When The Livin' Was Easy

A friend living in Payson Canyon invited us to do a hike to a waterfall with her and her two little boys earlier this summer.  It took us until the day before school started to make it happen.  But it was a great little adventure and now I'm eager to go back in the spring when the water level will be higher, and then we'll bring Ben with us.

We knew that this would be a fantastic adventure when we arrived early to meet our friends and got to sit and watch a group of cows hanging out by the parking lot.

It was a short hike that followed the path of a stream, and crossed the stream in several places.  Luke was nervous about walking on the bridges (some of which were more precarious than others) so Cat and I helped him across.  The water level was low, it being so late in the summer, so it was easy to just walk beside him and hold his hand.

It might not show up well in the pictures, but this is called the Grotto Hike because the waterfall really does come in to a quasi-cave, which is really cool.  Eliza and Luke and I hung out with our friends at the bottom of the waterfall while Cat and Jack walked around to see the top.  They were within earshot the whole time, and Cat said that Jack got a little nervous but they stayed together and took care of each other very well.

While we waited for Cat and Jack to come back from their expedition, Eliza tried a little rock climbing, with some help from our friend.

Do you see Cat and Jack, making their way back down?

We ate lunch in the car on the way home.  When we got home, Luke took a nap, Jack and Eliza played with a friend for a while, then worked on Star Wars puzzles, and I think Cat was probably practicing piano. I busily sewed up a bunch of holey or outgrown school pants into shorts.  Nothing like waiting till the last minute to get those shorts ready, huh?

And with that, our fun summer was over.

True Story

On the Monday before school started, I'd signed up to bring half of a dinner to a family in our ward.  Someone would bring the main dish and I was in charge of dessert and a salad.  I got everything ready and brought it over at dinnertime, only to find a note on the door saying that the dinner was no longer needed.  I gave the dessert to the family's neighbors, who were chatting outside, and wasn't sure what to do with the salad.  It was big enough for a few people, and nobody in my family would eat it (other than me) and the contents were such that it wouldn't keep in the fridge.  I called a friend in my neighborhood to see if she would like it and she politely declined, but said that her neighbor, Sis. B., loves salads and might appreciate some.  I had another friend, Pat, who agreed to take some, so I divided the salad into two portions: one in a container with a lid, and one in a disposable bowl with a layer of cellophane over it.

Pat needed Cat's help with something, so I sent Cat to Pat's house with the salad in the closed container.  And then I made a critical error.  I sent Jack and Eliza to Sis. B's house with the salad in the bowl with the cellophane over it.  I decided to save them a little time by sending them out the back door to this neighbor's house.  Jack and Eliza seemed to be taking longer than I thought they should, but after a little while, I saw them climbing on the gate to get to our back yard.  I went outside and reminded them not to climb on the gate, and Jack excitedly told me about the candy that Sis. B. had given them when they delivered the salad.  Then he told me that he'd dropped the salad on the way over.

"What? You did?  Where did you drop it?  Did any come out?  How much?  What did you do?"

Well, it took some time but I finally found out what happened.  Apparently, the gate to get out of our back yard wouldn't open for them when they were leaving, so they decided to climb over the gate. (I'm not sure what I was doing that I didn't know about this.)  Jack dropped the salad when he was climbing over, but it landed the right way in the grass and no harm was done.  Then he finished climbing and landed on the salad bowl, sending the cellophane, and the salad, everywhere.  But they just picked up as much as they could, put it back in the bowl, and delivered it.

Aghhh!  What?!?!?

I thought that maybe I should do something about this but didn't know what to do.  By now it had been several minutes and, for all I knew, Sis. B. had already eaten the salad.  What would I do, call and ask her if she found any bugs?  I knew the chances were pretty good that there was nothing wrong with the salad, and that if she saw anything suspicious she would probably discard the whole thing.  So I explained to the kids what they should do if something like this happened in the future, and just moved on with my evening.

But it kept bothering me.  What if something was wrong?  What if this 93-year-old widow got sick from a rare grass-born illness?

I needed an excuse to go talk to her, and it came to me the next day.  I had a few zucchinis that neighbors had given me and knew we wouldn't eat all of them.  I chose one to bring to Sis. B., and walked over with the younger kids so that we could share the zucchini.  As soon as she saw me she said, "Oh, thank you so much for that delicious salad!  My daughter and I ate it all!" Huge sigh of relief.  I made a joke (kind of) about how glad I was that it was okay, because sometimes you don't know how things will be when a kid is sent to deliver them.  And that was that.

By the way, Cat delivered the salad to Pat and helped her with the task at her house and didn't have any heart-stopping stories for me.  Being reliable can be so uninteresting.

Mixed Media

"I'm painting a peanut butter sculpture."

Idaho, Part 2

I don't have as many pictures for this post, but wanted to include what I could.  We had a few more adventures with our friends in Idaho before leaving on Wednesday.  We had a bowling lunch, checked out a choreographed fountain at the outdoor mall, admired the construction of the Meridian, ID temple, and went swimming in the neighborhood pool.  There was lots of fun to be had at the house too, which was mostly light saber fighting for the boys, jumping on the trampoline, and a karaoke party for the older girls.  Kathryn and I also managed a trip to the Boise temple one morning, which was lovely.  What a great friend-filled trip!

Idaho, Part 1

I took the kids on our first trip-without-Ben in quite a while.  It went quite well and I didn't get drowsy while driving even once!  We made the 6-hour drive to visit my friend Kathryn and her family in the area of Boise.  Kathryn has three kids, the oldest of whom is a year older than Cat, and the youngest is Eliza's age.  We had such a great time with them!  We arrived on a Monday afternoon and stayed until Wednesday morning.  It was just right for a last summer hurrah before school started the next week.

We started out with a trip to a nearby park with a splash pad.  The kids weren't in the water very much, but they had a great time playing and it gave Kathryn and me the perfect opportunity to talk.

The next morning we headed to the Foothills Learning Center where they have a Story Trail, a toddler-level trail around the main building with the pages of a story book spread out at short intervals.  It was a fun little activity with an incredible mosaic tree at the end which provided some fun photo ops for me and Eliza.

The girls had fun using my camera.
I really like this picture that Kathryn's second daughter took.

(Luke didn't want to join our circle.)

Off to the Races

A few weeks ago we used our Pass of All Passes to see some racing at Rocky Mountain Raceway.  My favorite event was the double decker racing, where two cars were stacked, with a driver in each.  The driver of the lower car controlled the gas and brakes, and the driver in the upper car steered.  It was ridiculous and very entertaining.  Nobody tipped their car-stack, but they came close a few times.  I was ready to go after that, but everyone else wanted to stay and see some traditional racing, so we did.  We didn't stay long enough for Jack, though, and he was pretty upset with me for making everyone leave early (about 9:30) on a Saturday night when we were driving an hour home and I'd need to be up early for Choir the next day.  I hope he's forgiven me now.

Beg.

I'm not sure how it happened, but the big kids have discovered - and, shall we say, exploited? - Luke's soft spot for dogs.  They've figured out that if he has something they want and he's not interested in sharing, they can change his mind simply by acting like dogs.  The below picture is NOT posed.

It usually goes something like this:
Luke is eating a treat somebody gave him.

Big Kid: Luke, can I have some?
Luke: No.

(Big Kid gets down on knees, shows paws, pants, woofs, walks around on all fours, etc.)

Luke: Here you go, doggy!  (Immediately shares the treat.)

The best is when all three big kids start acting like dogs in order to get a bite of a cookie or a couple of Skittles or something.  I'm not sure if they've trained him, or if he's trained them?

Training for the Race

Eliza had hoped to run the Temple to Temple race with Cat, Jack, and me but I thought it was too far for her.  She was so adamant that she get a chance, though, that I told her to go on a practice run with Cat and Jack one morning in June to see how she did.

As Jack was just finishing his track season, he was the most qualified for leading the warm-up.  It included high-knees, frog jumps, karaoke, kick-outs, and more.  The girls were mostly cooperative, too.

Our neighborhood is a perfect 1/3 mile oval track, so I challenged them to run 10 laps.  They began their run at about 7:50am, coming inside after each lap to get a drink of water and chat and talk about how Jack wasn't staying with the group or Cat was being mean to Eliza by pushing her to run faster.  They finished after 34 minutes, having run 4 laps.

First Family 5K

I signed Cat and Jack up to run a free 5K with me on Pioneer Day.  It was called the Temple to Temple Run because it started beside the Provo Temple, wound south through BYU and downtown Provo until it ended at the courthouse across the street from the Provo City Center Temple.  Each bib had a place to write the name of a relative, so we had a talk on the way down to the start about who we would be running in memory of.  It was a great way to start the event.

The run went quite well.  Cat wanted to run the whole course but Jack needed to take some walking breaks.  We did more running than walking, though, and it was a great first family race for all of us.  Maybe next year we'll have more members of the family joining us.

The Next Best Thing

I am allergic to dogs.  Also, I don't want to own a dog.  So there we have two reasons as to why our family will never own a dog.  Unfortunately, my kids are all dying for a dog.  So when a neighbor asked Cat if she would dogsit for her, I thought it would be perfect.  She could experience the joys and work of having a dog without any allergic reactions or long-term commitments.

All in all, I'd say it went really well.  The dog required attention at least twice a day, but three times was preferable, so we had to alter plans here and there, but mostly it was okay.  Cat did a good job of taking care of Cosette, or "Cosie" as we called her.  The other kids loved getting to play with Cosie too and it was actually really nice to send them outside to take her for a walk now and then.  Of course, the novelty of the experience was in my favor.  But it was nice to see that Cat was capable of taking good care of an animal.  Now we know that the dog she plans to adopt when she leaves the nest will be in good hands.