Juliet is 5!

 Joojie is 5!  And what a darling five she is.  In fact, she is standing next to me right this minute and insisting that I read her stories, so...off I will go.  But isn't she darling?  (And she is so in love with all things Tangled right now.  Can you tell?  We stopped at the Disney Store in Chicago and she profited greatly thereby.)

Juliet is bright, fascinating, inventive, and the snuggliest of all our children.  She still folds herself up into this tiny little ball (that she calls "princess ball") and wiggles into my lap.  She loves to cuddle with her blankie when it is freshly warm out of the dryer, she loves listening to any kind of story (her vocabulary is SO crazy for her age due to her penchant for listening to audio books), and she is just an absolute delight.  Love this little lady!

Last week of summer extravaganza!

 The week before school started, the kidlets and I did two little mini road-trips (would they count as road-trips with Neil along?  No.  But an hour in the car alone with the kids does count).

The first one was to a dairy farm that is the largest dairy farm in the US.  And they do tours.  So we went.  I think the kids really loved it, but it was a little depressing/nauseating for me.  The calf hutches where the heifers live, separated from their mothers; the milking carousel where all the cows ride around as they're attached to the milking machine, and the still-gross-even-though-they-clean-it-three-times-a-day barns.  I was not crazy about the idea of eating any dairy afterwards.



We did, however, witness the birth of a calf, which was pretty cool.  A little scary for the kids, because things were not progressing very smoothly and so a vet came out and attached some straps to the calf's hooves and literally yanked it out of the mother (you could hear an almost audible wince from every woman in the room), but pretty cool nonetheless.  (I'll spare you the pictures, although I did take some.)

Then when went outside and this was the REAL hit--all of the rides and exciting things to do.  I didn't get a picture of the girls jumping on the bungee bounce thingie, because I was standing there watching Isaac ride the train for the dozenth time and trying to keep Luke off the track.  It was pretty much a full-time job.

Apparently carousels aren't quite as fun when they are cows instead of mythical creatures and bedazzled horses...

 Juliet thought this was pretty awesome.

I really love ISaac's face here.  Awesome.

And then, a couple of days later, we went to the children's museum with some friends.  Melanie and I had been planning this trip since, oh, like April?  But my kids were super sick when we were planning to go during spring break (that was SO fun) and then we had trouble coordinating with all our vacations all summer.  So it ended up being our last hurrah on the Friday before school started again, and it was so absolutely wonderful that I was mad we hadn't been able to do it every week all summer!

 This is one of my very favorite pictures EVER.  The kids were playing on this "shipwreck" exhibit and they refused to take a breath while they were "underwater."  Whenever they had to breathe, they would run off to the side and gasp and then puff their cheeks out and run back.  Love it!

The babies loved crawling on it--and then Luke put on a little oxygen tank and insisted on wearing it for the next half hour.  I took it off him at one point (since it was pretty heavy) and he went right over and put it back on.  So darling.

Then we hit the Hot Wheels exhibit and it was kind of like the coolest thing ever.  I loved how many dads were just hanging out playing in there.  (Luke loved it so much that I later found several stowaway Hot Wheels in the stroller, which we ran back into the museum as we were exiting!)

 A definite highlight of our visit was watching the play based on David Shannon's book How I Became a Pirate (truthfully, the play was much more entertaining than the book!)  Great energy, fun songs, and very tailored to its audience.  Isaac talked for days and days about this!

 Somehow our five hours at the museum sped by all too fast (I was so loving the chance to just talk with a friend while the kids played happily!)

So we took a spin on the carousel...



...waved goodbye to Bumblebee...

...and left.  (Where Melanie and I proceeded to talk for another 40 minutes while the kids played in the statue garden).  

I can't think of a better way to end the summer!

the best part of camping

After our exciting camping trip with friends earlier this summer, we wanted to revisit the fun in a lower-key fashion.  We took advantage of one of the sporadic cold spells and invited them over for an evening of the best part of camping:  s'mores!

 We had a lovely evening--the children jumped on the trampoline and dug in the sandbox and totally filthified themselves with chocolate and marshmallows and sand and dirt and grass clippings.  Yay!  Just like camping.

And just like camping, the adults got to enjoy the best part:  sitting around the fire telling stories and laughing like crazy and eating all the s'mores the kids kept making (Abigail made six or so that nobody ate, except for baby Emma, who figured out how to snatch out all the chocolate and smear it all over herself and her daddy!)

We wound things up around 10 pm, long after the stars and the fireflies had come out.  So fun.  (And so dirty--I snapped this of Isaac before I started scrubbing.)

because I don't want to forget

I think I've mentioned on here at some point that I've been working on an essay over the last few months (the collection of finished essays, titled Undefining Women: A Compilation of Essays from Mormon Women, will be released this December.  My own essay focuses on my migration from academia to finding joy and satisfaction as a stay-at-home mother.  Who is still technically in academia, but that's not really the point).  

Anyway.  At some point while writing the essay, I realized that I use my blog as a repository of the images and text that describe the kind of life that I want to focus on living--hence the sidebar quote.  My life is not blissful every day (and I think my blog does reflect that), but I try to use this space as one where I am chronicling the parts that are the "kairos moments."  (If you haven't read that particular essay, you should absolutely click on the link.)

I haven't been as good about this lately, mostly because I haven't been blogging much lately.  But as I've been sifting through images and creating posts tonight (and I really should be taking a shower, because I went running 2 hours ago and I'm still in my sweaty clothes!  Yummy!) I realized that there were many photos that didn't fit into a post, but were moments that I had photographed because I wanted so much to remember them, because they represented something really special to me.

So here are some things I don't want to forget.  

Lazy evenings together as a family, whether it's "fireplace night" in the winter or just braiding the girls' hair in the summer. 

The funny way Luke sucks on his pacifier with its bottom edge sucked inside his lip (funneling drool down onto his clothes.  Always).

 The day Isaac asked me to make him some "wall dinosaurs" and sat next to me for the ENTIRE process and then was so gleeful and excited and exuberant when we finished that I thought his little body might explode with happiness.

 The afternoon that Abigail collected an enormous pile of Isaac's favorite books, sat down, and read to him until he fell asleep right in the middle of The Caboose Who Got Loose (something that has never ever happened before ever ever ever).

Summer of the Tomatoes!  I photographed this cute little bowl of cherry tomatoes early in the year, delighted that we had so many at once.  A few weeks later, when we were lugging them inside 40-50 pounds at a time, and tomato processing had become a daily whole-family effort...well, let's just say that nobody will forget this summer.

Luke's bedhead and the majesty thereof.

 One night we put the kids to bed and went out to pick tomatoes.  Within minutes, there were three little faces looking out through the glass windows.  Instead of chasing everyone back to bed, we had the kids come out and (surprise surprise!) help pick the tomatoes.  Then we picked the raspberries and ate them while we watched the sun set.  Then we jumped on the trampoline until our stomachs hurt from laughing and we all lay down next to each other and watching the clouds drift into the twilight.  It was so perfect.

Luke, Luke, Lukey Luke.

And surreptitious Luke.

 Every day, almost without fail, Isaac traipses back and forth across the house gathering all of the pillows and making an enormous nest on my bed.  Then he tenderly tucks in each of his "wubbies" (lovies) and lays down to snuggle with them and read them stories.  It makes my heart turn over when I walk into my room and see the mess of pillows and wubbies and dear little boy in the middle of it all.

  Earlier this summer, when my family visited, I had a bit (understatement alert) of an emotional thunderstorm one day.  When we arrived in Michigan the next day (my birthday) they had prepared an incredibly elaborate meal for my birthday dinner:  creamy pasta with asparagus and fresh tomatoes, grilled corn, carrot souffle, eggplant handpies, my favorite salad, and fresh cherries.  I was so touched.




And, as always, on days when I find that I am feeling a bit doldrum-y, I pack up my babies and head to the woods and everything is magically better again.