Go West

When I left for college, "home" was an hour from the Pacific ocean. Since then, each of the last four moves has been a move further east until, now, at last, I live about 90 minutes from the Atlantic. This place has been good to us, and it has been good for our kids to set down some roots, but I miss my family and miss the grand landscape of the West. As you may guess, then, last month's family reunion in Utah was many kinds of wonderful.

Big thanks go to Tiff and Kyle for allowing their condo to serve as the principal refugee camp. We got there in time for a little Father's Day grilling.

After performing our carnivorous duty, Mom and Dad's demands for a three-generation talent show were met with singing, dancing (tango and freestyle), piano, guitar, heavy lifting, and Bryce's attempt to get his eyes more than half open (he succeeded, but only just).
Monday was for hanging out, lunch with old friends, and preening for family pictures. We were a fine looking bunch, but you will have to take my word for it until we receive digital copies. How about it, Science?

Tuesday we took an extended family trip through the Salt Lake Temple, which was beautiful and memorable. Many thanks to Koosh, Mish, and Bob for generously allowing themselves to be drafted into babysitting duty--we really appreciated you making the trip possible. We capped off the day with a visit to an old friend of my parents, who hooked us up with some backyard pony rides:


I don't know what's going on here--I think Nora and cousin Erik are planning an elaborate mischief.

In the middle of the week we took visits to Welfare Square, the Humanitarian Center, Temple Square and the observation deck at the Church Office Building. It was great to see some of facilities out of which flow the global work of the Church. I came away understanding a little better the methods and scope of our efforts to do good in all the world.

The last few days of the week were spent largely outdoors, first on a hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon, and then on an overnight trip to Bryce Canyon. With an unusually snowy spring, Cottonwood was fresh and beautiful.
Mish put pet turtle Teancum on a leash and let him get a big taste of freedom. From the look of this picture, Erik also enjoyed riding on Teancum's back:
The water at Donut Falls was glacier-cold, but just about everyone dipped their toes in it.

When we got back from the falls, there was just enough time to engage in a fun new family tradition--Iron Chef. The surprise ingredients were black beans, avocado, cornbread mix and tofu. With three teams competing, everyone stunned each other with their creativity. I couldn't stop snitching from the competition.

The drive down to Bryce Canyon was a little long for a day trip, but full of the awesome landscape I remember. Bryce itself was breathtaking.

Everyone agreed that the hike down into the canyon was well worth it:
However, the kids were less enthusiastic about the 2-mile, 550 foot ascent out of the canyon. They are turning into real hikers, but I'm still going with the "Before" picture:
That night the whole family joined us for foil dinners, baked apples, and s'mores. The next morning I managed to squeeze in a memorable sunrise run along the canyon rim, and returned to find the camp overrun by adorable two-headed monsters:
We finished out the week visiting K's sister in west Orem, affording me the opportunity to look up our old home. It was still there, looking very much the same:
Ian, Johnny and Aiden capitalized on their shared love of Pokemon.

One of the best parts about the trip was meeting three new nephews (Charlie and Alex from my side, Lucas from K's side. Here's K with the latter.

I should mention before wrapping up that all four of the kids behaved surprisingly well on both plane rides, helped immeasurably by Delta's personalized television screens. The trip back was tiring but mostly painless, and our arrival at home was met with gigantic vegetables.
I cannot stress enough how wonderful it was to see everyone. Like our garden, it pleases me more and more to see how the little family our parents started continues to bear fruit.

Farm Fun Days

A quick post since my husband is being laaaazy -- ah, I mean busy. He is understandably short of time, having been made Young Mens president in our recent ward rearrangements. (Not that I'm not busy, but never mind that.) It's the first week of summer vacation, and so I'm putting up a few pictures of our farm outing today to keep the blog ball rolling. It's a good thing I don't have to vote on who's the cutest in these shots, because there are a lot of contenders.

These little piggies were born last Thursday, and were the reason we came today. Two weeks ago just the little girls and I visited for the first time, and this sow was hugely pregnant. Lucy has since been plaintively asking when we can go see if the baby piglets were born.

Sage has such a soft heart for animals, I love the way they light up her face.

Just a nice luminous shot of Nora, and it was indeed taken at the farm so it "counts".

I think the kids (Lucy and Ian in particular) spent the majority of their time at the farm pushing weeds through the chicken wire. I figure chickens forage in meadows naturally so it wasn't hurting anything, but after a while I wasn't sure who was bothering who more, the pecking chickens -- Nora went away crying with a pecked finger -- or the weed pushers (ha ha).

They really are cute until they poop...and I'll leave that "they" purposely undefined.

Beautiful world.

Nature and Nurture

Apparently there's a nature center about an hour away from us that highlights, among other things, the spawning of the largest horseshoe crab population in the world, which is usually at the full moon in May (or something like that). This was the first year we were aware of it, so we didn't manage to see the live masses of horseshoe crabs that we were secretly hoping for, but there was plenty of evidence that they had been there.

Another piece of that ecosystem is migratory shorebirds that eat the crab eggs, and though we didn't see the little Red Knot bird that the video was all about at the nature center, we did have a lot of fun looking for them among the egrets, blackbirds, terns, gulls, vultures, and cormorants at a nature preserve -- though the pictures don't show much of the action, because our little point and shoot is sadly inadequate for nature photography.

And, being so close to the Atlantic and it being a decently seasonable May day, we went ahead and drove a little further, got the kids into their suits, and let them play in the sand and waves. Every time we visit the Atlantic I see dolphin pods swimming out there, and though I know they're farther than they look, they always look as if some brave swimmer could go touch one. It's amazing.

We actually ended up driving around a lot, to five different spots on the coast, trying to see a live horseshoe crab. (We ended up seeing ONE at the end of the day, which was vindicating.) Being in the car was a little boring for the kids, but it was nice to see them get excited about the creatures that live by the sea. Plus, I was able to talk to them about how all the water from the creeks and rivers near our house end up here, at this particular estuary, and see it click as their eyes got wide. ("The stream RIGHT by our house mommy?") I reminded them about how we try to compost, and use less water and soap, and recycle, and that THIS (all the marshes and beaches and birds and crabs) was one big reason why we did all that, to take care of it, even though at our house we usually can't see where it all will end up. I think they'll remember that.

S. and I always hope that our kids will be glad for our bent towards nature rather than video games, but often it seems like just video games would really be fine with them. So, this trip was a good idea. (Thanks, S., who was the one to push for it!) It was wonderful to nurture the kids with good experiences, and at the same time to feel that bond with the natural world.

Escalators

Lucy got scared on an escalator recently, and tried to get off again right as she was getting on, resulting in a bit of a tangle and some tears as one leg kept going and another didn't. I was already halfway up, unfortunately, and couldn't comfort her -- I had to go all the way up and then back down to help her finally make the trip. She was very sad, but the rest of us found it mostly funny.

You forget until you have little kids how much practice escalators take -- but once they figure them out, they're a source of endless delight. Who hasn't had a kid beg to go up and down, up and down? (In fact, don't I recall a much younger Ian doing just that with Aunt Mish in the airport?) So, here's to the ups and downs of life -- and to playing catch-up after not posting on the blog in quite a while. Birthdays, holidays, cranky toddler days, they're all part of this amazing ride we're on. We're still alive, and (mostly) loving it.

A few favorite kid phrases we've heard lately:

"Come back here, you little peepsquirt!" (Lucy)

In response to Ian jokingly threatening to punch her lights out, "No! I don't have lights!" (Nora)

And some pictures, in roughly reverse chronological order:

Family Home Evening -- typical expressions, right?

Ian's party, which included the coolest obstacle course ever, but I have only videos of that part, no pictures

Mother's Day (sorry, Lucy took all the pictures that day, mostly self-portraits)

Boomer's (a Chuckie Cheese-like place), which the kids earned with piano practice and various other chores they've been working on since January

Ian in Cub Scout uniform, having earned his Bear badge

Ian's (actual) birthday

S. rock climbing

S.'s birthday

There! All caught up. Have fun on the escalators.

A Bird in Hand

The older I get, the more I crave the tactile, the real, the palpable. So much of my formal education was spent in the abstract appreciation of the aesthetic and the theoretical, but now I relish the beauty of practical things. For my morning exercise, I've been climbing stairs while listening to the Modern Scholar lecture series from Recorded Books, and it has surprised me how much more I have preferred the lectures on human anatomy over music. Perhaps it is my own simple-mindedness, but the context of basic survival makes the questions of form and function seem more significant, and the solutions more elegant. Oftentimes, the most useful is also the most beautiful.

Take the Alpine Butterfly, pictured above. In preparation for a rock climbing class I've been learning some basic climber's knots, and I don't think I have ever seen such a perfect marriage of simplicity and function as the Alpine Butterfly. If you need to hang something from the middle of your rope, you could not in a hundred years invent a thing more symmetrical, practical, or easier to remember than this very basic knot, made by passing a line a few times across the palm of your hand. I have read many poems in my time, but none more elegant than that.
[Above: Another wonderfully symmetrical knot--the Double Fisherman's Bend, an ingenious means of joining two rope ends via interlocking hitches.]

K. has also enjoyed learning with her hands, taking a weekly sign language class from the wife of a deaf man in our congregation. I have always been a little envious of the expressiveness that sign language affords its speakers, which is probably why some cultures (I'm looking at you, Italians) love speaking with their hands. [Above: K. makes the sign for "bread." Below: the sign for "magic."]

Say "Cheese!"