Happy Birthday Grandpa/Dad!!

Role play

Now I know how we fit into Sawyer's world:

Sawyer saying his prayers yesterday night - "Thank you for good food. Thank you for mommies who give us food and daddies who give us freezers for food."

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...

Usually my blog is about my kids and chronicling our (mis)adventures. But some recent news items are driving me a little bit crazy. Rather than upsetting people by responding to facebook posts I will just write my own views here.

1. It is NOT okay to stick your hands in my kids' pants. Or mine. Just because I bought a ticket to fly on an airplane does not mean I want to be radiated, or in the alternative, have your hands in my pants. Make me take off my shoes and sweatshirt. Make me take off my kid's shoes and sweatshirt even though he will immediately go into a screaming fit because he thinks the machine is eating his shoes. Do "additional testing" on my bags because of my son's suspicious Leapster gaming unit. Put me through a metal detector. If that goes off give me the old wand routine. If that still goes off give me a back of the hands pat down. If you still have a problem THEN give me the option of a dose of radiation or an "enhanced pat down." My kids don't need a dose of radiation every time they go see Grandma. And they definitely don't need minimally-trained-and-paid strangers putting their hands in their pants. Yes, I remember 9/11. No, I don't think it is an either/or choice.

2. I vaccinate my kids because I do not want them to die or suffer from preventable diseases. Imagine a disease is spreading through your neighborhood. 8 out of 10 kids that get it die. As in all my kids, and all your kids too. As in 300-500 million people. Then someone tells you "Look! One little poke in the arm and your kids won't get this!" Sweet salvation. Can you imagine the lines? That was called smallpox. Vaccines have eliminated it from our vocabulary and our lives. I won't tell you what to do with your kids and you don't try to tell me I am unintelligent/ignorant/naive/uncaring because I vaccinate my kids. Deal?

3. Leggings are not pants any more than my swimsuit top is a shirt.

4. Chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup stirred in are not the same thing. Please don't put "chocolate ice cream" on the menu if what you really have is vanilla ice cream with various mix-ins available.

5. If your commercial shouts "All jeans on sale!" and then underneath says "Select styles only" you are either lying or in need of a basic dictionary.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Sawyerisms

While my mom was visiting we took a road trip up to Idaho to visit Megan and see her new house. Trying to get the boys to go to sleep anywhere besides their own beds is always a lot of fun. One night I had put Sawyer back in bed about two dozen times over a two hour period. After being returned to bed yet again he called out that he "needed to tell me something." He came walking back into the living room and I asked him what he needed to tell me. He replied "Hold on. It takes a long time. It's loading." Then he busied himself with playing with the dog. I asked him again what he needed to tell me, but he informed me it was "still loading."

Nice try kid. Back to bed.

Then it was August.

We spent August pretending it was not the last month before the public school system would take over our lives for the next several decades.

We spent a weekend in Salt Lake and took the boys to a movie and played in the fountains at the Gateway. The fountains were great fun until someone got knocked down and someone else thought it would be a great idea to kneel on the ground and look down into one of the holes the water sprays out of...right before it sprayed out of it.



We also met up with Uncle Michael who was in town for a wedding.


The boys played in a summer rainstorm and I played with my new camera lens.


Sawyer got this little red wiggle car for Christmas the year we went to Idaho. He propels it with his feet rather than wiggling the handle. He has put many, many miles on it and destroyed more than a couple pairs of shoes in the process. He can get that thing going really fast!

Will has the prettiest eyes. They are green and blue and yellow and brown and look different from day to day. Bryce's are the same way.

Next stop: school!

Double the birthday boys

I fully plan on having a joint birthday party for the boys for as long as I can get away with it. We still do cake/presents/dinner for each of them on their own day, but the joint party is great. Especially since so many of our friends conveniently have kids the same ages as ours. So the guest lists would all be drawn from the same families anyways.

This year Will's birthday was the same day as Bryce's family reunion down in southern Utah. We brought the celebration on the road. I brought a box of supplies and made his cake down there and then he spent his birthday getting very, very dirty while playing with semi-cousins (second cousins?...1st cousins-once-removed? I get those confused).

I think Sawyer has rage issues. And *I* do not put his socks like that.

Some of the girls wanted to perform a musical number but were stalled by stage fright. Will stepped up and did some kind of impromptu dance solo instead.


When exhaustion was imminent we went back to Bryce's grandparents' house and sang and had cake and opened presents.

I think this is the last picture of Sawyer with a binky before it "got lost" (again...but this time for good.)

We got him a bigger bike for his birthday so we had it sitting out on the deck. The best part was when we told him to look on the deck and he ran right past the bike to an old Christmas decoration that was sitting in the corner.

The next day we headed home and got ready for Sawyer's birthday.

The boys both had very specific cake requests this year and I tried my best to honor them. Will wanted a cake that on the inside was "all the colors of the rainbow" and had "chocolate frosting with Fruity Pebbles and Batman on top."

Sawyer wanted a "pink cake with pink frosting and doggies on top."

Sawyer with his favorite present - a box of Rafaello chocolates. Those didn't make it past morning.

Their party had a (very loose) beach theme. They played in the pool and on the slip-n-slide and ran around like crazy things while the parents talked and ate...which makes for a successful party if you ask me. Of course I was running around crazy and didn't take a single picture. I made a sand castle cake using different-sized cake towers and sugar cones with everything coated in a vanilla cookie crumbles/brown sugar mixture. It was a really easy cake. Too bad I didn't take a picture to impress you all.

Yes, their birthdays were in July. Yes, it is now November. That's just how things go sometimes.

4th of July...?

This year was the year we got up early enough to go see the hot air balloons take off. It was also the year that no hot air balloons took off because of wind at higher altitudes. Of course.


We still had fun seeing the balloons up close and personal. And then we topped it off with McDonald's breakfast. So it was also the year we got up early enough to eat McDonald's breakfast.


We also went to the parade. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the lovely folk of Utah are obsessed with parades. Finding a seat within 20 feet of the road anywhere along the parade route is quite the endeavor.

[Sawyer collecting high fives from parade participants]

We also watched other people set off fireworks.

[All the kids.....................and Sawyer]

[The taste of freedom.]

And went to the downtown Freedom Festival where we enjoyed the liberties of freedom - such as petting a snake and bouncing in bounce houses.

Sawyer is not a big fan of bounce houses. He thinks he is until he gets close and then he refuses to go past the entrance. He did manage to climb up to the top of this bouncy slide. Once at the top he proceeded to throw a crying fit and refused to come down. Somehow it was determined that I had to be the one to go rescue him, so I had to climb the bouncy slide and slide down the bouncy slide in my dress. While Bryce photographed.

The 4th was on a Sunday so on the actual day we did...something. I'm sure. Hmmm. Maybe I should not wait until November to blog about the 4th of July. Oh yes, we had dinner with very lovely neighbors. Actually I think that was Saturday because then we threw kids in pajamas and went to go watch the fireworks...which were on Saturday. Or possibly Monday. This is a most unhelpful family history I've got going here.

I guess I have no choice but to take a flying leap into the realm of imagination. Therefore, on the 4th of July I'm quite certain we went to church in the morning and then spent the afternoon curing cancer.

PS: You know it's serious when they are workin' the tongue.

Boys in their natural habitat

Summer recap part 2:

At some point we went camping. We only went for 1 night so we only had to bring enough supplies to fill the back of our suv and a trailer. Our water cooler was on the trailer and the lid flew off sometime while we were driving up to camp. We never found it. On the way home one of the oars for the row boat flew off and broke. Success!

The campground was full so we found a place to pull off. It was secluded and would have been a good camping spot...if it had, you know, a bathroom or any running water. The boys didn't care of course since peeing outside is one of their greatest joys in life.

We took the row boat out on the lake when we got there. The boys caught fish that they cooked over the campfire and ate for dinner. I had nothing to do with that entire process. They enjoyed themselves though.

After smores we tried to put the kids to bed. It was about 10:30. That is when two truckloads of college-age party campers pulled in and decided to share our camping spot. They drank and yelled and played their loud, obnoxious music from their truck stereos until about 2 a.m. I love the peace and quiet of the wilderness.

The boys were up with the sun's first light and being the mature, non-passive-aggressive people we are I am confident that no one related to me went and found a cd of Christmas music and blasted it from our car stereo until all of our campsite friends came stumbling out of their tents and left. Then we loaded up and the drove back to the lake so the boys could fish for another half hour before going home. We got home tired, smelling like smoke, and with lots of dirty laundry which seem to be the goals of camping so I guess it was a success!

28 - ain't it great

Part 1 of the summer recap:

I had a birthday at the beginning of June. I wanted to celebrate with good friends and good food. Unfortunately the weather didn't want to cooperate and the date I originally planned to celebrate turned out wet and cold...not ideal for an outdoor dinner party. So we postponed until the following weekend - which worked out so that Bryce could get laid off a few days before the festivities.

Yes, Bryce got laid off at the beginning of June and was out of work until mid-July which made the birthday and Father's Day and anniversary festivities a little less festive and a lot more stressful, but it all worked out. The problem with getting laid off is that you never know how long it will take before you are employed again, so even if you have money in savings you feel like you can't spend any of it because you might need every last penny if you are still unemployed in six months or a year or what-have-you. And while you'd like to say "Hey, we should use this unexpected free time and go on vacation or re-do the master bedroom or finish the downstairs bath, etc." you don't because you don't want to spend the money. And then you go back to work and have no time to do any of those things again. Being unemployed is definitely not my favorite state of being. We were fortunate to end up no worse for the wear.

One of the first things we did after involuntarily losing our income was to cancel the cable tv. Which led to 2010 being the Summer of No Television. I thought the boys would go into withdrawals, but they were perfectly happy to just watch the occasional movie. I, on the other hand, found my kid-free evenings rather boring and was missing my Food Network shows. Settling for Top Chef on hulu.com just doesn't cut it.

So back to the birthday. I had a birthday. I spent the morning taking the boys to one of their summer movies at the Scera, then had lunch with some friends, then waited for Bryce to come home, then took Will to his baseball practice, and finished with dinner at the Olive Garden and cake back at home.

I tried to keep Sawyer occupied on the playground while Will had baseball. This lasted about 5 minutes and then he went back to whining that he wanted to play baseball too.

Care bear stare.

The following week we had our cook-out. "Now everybody turn around so no one will be identifiable on the internet. Good job." (Yes, this is the best and only picture I had.) It's good to have friends. In my head, this party was supposed to look like this:

(image from jordanferney.blogspot.com via google images)

I'd say we came pretty close. The pompoms on the fence really did it. Did I mention that it is good to have friends who don't care that your parties don't look like this?