may and june 2012

 There were so many days to be grateful for in May and June.  For the sake of family history, and in the spirit of self-indulgence, I'm finally posting my summer archives. 

 As the end of the school year approached, Ben performed in his middle school's production of Seussical Jr,

 The Grinch is a small role, but with lots of on-stage time, and a short solo.  I was impressed by Ben's confidence and excited to hear him sing. I could possibly be the only person with this problem; I don't actually cry when I watch Suessical Jr. I weep.  I can't hear Horton sing I'm alone in the universe without uncontrollable tears. I think it could be the companion song to the Red Hot Chili Pepper's Under the Bridge. Just a thought. Now, as it turns out, the girls will be in yet another production of Seussical Jr. this fall, so I may start counseling now.

There he is with the barbells.

In May, Kyle graduated from elementary school, none too soon, in his opinion. Ben finished middle school, and Sam completed his freshman year of high school. This was our celebration lunch at one of our family traditions, Diego's Taco Shop.

The same day the kindergartners held their end of the year performance with lots of dancing, singing, and recitation.

As school ended the sleepovers began, and became so frequent, and politically charged, they had to be outlawed.

And the lessons I vowed to make happen began as well. It felt like I spent most of the month of June in the van.

All the big girls had dance class. I forced them to be in the same class to avoid too much driving or hanging around. Bethany may not forgive me for that. We'll see.

Caitlin went to a week of sewing camp. This skirt was one of her projects.

This is our wonderful Miss Jenny. Her school is called Thimbles and Threads.  I never imagined I would take a daughter to sewing lessons every week, but Caitlin's good friend was going and invited Caitlin to come along.  Caitlin has had so much fun, and came home with so many cute creations, now all the sisters want to go.

   Mary and Olivia went to three days of basketball camp at UVU.  The girls loved their coaches, and Mary is excited to play basketball again this winter.

Sophie was inspired too.

Ben, Kyle, Bethany, Olivia, and Mary went to bluegrass camp. This was their end of the two weeks performance. It was a blast. 

 And while I am in that neighborhood, Kyle had been a huge help to Grandma Martha while I was away in Colorado, so to thank him we went to his favorite restaurant, Se Llama Peru, on Center Street in Provo.  It is located next door to the Great Salt Lake Guitar Company where the kids take music lessons.  In the cold months, I am easily persuaded to stop in for two to-go cartons of their delicious french fries that they serve with a wonderful spicy green chili sauce called aji verde. I asked the waitress for their specialty and she recommended the lomo soltado. It was amazingly savory.

Sam didn't go to any classes in town, but discovered an affordable video equipment rental business called Underfunded Productions in Provo. He spent the month of  June experimenting with new equipment and working on a short movie with his siblings and friends. He was also the only one in the family lucky enough to stay at a Marriott this summer. He flew to San Antonio for with his teacher and classmates for the FBLA nationals.  He had a great time touring San Antonio, especially the Alamo, Ripley's Believe It or Not and Six Flag's. Sam really deserved some fun time away.  

Sam experimented with building some of his own equipment too, so I spent a lot of time wandering the aisles of Home Depot while he gathered his supplies.

I had some mom and daughter time with the girls, Farr's Fresh and MIB 3. I cried in that too.My college roommate Kathy came to stay with us for a few days because our roommate Carrie was getting married.  

I was grateful to see them both and be a part of Carrie's happy day.

Kyle and I took the younger kids to the zoo while Sam, Ben, Bethany, and Grandma Martha went to the long awaited Utah opening of Moon Rise Kingdom at the Broadway theatre in Salt Lake City. I saw it later and it became one of my new favorites.

I just realized William wore his pajamas to the zoo.

The new Rocky Shores polar bear exhibit.Picnic in the van.

Grant spent too much time playing with my phone and other electronics.

So did Caitlin.

And William.

So I attempted to relieve them of their addictions with outings like this to Utah Lake. This one didn't go over so well. It was too hot, the air was thick with smoke from the fires, and apparently Utah Lake is creepy. But I was grateful they were willing to check that off my summer to do list.  I would love to go back with happier kids and kayaks.

best impressions

I have been planning to change my blog header for a some time now, since as I wrote last time, our baby is not really a baby anymore. So last spring, in the absence of matching blue button down shirts, I thought about taking a picture in Easter clothing, and realized, once again, that Sunday best doesn't always encourage best behavior.

It makes me think about the time in family history, when during our first stay in northern Virginia, we were scheduled to make an appearance at the State Department, down in the Foggy Bottoms in Washington DC. The people in charge of assigning new foreign service officers to their first post wanted to get to know each of the families, so they could assure a good match.  I dressed our then four little ones, between the ages of six and not yet two,  in their best church clothes, including as I specifically remember, the boys' stiff, surely uncomfortable, brown Sunday shoes, because I thought it would help them make a good impression. 

Upon entering the large crowded building, and successfully passing through the maze of security, six year-old Sam, our gadget man even then, was immediately drawn to a simple wooden pedestle topped with a large and glowing, red button.  His youthful hand reached out to explore its function, and immediately a guard darted toward him to stop it.

"That evacuates the building!" He said.  

Colin Powell and all. We were off to an interesting start. 

We walked down and around the long, hollow, basement hallways to the little tomb of an office where we waited past the point of good mood or manners before we were called in for our turn.  I remember how confined we felt as we finally filed in the room.  I was enormously pregnant with Olivia, who was born shortly after, and Kyle and Bethany surely struggled and shoved to conquer the remaining territory of my lap. I am sure that Sam, who inherited his mother's fascination with what's-for-lunch, had that on his mind. Stomachs growling, heads aching, brown shoes kicking, some crying, the rest barely smiling, we turned our list of twenty-five would- be posts over to the interviewer.  He had no problem with our top choices, mostly in China, as I remember. He smiled with approval at number twenty-five, Ciudad Juarez...suckers, and then grew concerned as he looked down at the eastern European countries on the bottom half of the list, the posts where he, not being the biggest optimist ever, probably assumed we would be placed. 

"Vilnius," he said.

 "Too cold."  

He looked at me. "Can you imagine being cramped up in a tiny Lithuanian house, with your children, in the dead of winter?" he asked. 

 He seemed to have a good imagination.

"Take it off the list," he said.

His point was well received, and we agreed to investigate an alternative post.  Port-au-Prince, Haiti was his suggestion. Upon our research we decided he must have secretly hated children, if not all children, then ours at least.  And as we feared from reading about the civil unrest and violence at the post, a few months later the country was in a coup d'etat. Maybe he thought we would fit right in.  I think we might have left Vilnius on our list. I can't remember.

So back to 2012.  This behavior hardly compares to a coup-d'etet. You can see that everyone, minus Sophie, is trying to appease their mom, this lady with a camera, who knows nothing about how to photograph large groups of children, even her own, but is too cheap to hire a professional.

  We'd been to three hours of church. They were hungry, tired of being dressed up, and wanting their Easter baskets yesterday.  So who is to blame?  Me. These pictures, as beautiful as they are, and as good natured as these kids were trying to be, are another reminder, like that day in the Foggy Bottoms, that I should have been more concerned about their comfort than a good impression.  I'm sure there will be more reminders to come...but someday I will catch on.

William through the fish eye.

Here are a few pictures from the barbecue we had at Granddad and Lala's house, Easter 2012.

Sam was looking like Quentin Tarantino here,  and demonstrating that he is taller than his Granddad now.

sophie's record

Monday, Sophie set a family record by becoming the oldest baby of the family.  She is the first to reach her second birthday before being unseated by a younger sibling. And as for other small victories, it seemed as if the teenagers, as well as others, seemed remarkably willing to make the day fun for their little sister and easier for me. 

 All day I was grateful for their shoulders.

 I never think of a fun idea that half of the Utah and Salt Lake valleys haven't already thought of first. Gratefully, the kids were up for Labor day crowds, parking or not, so we had our picnic by the side of the road, a mile down the street, and hiked up to the zoo.

I knew, because of the heat, and the long commute on foot, we wouldn't last long, so we went straight for the must-do's the playground, the train, and Hogle Zoo's new Rocky Shores exhibit.

The bald eagles were breath taking even in 

captivity.

 The harbor seals and otter were adorable too, but it would be hard for anyone to compete with this polar bear. When we saw the exhibit in June he was just wandering around his habitat on land. Fascinating, but not as entertaining as Monday when he was swimming back and forth, gliding up to the glass, and emerging from the water to make faces at the crowd, and then plunging back in for another lap.

This is how we knew that it was time to go. That and Grant's occupy Wall Street movement at the zoo. He camped out in the middle of the sidewalk, protesting my not buying him some zebra glasses. I know now how much Grant likes zebras. Still, no glasses.

 We had dinner at Sophie's favorite tree house McDonald's.

Tuesday afternoon Sophie and William were having some cake after lunch, while I went outside to water our small garden.  When I came back in William had shaved all of the frosting off all of the second day's half of the cake and had consumed it. William was unhappy with my response, so he spent all of Tuesday afternoon teaching Sophie to say "I hate you Momma."  Sometimes it is too bad that Sophie is such a good mimic.

berries within us

The first morning in September we woke up to an amazing thunderstorm--lightening and thunder right in sync. Kyle, who was out camping with a friend reported seeing a lightening bolt strike a tree.  Mary came in to my room because she was concerned about the rabbits, who have recently moved out to the garage. I was proud of her for thinking of them, but wasn't compassionate enough, myself, to get out of bed and dodge the hail out to the comfort them.

 The clouds cleared by the time the sun came up. We had plans for a change.  A very kind couple from the church had invited ward members to go out to their farm in Mapleton to pick raspberries. I was happy that the kids were enthusiastic about going, even with the early-on-a-Saturday wake up.  

Berry picking is in our genes, as I have mentioned before.  My blood runs blue, not from wealth, but blue for Maine blueberries.  My mother's father and uncles grew up picking blueberries and my wonderful Great-Uncle Ed managed blueberry fields for almost as long I knew him.  Going out to the fields with him, in the back of his pick-up, was always one of the best parts of our visits to Belfast, and even after eating numberless blueberries in his lifetime, Uncle Ed's hands would reach for mouthfuls and enjoy them right in the field, like he was witnessing a new miracle. I was pleased that the most resounding enthusiasm came from my native Mainers, Bethany and Ben, whose birth certificates, for the birthers among you, say Waterville and Portland.  Ben was old enough to remember picking blackberries with our good friends, the Bennetts, out by their log cabin, when we lived in Augusta. I remember their daughter walking among the vines barefoot, and thinking how lucky she was to be at home in those acres of woods. 

Back to Saturday morning. Our ward friends were so kind to welcome us out to their beautiful, just like the garden of Eden, farm. She is a master horticulturist, and so it was humbling to be in the presence of such well cultivated plants.  He, "the farmer" as William called him, was quick to give the little kids bright green buckets with painted raspberries to use as they picked, and introduced us to the hundred plus, golden and checkered chickens, the magnificent white turkeys, and the odoriferous, but palatial chicken coup where "the farmer" generously helped the girls gather brown eggs.

 We had gathered a big bowl of raspberries before the thunder and rain began again.  All of the kids, but Bethany ran to the van. Bethany was addicted to hunting for red berries in the bushes, and said they seemed to come out of hiding when all the kids went to the van. Our wonderful friend, "the farmer", sent us off with even more berries, frozen and vacuum packed.

I was happy that the kids enjoyed the experience, and grateful for our friends' generosity.

Sunday evening Olivia helped me make raspberry peach and raspberry apple pies.

Meanwhile Sophie was making herself ready for the next day, her birthday. The tears were due to Sam's taking away Mamma's makeup bag.