Out of the mouths of babes--July

7/2--B went shopping with his Grandma today. She took him to Target to pick out a birthday gift. Grandma got a glimpse of what it's like to shop in our family. Brandon walked through every aisle of the toy department and examined just about every toy. She was tickled that he would say things like, "Look at this, Grandma. There are only two guys in here and it's $12.99 That's such a rip off!"

Yep, training him well to be a bargain hunter.

7/3--Whit walked by her Grandpa today (who happened to have bare feet) and said, "Grandpa, your feet are NOT beautiful."
Gpa, "Why not?"
W, "Because they're OLD."
Gpa, "Well, what's wrong with them?"
W, "They are NOT normal."

But MY feet are gorgeous!

7/8--W and I just had a fun conversation.
W: When I grow up, I'm going to have a son named Carlos. [Guess she wants to pay tribute to her Mexican heritage.] Mom, how old are you?
Me: Guess.
W: 15?
Me: Older.
W: 100?
Me: Younger.
W: 15?
Me: 31.
W: Guess how old my baby is? [She was playing with a doll.]
Me: She looks about 3 months old.
W: No. She's 30.
Me: 30 years???
W: No, 30 weeks.

Caroline is still making her goofy faces.

7/14--We were out in the forest today and Whitney had on Croc-like shoes that let all of the dirt in. Yuck. When we got into the car to leave she said, "I need a bath as soon as we get home. My feet are dazzlingly dirty." Wow--interesting use of the adverb.

And her teeth are strikingly white

7/22--Grandma had a really fun "Ripley's Believe It or Not" book that kept B-train occupied for long stretches of time. Today he was reading it out loud in the car to Grandma. He got to a page that was talking about the price of the body. It broke down the body into its elements, estimated the price of the sodium, potassium, etc. and guessed the worth to be a little over four bucks. B was flabbergasted. "Whatever! Our bodies are worth SO much more than that. They are priceless! They are temples!"
Grandma tried to explain that the book was just kind of trying to be funny and was just telling the price of the ingredients of our bodies.
B defended his stance, "Well, they must not know what they're talking about. They just don't know everything we know about our bodies."

Even my nose hairs are worth more than four bucks!
(Ewww...more close up than we should
EVER be to those nostrils. This was
his self-portrait for the month.)

Phew--I wasn't the only exhausted one when we got
back from our UT trip. Whit fell asleep in the middle
of the day on the bonus room floor WITH her sunglasses on.

7/25--At the dinner table, we were having a conversation about bazookas/missile launchers. What ever happened to them? It seemed like all the "bad guys" on TV had them when we were growing up and now you never hear about them anymore. Anyway....
Brandon said, "Ooh, what if they made a candy launcher and when you shot it, it unwrapped the candy?"
Whit added, "And someone could eat the candy!"

7/30--I loved listening to the small talk between Whitney and my friend, Michelle, while W was getting her hair cut. W said things like, "I love your shirt. Those roses are so pretty." And, "These walls are white." But my favorite was in the midst of the scissors chopping away at her mop she said, "That sounds like you're cutting tomatoes." Huh? Really?

While W was getting her haircut, B was playing with Michelle's sons. Afterward I asked him what they played. "We pretty much just played this big robot game."
Me: "How did you play that?"
B: "There was this imaginary door that led to the future....Well, there really was a door...but it really didn't lead to the future. And there were borgs."
Me: "What's a borg?"
B: "You know! Something that looks like a human, but it's not a human. It's like a robot."
Whoa--you lost me, buddy.

A first for W

Today was a big day for little Miss Whitney. She got her first haircut!!! Yes, she is 4+ years old and has never had one. I just loved her long flowing locks and never wanted to chop them. Now that I have another dependent little one that takes a lot of time in the mornings (well, actually, all day and night), I've noticed that poor Whit has been walking around with crazy hair most days.

Here's an example.

Super cute girl...

even with wild-woman-of-borneo hair.

So I talked to her about it and we decided it was time. When she agreed that she was ready to take this big step, she wanted to go all out. She told me, "I want to use that massage-er thing." What massage-er thing? "That thing you use when you cut the boys' hair." Yea, she meant the hair clippers. I told her that was only to cut hair REALLY short and we just wanted a trim for her.

My friend, Michelle, cuts my hair,
so I asked her to do the honor.

W was pretty cooperative.
She just needed to be reminded
several times to hold her head still.
"Can I move my arms?"

And here's the AFTER shot.

Voila!

She took about 4 inches off.

I love it and Whit seems happy with it, too.
It's still long enough to do fun things with.
But doesn't look as unruly...yet.

Home Sweet Home

It feels good to be home. I love our house and I missed our friends and although we loved being on vacation, it's nice to be back on our own turf. Here's what we've been up to.

My latest fad
When we were visiting with my parents, they took us out to the most random restaurant called Hollow Moon Cafe. It is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. You're probably picturing some hole-in-the-wall grubby place that happens to have decent food, right? That's what I'd envisioned. But it was great. Very cute, sophisticated, and best of all...delicious! Anyway, my parents said we had to try the raspberry lemonade.

So we did.
(Nice dirty look, Daneen. Love you too!)

It was just regular lemonade, but they put real raspberries in the top and they diffuse throughout the drink and by the end they have disintegrated and you're slurping up little bits of raspberry goodness through your straw. LOVED it. I totally thought, "I could do this at home." And I did. Except my local Walmart was out of frozen raspberries. What's up with that??? So I bought blackberries instead and they work well, too. So I'm all into experimenting with drinks now. (All non-alcoholic, of course!)

Last night, the kids and I had cherry
limeades. Yum! It's fun to look forward
to the drink as well as the food at dinner time.

The kids tried cherry kool-aid mixed with orange juice tonight (their own creation) and seemed to enjoy that, too. Who knows what we'll come up with next.

Another Sunday down
Only 64 Sundays left until Caroline starts nursery. Ha! Can you tell Sundays can be a little stressful for me??? But, seriously, yesterday went really well. HUGE thanks to Jeremy and Glenda for helping me out with Caroline and to Dee for helping me with B and W. I think I only held C for one of the three hours of church. Sweet! She was a really good girl. And for a few minutes, I was sitting by myself and actually LISTENING to Andrew give his talk in sacrament meeting. That NEVER happens.

The older kids experienced a first after church:

They got to feed Caroline a bottle.
It was SOOOO super cute to see how excited
they were to help feed her. They rock!
Today they kept asking for another turn.
Kind of hard to explain that bottles aren't
readily available when you're nursing.

Caroline at two months
Our sweet baby girl turned two months old today. She spent almost half of her life up to this point on vacation. Lucky. At her two month check up, she weighed 10 lbs 1 oz. She's in the 25th percentile in both height and weight. What a tiny little thing! Whit started out tiny, too, and made big jumps between 2 and 3 yrs old, so we'll see what happens with C.

She is a good baby. We had a few rough weeks with her colicky spells, but she is over the worst of that and cries less often now, though she still has lungs when she does cry. Wow. B and W plug their ears. She still sleeps a lot during the day, but when she's awake, she loves attention. If you get close to her face and talk to her, it's pretty easy to get rewarded with big smiles.

She melts our hearts.

I think she looks like Brandon. Lots of people told me that when she was first born and I didn't see it, but now I do. Something about the shape of her face. And they both have those thick, dark eyebrows. Wonder where they got that? (I'm looking in your direction, Andrew.)

She is a mover. Most of the time when she is awake, she is moving her arms or legs or both. She was really active inside of me and that has continued. She is also pretty tense. A lot of times, her little hands are balled up into tight fists, even when she's not crying.

And she usually keeps her toes curled up like this.
Hopefully she'll learn to relax soon.

She likes to be held facing out.

She loves looking at ceiling fans.
She enjoys warm baths.

And the binky is her friend.
It took a couple of weeks to convince
her, but they get along great now.

Other random vacation moments

Phew. We made it back. I survived the 4 hour cross-country flight with three kids and it feels great to be home. We had a wonderful time out in Utah. (Great place to visit, but, no, we don't plan on moving there anytime soon. Sorry, Mom.) Since I don't want to share all 486 photos that I took(lucky you!), here is a smattering of highlights.

Dinosaur National Monument
The Uintah Basin, where my parents live, is known for having a high concentration of dinosaur fossils. They have a great museum that we've visited a few times, but this trip my mom took us out to Dinosaur National Monument, a national park.

Yee haw! We got to ride on the back of a brontosaurus.

We saw some amazing petroglyphs.
I love stuff like that!

And we went on a little hike.
The kids were NOT excited about that.
We had to bribe them AND threaten punishment
to get them to cooperate, but my mom and I
sure enjoyed it.

BYU
We made our annual pilgrimage to our alma mater. Yes we are trying to instill a love of the Y in our kids from a young age. We got our cultural fix at the Museum of Art, got some great deals at the bookstore sidewalk sale, and enjoyed a quick lunch at the Wilk. Ah, the memories.

Future Cougars?
(Look closely to see the Y on the mountain)

Yuba Lake
We spent one day (and the boys spent the night) out at Yuba Lake with Andrew's side of the fam. It was a perfect day for it. Andrew and I got to water ski. Brandon tried knee-boarding once. (It wasn't a pretty wipe out and he didn't volunteer for a second try.) And both kids liked playing in the mud at the beach.

Perfect water for skiing.
I'm hoping I don't bite it when
I go over the wake.
(I didn't.)

Andrew took the kids on a little raft ride.
Whitney was terrified that they were going to sink.
(They didn't.)

What a little supermodel.
Ooh la la.

Cousins galore!
It is so fun for our kids to hang out with their cousins. We are blessed to have cousins close to their ages on both sides of the fam. They get along great...for the most part...now that Brandon is mostly over his bullying/pestering phase. :)

Carson and Whit at our family reunion

Eli, Reagan, Jane, B, Lauren, and W
at Temple Square

C and B swimming in Vernal

B, Josh, and Carson all have July birthdays,
so we celebrated together.
Lucky B got TWO parties!

Uintah Canyon
My parents took us up in the mountains for a cookout and so Paul and my Dad could do a little fishing. It was so pretty.

We love Grandpa!

Bridal Veil Falls
I LOVE waterfalls, so convinced Andrew and the kids that we needed to stop and take a little hike to see this one. Again, the kids were NOT excited. Where is the sense of adventure, guys??? I only got a glimpse before they were ready to head back to the car, but it was worth it.

Gorgeous!
(I meant the waterfall.)

Days of '47 Parade Preview
Cindy took us to see all the floats before the big Pioneer Day parade in Salt Lake. It was so awesome. The parades we've seen in NC don't have floats, so it was a completely new experience for my kids. They were very impressed.

B's favorite was the Utah Jazz float
(Hmmm...maybe we should make an annual
trip to the Staples Center to convert him to
being a Lakers fan???)

He also loved the BYU one

Whit loved this one with a princess castle and dragon.

Temple Square

Another stop that was more for me than the kids.

They endured it, while I treasured it.

Family
Look at all the family members we got to visit:

Andrew's side

My side

I'm so grateful that we could take this trip and visit with all of them and have them all meet little Miss Caroline. It was fun and crazy and busy. I'm looking forward to settling back into a routine here at home and catching up with all of our friends.

Utah--Part 2

The Wedding
The big reason for this visit was to attend my little sister, Destiny's, wedding.

Here she is with her new husband, Robby.

It's still kind of hard to believe that she's MARRIED! She's so young. (Yes, she is the same age I was when I got married, but I felt so mature.) :) This was the first time I had ever met Robby. He's a really nice guy and they look happy together. Yay!

Andrew performed the ceremony.
I thought he did a great job.

Whitney got to be a flower girl,
along with Robby's niece.
It was a dream come true for
this wannabe princess.

My nephew, Carson, was the ring-bearer.
He did an awesome job.

And at the last minute, Brandon was given
the job of being the "dog bearer" for Peanut.
Considering we are not pet owners and he has
not been around dogs much, he rocked.

Caroline's only job was to stay quiet during the ceremony.
Not only did she refrain from screaming,
but she looked dang cute while doing it.

The happy couple

All my brothers and sisters:
Paul, Mark, Destiny, Me, Celeste

The kids impatiently waiting for the reception
to start. Love B's expression.

First Dance

We couldn't get Miss Whitney off the dance floor.

She danced with Carson,

her Daddy,

her big brother...

Heck, who needs a partner?

I thought this was a cute pic of
Robby dancing with Grandma Cuca.

Another highlight of the evening:

how excited Carson was when he
caught the garter.

It was wonderful to be with so many of our family members and to add a new brother-in-law to the mix. So thankful we could share in your big day, Destiny and Robby. Congratulations!