Road Trip!!

I just downloaded 254 pictures onto my computer from our road trip vacation.  Needless to say, we certainly packed in a lot of stuff!!  I think I need to write the story in spurts or I'll be up all night!

I've been itching to road trip.  My mom and I had talked about going to see them in Las Vegas but ruled it out for various reasons -- they were going on vacation themselves, I was potty-training William, two day drive and who drives with me -- that kind of stuff.  Well, the potty-training didn't work out and their vacation didn't work out so at the last-ish minute my mom said she would fly out and drive one way with me if Chopper did the other.  Deal.

Oh my.

Just so you know, the girls travel fantastically.  They self-entertain very well.  I did provide books, coloring, toys, and snacks of course but they were so good.  William?  Not so much.  Poor boy doesn't read, doesn't color, and doesn't have room in a car seat to play with cars.  Thank goodness for DVD players and music.

Going from Texas to Vegas is actually very interesting . . . once you get out of Texas.  The kids LOVED the red rocks and mesas of New Mexico and the mountains and deserts of Arizona.  They pointed everything out to me and it kind've became a competition of who had the cooler sights on their side of the car.  We stretched our legs doing some climbing at a rest stop and drove and drove.

We spent the night in Gallup, New Mexico which gave us a shorter 2nd day.  About 30 minutes from my parents is Hoover Dam so we stopped to take a look.  It is something that is completely astonishing and doesn't look it in the pictures.  You just can't get the full sense of the scale of it until you stand there.  Last night Chopper and I watched a documentary on the dam and it wasn't too detailed but still gave some incredible information on how they built this thing in the 1930's and 40's.

Lake Mead right now is incredibly low.  The white rocks are where the the water normally should be.  In fact, they've had to caution boaters about the water levels because of rock formations under the water that are getting very close to the surface and they've had several islands pop up as the water has gone down as well.

The dam itself.

There is a massive bridge that you drive over above the dam and a walkway along the side that you can go on.  My fear of heights is getting a lot worse the older I get so we didn't walk the whole thing (which the kids complained about) but we got far enough along to take some good pictures looking down.

Then finally to Vegas!!  Thank goodness for toys!!  Grandpa helped William build a train but in the end, he really only wanted cars every day.

Our first full day in Vegas we went south again to visit a chocolate factory and watch their production.  Sadly, the production line wasn't working but we got a free sample and wandered in their cactus garden.  It's amazing how much my kids are entertained by nature and lizards and airplanes and simple things!

Because the morning didn't turn out too great, we got some good tacos for lunch and found a park for the kids to play at.  It was actually an overcast, fairly cool day (for Vegas in July!) and the kids enjoyed the park particularly because it had a splash pad and I let them soak themselves, clothes and all!

Our next day we drove up to Mount Charleston about 30 minutes away.  It was fun to go from Nevada desert to high desert with Joshua trees to piney mountains in a 30 minute drive and a big elevation climb.  It was about 75 degrees up there and PERFECT weather.  We asked at the visitor's center about good hikes for kids and they suggested Robber's Roost because it ends in a sort've cave where robber's hid after stealing horses from the Mormons! 

The hike was short but very rocky and we did a lot of climbing.  My kids are mountain goats!!  They all did spectacularly, in fact William was often in the lead and it wore me out trying to keep up with him to make sure he didn't fall off a cliff or anything.

 

Funny story.  On the way there, William threw a fit in the car about going to the mountains and I tried to appease him by telling him that we would see animals.  Immediately he starts talking about seeing puppies and even though I told him we probably wouldn't, it's what he talked about a lot.  When we got to the top of Robber's Roost, there was a couple climbing the cliff face and lo and behold, they had a dog with them.  William was so excited and it was a very nice dog so they got to pet it too.

Proof!!

That's Grandma trying to keep up with William while I help the girls and telling me later about the moment when he fell over the edge and caught himself.  But he would only have rolled about 10 feet down a steep slope.  Yeah probably not a story I needed to hear!

But we did also see a deer.

We hiked a second trail that wasn't as fun but had some spectacular views.  It made me miss my college roommates.  Krista and Rachel and I used to go on hiking and camping expeditions.  We took a really fantastic one to Asheville, North Carolina and hiked waterfalls and the Appalachians -- including the area where they filmed Last of the Mohicans.  I miss those girls and our adventures!!!

Our entire time in Vegas we didn't even go near the Strip and I didn't know that there were so many amazing things to do outdoors!!!  The heat was a factor but to me it didn't feel too much worse than Dallas.  We have temperatures that are slightly lower but also get the raised heat index from the humidity.  Besides, you pretty much get above 100 wherever you are and hot is just hot!!!

At the visitor's center we saw a really interesting piece of art.  At the top of the wall in the windows you could see the outline of mountains, like glass on glass.  But when you look through polarized glass, suddenly animals and plants and nature scenes appear in bright, vivid colors.

It was hard to take a picture of -- that's the polarized glass I'm holding up on the right -- but really cool!!

This one is a little clearer with the outline on the right and the polarized view on the left.

 

In preparation for our trip I loaded up the car with stuff to do, snacks, movies, and sewed a ton of things -- car organizers, car seat pillows, and lap desks.  Ironically in all my preparation, I forgot to bring shoes for the kids.  Well maybe not exactly forgot.  I assumed that we wouldn't need anything other than flip flops.  I should have done more research into Vegas and what we could do.  I ended up purchasing shoes and socks for all the kids so that we could do this hiking and it was totally worth it.  I'm justifying it as a back to school necessity as well!!!  

So that's the beginning!!

William is Three!!

Where do I start?  Poor William.  Three years old is definitely not the baby and yet that's what Abby calls him constantly.  He's the youngest so he gets all the hugs and kisses (I think a double dose because of missing Aaron), but he's starting to turn "boy" and not want hugs and kisses.  He wants to do everything that his sisters do and honestly, pretty much can.  We always measure the kids on their birthday and he is taller at 3 than Abby was so she'll probably get overrun pretty quickly.

William doesn't really have any friends.  He spends his life with mom doing girl things and going places for the girls so his friends are their friends.  And all of their friends are on vacation!!  His birthday fell on Sunday and I didn't want to throw a party anyway so we invited over the guy who is probably his favorite person ever - his nursery leader.

Now Chad, the nursery leader, really only volunteers in the nursery because all of their leaders except one have moved or had babies.  But he really has taken it over.  The nursery right now is mostly boys and Chad lets them rough-house with him to no end and has started a nursery dodgeball league that mostly consists of beaning the kids in the head with under-inflated dodgeballs.  William LOVES it.  In fact, on the day of his birthday, he skipped his nap (again dang it) and was pretty cranky so Chopper turned on his favorite YouTube video -- an hour long video of different trains driving and making train noises.  He loves it.  And when Brother Fisher arrived for dinner and cake, William LEFT THE TRAINS BEHIND to go see him.  That's how much he loves him.

Presents this year were pretty predictable -- cars, helicopters, dinosaurs.  He is heavily into all three.  Although he doesn't play dinosaurs as much.  Dinner?  hot dogs, olives, corn-on-the-cob, tater tots, CAKE.  All year poor William has had to suffer through everyone else's birthdays -- watching them open presents and blow out the candles.  He tries to do both.  As soon as we set that cake down in front of him he went for the candles and we had to make him wait until the end.  He did good though.

No smiles!!!  This was the best I could get.

And some fun videos.

Ok that's not a birthday video.  A friend of mine gave us their playset -- her boys have grown out of it.  It took a lot of work to get it apart, over here, and built back up, but the kids have loved it and for the 4th of July we did a little waterslide with it!

So things about William on his third birthday -- His talking has improved SOOOOO much!  He's still not saying his K's and hard C's (so ok is oh-hay and cars is hars) but he's speaking pretty much all the time.  A lot of it is fairly unintelligible, especially to people other than me, but he's doing it.  He reads scriptures at night with us (we pick the shortest one for him and go word by word) and more of his personality is coming out with his words.  Speaking of personality, he doesn't like to share AT ALL and is very boy -- active, loud, stinky (wet dog when he's sweaty -- it's amazing) but he can be so sweet and is quick to apologize.  He still is a major mama's boy and loves to cuddle with me, his blankets, and his milk but if daddy's home and doing work around the house then I am nothing!  He loves to be outside and he loves tools.  He has really enjoyed putting that playset together!!  He doesn't carry his blankets around everywhere anymore but still wants and needs them.  He has also gotten attached to Pluto (a stuffed animal) and needs him for bed now as well.  He is sleeping in a twin bed and occasionally asks me where his crib is but hasn't had any problems.  I think he fell out the other night but we cuddled and he went right back to sleep.  We tried to potty-train and he doesn't care so we stopped but he hates having a poopy diaper and he HATES being sticky.  The boy can be covered in who knows what and if his hands are sticky there is no end to the whining and crying until it's taken care of.  He loves cars, planes, trains and playing on the tablet or my phone and will steal them to watch movies.  He is still white blond but I've noticed a few random dark hairs!!  Not sure what that means!!!

I think that's it for now.  I love this boy and I'm grateful to have him.  He's a sweet sweet boy, oh LOVES to be read to, fun to be around.  Happy birthday William!!

Summer Projects

A while back, a friend of mine gave us their playset.  This of course involved taking it down at their house, transporting it, and reconstructing it at our house.  With so much rain, and needing to borrow a truck and extra arms, it's taken us a long time to get together.  It's now fully functional (swings and slide and house are up) but not yet complete.  But it has been the biggest excitement of the kids' lives!!  They have very eagerly anticipated this playset and so far have not been disappointed!

 

The best thing has been the kids' eagerness to help.  William especially has loved the access to tools and building!  But they have all pitched in.  The other day, Abby eagerly ran up to Chopper when he got home from work and said, "daddy I'm going to help you work on the playset and then we can drink Dr. Pepper and talk about the world!"  She knows how to get into his heart!

But our artsy side has not been neglected!!  Scrolling through Pinterest one day, Megan and I saw some postings of clothespin dolls and fell in love.  So we took 2 days to get the materials, paint, and clothe.  Ok I took 2 days.  The girls painted some and then decided it was too tedious and time-consuming.  It's not really a project for impatient fingers for sure but the results turned out great and Megan especially has enjoyed playing with their new dolls.

Yesterday was the annual Freedom Fest in Oak Point.  3 minute parade followed by playing at the park and pavilion with bubbles, hula hoops, and some lunch to end the morning.  We enjoy this small town festival every year! 

More Arboretum

My albums and your patience are inundated with Arboretum pictures, I know.  We always try to get in one summer visit though, hot as it is.  We got lucky last week with an overcast, sprinkly, cool (80s) morning that turned in to a downpour about 15 minutes after we left.  It was humid though so we spent the morning damp and sticky.  But we came home and did swim lessons and pizza for dinner and the girls declared it the best day ever!

Summer display -- Texas fairy tales.  

Hello who's this?  That would be my almost 3-year old!!  He's so handsome when he's not screaming or destroying things!

As you can see, Megan still "loves" to have her picture taken.

And Abby really does!!  But this is the smile she's started giving me every time.

I always ask them to do at least one hugging picture.  It gets them close together and creates the sweetest moments -- that don't last beyond 5 seconds.  This is why pictures are deceiving.  They are ordinary siblings -- fighting a good portion of the day and best friends when they're supposed to be sleeping.  Or doing chores.  Or following my directions.

I love the mushroom pictures though and they do too.  We took several this way and then we had to mix up mushroom size and kid size and take several each mixup.  I really don't think you need to be subjected to that! 

In the children's garden we found a place we actually hadn't seen before and it was cool!!!  Cave drawings, plant life cycles, and GIANT flower pots! 

This display was tons of fun -- putting the flower together from stem to stamen (isn't that what they're called?).  I took a lot of pictures of this process too.  

William has pretty much broken my camera and it isn't focusing correctly and sometimes it doesn't work at all.  This means that until we get a new one I'm relying more on my phone and I don't like that.  The camera on it isn't nearly as good and even though I carry it everywhere the pictures don't come out as good for printing copies or publishing in the blog book.  I'm hoping to get a quilt commission this summer and using the proceeds to buy a new camera!!

A Craving for Camp

Doesn't that sound funny?  Can you crave a time and a place?

A few weeks back I dug through a box of old pictures looking for a particular one and found just a few from the summer of 2001 when I worked at Lochearn Camp for Girls -- a private girl's camp in rural Vermont.  Then today, I was sewing up another pillowcase for the girls' cozy nook and thought "this would be awesome fabric for camp!"  I love summer camp!!  In high school, when I went to Young Women's camp, I had 4 years of fantastic experiences despite the mosquitoes and spiders and dirt.  I've always wanted to be in our Young Women's program at church and since becoming an adult, never have been!!! Ironic isn't it?  When I've been friends with a lot of YW leaders who have dreaded camp!!  

Anyway, I digress.  Lochearn.  I want to write about it now so I don't forget and I may have to dig up old letters to my parents and things and see what they say too.  But in the meantime, I thought it would be fun to write the story since we're into the first week of summer here and I am craving summer camp!!!

I don't remember how I found out about Lochearn or even when the idea first popped into my head, but at the beginning of the summer I got in my car and drove the 9 hours by myself (no cell phone!) from Virginia to Vermont.  When I arrived at the camp I felt like I had stepped into the camp in The Parent Trap (which we may have to find and watch now!).  Cabins clustered in groups along the lake and in the trees, a main dining and activities building and the flagpole front and center.  Actually, go to their website and see the pictures: Camp Lochearn  -- there's actually a virtual tour of the camp that includes cabin interiors, etc.  The White Mountains are in the distance and we did a day hike up there -- idyllic setting really.

I had been hired as a camp counselor and then rehired as a group leader (I can't remember what it was called).  That meant that I was in charge of the counselors for one of the age groups.  Mine was 8-10ish.  The youngest campers.  Campers were arranged into age groups and for the younger girls there were 4 to a cabin with a counselor in the cabin.  I got my own cabin (awesome!) and had about 7 cabins under me with their campers and counselors.  Halfway through the session we had a counselor leave and I got to move in with the campers and do double-duty until a replacement was hired for the 2nd session.  The website says the sessions are 3 1/2 weeks but I'm pretty sure they were six when I was there.  And it was the youngest cabin.  Poor girls were all 7 turning 8 in the summer and they were sweethearts but I can't imagine Megan being in summer camp for that long and she's about that age!!

My girls of cabin F -- ha I almost forgot!!  We had a bat in our cabin.  I laid awake one night listening to it chirp (is that what bats do?) and the girls slept through it.  But the next night it was spotted and you can imagine chaos that ensues when you're trying to get a bat out of a small cabin with 4 screaming 8-year olds.  One of the other counselors, Naz I think, got a broom and in the process broke our overhead light.  So then we had a bat, 2 counselors, and 4 screaming girls in the dark.  We did finally get it out -- I think it came back the next night -- and then they installed a bat house on a nearby tree and we were good after that!!

Each counselor also taught classes and they had all your classic camp classes: canoeing, swimming, basket weaving, theater, crafts, various sports, and for an extra fee you could do English riding.  What did I teach?  Scrapbooking and I don't know what else.  I didn't teach quite as many classes because of other duties.

Cabins did have electricity but no air-conditioning (not needed!!!) and had to be cleaned up ready for the day by breakfast.  Girls brought fabric from home and used it to make curtains around their beds or in the windows.  This actually was my first exposure to Harry Potter because as I was going around on opening day helping with move-in, one girl was hanging up Harry Potter fabric and I didn't know who that was!!

We had so many fun camp activities!!  The counselors and staff were the red team and girls were divided into blue and green and stayed on that team for as many years as they came to Lochearn.  So we would play games against each other, we had songs and chants for our team (I can still do R-E-D and it was hard to learn!), etc.  We had campfire every Sunday night I think where we dressed in camp uniform -- navy shorts, white Lochearn shirt, red plaid sash, knee high socks and sang camp songs and had a program.

Crazy dress night????

Me and my counselors for the junior level

Wow bringing up all these memories is really making the holes apparent!!  I have to have this written down somewhere.  2001 -- no cell phones and internet was spotty so I called my family once a week on an office phone and wrote snail mail to them.  I doubt my mom has those letters but now I wonder if I have them tucked away somewhere.

The people.  The people!!  Obviously I didn't know anyone on arrival and most names I've forgotten but it was a very safe environment and I made fantastic friends.  There were a few other LDS girls there and we went to church on Sunday when we could.  There were quite a few girls from England and Australia and that was fun to compare lives, and then there was also a group from Eastern Europe, Romania I think -- that group included our male water instructors that made all the teenage girls in camp twitter-pated.  The food was actually pretty good even if it did get old from repetition but I do remember some of the Australian girls had brought Vegemite with them (I thought it was awful!) and my friend Leanne sent home for decent tea because we didn't have any!

I can't think of a whole lot else right now.  Maybe I'll dig and see what I can find.  I should be posting stuff like this though.  I didn't start blogging until we had Megan and there's years of good stuff from when Chopper and I were first married, etc.  Since I print my blog off into a book every year, I should be including more from our "family history!"

So that's the basics at any rate.  Especially since we're already approaching 100 degrees here I am really wishing for hot days but cool, perfect nights and that carefree, summer enjoyment that camp gives.  I can't wait until the girls are able to go to camp -- probably just our week long church camp -- but I hope that they love it as much as I do!! 

It Gets Harder

I really thought that things would get easier over time but maybe I've packed too much in at once and done myself in.

Today is the last day of school and I am crying.

Not because I'll have all three home for the summer -- although ask me again in August and yes, that might be the reason.

It was the last time I walked home from school with William AND Abby.  So I'm already crying about Abby going to school too!  It will be just me and William and I'm not sure how to parent without breaking up fights and arguments and maneuvering the wishes and demands of more than one child.  After all, by the time Megan was old enough for all of that, Abby was here too.

What a funny place to be.

In addition, we've removed the crib entirely and William is now sleeping in a regular bed.  Next week I potty-train him.

I know that some of my struggle with all of this stupid growing-up stuff is grief that things are coming to an end so soon when they weren't supposed to.  I think that I will always feel a little bereft that I'm not suffering through one more set of terrible twos, one more first words, one more headed off to kindergarten.  Because amazingly, those first months of having Megan when everything seemed to DRAG are completely gone.  And now it's one big race.  How quickly can they grow up and move on?  Too quickly.

Megan has progressed more in this year than I think I've ever seen.  She is FINALLY bathroom independent and will be a completely silly girl at times.  She still struggles with performing in front of a crowd but has come so far and does it when she has too.  Her reading and writing are phenomenal!  She has had A honor roll ALL year.  She has gained a lot of confidence in herself but we still have a long way to go.  We've struggled this year with a particular "friend" who tears her down so much.  It's really come to a head this last week and I think we will both feel better when summer is here and they are NOT in class together next year (special request by me).

Abby has learned a lot and is primed for kindergarten.  She already knows the school and the teachers so well and is so excited to go.  I imagine that our biggest problem will be the talking!  And the thumb.  I just do NOT know what to do to get her to stop sucking it.  I don't think there is anything that I can do.  She knows most of her letters and numbers and can write her name although it's often with backwards or upside down 'b's.  Next year I anticipate that she will take off  and not look back and I can hardly believe it.  Everyone she encounters loves her and it's because she loves everyone she encounters!!  I will miss so much her cuddles and stories and funny things. Probably not the whining.

William -- well I'm keeping my fingers crossed that potty-training goes well next week (because I'm dreading it) and curious to see what my life looks like with one child - a BOY - the only one at home.  This could be very weird for me.

I'm looking forward to our summer though. I'm looking forward to not getting up in the morning to the sound of an alarm and having to rush and push and yell to get everyone out the door on time and ready for the day.  Im excited to not have homework but to have different responsibilities for the kids and shove some more gospel learning into them to hopefully prepare them for next year.  I'm looking forward to a fluid schedule of activities, playdates, movies, and pool time.  And all of it will be gone in the blink of an eye.