More Sewing

I went through kind of a dry spell with sewing but I am back into it again. I made this dress for Adele this week.  I plan to make some spring/Easter dresses or skirts for my other girls as well.  It was so funny when I was taking pictures of her in the dress she kept posing in all these cute and funny poses,

Eyebrows

Elise came home from school yesterday and I instantly knew something was different. 

I looked at her and said, "What happened to your eyebrows?"   

Her reply:  "I got some scissors, and, um, cut them....Can you put it on your blog?"

Me: "Did you do this just to get on the blog?  No way am I putting this on my blog because I don't want you doing stuff like that just to get on the blog."

This morning I took pictures of all the kids showing me their "happy morning faces" so I could get a pic of the eyebrows and secretly put it on my blog.  Am I evil or what.

Fun with Magic Erasers

We have had a lot of wall art going on around here lately. Last week Adele drew on the garage door (like across the whole outside door).  Then she drew on the living room wall.  Then on the cabinets under the bar.  And her bedroom door.  She destroyed the magic eraser during the garage clean-up by pulling all the white stuff off and shredding it. I finally got some more.  We have 4 now so hopefully that will last awhile.  She is going to be spending some SERIOUS time in her room today scrubbing the door.

Adele's New Skirt

I had to post pics of the skirt I made Saturday night.  I learned this pattern/method from a friend. Next time I think I'll make it fuller, but it turned out pretty cute.

Provo Nostalgia

We are on our way home from our trip now so that means our van is fixed. Just as I start to type this my kids are fighting in the back and spitting on each other.  I think I am ready to be home.  Today we took the  kids to the "Bean Museum" (the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum).  We always refer to it as the "Bean Museum" even though that confuses  people.  After seeing lots of taxidermied vertebrates and fouls, and a fair amount of reptiles and invertebrates-in-a-jar we took a picnic lunch to Wasatch Elem. on 900 East.  Then to the Creamery on 9th for some of the best ice cream ever. 

This whole weekend has been full of nostalgic moments for me.  My family drove around Provo on Friday evening before we ate dinner at Brick Oven.  We showed the kids my dorms, the Provo Temple, Allred apartments where I lived my sophomore year, and pretty much every landmark in between.  They were SHOCKED at how busy the streets were and how many people there were.  There are as many students at BYU as people in our city.  Seeing all the college students and my old haunts sent a pang through my body.  I felt the same way today in the Bean Museum.  College life wasn't great and fabulous all the time, and I don't have the delusion that it was, but I miss it sometimes.  (Especially when my kids are being twerps and I am longing for the simple freedoms of young adulthood.)  Seeing the animals and biology stuff made me think of all the classes I went to and all the studying I did.  There is just a certain feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction to finish a class or an assignment.  Kind of like you have something to show for your hard work.  Sometimes I feel like there is nothing to show for what I do. 

One night last week I was feeling overwhelmed and bad about all the things that I didn't accomplish that day and kind of had an epiphany.  I thought:  Just because my house isn't clean and all my work isn't done does not mean that I accomplished nothing.  I am growing 4 kids and the fact that they were fed, to all the places they needed to be and are taken care of shows that I did accomplish something.  It all has to be done again tomorrow, but I am growing kids and in the end, they will my greatest accomplishment (or biggest failure).  Anyway, that was kind of a tangent but I know that I am one of those people who wishes to be out of a certain stage of life.  And I get frustrated with the monotony of pretty much every stage of life when I am in it.  Being in Provo really made me miss my time there, my friends there, and the time of my life just after I was married and didn't have any kids yet.  As I sit here and think about this I know that I will feel that way about the time of life I am in right now. My kids are little.  They aren't "moody teenagers" yet.  (Tho sometimes I swear they are teenagers trapped in little bodies).  It was just really weird to think that my younger days are kind of over.  I guess I have been thinking about this more because I am on the eve of my 35th birthday.  I don't necessarily think of 35 as "old" but it is an "older part of young adulthood".  Or dare I say it is more like mid-adulthood?  I think I am old enough now (or I soon will be) for a mid-life crisis.  Not that that is what I am aspiring to or anything. I think my 1/3 life crisis was recent enough to put me in the safe zone for awhile.  Anyway, I don't really know what the point of this post is.  It's mostly rambling and to keep me distracted from all the complaints from the back of the car.  ("How much longer?") I just feel kind of nostalgic and sad that I can't go to a movie with roommates tonight or go for a run at the Smith Fieldhouse.  Sad that we have to move on, but actually relieved at the same time.  Wishing I could go back and see all my friends and mentors and spend some time (sleeping in) the library without a bunch of hungry baby birds at home who need and depend on me for everything.

(photo from this website)

Weekend Trip

It has been a really long time since we have taken our kids on a trip.  The last few times we have planned to go we have been thwarted by the weather.  Linda, my darling sister won some tickets to a cooking show from the greatest cooking blog ever:  ourbestbites.com .  I happen to know Sara and Kate from OBB so I was very excited to go.  (Don't worry, I will do a a post about the show).  We met Kate for dinner at Brick Oven and Sara stopped by after dinner to pick up Kate.  We had to pose for a picture:

There was an awesome balloon-maker. (What is the politically correct name for THAT job?  Balloon Artist?  Balloon Sculptor? ) I have never seen such elaborate balloon creations.  He said he could make something like 250 different (or 350?) balloon creations.  And he was the author of a balloon book.  A balloon SCULPTING book.  Oh, and the pizza at Brick Oven was the best pizza I have eaten in a VERY long time.  Sooooo much cheese...

I took oodles of photos on this trip and it was pretty packed with stuff, so I think I should summarize with some highlights and some pictures.

We went to a little pond in Salem to feed the ducks.  And swat at "midges"  (Thanks biology lady. Knowing what they were called didn't make them any less annoying, however).  Awesome picture huh?  Getting 7 little kids to cooperate for a picture isn't easy.  Instead of picking the best one I picked the funniest one.  (And all of them were bad.)

It was a gorgeous day!  I love the mountains in Utah county.

My crazy kiddos.  I didn't even tell them to make funny faces. I guess it comes naturally.

Other highlights:

• Going to the "Bean Museum" on BYU campus (Bean Life Science Museum)
• Getting to hang out with my awesome sister Linda
• Eating BYU Creamery Ice Cream (I forgot how yummy it was.  I even had a sample of "Sparkle Sherbet" for old times sake.  At BYU they serve a drink called "Pink Y Sparkle" at pretty much every banquet/party etc.
• Buying "squeaky cheese" at the Creamery. (Which reminds me... is that still in the car???)
• Seeing Sara and Kate in action (but I will talk more about that later), and getting their cookbook (thanks Linda!)
• The van breakdown was not a highlight.
• Going shopping at Old Navy.  (They had the best camis on sale for 5 bucks with adjustable straps.  YAY!)

Breakdown

Why is it that we never have breakdowns when we are at home? Whenever we go to Utah county bad things happen.  We were driving south from Old Navy in Orem and our car started smelling funny.  Then it started making funny noises in the construction area on the freeway.  Then we saw that the engine was hot.  It took about 10 minutes to get to the nearest exit.  The car died at a stoplight right on the overpass.  Good times.  Good thing we have family around here to rescue us when stuff like that happens.  Hopefully our car will be fixed by Saturday so we can go home.  (Or maybe I really hope that it will be too expensive to fix it and we will have to get a new car.)

Packing

I found Adele packing all her belongings.  Apparently she is going on a trip to the zoo tomorrow with Virginia.

All her stuff is in there.  This is going to be one LONG trip.

Uma Did It!

We don't have cable but my kids spend plenty of time playing at Nickjr.com.  They discovered a show called Oobi that has characters that are played by hands.  Their favorite episode s  is "Uma's Preschool" where Grandpu (pronounced Grand-POO, kids think it is the funniest thing EVER) promises Uma that he will come back.  It is pretty much as lame as it gets with them speaking in incomplete sentences and repeating everything over and over.   My kids love it.  Uma's best friend at preschool is called Moppy.  (I had to read about this on wikipedia because I had no idea who in the heck Moppy was.)  So, Adele has sort of turned Moppy (who she refers to as Floppy) and Uma into her imaginary hand friends. Uma and Floppy talk to her.  Sometimes when I can't get her to do something I want her to do my hand will become Uma and she will do it for Uma.  And she loves it when Uma gives her goodnight kisses.

This morning I was gone for about an hour.  When I got home my kids told me that "some guy" came over and brought brownies.  I couldn't find them in the kitchen so I asked them where they were. They said they saw Adele with them.  I asked her where they were.  She told me they were behind the chair in my office.  The area behind the chair in my office has somehow become her little burrow where she stashes all her treasures and hides things.  She also likes to hang out there.  I looked back there and sure enough, there was a half eaten plate of brownies.  I asked her if she ate the brownies and she nodded  Then she held up her hands and said, "It wasn't me, Uma did it, and Floppy! They need a spank".  This is not the first time that Uma and Floppy have force-fed treats to Adele.  This has happened before.  I guess in a way it is true.  Uma and Floppy do have a way of getting into things.

Adele's secret stash.  I missed that brownie the first time I looked back there. I think she was saving it for later.  She's got some puzzles back there, some of her craft projects from preschool, a purse, a blanket, her cell phone... all the essentials.  And how coincidental that the book that she has back there is "Where the Wild Things Are."

"Normal" Life (Update)

Whew, now that all those cruise posts are done I can get back to posting about normal stuff. Not that normal stuff is exciting in any way but I wanted to get the cruise stuff done and not break up the posts. 

• Before our cruise I commented to a few people that we had  had a pretty good winter so far without too much sickness. My kids were healthy through the holidays and that was amazing.  Of course I knew that couldn't last forever. And it didn't.  When we left for the trip Ian was sick. Then all the other kids got it while we were gone.  Then when we got back Elise was sick.  Then Ian got it, then Adele and then me.  Ian missed 4 days of school last week.  Adele and I days 5 and 6.  I think we have "the flu".  Next year I am going to be one of the first in line for the flu shot.  Guess who was the only one to have a flu shot this year.  Kent.  Guess who never got sick.  Yep.  Good thing too because last weekend he was on call and there was a big system upgrade.  Kent ended up working pretty much non-stop all weekend while the rest of us either ran amok or stayed in bed convalescing.  I CANNOT wait until everyone is well again. Can I just say:  THE WHINING!!! THE WHINING IS MAKING ME INSANE!  And I miss doing my usual activities like having kid free time sometimes.  It is great when kids can go to school.  I miss not being able to go to the gym.  And I miss sleeping all night without having Adele wake up in a coughing fit every 45 minutes and then crying and freaking out. Ah, the good old days.
  
• Someone please remind me what the age is when kids grow out of getting into everything.  Adele has been DRIVING me crazy because she is constantly getting into all my stuff and is a huge destructive force around here.  Maybe I am getting lazy and underestimating her power of destruction and am leaving things in accessible places but I don't think I have done anything different.  She is just into everything, and she always has been.  Either aliens are invading and using my camera to take pictures of their Mothership or Adele has gotten the camera again.
  
• On a happier note, we had a silly and fun FHE the other day.  Emilia saw this idea in The Friend and wanted to try it. It's kind of like musical dress up where you pass around a bag of silly stuff and when the music stops you have to reach in the bag and put on whatever you get.  The kids thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.

• I had to post this picture for 2 reasons.  1. I taught Adele to play "Go Fish" the other day and now it is her favorite thing to do EVER.  2.  I had to document me wearing my "Betty White"  (wait, mine is Bea Mcarther huh.) jammies. My sister Carol told me about her "Betty White" warm-up suit and said that it was the most comfy thing ever even if it did make her look like one of the "Golden Girls".  When we were talking about it she decided that I must have one too.  Hers is blue, mine is pink.  She sent it to me early for my birthday.  It is like wearing a fuzzy cloud.  Now we need to find some for the rest of our sisters.  They didn't have any more at the store when she got mine for me.

 (Oh, and thanks Kent for taking the picture with the pink bow in my hair. Sometimes I grab whatever is nearby to get my bangs out of the way. I guess I should be glad it was that little pink bow and not something scarier.)

This is scarier.

Going Home

Gotta love this candid shot after getting off the ship.  "Noooo, I am not ready to go home! Can't I stay in tropical paradise forever?"

Nassau

Our second port-of-call was Nassau.  It was much much more crowded and touristy than Coco Cay.  You have to go through a whole series of shops and vendors just to get onto the island.  People are selling stuff and offering their services everywhere.  Want a taxi?  How about some expensive jewelry (duty and tax free!) or maybe just a tour of something?  Boat ride? Shuttle? Carriage ride? There are people in your face constantly.  We had planned to go on a walking tour, see some of the city landmarks and go to the pirate museum.  We wanted to find a nice beach somewhere and swim but that part didn't happen. After walking around for several hours and being bombarded by people we decided just to go back to the ship, have lunch and relax.  It was very beautiful there but also very busy and very touristy.  There were 3 other ships there at port that day plus all the regular tourists who stay at the Atlantis resort.  This is definitely a big tourist trap.

 This guy's job was to stand outside the pirate museum, take pictures with tourists and then convince them to go inside the pirate museum. We were easy targets because we had been planning on going to the museum all along.  Isn't he nice to hold my hair out of my eyes for the picture?  Bahamians are very "hands on" types of people.

In the picture on the left you can see the Queen's staircase behind Kent's head.   It was carved into the rock by slaves.  We had an impromptu tour by a very helpful "non-tour guide" who stopped us as we were walking and started giving us info (and then asked for tips at the end of course).  On the right is the statue of Queen Victoria.

Fort Fincastle

Arrr!

National Geograpic Part II

Yes, we are nerds but we had a lot of fun looking at and taking pictures of all the interesting and different wildlife we saw:

 Ok, so chickens aren't really wildlife.  We thought the egret was pretty cool (but we didn't know what it was.  Emilia told us what it was when we showed her the picture. It is nice to have kids who are smarter than us.  And she's just in 5th grade.)  The Wild Dilly sign is pointing out a tree and the other picture is a pelican.

The alligator was in Florida.  We saw a sting ray, snaily things, barnacles and other things that I can only describe as looking like trilobites.  (Which I might point out was readily noticed by Ian, Elise and Emilia all independently.  That is what you get when your kids have an uncle who is really into fossils and teaches them about trilobites. Maybe he will know what that  thing is.)

Coco Cay

When people ask me my favorite part of the trip I tell them "Coco Cay".  Coco Cay is a private island owned by Royal Caribbean.  It has lounge chairs and hammocks everywhere and it is as close to an island paradise as I have ever seen. It wasn't crowded, there was beautiful water, coconut trees and all sorts of sea shells and interesting stuff to look at.  I am not sure where the chickens came from but there were chickens.  Not so tropical but amusing.  We had a great time walking up the beach looking for shells and sea creatures, lounging in the hammocks and hiking on a nature trail.  Unfortunately for me my little toesies were not used to wearing flip flops and I had some blistering going on between my toes.  Add some sand and a little salt water and you have some pretty uncomfy sores.

Kent took a picture of me sleeping in the hammock with the chickens running all over the place.   It was funny because I heard the chickens before I saw them and at first I thought the clucking was just a lady with a terribly annoying laugh.  That is what happens when you are only semi-conscious and you hear strange and unfamiliar noises.

That is our ship in the distance.

I could have stayed at this tropical paradise for a very long time.

The Cruise

Here are some pictures from the cruise ship. 

 Playing with the life jackets we found in the closet.

 Here are some pictures of our stateroom.  Elise wanted us to take lots of pictures of all the hotel rooms and the cabin on the boat.  She even specifically asked for pictures of the bathroom.  She is very interested in taking pictures right now because she got a camera for her birthday and all things must be documented.  The kids got a kick out of the toilet and thought it was so weird that you had to push a button (about 100 times in our case) to get the toilet to flush.  Don't be fooled by the sort of spacious look of our room.  There are mirrors and it looks bigger in the pictures than it did in real life.

 Random pictures of the ship.

(Anyone else think Kent looks like "Pirate Dwight" just a little in this one?)

We didn't even see any towel animals until the day before we left the cruise.  It was very disappointing.  We actually saw that monkey hanging in someone's room when we walked by and I quickly grabbed my camera and took a picture of it.  They did have a "towel folding" class on one of the decks one day but we missed it.  Now we will never know how to make monkey-towels for our guests. 

I didn't get a picture of our waiters but now I wish I would have. They were absolutely delightful and we enjoyed seeing them at dinner everyday. Our head waiter, Amit from India asked us where we were from and was so excited to hear that we were from Utah.  He asked us if we were Mormons and told us that he loved Mormons.  He used to see them all the time when he worked on a cruise out of California but hadn't seen any Mormons (assuming that Utah residency=Mormons) for 2 years.   He came to our table every night asking how his "lovely Mormons" were.  It was interesting that he said that he loved meeting Mormons and that there was something different in the feeling he got from interacting with them.   

On our last day on the ship Amit sent chocolate covered strawberries to our stateroom.  We were talking to him at dinner and thanked him for the strawberries and we asked him if he was Hindu.  He was and we told him about the Krishna temple in Payson and how they have the festival where they throw colored powder on each other.  He thought that was pretty surprising that they had a Hindu temple in Utah.  Then he mentioned that a bunch of his "lovely Mormon friends" had given him copies of the Book of Mormon and he joked that he didn't have any more room in his cabin because he had 11 copies of the Book of Mormon taking up all the space everywhere. It was pretty funny and we really enjoyed talking to him.  I was glad that other Mormons had made a good impression on him. 

Cocoa Beach and Port Canaveral

Ok, I am finally ready to blog about this trip!  There have been lots of photos to edit and resize etc. so it has taken forever.  Plus, once you get back from a tropical vacation and have been away from your home for a week there is laundry to do, people to cook for (dang, I guess I have to do that again don't I?) and SICK kids to take care of.

After arriving in Orlando we rented a car and made our way to Cocoa Beach.  We brought our new GPS with us on our trip, thinking it would come in handy. We were headed out of the airport garage when she started telling us directions that did not correspond to what the rental car guys had told us. We had a decision to make: Follow the map and the signs on the freeway or listen to "Susan". Kent decided to listen to Susan.  (I tried to tell him... FOLLOW THE MAP!)  He was driving so he got to make the decisions. We listened as Susan kept telling us to go North when the OCEAN and our destination was clearly East. I finally convinced Kent to ignore Susan and listen to ME (and the signs and the maps). We turned around and backtracked the way we were supposed to go. We assumed that as we did this Susan would reconfigure the directions and pick up the route as we were driving it. No such luck. Here's what our trip from the Orlando airport to the hotel sounded like after we got back on the freeway headed EAST:

"Prepare to turn around in 200 feet."
"Sorry, we are not turning around."
..."Route recalculation"
"Exit freeway at exit 16"
"Do you think she will figure out that we are going a different way and reconfigure it with the new route?"
"Turn back at next left"
..."Route recalculation"
"Turn back at next sharp left"

...
"Route recalculation"

"Is she for real?"

"You are over the speed limit!"
"Shut up."
"Turn back!"
..."Route recalculation"
"Susan, you have no clue what you are talking about."
"Turn left in 200 feet."
"We are going the right way."
"Turn left at next turn."
..."Route recalculation"  and on and on. She kept telling us what to do, we kept ignoring her and she kept recalculating the route.  We thought that eventually she would reconfigure the route to actually be the right route. She never did. This went on and on until we were less than 5 miles from our hotel. She told us to turn back and the GPS said that we were an hour from our destination.

We ate dinner at this cute little seafood restaurant. I don't really love seafood but for some reason I wanted to eat seafood since we were by the sea.  I ended up getting clam chowder.   Does clam chowder really count as seafood?  The guy at the hotel said they were famous for their clam chowder.  It was good, but I have to say it wasn't as good as the clam chowder at Mo's at Canon Beach in Oregon.

We had several hours to kill in the morning before we had to get on the ship so we went a beach shop and got some souvenirs for the kids.  After that we decided to play some mini-golf.  Kent beat me by 2 points.  We both got 1 hole in 1.  The course was pretty cool and they had live alligators in a fenced area in the middle.

We boarded our ship at Port Canaveral and saw the Kennedy Space Center in the distance. Kent had been interested in going there until he heard that the admission charge is $40.00. 

The ocean was beautiful there even if it did smell a bit fishy. I actually noticed the "salt air" for the first time. People always talk about the "salt air" and I couldn't really figure out how you can smell salt since that is one of the only 4 things that we actually taste instead of smell. But, at last, I smelled the salt air (or maybe I just inhaled it and then tasted it.)  Being by the ocean made me want to live in a place where there is water.