A very full day.

Saturday we spent the day in Utah with family. Both sides of the family - one in the afternoon, one in the evening. My girls were in heaven. Gray and Zander just rolled with it.

We got to spend time with Grandpa who is a photographer and loves to teach the kids how to take pictures.


The cousins we spent time with first have lived back east for 8 years, so it was a lot of fun for my kids to get some quality time playing with them. They only live two hours away now!

My redhead brother holding my redhead son.

Having ice cream at the same place my partner and I had our first date. The girls thought that was so exciting and romantic and .... "Wait! Does this mean that I have to marry Grayson because we're having ice cream together here?!?!" No, sweetie, you're fine.

We went by the big Mormon temple there to get a picture taken with a Flat Stanley we're hosting and the kids rolled down the HUGE hill before I could stop them.

It *is* kind of an irresistible hill.

I have no pictures of the girls playing with their cousins at the next house. We got there, I was surrounded by dance costumes and giggles and then they all disappeared for two hours.

So Zander and I played with sidewalk chalk ...

and I tried to breathe and stay calm as Gray zoomed down the driveway over and over on a skateboard.
I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom. I will not be an overprotective mom.

Family photos on the fly.

A few months ago at an ice cream social at our house, I asked a good friend to take some family pictures for us. She has a fancy camera and a gift for kid photography.

They turned out so cute, though we're not exactly color coordinated.

Still, I love them - Ains in her cape, Hannah in her farm pants, Gray in his truck shirt, Matt in his shorts, me wearing a baby wrap.

And the silliness she captured when they did that.

I love that she went with the silly instead of putting the camera down and waiting for the 'good shots'.

all picture credit Rebecca

The beginning and the end.

As part of our long weekend last week, we stayed for a few days with my grandma. She's fading mentally - just so tired from a good, long life - and we want our kids, and us, to have as much time with her as we can.

I've noticed that each time we visit she's just a little more tired, a little more absent. This time she was not so aware. She would drift in and out of sleep in the middle of sentences, she seemed a bit frustrated by being so tired. She wanted to hold Zander, who she has met three times but didn't remember meeting at all before, but was worried about dropping him.

We stuck him in his bouncy chair in front of her and the two of them had so much fun talking and laughing to each other. I've never heard her so silly with a baby, it was so sweet to listen to her chatting him up and encouraging his smiles and coos. And I've never heard Zander so chatty. He was chattering away so much that his shirt was wet with bubbles. He'd talk to her and she'd make sounds like she was in a conversation with him, then she'd talk to him about his life and he'd make sounds like he was listening to her. Then one of them would drift off to sleep. If it was her, we'd pick up Zander and then put him back when she woke up. So content with that situation, both of them.



It's so hard to see her getting so much older - she was a solid place for me in my childhood - but there was something so beautiful about the two of them together, one not far from the beginning and one not far from the end. 'Tis life.

One for strength.

When I was naming my children, I wanted to give them a first name that was all their own and a middle name that they shared with someone I admire, someone that I think will help give them strength as they get older, someone they'll be proud to share a name with.

I share my middle name with my great-grandmother, a strong woman who lived an amazing life.

Hannah shares her middle name with Matt's grandmother, another strong woman who has lived her own amazing life. I got an urge to go get some history done with her, so we took a last minute trip into Star Valley, Wyoming to talk to her.

Have you seen Star Valley? It's unbelievably beautiful. Pictures just don't do it justice. This is the view out her front door.

She has lived there for her entire life. She has lived in this house since she was married at 17, a mother at 18. She's got the best sense of humor and a seeming complete lack of judgment for me, an apostate in the faith that is so central in her own life - and that is rare in that religion.

This is the first time in 12 years that I've gotten to sit and chat with her, just the two of us. There have always been husbands or cousins hanging around or kids and grandkids needing to be tended to. We got 3 1/2 hours of chatting and laughing and bonding in. It was brilliant. I came away with the feeling that we would have been great friends had we lived in the same area. And also that the world would have to watch out if she had been born 80 years later and not contained by the expectations of her time and place.

Zander slept through some of it, cooed at her through some of it, talked to himself through some of it, and wrapped her around his little finger for all of it.

I had 50 questions written out for her. 25-30 from Hannah and the rest from Matt, Matt's mom, and me.

Hannah's questions ranged from the typically 6-year-old ("Did you have a dolly like Nettie?" and "How many hotels have you gone to?") to some deeper ones ("Why are you such a strong woman? Was your mom a strong woman?" and "How do you stop from getting angry?"). The questions from the adults were the typical history questions - school, memories, traditions, advice to give.

She was such an open book, which made the interview by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching. Hearing her talk about her son in the runaway goat cart had me in tears as did hearing her talk about feeling that she was to blame for her first son being born with club feet - just different kinds of tears.

She pulled out a scrapbook that her mom had made for her out of a fashion book.

How cool is that?

I kept watching her, waiting for her to get worn out, but she seemed to want to keep talking. The 30 minutes we planned on talking stretched into an hour and a half of recorded questions and answers.

Such a treasure for my children.

And for me.

Visitors.

We've had two nieces staying with us this past week.

Every day has included:
-horse riding
-swimming
-makeovers
-squealing
-popcorn
-sleeping in
-teasing
-making Zander smile

Because it's fun.

And taking pictures of Zander.

"Hi!"

"Yeah, I'll smile at you."
"Oh, ok. We're getting closer."

"WHOA! That's close!"

We'll be sad to take them home. They've been so much fun.

Zoo.

What more is there to say?

It was a long, full day. When we got there, the first thing we did was get over to the giraffe enclosure because it was feeding time. This was such a great opportunity. Mike helped the kids hold out treats and the giraffes would lean over the fence and eat it out of their hands. It was an awesome experience for all three kids.

Hannah was startled that their tongues were purple. ("They're not even turquoise!" she later told her aunt.)

Ainsley was tickled (literally) by how long the tongues were.

Grayson seemed unsure - maybe because he realized that a giraffe kiss would cover his entire face - but couldn't stop staring. He was very unhappy to leave that area.

Once we were done with that, Ainsley took the map and started to decide where we should go.

Each girl had animals they wanted to see, and they both got to see all of them.

Hannah got to see her lions, tigers, and anteaters.

Ainsley got to see her elephants, zebras, and - her favourite animal - toucans.

Look close - they're up there.

Me? I was just happy that this zoo was obviously built with kids in mind. There were little cubbyholes everywhere holding little creatures.

Scattered throughout the zoo were animals that kids could climb on.

And in.

And on.

And explore.

There was even a 'petting zoo' that was low on variety. Only goats. My kids were so excited about that.

Can you see the excitement? Yeah. "We have deez at home." said Ainsley.

There were little playgrounds scattered everywhere which were great places to let kids run unfettered for a bit.




We even found places to sit and just be for a little bit.

Though this tranquil moment ended when Gray decided to try to jump into the pond - but that's a story for another post.

The next part of the zoo was very exciting (truly). It was a 'monkey village'. You walked into an enclosure and these little spider monkeys were everywhere. The picture below was taken without a zoom lens.

They were running and jumping and swinging all around you. It was fantastic.

By the end of the day, we'd seen more animals than I could remember and we were all completely exhausted.

Oh, I have to show you this picture because it makes me laugh. At the moment I took the picture, Hannah was pretending to be The Little Mermaid, Gray was trying to decide whether a running jump off the log was a good idea, and Ains was saying "Wook, Mommy! I Queen of all da kids in da WOOOLD!!!"

On our way out, we stopped at the carousel. Hannah and Ains each chose sea creatures the first time around - a sea horse and dolphin respectively.

Gray chose to sit on the stationary bench with me once his shark started moving.

On the second time around, Ains chose a zebra. She wanted to bring it home with her.

Today I went to IKEA for the first time with my sister and my feet hurt from all the walking I did yesterday added onto the walking we did in IKEA. That store's almost as big as the zoo (Not really. But kinda. But not even close. But it's BIG!!!).

It was a wonderful day and now my kids want to go to the zoo closer to home. It's not nearly as nice, and it's a lot colder this time of year. They'll have to wait.

Always a day behind.

And today won't be any different. I'll tell you about today's fun tomorrow, when my eyes aren't glassing over from exhaustion.

Yesterday my sister and I went to a small market in the area. The girls bought mini-cheesecakes from a sweets vendor which they thought was tons of fun (mini-cheesecakes are fancy and Hannah's still trying to teach Ains the importance of that) and Gray had several mini-meltdowns. Being away from home isn't as carefree for him as it was for his sisters at the same age.

Then, when the cousins got home, we went to a World Market. Such a fun store. Hannah and I found some ideas for lighting in the kid's flower garden this summer.

Wouldn't those be pretty? Everyone kind of gravitated to the international chocolates aisle and milled there for awhile. I got some early Easter supplies and a sweet little mini-globe that I would like to have floating around our house.

When we got home, the kids went directly to the trampoline in the back yard without passing Go or collecting $200 (not that they would have had much of a chance of that had they tried). This is where they get rid of so much of their energy. I tried to get some pictures, but they were getting rid of a lot of energy.







The girls are so good with Gray in there. All he wants to do is run in circles as fast as he can, and if he can do that while they're bouncing around him, it's all the more fun.

Let me show you one of my favorite views since I've been here. From my sister's patio, you can see an orange tree in the yard behind hers...

and a lemon tree a few doors down.

We don't have local citrus in Idaho.