heading home

We're super excited around here because we're heading up to my parents' this weekend to a shindig celebrating the engagement/impending wedding of these two fabulous people, my sister Ruth and her soon-to-be husband Jordan (and we're excited because we actually get to meet Jordan for the first time!) My uncle is coming in from New York City today and Ruth and Jordan are flying in tonight from Utah, so it will be great to see everyone. I am looking forward to it SO MUCH!!!!! Hours in the kitchen with my mom and sisters cooking up things like baklava and truffles and artichoke dip for the open house, foosball tournaments with Neil, early-morning running with Dad (hopefully! if you're not working!), and watching my kids go crazy with joy for their much-loved family. Hurrah!!

And then in two weeks we're headed out to Utah where Ruth and Jordan will be sealed for time and eternity in the Salt Lake temple. We'll get to see all of Neil's family, most of whom we haven't seen in the last two years, we'll take the girls to the grounds of the Mount Timpanogos temple where Neil and I were married and visit the BYU campus (where we both did our undergrad work and I did my grad studies) and tell them about how we met in a class right after Neil got home from his mission, we'll go camping and hiking in the mountains, we'll drive up to Idaho to visit my grandmother, and then we'll spend three days with just our little family in Yellowstone.

I can hardly wait.

I love summer. I love the mountains. I love camping. I love family!!!

Now I just have to buckle down and get ready to leave...

creativity binge

Yesterday I borrowed my friend's sewing machine and sort of went nuts.

First I made the twirly skirt that I'd promised Abigail (we had so much fun picking out the fabric together!)


Then I made the shoulder bag, which I've been really excited to make.



Also very excited about this fabric.

And I like how long it is--I hate it when the bottom of a bag hits my waist. I have children who can take care of waist-bumping, thanks very much.



I made the bag longer and wider than the pattern, since I KNOW I will be cramming in lots of things. Shoulder bag? Who am I kidding? It's really going to be a diaper bag.

Speaking of which, I made this bag to hold diapers and wipes (and I made it detachable on purpose, since this way someone else can go change the diaper (like a husband!) without taking the entire bag with them. Excellent for sacrament meeting). I just sort of freestyled this--no actual pattern.



And speaking of freestyling, Abigail and I did some hand embroidery this morning. It was nice to relax with her and do something other than crayons for our creativity time (I read The Creative Family over the weekend and we're branching out with some of the activities she suggests).

I think this will eventually end up on Abigail's walls.

And here's Abigail's--not bad for her second time, eh? She put in all the stitches herself, although she did ask me (on the letters) approximately where to put the needle.

Abigail's favorite day

Let me just say--what goes around comes around.

When I was in elementary school, I went through a period of time (six months? Three years?) where I insisted on wearing a dress to school every day, preferably the same dress. It was a poofy Easter dress with flowers all over it, and I'm sure it must have driven my mother absolutely mad, but she let me wear it.

As we speak, Abigail is asleep in her bed wearing her favorite dress (although it's mostly because she fell asleep on my bed, well, actually, Neil, Abigail, and I all fell asleep on the bed around 6:45 after I put Jules to bed and then when we woke up half an hour later we just put Abigail to bed in her dress). Anyway, my point is, Abigail loves nothing quite so much as dresses, so it drives her absolutely crazy that I don't wear a dress every day (because after all, SHE does! Unless she's just wearing nothing, or her swimming suit). In fact, we were out in the garden last week and I looked over to see her running around naked, and I yelled, "Abigail! Put your clothes back on!" and she shot back, "No! They are garden clothes and they are UGLY and have dirt on them!"

She's becoming quite the little fashionista, and never fails to comment on my choice of outfit/accessories. In fact, I wear a lot more jewelry now than I did two months ago, just because it placates Abigail (and I don't want her to be ashamed of her mommy at the tender age of three).

So our conversation in the morning usually goes something like this:

Me: What should I wear today?

Abigail: How about a beautiful dress?

Me: Um...I would love to, but I have to weed the garden and dresses aren't good weeding clothes. How about jeans? Those are good weeding clothes.

Abigail: Well, I think they are ugly, but I guess you can wear them. I will wear a beautiful dress. Maybe you can just wear some beautiful earrings and necklaces.

Anyway, so today Abigail came RUNNING in and said, "It's Sunday! You can wear a dress! Please you will wear the beautiful pink dress for Ruth's wedding!?!"

So I did.



And she was ecstatic all day, and spent most of sacrament meeting with her head in my lap tracing the flowers and whispering, "I really like this beautiful dress, Mommy. It makes me so happy because it is pink." Poor little kid--it's the first dress I've bought since my own wedding dress (usually I just wear skirts, most of which are from high school and getting a bit elderly) and I've never seen so much vicarious excitement in someone twice (or twice twenty) her age.



Even if she doesn't look very happy in this picture (she was sulking because I made her wear a shirt under the sleeveless dress).

Oh...and did I mention she now picks out Neil's ties on Sunday? It's one of the highlights of her week.

summer fun

Tonight we got together with seven other couples and had ourselves some good campfire fun (we've been trying to plan a massive camping trip, but it's rained every weekend until now, and most of the guys are headed out tomorrow to help with the disaster cleanup stuff).

One thing I love about this ward is how fascinating it is to just talk to everyone and listen in on the conversations, since all the husbands are here for grad school, and the wives are all intelligent, thinking, and really wonderful girls. Heat transfer and thesis-writing was the topic of choice over by the picnic table, investment talk next to the woods, and I was caught up in a very informative discussion with the audiologists about Juliet's problematic tympanic membrane.

Plenty of fabulous potluck food, great conversation, woods-exploring and frog-catching...but wait! Where are all the kids in this picture, since there were 14 present at this little gathering?

Ah yes. The trampoline.

It was pretty much the hit of the evening.

This is my new favorite picture of the girls.

Another interesting fact I discovered tonight: Juliet's appetite for graham crackers is literally bottomless. As is her appetite for blueberries, Pringles (thanks a lot, Neil), baked beans, and hot dog buns. Forget the fact that I fed her a well-balanced dinner before we came. Bottomless pit, I tell you.

And she likes keys too.

one of the "moments"

Sometimes putting Abigail on the floor to wake her up works; sometimes it doesn't.

You know how people (like Elder Ballard) tell us about the shining moments of motherhood (that definitely don't happen all the time, but should really be appreciated when they do?)

For me, one of those shining moments is when I don't have urgent commitments early in the morning (read: I stayed up late last night catching up on housework--hideous thought--so I felt perfectly justified in taking it slow this morning) and I can wake my girls up by climbing into bed with them and rubbing their little tummies and smelling their Johnson & Johnson-perfumed hair and wrapping our arms around each other and talking about our dreams. Bliss, I tell you.

And it makes up for five minutes after we climb out of bed and I find Juliet up to her wrists in Vaseline (my lip balm of choice when not wearing lipstick, sad to say, which I always lose, so there are things of it all over the house. And let me tell you, washing baby hands is hard enough on a regular basis, much more so when they're covered 1/4 inch deep in sticky goo).

Yellowstone Untouched

This morning Abigail and I had fun watching YouTube videos while we made our campground reservations for Yellowstone. This one was our favorite. We are SO EXCITED to share one of our very favorite places with our kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's all fun and jams...

Bet you're wishing you lived in the Midwest right about now...

The weather was perfect--sunny and breezy. Perfect shorts weather without ever worrying about breaking into a sweat.

The cherries were succulent and plentiful. The Goldfish were just plentiful.

It was, in short, a perfect family evening. Talk about "wholesome family activities."

And the proprietor, as always, was delightfully friendly and welcoming. Abigail especially enjoyed the ride out to the orchard (and Juliet just about went crazy watching her from the stroller).

It was a good night.

Now let me cure whatever cherry envy you may have developed, because when Neil went to play basketball that night I thought I'd polish off a batch or two of jam.

I like to call this look "vintage farmhouse patina."



In retrospect, I would have been fine had I remembered to use the big stockpot. As I watched the flames from the burning jam (boiled over and spread into the burners), I was pretty sure I wouldn't ever forget again. Especially after scrubbing the stove for the next hour. Oh, and yes, it did indeed jell. All over the stove. Quite well, in fact. And on the floor, and the counters, and the sink, and the cabinets (it was kind of frantic there for a while. What with the flames and the boiling jam and boiling water and cherries everywhere. Oh, and with Neil gone and with the kids sound asleep, so I was panicking very quietly. More like hyperventilating, come to think of it).

But all's well that ends well...there are rows of cherry jam in the pantry now and I had a good run at 11:30 p.m. last night to work off the angst. And I am REALLY excited about this jam!! And humbled about my kitchen prowess.

snippets

Juliet is teething again.

In other words, nobody is sleeping.

We are like a house of little zombies.

A messy house of zombies, because teething Juliet equates to my viewpoint all day being either this:



...or this.



In other words, I can't accomplish anything that I can't do one-handed.

But evenings are still lovely (as long as nobody thinks they'll be sleeping later on...)

Plans for tonight: a little visit to the cherry orchard (not of the Chekhov variety).

shout-out

for you local friends...

...is your husband going south to help with the disaster relief this weekend? because I'm thinking we should organize something to combat the loneliness. I don't know about you, but a Saturday without my husband sounds reeeaaalllly long.

comment if you're interested in planning something!

i love my garden

No, this picture has nothing to do with the post (except in spirit). I just like it. Baguettes, a great magazine, lots of my favorite color, and onions sizzling on the stove. Happiness.

It's always easier for me to be happy and upbeat when the weather is beautiful and sunny and breezy like this, so that we're practically living outside. Call me crazy, but there are few things as satisfying to me as digging around in the garden while the kids play happily in the grass/on the swingset. I just adore it (except when Abigail squashes a good 18-inch section of peas when she sits down on it in preparation to "help" with weeding).

Some more outdoorsy things that have made me giddy with happiness the past couple of days:

• Eating the thinned carrots and broken-off pieces of broccoli while weeding in the garden (it's like a snack buffet out there)


• Watching everything in the garden explode with the warm weather--the beans are coming up so fast that you can literally watch them pop out of the ground--which unfortunately includes the broccoli, lettuce, and various herbs, which have decided it's just their time to bolt (but which makes Abigail happy because she loves to see all the flowers)


• Going on a bike ride with Abigail last night, just the two of us (as part of the new behavior system we're trying, which revolves around moving marbles from one jar to another based on whether she's earned some for good behavior or lost some for poor--remind you of house points for Hogwarts?--but the reward at the end of the day, if she's earned enough, is a bike ride after Julesie is asleep)


• the strawberries we picked on Saturday which were made into a pie, which was probably my favorite pie ever and you really should go make it!

wannabe craftiness

This morning I was reading Anne of the Island for the umpteenth million time while I fed Jules and read a conversation between Anne and Philippa where Anne mentions that she really should stay home and finish sewing her blouse, rather than going for a walk in the park.

First of all, I wish I felt comfortable going for moonlit rambles by myself (but unfortunately, I don't live in safe friendly turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia), because I really miss being outside at night (Neil and I always used to go meander around before we had small children that needed to be in bed).

But secondly, and more to the point of this post, I wish I was a more confident seamstress. (Although to be honest with you, since I don't have a sewing machine it's hard for me to find time to do much sewing. One of the quilts I've made is completely by hand: it took me about three years.)

One of the things I really admire about my husband's family is how talented they are in hand-crafting--I have a beautiful crocheted blanket that exactly matches my living room that my sister-in-law Monica made and the photograph at the top of this post was the beautifully sewn gift my mother-in-law gave me last Christmas. It is my very favorite piece in my whole house.

Anyway, over the last ten months I've lost a lot of weight (a real surprise, given that I was pregnant and then I had the baby, right?) This is great, but it also means that most of my clothes no longer fit. Not only do my pre-pregnancy clothes from college and high school not fit, but the clothes I bought in April don't fit anymore either (although if you know me in real life you're probably thinking, "uh, you don't look that skinny to me anyway." And as a sidenote, it's funny how I'm still unhappy with my body image. I'm somewhere between a size 4 and a size 6 now and I still see lots of figure flaws. And I feel really guilty if I eat cookies or something like that, and I feel wretchedly guilty on any day when I don't exercise, which is something I would like to prevent in my daughters. How do we teach our children to be happy with their bodies and view them as wonderful creations and not to stress so much, while also emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy body...without going crazy over it?)

But my point is, I wish I knew how to sew things that would fit for a long time, or how to take my clothes apart and sew them back together so they would fit again (except that's not a good solution, since I would probably want to wear them again when I was pregnant and needing a bigger size). This is of especial concern to me because I hate looking sloppy, which happens when all your clothes are too big.

Specifically skirts. Doesn't the idea of a nice floaty summer skirt with an adjustable waist sound great to you? Do you have any experience sewing these kinds of things? Do you know where one would look for patterns? Please, if you have any wisdom/experience/input, share share share!

Meanwhile, I CAN find cute patterns for other things. Like this twirly skirt for little girls:

http://houseonhillroad.typepad.com/photos/twirly_skirt/

and this adorable shoulder bag:

http://www.tinyhappy.typepad.com/tiny_happy/2006/06/shoulder_bag_tu.html

father's day pictorial special

Disclaimer: this post may not be of much interest to you unless you're related to me (or you just like pictures).

This Father's Day, I've been reflecting on all the fathers in my life. And how lucky I am to have them, and more especially how lucky my girls are to have all these wonderful men setting an example for them of what "real men" are and what they do.

So here are the images that show some of my favorite father moments.





Dad with Jules


Dad at my wedding

Juliet's blessing: Uncle Dave, Uncle Caleb, (bishopbric member), Neil, and Grandpa Steve (and Mikal!)

Neil holding Jules in the hospital

Dad and Abigail

My Grandpa Ed (Papa), Neil, and Dad, holding Abigail

One of the qualities I really looked for in a husband, thanks to seeing it in my dad, was someone who truly loved to play with children. Neil's got that in spades. And obviously, so does Dad.

Papa and Juliet

Dad with Abigail

Abigail, firmly entrenched on Grandpa Steve's lap

And finally, two of my very favorite pictures (and no, I don't have a scanner, and yes, that is a camera flash because I had to take pictures of the pictures): Dad holding me when I was a baby.