Sunday, July 31, 2011

19 Years

Stan and I went to the mountains overnight on Friday to celebrate our 19th anniversary. We stayed in a little cabin with a jacuzzi, ate a delicious dinner of steak and swordfish and went on a zipline tour. It was so nice to get away and just be alone together, but it was also nice to get back to the kids and find them happy and well :)

Here are a couple of pictures from the ziplines. There were nine total. We got up to about 46 miles per hour and the longest was 825 feet.
It was fun!


I kept adjusting my helmet mid-ride because it didn't fit very well, so it is a good thing I didn't land on my head.

Speaking of milestones - this is the 500th post on Blogography! I looked back, and we started it five years and three weeks ago from today.

Thanks for reading it :)




Sunday, July 24, 2011

Pick an Author Photo Contest--$25 Amazon Gift Card

Stan had me take a bunch of pictures of him to use for his upcoming book. We chose the ten best photos...and then we ran out of decision making brain cells, so can we use yours?

#10




#9




#8




#7




#6




#5




#4




#3




#2




#1



There are two ways to enter -

1. Leave a comment on this blog post telling us which one you think would be the best author photo and include a way for us to contact you (e.g., email address) to deliver your prize. Please only one vote per person age 18 and older.

2.Like the book's facebook page or follow the author on twitter and leave a separate comment here on this blog saying that you did.

The winning entry will be chosen from the comments on this blog, so if you do both 1 and 2, it will double your chances.

On August 15th we will randomly pick one comment to win...

...a $25 Amazon.com gift card!

Good luck and thanks for your help :)


***UPDATE***

Thanks to RANDOM.org, we have a winner...




...and the winner is Shell Holland!

Thank you ALL for entering and for your feedback on the photos :)


Provo

Last month sometime, I don't even remember which week without looking at the calendar, the five youngest kids, Summer, and I (Stan was in California and Rachel was in Indiana) stayed with my brother and sister-in-law in Genola while we worked on getting Summer settled at BYU. There may also have been some (a lot of) fun going on that week, too.

I remembered that there were fish tanks in the basement of one of the buildings on campus, but I didn't remember which one, so I asked at the information desk, "Where are the fish in the basement?" She had no idea what I was talking about, but after we looked around the wrong science building for a few minutes, a more informed person sent us to the Widstoe building. Besides seeing the fish and crustaceans, we saw a student working in the growth chamber and I was able to tell the kids that that is what their dad did when he was at BYU.

We also went to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. More than one kid was confused when I excitedly told them that we were going to the Bean Museum. They caught some of my enthusiasm when they realized we were looking at animals instead of legumes.

I really like this picture of Summer, but I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I am just sentimental about anything Summer since we all miss her a lot.

There were walls of child eye level heads that lent themselves to the following silliness -



I also got to see some college roommates and had so much fun! Michelle fed us lunch and my kids played and visited with her kids. It felt so nice to be in her home and it was wonderful to see her and her family :)

Summer, Naomi and I also went out to a long, delightful lunch with Karla, Kathleen, April and Kelly. Summer understood that much better why I had so much fun in college after she hung out with these wonderful women for a couple of hours. My cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing when we were done!

Some of the other, non-photographed things we did were to help Summer get a state ID, a bank account, books and food. We ate at the Creamery on 9th and at the Wilkinson Center. We went to the Museum of Art (no pictures allowed) and helped the girls who were moving out of Summer's new apartment clean the bathrooms (strangely enough, that was part of getting Summer her state ID!).

I started following a blog a couple weeks before our trip and the blog author was teaching a class the week we were there. I was SO excited to be able to take a class from Karleigh Jae! Here is the book I made.

It was sewn using a double needle Coptic binding. I hope I said that right!

I love the endpapers :)

The day Summer was in Freshman Orientation, I took the younger kids to Cascade Springs. The road was closed, so we went around the back way. It was kind of nice because I got to stop on the side of the road and show the kids some lilacs, one of my all time favorite flowers, which don't grow where we live.

The most exciting part of the day was seeing a baby moose, just a few feet away. We kept hoping we wouldn't run into its mother, and we didn't - whew!

We also saw a snake :)

It was a lovely day and a lovely trip, but it turned bittersweet as we said goodbye to Summer.

We can't wait to see her again!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Cute

This weekend I have added two more long posts in my to-post-pile, Gwen's day on the rope course and our tour of the port of Long Beach, but I am procrastinating them along with the three other posts still waiting to be done and just putting some pictures up. These are all things I thought were cute enough to photograph during the week.

Naomi caught a baby lizard.

I don't know what I think is cuter, the tiny reptile, or those chubby, grimy hands - okay, I do know, it is the hands :)

Each of the kids has some summer vacation meal assignments and the other day Heather set out sandwich fixings for cheese and mayonnaise OR peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Naomi didn't hear the "OR" part.

Michael was having fun in the bath with bubbles. The blur over his neck is Mo's hand helping him add MORE bubbles.

Kelly has such a cute smile and...

...I think Stan is really cute!

Monday, July 11, 2011

My kid is turning into a shark.

See, he has two rows of teeth!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

4th of July for Pyromaniacs

It is either feast or famine as far as posts go around here, isn't it? Someday, in the near or not so near future, I'll post about the week we spent in Provo dropping Summer off at BYU, the week and a half we had cousins staying with us, and the long weekend we spent at Stan's family reunion, but first, I wanted to show what we did when most of us (we miss you, Summer!) finally got home. It was the 4th of July. Stan took the kids up on the roof to watch the municipal fireworks from a distance and then we had our own little show at the dining room table.

Pyromania, anyone?

We started off with orange peel fireworks...



...which progressed to seeing what lighting a whole orange on fire would look like...

...and ended up being really crazy when we lit ourselves on fire.


Speaking of Summer, I talked to her on the phone on her 18th birthday and she told me that she and her roommate just had fun lighting their hands on fire and then she added, "and you can't do anything about it!"

She's right, she is an adult now and so we figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Hee hee

Someone was searching on Google for "Missouri-isms" and was directed to our blog and a post called "Mo-isms".

I don't think that is what they were looking for...