to visit if we keep working them this hard (in my defense, jeanie suggested it.)

we had quite the assembly line going. randy and his mom were manning the apple/peeler/corer/slicers and randy's dad and i were cleaning up with paring knifes and cutting the apples to size for cooking the applesauce. once we had three big stockpots full, we would cook them, fill the cans and process. repeat several times. we processed cans all day.

even though it took most of the day, we really did make quick work of it and having randy's parents here was so helpful. i just imagine randy and i doing this alone and i cringe at the thought. and most of the time was spent processing. the actually cutting apples, etc. went quickly with the four of us.

we ended up with 56 quarts worth of applesauce. jeanie took some for herself, but left the lion's share for me. we are set for the winter and i am so excited to have homemade applesauce. it turned out really well. last year, i did some, but not nearly enough and we were rationing ourselves. even then, we ran out in december. hopefully we make it all the way to next year this year.

i didn't take too many pictures because i was busy making applesauce. i wish i had gotten a few more. oh well. i did manage to get a few more pictures from the weekend. these are jeanie and madeleine making some fun halloween treats:

all in all we had a great weekend. thanks for coming and working so hard, mom and dad.

sunday evening walk

2011-10-11T12:49:00.000-06:00

on sunday evening, my parents were gone, so we didn't go up to their house like we usually do for sunday dinner. the girls had some pent up energy and the weather was beautiful, so we ventured out for a family walk.

the girls found some dandelions on a vacant lot and proceeded to seed the entire lot for the owners. usually i discourage such behavior, but i figured that it was nothing that the wind wouldn't do in this case.

madeleine wasn't thrilled when she realized we weren't heading to the park.

we always know that it's time to head home when madeleine plops herself down on some convenient patch of grass and dramatically declares that she is "out of energy."

that was the goal.

tent time

2011-10-10T15:02:00.001-06:00

my girls have been obsessed with me making forts for them lately. unfortunately, diane doesn't really understand physics and likes to pull them down on top of herself. including the heavy books that i use to weigh down the corners. not really safe.

so when the weather got cold last week and madeleine started begging for a fort, i decided to set up our tent for the girls. not sure if it was a great precedent to start, but they loved it.

while i was setting up the tent, madeleine said, "did daddy teach you how to set up a tent?" i informed her that i knew how to set up a tent long before her father was in the picture and that i am a very capable woman. i was telling randy the story later and madeleine (who i didn't realize was listening) said, "mom is very smart, daddy." at least she thought it at one point in her life. even if i did have to indoctrinate her first.

after running around like wild women for a few minutes, they calmed down. we put some pillows, cushions and quilts in and they sat and read in the tent for a long time.

a good treat to remember for rainy days where we're all going a little stir-crazy.

tis the season

2011-10-06T11:53:00.000-06:00

the last two days have been cold and rainy. hunker down days. i've made soup and piled on quilts and loved it all.

the snow just started outside my window.

this was a quick change of seasons but i am ready for it. christmas music soon?

in the meantime, i've got to hurry and buy a couple of boxes of produce to finish up some unfinished canning business.

fall

2011-09-22T20:29:00.002-06:00

i realized that, contrary to my usual m.o., this is the last picture that i had posted of my garden, and i really haven't talked about it much since then.

now it looks like this. it's quite the jungle. every year, we learn more and more about gardening. for instance, even though i really like tomatoes, sixteen plants was too much for the space and they ended up competing too much. only the front ones really produced like they were supposed to. don't get me wrong, we would have used the tomatoes from all sixteen plants if they had been productive (i'm aching for more tomatoes to can), but it was too ambitious for such a small plot. i feel like a hunter, wading through the jungle, every time i go out to pick.

also, no matter how much i like the idea of zucchini, i get sick of it by the end of the season. and with a small freezer, even two plants was too much this year.

and cucumbers don't vine well. they need their space to run. sad.

but, we've still had lots of tomatoes. we've eaten plenty, i've canned 20 jars of marinara sauce so far, hope to do more this weekend, and i've dried a ton of yellow pear tomatoes.

one of the awesome things about the house we are renting is that it has a nice little peach tree in the yard. not too big that it is overwhelming, but enough that we are going to be able to can, freeze, and eat the peaches from it. they have just started to ripen in the last week, so today madeleine and i went out and picked all of the fruit. in a couple days, we will be up to our ears in ripe peaches.

the tree is small enough that even madeleine could reach some of the peaches.

after picking the peaches, diane woke up from her nap and joined us outside to play.

still waking up...

not really sure...

good to go.

have i mentioned that i love fall? i love the harvest and the rush to preserve all of the food that is suddenly upon us. it's the payoff for a season of labor in the heat.

i love the crisp mornings and warm afternoons. sweater season around the corner. i love the changing colors. i love looking out my window and seeing bursts of color on the mountain. can't wait to drive up the canyon. i love the change and the move towards the holidays.

it's a great season.

cave paintings

2011-09-12T14:25:00.001-06:00

these are madeleine's first real drawings of people. she draws all the time, but it is usually squiggly lines that are mountains or snakes (see lines in the picture). and when she does want to draw people, she will do the circle for the head and then gets frustrated and makes me finish for her.

but yesterday, she decided that she wanted to draw our family. and this is what she came up with. all by herself. i'm pretty proud of her.

and glad that it wasn't on a wall somewhere.

fashion advice

2011-09-12T10:26:00.002-06:00

after my shower this morning, i got dressed and came out of my room wearing a plain long sleeved shirt and some blue lounge-style pants.

madeleine: mom, i love your shirt and your pants.
me: thank you, madeleine.
madeleine: actually, i love your shirt, but i don't love your pants.
me: why don't you like my pants?
madeleine: they are blue and they are slippery.

now, granted, these are not my most flattering pants. they are solid royal blue, and they are not anything special. but they are comfortable, which is what i was going for. and i'm not sure where she got "slippery," because they are a basic, knit, 100% cotton. no sheen whatsoever.

good to know that my three year old is already protecting me from fashion disasters.

cute kids

2011-09-11T14:36:00.002-06:00

salt flats half marathon

2011-09-06T15:12:00.001-06:00

last saturday, my sister, audrey, ran the salt flats half marathon. she has been training for it for a long time now and i am so proud of her. she just happens to live out in wendover and so it was the perfect place to run.

audrey was not a runner before training for this. she didn't like running. which makes it all the more impressive.

this was an awesome venue for a race, too. there weren't tons of people, so the kids could run around and we could see them no matter where they were. the salt flats are pretty amazing to be on.

i forgot my camera, so these are all from my mom.

when we got there (about half way through the race), it was still a little chilly, so we ended up grabbing madeleine's pajamas and making a makeshift coat for her. but after sitting in the sun for a while, it warmed up. the weather was perfect, with a breeze coming through the whole time and keeping the temperature right around 70 degrees.

we woke up at 6:00 to get to wendover and all of us were looking our best. diane and i were sporting pretty fancy hair, in particular.

have i mentioned how much these two love each other? they will randomly start hugging at any given time. i love it.

here she comes!

diane spent most of her time crawling all over these gates at the finish line. like i said, not too many people, so this wasn't a big deal.

this is jeanette perry, who is from our stake back in kirkland and happened to be running as well. fun to see a familiar face.

audrey and joseph

audrey and my mom

audrey, my mom, me

these three had a blast running around together. ring around the rosies was a favorite.

all falling down.

this was what the start/finish gate looked like. pretty fun, eh? thanks for running and giving us an excuse to come visit, audrey.

inspired

2011-09-03T20:59:00.000-06:00

i know this girl. she's family of family and we've probably only met in person a handful of times, but i bump into her online presence a lot. that's what happens when you have lots of people in common. and i have her blog on my RSS feed because i really like her writing and i find her inspiring. secretly, i kind of wish i could be so cool. we're friends on facebook.

all of this is to say that the other day, she posted a link on facebook to this post. i don't usually click over to links from facebook too often, but like i said, i find myself inspired by this girl and wondered if maybe i would be inspired by her inspiration.

and i was.

and my sister just ran a half marathon.

and i was.

and like the post said, it makes me wonder what else am I telling myself I can't do?

sometimes i blame my children for my not doing things. not like i get mad at them or anything. more like i use them as an excuse. time to stop doing that.

here we go.

summer on my phone

2011-09-01T10:47:00.000-06:00

i finally got around to syncing my phone with my computer and found all of these fun pictures from the summer. it sure went by fast.

scera pool

2011-08-25T11:14:00.000-06:00

the other night, our friends, the garfields, invited us to go to the scera pool with them. the weather was perfect and the pool wasn't too crowded. it was a great evening. thanks, garfields!

mccall: day five

2011-08-17T20:55:00.000-06:00

friday was another day spent at the beach. the extended family had headed home, so it was just randy's immediate family at the beach. we were sad to say goodbye to the beach at the end of a great week.

kyle, kim, and randy took the four oldest kids out on the boat one last time before they pulled it out of the water. madeleine had a blast tubing.

kim and calli

kim, lainey, and madeleine

carsten

calli

lainey

lainey and madeleine

randy and calli started building a sandcastle.

randy, bob, kyle

kim

carsten, striking a pose

carsten and his awesome remote-controlled boat

bob working on the sand castle

kyle

randy and calli

see the tunnel that randy built?

lainey

randy, bob, kyle

randy, kim, lainey, kyle, bob

bob

mccall: day four

2011-08-16T15:18:00.001-06:00

on thursday, we went kayaking in the morning. randy didn't join us because he is still nursing a cracked rib. plus, he may still be nursing memories of last year and diane's screaming the whole time while i held her and he paddled our whole family along by himself.

unfortunately, that scene may have played out again (although at least diane waited until the second half of the ride), except that instead of my husband paddling us along, my sister and brother-in-law did all the hard work.

jeanie, diane, and bob

diane started out with my in-laws (see her in the middle there?) and was doing fine because she had a little bag of cheez-its keeping her happy.

jeanie, diane, and a slightly less fierce bob

tim, eliza, and carolee

still happy with her cheez-its.

me, madeleine, and kim

kyle

calli and her friend, xiumay

carsten, lainey, and kyle

aaron

and then, the cheez-its ran out, i got too close to diane's kayak in an attempt to hand off the camera, and diane only wanted me. so, we tried both my kids in the same kayak and that didn't end up working. kyle was a trooper and took three kids in his kayak without anyone else helping to paddle. and kim paddled diane and me around because diane freaked out whenever i tried to pick up my paddle.

better luck next year.

rhonda

mccall: day three

2011-08-15T14:29:00.000-06:00

lainey and diane

we spent almost the entire day on the beach on wednesday. it's my blog and i can post an excessive quantity of pictures if i want to.

i think the girls consumed more sand than actual food while eating on the beach.

carsten and calli building sand castles

my mother-in-law got this little raft for diane, but the plug wouldn't stay in. nothing a little chewing gum in the hole didn't fix for the whole week. go figure.

my wonderful in-laws

lainey

carsten throwing sand - a favorite activity

taking a break to warm up a little

kimberlee - float master

carsten

calli was a huge help with the girls all week

randy taking a jet-ski ride with his cousin, chandler

madeleine joining kim for a float

madeleine and lainey

these two were best friends all week. i am so glad they are so close in age. they would walk around, holding hands and then suddenly hug each other. this was a hug that turned into a wrestle.

on wednesday evening, we went out on the boat. i went for a ski run that lasted about two minutes before i decided that the water was way too choppy. randy lasted a little longer on the wakeboard. but the kids had fun. i am determined to have them like boating.

kyle

well, it was almost a good picture of the five grandkids.

after boating, we headed to ice cream alley and then walked over to the beach to eat our ice cream. fun memories.

calli, madeleine, and lainey

diane was climbing all over the place while we were at the beach.

randy, kyle, kim

mccall: day two

2011-08-15T10:45:00.000-06:00

most of our free time in mccall was spent on the public beach. the weather was perfect for it - not too hot, not too cold. the kids loved playing in the sand and the water.

all cleaned up and in new matching pajamas from grammy after a long day at the beach.

mccall: day one

2011-08-15T08:35:00.000-06:00

every year, we head up to mccall, idaho with randy's family for a week. it's a great tradition and one of the many reasons i'm glad i married into randy's family.

i love the drive up to mccall. it's beautiful the whole way up.

we ran into some construction along the way, so it took a little longer than usual.

diane sporting some nice sweaty sleep hair.

we got there before everyone else, so we went to the public beach to do a little wading and to introduce the girls to the lake.

heading home

2011-08-14T10:02:00.000-06:00

we are just heading home from a glorious week in mccall, idaho with randy's family. lots of fun, lots of sunshine, and of course, lots of pictures. more posts to come soon.

dance recital stills

2011-07-31T07:38:00.000-06:00

this one is actually from madeleine's dress rehearsal, but the rest are all from the recital. randy was manning the video while i took stills. you can never over document a three year old's dance recital, right?

dance recital videos

2011-07-29T14:35:00.002-06:00

here are the videos from the dance recital yesterday. hopefully they should work just fine. the first one is "limbo rock," and the second one is "you are my sunshine." this is probably the best i have ever seen madeleine perform either song, so good thing we caught it on film. madeleine is the second from the right in both videos.

i can't believe how big she's getting. favorite parts of the second video are when she does the hand motion for spinning around that her teacher does instead of turning around at first. this has always been a problem in practice, but she doesn't usually spin at all. i love that it looks like she's just too tired to get her arms above her head for the very last, "please don't take my sunshine away." and the silly walk off the stage? priceless.

hose time

2011-07-26T14:02:00.001-06:00

there is something magical about playing with a hose during the summer. i'm not sure what it is, but i remember the feeling as a child. we could play with nothing but the hose for hours. my children feel the same way.

yesterday, it was really hot and after naps, i took the girls out in the backyard and turned on the hose.

apparently diane's nap wasn't long enough because she went back and forth between blissfully happy and completely distraught the whole time.

blissfully happy.

completely distraught.

blissfully happy.

completely distraught (although with good reason in this one. she didn't want her hair combed).

canning season begins

2011-07-23T16:36:00.000-06:00

my giant canning pot finally made an appearance this week. i realize that i'm a little behind schedule for strawberry jam, but i found some good looking strawberries and decided to go for it. i made strawberry freezer jam a couple weeks ago, but my freezer isn't as big as i would like and randy prefers canned jam, so i decided to make both kinds.

i took my beautiful strawberries,

hulled them, and then smashed them up with my potato masher.

my adorable assistants.

they weren't sour, madeleine was just being goofy.

the finished product (can you see how bad our hard water is?).

i have to admit, i hate canning. it is a messy, long, hot process. but i love the fruits of my labors (get it?) for the rest of the year, so i will keep it up. planning on doing at least four dozen jars of marinara sauce once my sixteen tomato plants actually start producing fruit, at least the same amount of apples once allred's orchards start producing delicious apples, and some pears and peaches to go with those. oh, and don't forget the annual trip to pick raspberries and blackberries.

hopefully i can keep up with the harvest come end of august/september.

south fork

2011-07-14T07:58:00.001-06:00

my friend, robynn, and i realized that neither of us had been up the canyon yet this summer. we both love spending time up there and it seems criminal not to go more often when i live right at the mouth of the canyon. so, we loaded the kids into the car, supplied ourselves with all of the necessary entertainment, and headed up to south fork.

even though we brought things for the kids to play with, the main attraction (of course), was the stream. the kids loved throwing rocks and sticks into the water.

i've realized that going up the canyon is not the same experience that it was when i was single and without children. i still enjoy it, but it is a little more stressful to watch the kids playing near the water. i could only handle it for so long before we decided to head back to the picnic blanket and hang out there.

eli decided to take some pictures of the group.

madeleine knows how to relax. it was great to escape to the canyon for a little while and enjoy slightly cooler temperatures and beautiful scenery.

it's been a hard day's night

2011-07-11T14:31:00.001-06:00

you know it's been a rough night/morning when your children are having naps at 7am...

and one of them collapsed into the nap while playing with her toys.

july the fourth

2011-07-05T11:20:00.000-06:00

our sisters' weekend concluded with the husbands coming to meet us at my aunt and uncle's house for a fourth of july pool party. the weather was a little overcast, which i thought was perfect. we had a bbq and spent the rest of the time in or around the pool. mostly in.

my brother, ray

my dad is going to be doing some scuba diving soon, so he brought his gear to test out and randy decided to do a little scuba diving himself. he had a blast and swam around in the deep end for a long time.

i have to admit that it made me a little nervous at first, seeing as he has never scuba dived before, but my family assured me he was doing just fine and he was moving around enough that i was finally put at ease.

audrey and matthew

austin jumping off the diving board

madeleine was such a fish the whole time we were there. she always likes the water, but usually gets out after an hour or so. this time though, she spent almost three hours in the pool, happy as a clam. she especially loved having my uncle, austin, throw her.

diane spent plenty of time in the pool herself, but not as much as madeleine, which i'm okay with because she requires constant vigilance in the water. we called her greased lightening.

diane and diane

ray did some scuba diving himself.

matthew

dad and elizabeth

about an hour before we left, madeleine discovered the diving board. the first couple times, my dad dropped her off, but after that, she did it all by herself. over and over. she would get on, run off the end without even hesitating, swim to the side, climb out, and go directly back to the diving board. no fear.

if you scroll through these next ones fast enough, it's kind of like a stop motion film of her jumping in.

my brave little fish.

of course, diane decided she wanted to do it, too. even though she wanted to do it all by herself and kept trying to shove me away on the diving board, i dropped her in. she even did it a couple times.

stop motion #2:

we had a great time and after a long weekend by myself, i was very happy to be driving home with my family.

sisters' weekend 2011

2011-07-05T09:58:00.000-06:00

this last weekend was our annual sisters' weekend. it was a bit of a process to get everyone nailed down to dates that worked with all of our schedules, but we finally figured it out. as always, it was one of the highlights of the year.

on friday evening, as soon as beth got off of work, my mom and audrey came down to provo and picked us up so that randy and bruce would have cars for the weekend. we headed to california pizza kitchen for dinner and then went to the movie, "17 miracles," which is about the mormon handcart pioneers. by the time we got out of the movie and back up to my mom's, it was getting late, so we quickly exchanged our gifts and then headed to bed.

beth got everyone cheese graters from ikea. it is one of the kitchen items i have really missed now that we are not living with each other and i am excited to have my own. audrey got everyone pink zote soap. it is supposed to be really great for stains and i am excited to try it out. my mom got us each the newberry and caldecott books from last year, as well as a silk scarf and small silk purse from china.

for my gift, i decided to make everyone camera straps, but wanted to let each person pick their own fabric, so i brought mine as a model and promised to make everyone their own as soon as they picked their fabric.

on saturday morning, we all got up early and headed to the draper temple together. audrey doesn't get to go to the temple too often because she is out in wendover and beth and i haven't been back to the draper temple since the open house, so it was nice to all be able to go together.

after going to the temple, we headed out to get pedicures. i have to admit that mine wasn't the greatest experience. it was hard to relax after having my foot boiled at the outset. apparently the woman filling the tub forgot to put on any cold water. my foot felt better the next day though, and my toes are still pretty.

the rest of the weekend was spent relaxing, playing cards, watching jane austin movies, and working on our family photo albums, which we are quite behind on. we are still behind, but made significant progress this weekend.

it is the first sisters' weekend we have had with no children in attendance (right? i think that's right). beth is pregnant, but none of us have infants and we all got to leave the kids with their dads for the weekend to enjoy a true get-away. i always feel a little guilty leaving randy alone with the girls for so long, but not guilty enough not to enjoy the time to myself, the extra sleep, and the chance to spend time with my mom and sisters' without the distraction of child care. it's just what i needed.

arches national park: day two

2011-06-26T21:53:00.000-06:00

after a good night's rest, we all felt much better in the morning. our motto for the day was to beat the heat. we made a game plan, ate some breakfast, and headed out.

warning: picture heavy post.

arches is an interesting park in that there really aren't too many long hikes. most of the hikes are less than a mile round trip. just to the arch and back. there are a few longer ones, but even those are around three miles round trip. we avoided those though, and stuck to the short ones, paying particular attention to whether they had shade and whether they had slick sections that would be hard for madeleine to navigate. fortunately, i had gathered lots of information before we left.

our first stop was sand dune arch. this was my favorite. you walk up that narrow ramp in the previous picture and come into a little sanctuary. it has a sandy floor and the sand was really cold when we were there in the morning. the area is shaded almost the entire day. it was just us and one other family, so it was perfect.

this is the actual arch itself.

randy and madeleine climbed up into this little cove behind the arch.

diane already had sunscreen in her eyes and wasn't too happy, although she was handling the pack better than she had the day before, which i was worried about.

randy and madeleine did a lot of climbing up these rocks. that's all madeleine wanted to do all day - climb big rocks.

despite these last two pictures, diane was happy for the most part while we were here.

our next stop was skyline arch. just a short, half-mile round trip hike.

you can't tell from the pictures, but the pride beaming from madeleine's face is because she climbed up on this rock all by herself.

we discovered two things about madeleine this weekend: she is a really good climber and doesn't seem to be bothered by intense heat.

turret arch

next, we hit the windows loop. it takes you past turret arch and the north and south windows. it was a short hike up a bunch of steps and when we got to the top there was some beautiful shade with a strong wind blowing through and a nice area for the girls to play around. rocks small enough for diane to climb on, too.

we stayed here for a long time and just let the girls play, snack, and drink lots of water. we were water nazis the whole time. the girls each had their own nalgene bottles and we constantly stopped for drink breaks. we also put on spf 50 every hour and a half or so.

double arches

you could see these arches from the parking lot for the windows hike, but we didn't actually hike over to them. diane was past nap time and we headed into the next phase of our plan: lots of driving around.

cove of caves (i think...)

moab is only a couple miles away from arches and we had to gas up anyway, so we headed out of the park and into moab for a long drive. diane fell asleep while we were still in the park and slept for a long time. after driving around moab for a while, randy dropped madeleine and i off at an elementary school so that she could play on the playground and he kept driving around with diane. then we switched. not ideal, but it was the best way to get her to nap. it certainly wasn't going to happen in a 100 degree tent.

diane finally woke up and we headed back to the park to begin our trip back to the campsite. we stopped at all of the viewpoints, got out for just long enough that we didn't overheat, but enough to create a diversion for the girls and stretch our legs.

park avenue

our first stop was park avenue and was a really beautiful viewpoint. if the hike hadn't been completely unshaded (goes down through the middle of that valley), i may have been tempted to hike it.

formations surrounding park avenue

it's hard to get a sense of scale from these pictures, but these formations are huge and really are amazing to see in person.

more formations surrounding park avenue

the last actual little hike we did was the viewpoint for delicate arch, the most famous of all of the arches. i wish that we could have gotten closer to the arch, but before we even arrived at arches, we knew we wouldn't be doing the hike. it is one of the longer hikes, with no shade, slippery points, narrow ledges, and sharp drop-offs. definitely not our stage of life. plus, we knew that it would be really crowded.

our trail guide said that it was a 100 yard hike to the viewpoint, so we didn't take diane in the backpack. apparently there are two different viewpoints though. the lower one, which is 100 yards from the parking lot, and the upper one, which we went to. not a terrible hike, but steep and i would have liked the backpack. instead, i had diane on my shoulders and randy ended up with madeleine on hers.

diane looked like this for most of the trip. our little ragamuffin. dirty onesie, greasy hair, and a little angry. although she really was happy almost the entire second day. i just couldn't bear making her wear shorts. i certainly didn't want to be wearing mine.

i made each of us stand in front of the arch - photographic evidence that we've been there. since there was no shade at the top of the viewpoint, we headed back down pretty quickly.

we got back to the campground around 4:30 and let the girls play around the camp and in the tent. they did really well. i think it helped that they had had the entire day to acclimate to the heat. we pushed dinner back as far as we could for as long as they were happy and then as soon as dinner was over, we did another round of sponge baths and let them play in the tent until bed time.

we debated whether to do another hike in the morning on saturday, but decided to just pack up and head home. we were tired and ready to get home and had seen most of the park that was accessible with small children.

would i do it again? nope. not in june. not with small children.

everything i read said that arches is a great family park and a fun place to camp with kids. they must have been camping in early spring or late fall, or have kids five and older. kids that can entertain themselves a little bit better.

it's too hard to camp without any water. the desert is no place for me and no place for small children. randy loves it. but not being able to cool down was too hard. if we did arches again tomorrow as a family - same temperature, etc. - the only way i would do it would be to have home base at a motel in moab and do early morning hiking, hang out at the motel pool and maybe even do some hiking in the late evening.

arches was beautiful and i'm glad i've seen it, but i could probably go the rest of my life and never return. i don't want it to sound like the whole trip was miserable, because we really did have a fun time. but it was hard. not my kind of camping.

but no one got sunburned.

arches national park: day one

2011-06-26T14:56:00.001-06:00

our campsite

randy and i decided that we wanted to head down to arches for a family vacation with just us and the girls this year. we booked our campsite a couple months ago and last weekend, the time had finally come for us to go. we stuffed our little corolla to the gills and drove down last thursday as soon as madeleine's swim lessons were over.

the view from our campsite

when we arrived at the park, it was 2:45 and 101 degrees outside. all of you who laughed at me when i told you that we were going camping at arches at the end of june can wipe those smug smiles off your faces and read on. in my defense, when i booked the campsite, randy had registered for three spring term classes and this was the earliest we could go. by the time he decided not to take classes spring term, everything was booked up.

plus, i didn't realize it would be THAT hot.

another view from the campsite

randy and i tried to hurry and set up camp, but it wasn't fast enough for diane. she did not like the sudden heat, she did not like being slathered in sunscreen (including her hair because she refused to wear a hat), and she did not like the sand. and she certainly didn't like being ignored while she was struggled with these things. by the time we got everything set up, diane was inconsolable. we had dinner, which ended up being a little bit of a disaster itself, and then decided to try a small hike to calm down diane.

we loaded her into the hiking backpack and headed onto the trail that started directly across from our campsite. if you look really carefully in this picture, you can tell that diane is actually screaming in the backpack. well, maybe you can't, but i can actually still hear it when i look at the picture.

madeleine pointing to a cairn. she loved spotting these along the trail.

after about five minutes of screaming, randy turned around with diane and took her on a car ride to cool her down both physically and emotionally. madeleine and i pressed on for a little longer and saw tapestry arch.

tapestry arch.

madeleine was getting tired, so we turned around and headed back to camp to see how things were going with diane.

finally calmed down

just as we got back, randy pulled up and diane was sleeping in the back of the car, so we all piled in and drove around the park a little bit. randy and i discussed our plan of attack and decided that if diane woke up and wasn't doing better, we were just going to have to turn around and go home that night. we are not martyrs and we were not going to submit the rest of the camp to our screaming child.

thus began me madly snapping pictures out the window, not knowing if we were going to get another chance to do so. you'll note that i didn't roll the window down because i didn't want to wake diane up.

random shot from the car

more random rocks from the car

sand dune arch (you can't actually see the arch in the picture) from the car

skyline arch from the car

thankfully, when we got back it was about 7:30 and finally starting to cool down. i gave the girls sponge baths in the bathroom sinks and that helped cool them down as well. we left diane in just her diaper, threw them into the tent all clean, and i read while they played around for a couple of hours. randy took off and did a small hike himself before dark (we still didn't know what the next day held for us and our temperamental child and thought it best to pack in whatever we could). he loves the heat and was probably in heaven hiking out there alone. i enjoyed the shade that our tent was in, my (finally) happy children, and a good book before we all dozed off together under a sky filled with bright stars.

sun hat for madeleine

2011-06-26T13:54:00.000-06:00

madeleine needed a sun hat for this summer, but after looking for a while, i didn't see any that i really liked. so, i decided to make one. i bought the fabric for it a while ago and have been sitting on it, waiting for time to sew.

since time to sew didn't fall into my lap and i wanted her to have it this weekend, i had to make time late one night last week. i am really happy with how it turned out. more importantly, madeleine loves it and wears it all the time. which was really nice while we were camping. i wish that diane would have been as compliant with her hat.

we were walking out of swim lessons on thursday and i heard a woman say, "look at that cute girl. i love her hat." i swelled up with pride and barely restrained myself from saying, "i made that!" (i suppose that could refer to the cute girl or the hat).

speaking of swim lessons, here are a few pictures from her latest round of swim lessons, now in an outdoor pool:

see that beached whale on the side?

floating like a pro.

deserting

2011-06-25T16:56:00.000-06:00

we went to the desert this weekend. i'll post pictures and tell you all about it once i get everything back in order.

observations made between the hours of 12:00 and 1:30am

2011-06-22T08:10:00.001-06:00

there are few feelings worse than finally going in to check on a crying baby and wondering how long they have been sitting in their own vomit.
quinoa is a fun grain to cook with. it is less fun to work with the second time around.
my baby creates bile that smells strong enough to knock over a horse.
having an extra set of sheets is so nice when you are trying to clean up barf in the middle of the night. having a couple more would have been even nicer.
only having grape juice in the house is not a great idea when you are looking for a liquid that will not stain everything purple in the event that it re-enters the scene.
should have put zip up jammies on the first time that we had to get dirty pajamas over a very sad baby's head.
iron chef america may be good entertainment for parents that are staying up with a sick child but is less entertaining for the child.
i am very glad to have a husband that is so helpful in the clean-up process. he may have an uncanny ability to sleep through screaming children that can't sleep, but he is always right on the scene with sick children.
madeleine shares her father's uncanny ability.
diane is even more attached to her blanket than we thought.
having a kid get sick in the middle of the night is the pits.

this weekend

2011-06-20T13:54:00.000-06:00

we went swimming as a family (and had fun, despite the sad faces),

got in-n-out burgers to go and drove to the nearest park to eat them (don't want to wait too long or the burgers get cold),

the girls had a hard time focusing on eating with the playground right next to us. not great planning on our part.

then we sat on a hill and watched while the girls played.

it was a fantastic day.

in the yard

2011-06-13T10:57:00.000-06:00

we've been enjoying our yard lately. the flowers are in bloom and are beautiful. madeleine likes to "help" when i water the garden.

i let her water the grass.

some of our irises.

our neighbors have these gorgeous peonies that peek through our chain link fence (i guess chain link is good for something?). i am pretty jealous of them. they mingle with our irises and tease me. i was going to steal some that were on our side of the fence to put inside, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. we were at church yesterday and i complimented our neighbor on the peonies and she said, "feel free to snip some to put in your house." permission granted.

spring never lasts long enough for me. but i guess that summer means vegetables, so i won't complain too much.

swim lessons

2011-06-10T22:41:00.006-06:00

madeleine is doing swim lessons for the month of june at the provo rec center. she absolutely loves it. she is doing really well - even better than i anticipated. she isn't anxious when the teacher has her float on her back, she is going under the water by herself, and loves to be in the water. but that's nothing new.

my favorites

2011-06-10T10:41:00.000-06:00

these two are getting along really well lately and play together better than they ever have before. i love it.

both of these girls love to read and spend a lot of their time surrounded by books. when the house has been quiet a little too long, it is almost always because they are sitting by the bookshelf in their room, reading quietly to themselves. much nicer than when it is too quiet because of mischief.

even though madeleine can't read yet, she's turned into quite the story teller and "reads" books to rachel and diane. she's usually pretty close to the actual words, especially on the books that we read all the time.

le bois

2011-06-06T13:10:00.000-06:00

after some begging from a grandmother, aunt and cousins (it didn't take much), we decided that we were long overdue for a trip to boise and headed up last weekend. our trips never seem long enough and this was no exception. we packed in a bike ride along the greenbelt, watching a dance recital, a trip to the farmers market, and of course, lots of time with family.

the girls spent as much time in my in-law's back yard as possible.

one of the best shots we've ever had of all of the peck grandchildren together.

kyle tried so hard to endear himself to diane and she never really let him hold her too long. she was pretty grumpy with everyone all weekend and was handing out the stink-eye left and right.

these two were attached at the hip all weekend and were adorable to watch. i loved hearing them talk together in their high pitched little voices.

orem 5k

2011-05-29T06:59:00.000-06:00

my sister, audrey, decided to run the orem 5k a while ago and about two weeks ago, randy decided to join her. the race was yesterday, so we all trooped over as a family to watch the runners.

yes, it is the end of may.

we thought that audrey's boys would be there and had promised playmates for the girls, but the boys didn't end up coming. our girls were pretty bored with the whole thing. oh well. this is why i don't generally tell madeleine that she is going to see her cousins until they actually appear before her. too much room for disappointment if something falls through.

and they're off!

coming into the finish line.

after the race.

it was a small group of runners and i was a little sad that i hadn't participated as well. of course, it would be good to have run at least once this season before engaging in a 5k. you know, small details. it turns out that i am not motivated to run when it is cold out (although i hate running in the heat more), but mostly, it is really hard to run with two kids when you don't have a double jogging stroller and your husband teaches piano lessons at 6:00 most mornings. once his students are out of school, his lessons will move back a little later and i can run before he leaves. the joys of trying to exercise with small children.

planted

2011-05-25T12:28:00.000-06:00

some of my greatest joys, as well as my deepest disappointments, come from gardening. i planted my garden in the evening yesterday. i carefully checked the weather forecast and it looks like i am in the clear for planting. just to be safe though, i covered the smallest plants to protect the from the cold.

because i didn't think it was going to snow last year and it did.

everything went into shock as soon as i planted. which i knew would happen. i just hate to see it happen. it causes all of this angst, inner turmoil, and pessimism within me. plus, i kept waking up in the middle of the night and wondering how they were doing.

i am way too emotionally invested in this for it to be healthy.

i woke up this morning and went to check on the plants. some of them look great and they should pull through just fine. some not so much. are they still in shock? i haven't been doing this for long enough to know when i should give up hope.

i'm not optimistic about my cucumbers (i think that the key is to plant them before the starts get too big? so the broad leaves don't droop on the ground and get stuck to the soil? is this making any sense?)

the zucchini look like they'll pull through. surprisingly, most of the tomatoes look like they will, too. but my juliets are droopier than i'd like and they're impossible to buy starts for. the abe lincolns look dead. not mostly dead, but dead. and i'm not surprised. i had such hope for them when i bought them. the name alone was so promising. but the starts have struggled since the beginning and i'm not shocked (get it?) to see them like they are. there are two other tomato plants (can't remember which variety) that look dead too, but we're just going to have to wait it out. hopefully they pull through.

good thing i planted 16 tomato plants.

see what i mean? so many emotions in gardening. it's that season again.